Nemesis: Book Four (10 page)

Will thought a lot about freedom, thought about it constantly, and when she said the word, he thought she might have traded one master for another. It was the way her words sounded, like a cult member preaching about the holy qualities of their leader—a light in their eyes and passion in their speech, yet underlying it all the inherent stream of crazy. He didn't know who this new master was, what now permeated her head the way Marks once had, but this still wasn't the Rigley he once knew.

And who had he known?

Had the woman ever been driven by anything from inside her, or had it always been different external stimuli prodding her along like a cow?

He saw her, standing before him, her eyebrows raised expectantly, hopefully even.

And are you any different? Are any of us?
he thought. And he had that luxury now, to think such existential bullshit, because he was in this cage without a choice whether to piss himself or not. Rigley didn't have that luxury; she lived outside, and had to deal with the pressures that outside brought with it.

And this person before him was the result of all that pressure. A smiling, manic face, and a glee in her eyes that said she had something to do, something she believed in wholeheartedly. Will didn’t trust any of it.

"Are you there?" she said. "Not Will, but the other. The creature we chased in Grayson."

Will's mouth stopped what he thought would go on forever, the laughter barking out from his throat. No words replaced the barking laugh. No other movement stirred in his body. Only silence spread across the room.

"Maybe you are," Rigley said. "I think you can hear me, even if you're not going to reply." She swallowed, and the smile dipped away, leaving her face looking grave—though not like it had been in the hotel room. Serious, not fearful. "I'm coming to you. I want to help you. The man that keeps showing up here, Marks, I don't know what he wants, but I know it's not right. I know it's not in your best interest, or ours. I want to help you… live here peacefully."

If Will could have laughed he would have, for the second time tonight.

He had thought Marks lost his mind, and now, he knew without doubt that Rigley lost hers as well. Both of them could search from here to the end of the universe, and they would never find that elusive thing called reason and logic. Perhaps they threw it out of their heads willingly, or maybe something stole it, but either way, they had no fucking clue where their minds were.

He looked at her face, so solemn, so honest—like a child telling her parents she loved them. She was completely serious. She wanted to help the thing that now locked Will down like gold bars in a safe. She wanted to help it live on Earth? Peacefully? The goddamn Pilgrims and Indians couldn't get along; what the hell did she think she would actually be able to do?

Rigley said nothing else. She nodded, to herself or to Morena, Will didn't know. She looked on for another second and then turned around, walking back to the tent's entrance. Will watched her go, wondering how much he contributed to the madness now breeding all around him.

R
igley looked east
, to Grayson.

She stood just outside of the tent where Will was held captive. The flap had closed behind her and guards stood to either side, neither of them moving. The sun would peek over the horizon in the next hour and Rigley understood she wouldn't get a better chance than this. Marks had finally laid down, and she thought Knox had as well. People were still awake, of course, but none of them held any authority over Rigley.

She was alone.

Rigley had to leave now, before the sun rose. When it finally came up, things would start happening afresh, and eyes would fall on Rigley again. For the past day, maybe a little more, she was looked at as ancillary equipment, but the chance existed that Marks would throw her back into the fray. And even if he didn't, he wasn't letting her out of his sight. She did something in there when she pressed that button, because she could feel his eyes resting on her like a cobra staring at a rodent. He expected something
from
her, not from the push of the button, and she hadn't given it to him.

He certainly had plans for Rigley.

So either she left now, or she risked never leaving.

She couldn't see the white growth, the cake as they were calling it, without binoculars, but she knew she would find it soon enough. It was coming to her just as she would come to it. She didn't have a plan as to how she would deal with the cake, but she hoped that the creature in the tent listened when Rigley spoke. She hoped that the creature would make a way.

Rigley walked into the parking lot, feeling her pocket for keys. They were still there, where she put them before going into the tent. She didn't slow down, but went straight to the Humvee she took the keys from. She checked the back seat again, making sure that the hazmat suit was still there. She didn't know how far out the white cake had spread exactly, and whether or not the neutron bomb would stretch to its frontier, but she wouldn't risk having her flesh rot off before she got the chance to talk to the creature.

Rigley stepped into the Humvee and put the keys in the ignition.

No one said a word as she left the camp, intent on committing treason.

K
nox didn't care
what Marks said to the President, not outside of any peripheral effects it would have on Knox's operation. If the conversation did somehow derail what Knox wanted to do, he would simply make the leap and get in touch with the President himself. There wasn't time for dealing with Marks and his wants anymore.

Knox stared down at multiple tablets in front of him, all of them together creating a tapestry of the land outside. The advance he saw didn't quite make him speechless, but it was close. He certainly didn't say anything when he first saw the images. He stood next to his direct reports looking at the scene, and wondering how in God's name they would deal with it. Knox didn't know if it was possible, but the radiation might have sped the whole process up. When the sun went down last night, the white cake was only beginning to stretch outside of Gwinnett County.

It took days to do that.

Now, looking at the state of Georgia, Knox saw that the white cake had nearly reached the Alabama border—and was quickly making gains on Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

Knox couldn't see for sure, but it looked like the cake was actually spreading into the ocean. Simply leaving the land and going beneath the water, into the Atlantic Ocean.

His camp would need to retreat again today, would need another fifty miles between it and the growth. Many would fall back, but some would go forward too.

"We're going to start killing this shit today," Knox said, his hands on the table and his eyes still assessing the situation.

"How so?"

Knox looked up, knowing who spoke before he saw him. Marks stood behind the circle of men around the table, had walked in without being noticed. Had stood silently, watching everyone… for how long? They must have been looking at this thing for three or four minutes, no one speaking, but just taking it all in. Had he watched them? Because he certainly wasn't impressed by anything on the table. He kept his hands folded behind his back, and that goddamn smile across his face.

Knox broke eye contact, looking back down at the table.

"We're going to surround it, like we did before. The perimeter is large now, nearly as large as the state itself. The creature won't be able to patrol the entire area." Knox had been thinking about something, but he was nearly scared to mention it, especially with Marks standing there. Amongst his own men, they could brainstorm, and even stupidity wouldn't be discarded immediately. Here, with Marks, the magnifying glass shone on every one of them.

It doesn't matter what he thinks anymore. You have a job to do.

"I want to try the opposite of everything we've tried so far. I want to try ice on it." He nodded. The words felt okay out of his mouth now, not stupid, not silly. "We can't use fire. We can't use radiation. Tanks are going to be useless against the growth. Ice though, might retard its spread. The entire thing stems from a hole that travels to the Earth's core. It thrives on heat. So let's see what it can do against the cold."

"How does that look, sir?" an officer said to his left.

"We wear hazmat suits, just like before, but this time we're not holding flame-throwers. We're going to pump out ice slush. And we're going to keep pumping it until that bitch shows up, the growth eats us, or it dies." Knox looked up to his men, glancing around the table. They all stared at him, and there didn't seem to be any doubt in their eyes. They were with him in this, ready to follow his orders.

Are you right?

He didn't know. He only knew that everything else they tried was useless. Everything else ended in death.

Knox looked to Marks, who stood as calmly as he had in the tent with the creature—not a hint as to what he thought.

"Let me hear what you think can go wrong before we do this."

"
T
hat's a stroke of genius
," Marks said.

The tent was empty except for the two of them and the tablets still beaming up from the table.

"Thank you, sir," Knox said.

"It looks like some of the cake might be escaping out into the ocean. How do you propose to deal with that?"

Knox had thought about it, knowing that the stuff in the ocean might very well be growing at the same pace as the land.

"We'll need to involve the navy," he said.

"Oh yes. I think so as well. I just got off the phone with the President. He wasn't… happy, I suppose, would be the word to use. World leaders will have to know soon. There will be meetings. People will discuss things. They will try to come to conclusions on those things discussed. You and I, though, General Knox, are still here in the thick of it, and we must deal with what we see before us. We cannot wait for the suits in Washington to give us direction, am I right?"

Knox said nothing for a few seconds, letting the question hang in the air like a rotten smell. The man was insane, but too goddamn smart for Knox to truly read him. This was a change, a pivot in strategy. Before the plan had been top down, with Marks directing, and now it appeared that Marks would follow Knox's lead.

The General knew he now walked in a pit full of vipers, actually walked on top of them. Sooner or later, whether sleeping or drugged right now, they would wake and all descend on him at once.

Move quick, then
.

"Yes, sir," he said.

"So, ice. I like it. Let's use ice and see how much of the crud we can kill. Deal?"

"Yes, sir," Knox said.

Marks nodded, looking on for a second longer than Knox liked.

As if you like him looking at you at all
.

He did turn though and walk out of the tent, leaving Knox alone.

The General sighed, sounding tired to his own ears—a noise that he couldn't make with anyone else in the room.

M
orena hung
just below the cloud line. The sun had reached its peak, was shining down on the world beneath it. Morena relished the heat that beamed down on this planet; it would supplement the heat growing from the ground in a way that never occurred on Bynimian.

And yet, she wasn't happy right now, despite the habitability of this planet.

She looked down, to the west, and saw what the humans developed. She had listened to the man speak in the tent, to Kenneth Marks go on and on about how he would kill what mattered to her. Trite, nonsensical. Yet, the man appeared to be onto something here, if what Morena saw now was correct.

It made sense.

Was laughable, even, that she hadn't seen it before now. Had her species been one of war, certainly they would have thought up alternatives to this, but at Stage Five, they faced no threat from one another. Heat gave Bynums life and the cold would strip it from them just as easily.

They were using the cold to wipe out the strands, to push back her children.

And when Morena turned around, viewing different parts of the land she laid claim to, she saw that they had surrounded her. That they were using huge pipes to spew the cold at her, at her children. It would take time, she knew that, because massive amounts of heat stemmed from the core—however the edges of her boundaries were the furthest away, and thus weaker than the strands near the hole.

She felt their pain in a way she didn't know possible. She was always her species' mother, since birth, but when those Bynums died, they possessed no
physical
connection to her. Not so with this. Her aura ached, felt the cold chill of the ice drowning her children. She couldn't hear them, thank The Makers, because it would have been too much to bear. Both the pain and their voices, begging her for help.

The cold hadn't reached actual Bynums yet, resting in their pods. It was only a matter of time though, unless she did something. Yet looking down to the land beneath, the area they spanned was so
large
. The humans weren’t attacking one single spot, or using heat, which the strands could handle. They launched a massive assault, one that Morena couldn't fight by herself.

She floated down from the clouds, moving to the woods—or what had once been woods. Now a white canvas lay before her, filling with growing Bynums.

Morena walked across the strands, the pain in her aura not dissipating. She tried to ignore it, tried to focus on the task at hand, but it was constant. Nothing attacked her actual body, but her aura begged for relief, and that meant her offspring were begging as well. She didn't want to think about what she saw above, the withering white strands trying desperately to find safety, but dying as the unending cold poured across them. Shriveling, turning black.

There is work to be done,
she thought.
You can't help anything by fretting
.

Morena heard the woman talking in the humans' camp. She didn't know everything the woman wanted, or could give, but Morena believed the lady wanted…

To
help
as she termed it.

Perhaps she could help against the assault. Perhaps she had knowledge that would allow Morena to create a new threat against this planet. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

She stood in front of the blue pod, the Bynum's eyes open and looking out.

The first
, she thought.

She had made her mind up without knowing it. Morena realized that now. There were moments when she wanted to hurt these humans. Bryan, tearing a fingernail from his hand—though, that was necessary because it allowed her to reach this point. The Marks character; she still wanted to hurt him due to his arrogance, for the way he seemed to trash those around him, sending the other human in here knowing the danger. All for his own personal gain.

And yet, part of her sided with Chilras. Part of her had hoped that she could allow them to live, that Bynums would rule, but humans needn't die. No more. Staring at this blue aura in front of her, ripe for birth, and feeling the pain happening all around her, she understood that they would die. All of them. It didn't matter the good that she saw in Thera. They made this war and now she would kill them. If she didn't, they would kill her children, and then her, and everything her species built would finally end.

It's time
, she thought. The reason she came down here, to witness.

It started at the top.

The pod opened in a small circle, and a wisp of blue shot out, licking the air like a flame. The circle grew, spreading across the top of the pod, and then falling down, opening the Bynum inside to the world around it.

The ache faded, not in reality, but Morena's awareness of it. Her mind focused on the creature before her. On the first birth of what would become a new world for her entire species—those lost millions of years ago. Even Chilras, this was for her. Because despite what happened between them, Morena wouldn't deny that Chilras cared for Bynimian, cared for it even if in a different way than Morena. This was for everyone that died, and she would bear witness for all of them.

She wept as her child came into the world.