Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 (16 page)

That was a weird consideration, this far out. It might have been something he once wanted in the beginning, a notion like that, but not now. Not for a long time. The truth didn’t matter; it was elusive, a rabbit running through thick woods. But the truth here, it meant he lived or died. It meant the two guys he was here with lived or died. And if he was being honest, he didn’t know the truth. He didn’t know if it was over. He thought that it might be, that there was a really good chance he wouldn’t find this thing.

But maybe he could. Maybe.

“What do you want, Rigley?” he said finally, still looking out the side window.

“I want you to find this goddamn thing.”

“And no one else knows?” Will said.

“No.”

“So only the three of us down here know about it? And you?”

“A few analysts might, the people that send me the data, but that’s it.”

Will knew he was about to give away his soul here. He knew that he was giving it away for a few extra days of life, for a few extra days of life for the men with him. What was Will’s soul anymore anyway? Just a tattered flag, dragged through the dirt. Hell, he was going to risk the entire world so that the three of them could live, and it sounded like Rigley wanted him to. It sounded like she was begging him to say he could fix it.

The chances were small, but still there.

“You’ll need to make sure those analysts are disposed of. You’ll also need to send me more resources.”

J
ulie’s sobs subsided
, though the tears didn’t.

“Will you let us go? Please?” she asked, knowing these two wouldn’t answer. Whatever she and Michael were involved in, they wouldn’t get out of it. The man that walked them over to this car had taken both their phones and tossed them to the ground before continuing. And still, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, from begging.

Michael said nothing; he sat staring out the tinted window. He still held her hand and she wasn’t letting go. She held onto that lifeline, the only thing she had right now that said someone cared, that said someone was with her.

“Please?” she asked again, wiping her nose with the shirt of her free arm.

Nothing. The men up front were stones, as inhuman as anything they were chasing. They wouldn’t be reasoned with, they wouldn’t take pity on anything. They were evil, that’s what Julie thought. They were heartless, black things that might have spawned from hell itself. The only hope Julie had was her parents starting to look for her soon. That they would call the police, or actually go to the police station. Then someone would start looking; then someone would figure out about these black cars and the people inside them.

A phone rang in the front of the car. Driver picked it up and put it to his ear.

“Okay,” he said and then hung up.

“What are you doing?” Julie asked as the man in the driver’s seat turned around. He looked at Michael first, who had pulled his hand away from Julie’s, both of them now up in front of him, not with his palms out, but turned into fists.

Michael was looking at the man in the driver’s seat, prepared for a fight. By the time he realized the aggression would come from the passenger’s side, it was too late.

Julie saw them come for her. She screamed, and clawed at the door—for a few seconds—but in the end, darkness and silence took over.

B
riten knew
where his wife was, and more importantly, he knew where she was going. Where she was right now wasn’t bad, but where she would go later would be so much worse.

She could die today and there wasn’t a thing he could say about it. It was more than the female-male dichotomy that ruled on Bynimian; that never really mattered in their relationship. Morena was concerned only with her people, only with making sure that they found safety. It didn’t matter if she died in the process. Briten didn’t think it could all be blamed on going to the tower either; this was Morena, the reason she was born the Var. Briten learned young what the word meant, learned it when he was still a boy training to lead his own planet. It meant
mother
—at least that was the easiest translation to his native tongue. That’s what she was being now, a mother to this place, and if she died trying to save her children, then so be it.

Briten walked among the core, the clear bridges building out in front of him and falling away as he stepped forward. He wasn’t wrong in his research; he knew that and he thought The Council did too. Any of them could have searched through it, could have seen there were no traps, were no deceptions. They were angry at Morena’s choice, had been for the past thousand years. This new surfacing of that anger stemmed from the fact that he discovered the problem. It stemmed from the fact that he was tasked with the solution by Morena. It stemmed from him not being of this world.

He watched molten lava lick up at the clear shield around him. It would eat him alive if it could, without even knowing it.

He had thought of turning back, leaving Morena, going back to his own world and seeing if he could be integrated back into life there. Not as a ruler, of course, but something else. He thought of it often over the past few years as he worked through this problem. He didn’t know how his work would end, but the further in he went—the more trails he followed that turned into dead ends, bearing no solutions—the more he saw the probabilities staring at him: that the world would die. He understood the trouble that would come to Morena over it, understood years ago that this would be an extremely painful process, made all the more painful by his origin. If he left, if he handed it off to someone else, maybe The Council would listen to the message. He decided against it, and the reason why was as simple as reasons could get: he loved Morena more than anything else in life. He loved her selfishly, loved her more than he wanted all of these beings on Bynimian to continue living. So he had stayed and worked out the solution.

Briten never told Morena, never asked her if he should leave, because he knew what her answer would be.

Now it was too late for all of that. Now, there would be war and one side would die as they always did during war. It was too late for him to leave and it wouldn’t matter if he did at this point—Morena wouldn’t stop. Her mind was made up. Whatever the tower told her, whatever conclusion she came to, no one could stop her from taking this path. Bynimian wasn’t a warlike people, but if anyone on this planet should have been from Briten’s world, it was Morena. If any Var had to handle this problem, Morena was the one.

M
orena looked
out at the machines. She stood in a hollowed out cavern, one closer to the core than most Bynums would ever get—heat permeated the cavern, but the machines didn’t mind it. Morena didn’t either, not if it meant she was able to complete this job. No one would come down here, because very, very few people knew the place even existed. The third Var had built it, maybe a billion years ago; Morena didn’t remember fully why, but she thought it had something to do with trying to find another way to use the core’s energy. It failed, but the cavern still existed, boxed in with metal on all sides—a pristine room that stretched a mile square.

Morena stood at the entrance. She had to come down here to see what was going on; she couldn’t monitor this remotely, using surveillance. That could get out, that the Var was watching something underground, and she needed silence more than anything else right now. So when she wanted to look at the progress, she descended to this cavern. She didn’t mind, though, because what she saw before her took her breath away.

Huge machines—the smallest at twenty feet high—moving around the room with grace that most Bynums would be jealous of. The Singularity Bynimian created millions of years before controlled these machines, all Morena need do was tell it what she wanted. Ships. Ten thousand ships. The first batch of five hundred sat in front of her now, being built to perfect specifications. They would carry her people to the far ends of the universe, each of the fifty thousand aiming for a specific planet, and with enough energy to turn back around if needed. No one would be sent out into space on death missions. They would find habitable planets or they would return. This part of the plan was going well, and when the batch was finished, the first group would be sent out.

The next part of the plan was going to be the difficult piece. She had held off challenging The Council, instead deciding to build first. She wouldn’t lie to herself down here in this walled off assembly line; she was scared to challenge them. She was scared and she felt guilty. Those people had served Bynimian their entire lives, and now she was going to end their lives. They truly thought what they were doing was in Bynimian’s best interest, truly thought they were doing good, but in their best intentions lay death for the entire planet. Morena had to do it, though she didn’t want to.

She found herself coming down here everyday, watching the machines build. They didn’t care who was here, didn’t care who watched them. They had a job to do and that was all that concerned them. If Morena was to try and step in their way, they would discard her like a broken toy. It reminded her, she supposed, of what she needed to be. A machine with a job. Even if it meant killing those that raised her.

Morena turned from the project, heading back to the surface of her world, knowing that it was time to bring The Council down. It could be put off no longer.

N
o one noticed
the vehicles showing up, nor should they have. None of them rolled into Grayson, Georgia, using armored tanks. No police cars with sirens. The invasion of Grayson took place in broad daylight, with everyone watching, and yet no one knew it was happening.

It started the very night Will got off the phone with Rigley. The first car entering the town at about one in the morning, pulling into a gas station. The man that got out wore a blue Atlanta Braves hat and a light brown jacket. He filled the tank, paid with cash, and then pulled out of the twenty-four hour gas station. The clerk never even asked how he was doing, only took the money and then went back to reading his book behind the counter.

More cars started pulling in after two; they came from all directions, and each of them looking as normal as flannel shirts in the nineties. Most didn’t stop, but just rolled through the town in darkness, pausing at red lights, and then slowly moving forward when they turned green. They were all heading to one place, to Will. Some were older than him, though most younger. All of them the best that Rigley had been able to find. All of them as silent as a mute; they would never speak about what happened here and that was primarily why she chose them. Each of the ones arriving knew what was to occur. They had done it before, though perhaps not on this scale.

They were coming to massacre this town. To cut it up until they found what they were looking for, or until there was nothing left to cut.

B
ryan looked
at his mother lying on the floor. She hadn’t moved at all since he/Morena attacked her. She lay crumpled on the floor, face down, her eyes closed. Blood leaked from her nose onto the carpet. The blood, once it left her body, lost its color, turning into the same black and white hue as the rest of this place. He could see Thera’s parents too, when Morena turned Thera’s head to look that way; but it was much the same on that side. Neither moving. Silence filling up the house.

They hadn’t spoken since coming across, not after the screams at watching their parent’s abuse. It was a strange feeling, switching from the horror of watching your parents being beaten, and knowing it was your body doing it, to then switching to the terror that you might die. Bryan didn’t know where he was, didn’t know how this place could even possibly exist, but he could feel Morena’s fear. He could see the creatures outside, more showing up slowly, all of them shadows with white eyes that glowed as bright as the ship Morena arrived in. There were ten of them outside his house, all moving almost glacially slow as they joined the small group. They didn’t venture onto his lawn, but stared from the street, each of them lining up next to the other, see-through shoulder to see-through shoulder.

Morena was frightened of these things. Bryan could feel that, and her fear transferred directly to him, because if this beast inside him was scared, then certainly he should be too. He didn’t know how he knew it, but those things outside meant him harm. Maybe it was his parent’s screams that brought them, or maybe it was just that their group arrived here. It didn’t matter, because more were coming, slowly, but still on their way. He could see them exit houses down the neighborhood. They walked out and just watched, standing at the door, turning directly to his house. After a while they would start walking, always stopping next to another shadow. Then they just stared, those white, blank eyes looking blind.

“Do you think they’re alright?” Thera asked, breaking the silence between the two of them.

Bryan didn’t need to ask who; she certainly wasn’t talking about the creatures outside. “I don’t know,” he answered, honestly.

“This place, I don’t think anything that makes sense where we’re from makes sense here. I don’t know what that means exactly, but I think they’re in more danger now than they would be if they were hit back home. Not just because of those things outside, either. This place is dangerous.”

Bryan had been scared and Thera had been thinking. She’d been considering all the angles and possibilities, coming to some kind of theory.

“You think they’re dying?” He asked.

“That I don’t know, but I think they could if something doesn’t happen soon.” She paused for a few seconds and then spoke again. “What do you think they want?”

This time she meant the things outside, the creatures showing up to stare. Bryan didn’t answer for a bit, because he didn’t know what to say. He felt sure they wanted to hurt whoever was inside these houses, but how and why, he didn’t know.

“I think they’ll kill us,” he said finally.

“Yeah,” she said. “She’s scared of them, isn’t she?”

“I think so.”

Minutes passed with no one speaking, both just watching the street from their different vantage point. Sometimes Bryan would look to Thera’s house, to see what her view showed, and it was similar every time. Morena sat on chairs in both houses, pulled back from the window, but watching out.

“She’s quiet,” Thera said. “Not like usual. There’s none of the planning going on. She’s watching, I think, but kind of in a slowed down state.”

Bryan hadn’t noticed that, perhaps because he’d been too busy watching the creatures outside appear from nowhere. He searched now though, and he saw Thera was right. Normally Morena was not just there, but in charge. Her mind always whirling, thinking in that way Bryan couldn’t quite understand. There was always a power coming from her consciousness, feeling like when you held your hand close to a fire. You know the energy that the fire holds, know that it could hurt you in a split second.

That energy was gone now. Morena was in charge, clearly, but not all of her was here.

“She’s gone somewhere else,” Bryan said. “She’s watching but…” he trailed off, not knowing what to say.

“She’s hibernating.”

“Why’s she scared?” Bryan asked. “I mean, if she’s scared of this, why did she bring us here? You saw her do it and now she’s terrified.”

“I’m not sure…” Thera trailed off, clearly thinking. “I’m not sure she knew what to expect. I think she panicked because of that cop.”

“Why doesn’t she just bring us the fuck back, then? Why is she sitting here watching them show up?”

Thera didn’t answer. She didn’t know just as Bryan didn’t know.

“HELLO! ARE YOU FUCKING THERE?” Bryan shouted into their consciousness, trying to kickstart Morena, trying to get her to at least recognize them. He knew it wouldn’t work, knew that when she didn’t want to hear them, she wouldn’t.

“Do you think she’s going to come back?” He asked.

“She’s hibernating for a reason, I think. The same as all creatures that hibernate—she’s waiting on something.”

C
lose now
, the spawn could feel the heat. So very close, and it thought this world would do just fine. A few more feet and it would know for certain. Fear rested in it as well, not just excitement, fear that the core wouldn’t be hot enough, and that when the spawn passed through the last layer of solid rock, it would meet an environment unsuitable for growth. If that happened, all was lost. Whatever its mother wanted would not happen; it would not complete its purpose.

It didn’t stop driving downward though. It couldn’t. It was made for this, and would die doing it if need be.

Finally, though, it felt the rock breaking beneath. Felt the rock crumbling, and the spawn fell through, into a glorious mixture of swirling red and blue lava. The moment it touched the heat, it knew that this world would work. It knew that it had found a home.