Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation (5 page)

There was still bottled iced tea in the refrigerator. It had warmed, but tea was still tea. Grace accepted it even though the lab seemed to have been her home all along and she clearly could have drunk the tea at anytime. When Piper led to her the couch, she’d gone willingly.
 

Then she unspooled her tale.
 

Not long into it, Andreus and Coffey entered, their pointless distraction having come full circle in its futility. Of course there was nothing in the obliterated basement. And of course the Astrals hadn’t been fooled, if they’d been watching.
 

Every card was on the table. The ship above must know they were here; it was too much to hope that they simply looked skyward and never down. The humans knew the ship knew, and the ship knew
they
knew. It was, in a strange way, as Charlie had said: They were twisted partners, each in pursuit of the same thing. The only questions were how long each party would let the other tag along … and who would attempt to knife whom in the back.
 

Andreus saw his daughter and finally lost his cool. It touched Piper just as Charlie’s kindness had, and she fought, strangely, not to cry. The big bald man embraced the girl, holding her tight for too long while she squeezed him back. Then their former awkwardness seemed to recur, and they separated: Grace moving back to the couch, and Andreus to the small group’s outer halo to listen.
 

And then Grace talked.

About the attack, which Piper guessed had timed perfectly with their own escape into the tunnels. The shuttles that had come here first must have arrived seconds after Trevor’s death. After he’d kicked Piper away and shut the door, saving her while feeding himself to the wolves.
 

Trevor had been seventeen. So was Grace. They might have been friends. Or maybe something more. But Trevor would never see another birthday. Or a proper burial.
 

The ships came. Shuttles first then the mothership. The lab’s skeleton crew had hidden with nowhere to go, slipping under desks like a 1950s duck-and-cover drill. There had been a volley of shots from outside. Grace said she’d heard the ranch house break apart and burn, “like someone kicking down a house of sticks.” Another energy shot close to the door filled the room like a live wire.
 

Then the Reptars had come, tall white Titans beside them like escorts. They’d riffled through the papers, to poke impotently around the computer monitors. Either the network had managed to survive that long, or the mothership had somehow held Terrence’s virus temporarily at bay because the screens had remained lit; the lights had stayed on.
 

Unable to access whatever they were trying to retrieve, the smashing and killing started.

The first to go had been a tech whose name Grace didn’t know. She’d spent her ranch time mostly in the house out back, and had only run to the cliff after the tumult had started. Telling the story, Grace teared up — not over the tech’s life, but over not knowing his name. As if she hadn’t cared enough to learn it and had somehow caused his death by her own hands.

“That thing they do,” Grace said. “Do you know the thing they do, with your mind?”
 

Heads shook. Cameron almost spoke, but Grace had moved on by the time he thought to. He knew
a
thing they did, if not
the
thing. He and Piper had shared a strange mental bond once upon a time, but this sounded different as Grace described it. Like an intrusion. Like a rape of the mind, pinning the nameless tech to the wall with Reptar claws, alien eyes meeting his while the thing pillaged his brain like a hacked data bank. Listening, Piper couldn’t help but recall the monks telling her how the Astrals understood human minds as they should have developed, even if they didn’t understand the Internet.
 

The others had watched. Literally
watched
. They saw the tech’s thoughts as the Reptars searched them. They saw the intrusive images the Reptars inserted to apply leverage. Then they saw the kid die from the inside, and then the outside as claws ripped him to shreds.
 

Then the next person in the lab.
 

Then the next. Furious. Smashing things along the way. Kicking like a tantrum. The Titans’ big white hands pinning each victim against an outside wall so the Reptars could do their job, the dark-think inside the Titans percolating through to the survivors, indistinguishable in image and tone from that of the Reptars.
 

Maybe Titans couldn’t fight. Maybe they really couldn’t hurt a fly. But they could make it easy for Reptars to hurt plenty, and the lines between Astrals, in all of their minds, had grown so thin as to no longer matter.
 

When Piper could no longer take the story — when Grace neared her climax, the part of the story where she alone survived, possibly specifically to report this grisly tale — she walked away. She didn’t make excuses. She simply turned into the deeper part of the lab, searching for all the Astrals couldn’t find.
 

They were so angry
.
They just smashed and destroyed. Titans and Reptars both. Such … impotent rage.
 

It hit Piper all at once. All she’d been keeping inside since their trip through the guts of Cottonwood’s mountain. Through the dust and bugs and fetid-water sumps that washed her bloodstained clothes partially clean. She’d been strong. She’d even felt strong — for once and for all, no longer the old Piper Dempsey. This woman would never again be a passive city’s queen. The new Piper was an insurgent, a troublemaker, an incurable fly in the ointment.
 

But for the moment, she felt broken. For now, she needed to be alone, to let it settle. To get it out, like infection.
 

She sat in the back room, in a lonely upright chair. She turned off the flashlight, comforted by the darkness and discussion — more sounds than decipherable words — in the other room. This was a human place. They hadn’t cracked it. They’d been so, so angry when Cameron and Nathan had fooled them long enough to grab their ceramic key. But that anger, according to Grace’s story, had earned them nothing but a uniquely human emotion:
frustration
.
 

Piper let the tears come: for Trevor, for Benjamin, for her life with Lila, the changed Meyer, and perhaps mostly for herself.
 

When she was finished, Piper looked up in the dark, feeling clean.
 

And saw the thing across the room … watching.

CHAPTER 9

Heather couldn’t take it. Listening to Clara talk about her grandfather was too sad. She’d tried to spare Lila the uncomfortable duty of responding, stepping in to do so herself, explaining that Grandpa had gone away and wouldn’t be coming back. That had confused the girl, so Heather had, despite her disbelief in God, told Clara that Grandpa had taken a permanent vacation to a beautiful place that was better than this one. That last wasn’t even much of a lie, despite her atheism. Because really, what wasn’t better than Heaven’s Veil?
 

But Clara wouldn’t listen. Didn’t get it. She kept saying that they could just follow Grandpa — a request that made Lila visibly pale and Raj uncomfortable. The girl kept saying that she really wanted to find him, especially if he was on his way to somewhere idyllic. And, because she was Clara, she used that word, too:
idyllic
. A freaky child prodigy who spoke like a college student but still didn’t understand death. It was like a cartoon evil genius who happens to be a cat … and who, accordingly, can’t resist playing with a ball of yarn.
 

Heather left. Raj hadn’t ordered anyone to stop her, perhaps rightly deciding she was defeated enough to not be a flight risk. She’d left Lila and Raj’s apartment — the uncomfortable trio of confused child, distressed mother and daughter, and the murderer who’d caused all the trouble. The murderer was now in charge, and Heather found herself for once empty of insults. Apparently, she could only mock Raj when he’d done nothing to earn it. It was almost ironic.
 

On the way down the wide main hallway, Heather heard hard-soled footsteps rushing up behind her. She didn’t bother to turn. It could only be one person, and she didn’t particularly feel like talking to him. Details were Mo’s job, not Heather’s. He could arrange the funeral. She was beat and wanted to bunker in until the weight of Meyer’s death left her.
 

Which, right now, she didn’t think it ever would.
 

“Ms. Hawthorne?”
 

Without turning, Heather said, “Go away, Mo.”
 

“Have you seen Terrence?”
 

Heather stopped. Turned. Stared directly at Mo with all the irritation and condescension she could muster, which was admittedly little. She didn’t feel up to her usual sarcasm. Her middle felt scooped out, and now her top half was wobbling without support.
 

“Terrence?
You’re asking me about Terrence?”
 

“Systems specialist. Tall black guy, with — ”

“Holy shit, Mo. I know who Terrence is. He lives next to me. I was shut into an apocalypse bunker with him. Maybe you remember the last hour or so, when Meyer sent him to go with the Astrals, and you sat here as arbiter?”
 

Mo looked almost defensive. He was good at his job and took pride in doing it well — and offense at any implication that he wasn’t.

“I know you know. Maybe if you’d just answered the question instead of preparing a witty rejoinder for once — ”

Heather resumed walking, ignoring Mo. He trotted beside her.
 

“Don’t walk away from me. Your position here is honorary. Let’s not pretend that you hold any authority in this house when we’re facing a matter of Astral security and a threat to — ”

“Oh, shut the hell up, Mo.”
 

The hallway lights went out. There was only one window in this stretch, and the change made it surprisingly dark. To Heather, with her morose thoughts, the stone palace in darkness felt like a mausoleum. She stopped, feeling blind for the second it took for her brain to catch on.
 

Then the lights returned. Mo was staring at her, his face smug.
 

“Nothing but sass with you, huh? Maybe you don’t get what’s happening here. The entire Heaven’s Veil network is down, but it’s wider than we thought. The problem has wormed its way out onto the Internet. Not sure how. We think it might be repeating through the mothership. But of course
they
can’t tell me because they don’t talk, and the only way for an Astral feeb like me and the rest of humanity to get messages is the old-fashioned way, through the computer, which is down because the whole goddamned network is — ”

“Is that what’s happening with the lights?”
 

“The house has a generator, but the virus is in the home’s systems too. Which is why, until Meyer comes back, I need
Terrence.”
Moe said the last word as if he were teaching someone slow.
 

Heather blinked, her mind working to understand what he’d said.
 

“Terrence went with the Astrals.”
 

“He did?”
 

“You were here, Mo! We all came running down the stairs. Raj was yelling and shouting about conspiracy. Meyer — ” Heather swallowed past his name, “told you that Terrence had done something in the network center. You sent him off with the Titans!”
 

Or maybe not,
Heather thought. Too much had happened since that long-ago time. Had Mo gone with Raj, Terrence, and the Astral guards? Or had he simply given clearance and walked away?

“I know what I did,” Mo snapped, his patience clearly thin. “But now I’m getting strange texts on Meyer’s phone. It was buzzing so much I heard it all the way down the hall.”
 

“I thought the network was dead.”
 

“They’re Astral messages. They sort of take over the phone, not like normal texts. They’re not good at messaging, either, and I don’t think the right hand knows what the left is doing. I can’t talk to them, and nobody with a brain — if they
have
brains — is talking to me. I just keep getting messages that say illuminating things like, ‘Terrence.’”

“What about Terrence?”

Mo held up a phone, apparently Meyer’s. Heather saw nothing on its screen, but Mo said, “I assume they’re asking where he is. I need Meyer to interpret, but … ” Mo rolled his eyes.
 

“Oh.”
 

“So you haven’t seen Terrence? The way these are coming through, it’s like he’s escaped.”
 

“No.”
 

“What about Raj? He’ll know.”
 

Heather tried to remember if Raj had said anything about Terrence. She didn’t think so. She’d been too busy being crushed by the thing nobody had told Mo Weir, obvious as it was.
 

“Raj is upstairs.”
 

“Fucking Meyer,” Mo muttered. “Now of all times to dip into one of his long Divinity sessions.”
 

Mo walked away, frustrated, having no clue he was now right hand to a dead man.