Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 (29 page)

She walked to the edge of the cage, as close as she dared, so that they were mere inches from each other.

"What is your name?" she asked.

He stopped his walk, looking at her with eyes that showed no fear. But why would they? He was protected by this cage, protected from what she could do to him if she had a single second to touch him.

"Veral."

"You have no idea what you've done, do you? Not a clue."

The Assistant said nothing, and for the first time, Morena thought he might understand what she was. Perhaps before, in his mind, she was only considered a Var in title—because he had never come in contact with her, or any other Var before her. He had realized that the title meant nothing, that the bloodline was what mattered, and it
did
separate her—and all those like her—from him.

"Veral, I promise you, that whatever happens here to my husband and I, the same fate will fall on you." She didn't look away and didn't allow him to either. She stared with an intensity that revealed all her anger, all her frustration.

She only averted her eyes when she heard someone else entering the room. Morena saw the Hindran, the one who started the whole damn mess, coming from behind him. Morena stepped back as Chilras approached, breaking the connection she held with the Assistant. She had no more use for him, no more need to ever communicate with him again outside of keeping her promise.

"Where are the machines?" Chilras asked, moving to the transparent cage. The Assistant took a step back.

"Where is Briten?"

"Do you understand what you've done? What awaits you now?"

Morena said nothing for a few seconds, but just looked at the older Bynum. Her aura had faded even more, the imprisoning must have taken quite a lot from her. She held none of the cockiness of her Assistant. This Bynum was terrified. Her whole world, her whole belief system had been brought to the ground in seconds.

Morena felt pity.

The old being had outlived her time, but her aura wouldn't let her go. It kept on pushing, and in doing so, brought the Hindran to a time that she no longer understood, but was expected to function in. A strange marriage between her ruler and some foreigner. A plan that cast her planet away into history without so much as a real farewell. Morena had acted, but now she understood what all of it meant to Chilras, and it was sad to see someone so old fall behind.

"Morena, are you so arrogant you won't even listen?" Chilras said.

"I've tried to save our planet, Hindran." Morena pushed the feelings away. "Now where is my husband?"

"We're going to find the machines. I want you to know that. Whatever you're building with them, we're going to find them, and then we're going to sentence you and your husband. I promise, no Var in our history will ever meet the same end as you."

Morena looked to the Assistant standing just off in the distance. "That should be interesting for you then, as I doubt any Assistant has met that end either."

F
or a moment
, a brief one, Rigley felt right. She felt like she had a year ago, like she had most of her career. In that motel room, with both of the men staring at the dead body, she had been the one to act. The one to decide.

They were nearing the woods again, the SUV rolling over the road easily. She wanted to capture that moment again, wanted to capture how she felt in the motel room, but it was fading. And fast.

She didn't look over to Will in the driver's seat or glance in her mirror to see the scout behind her. They had listened, they had followed her lead, but that confidence had been driven out of fear. She knew what happened if those two kids got out of here, and it wouldn't be something that she did, but something that happened to her as well. She was down here now, as likely to be contaminated as anyone else.

Rigley looked out the corner of her eye at Will's hands holding the steering wheel. What would they look like after? The skin completely burned off, and the flesh underneath red, trying to pump blood through open veins. His eyelids gone in flames, leaving two orbs to stare endlessly out. Or would everything simply turn black, charred like the very area they were now heading to? What about her own hands? Would her nails burn away or simply be obliterated all at once?

Her child had died in a stream of red blood, leaving her body like urine rather than a person.

"Is anyone going after the two kids?" she said, trying to shove that thought from her mind.

"I put the rest of the people in the field on it."

She finally glanced back at Andrew, but his eyes were fixed on the road ahead.

What would his eyes look like? Black holes, with paper thin flesh surrounding them? Would his brain burn too, or would someone be able to look inside his skull and see untouched gray matter?

Stop,
she told herself.
Don't think of any of that.

Rigley couldn't help it though. Just like her mental journey that she was currently on, her feet moving through those dark rooms, her conscious mind wanted to force her to think of what she would need to do. Of what would happen when the hammer dropped.

She closed her eyes so that she couldn't see anyone around her.

It's not time yet. You can stop it, right now. Out in these woods, you can make sure it doesn't come down. That's why you're going there, now.

"Will," she said.

"What?"

"We have to kill it. Tonight."

He looked over at her, his face scrunched in confusion. "I know, Rigley."

She kept her eyes closed, not caring if he saw her, not caring if he doubted her. She wouldn't look at his face, wouldn't see the fire ripping across his clothes and flesh, because she knew her mind planned on taking her there the moment her eyelids opened.

"I'm not fucking around. Do you understand that? If we don't kill it, I have to call in the hammer. I don't have a choice anymore. Whatever…whatever it's doing out there, it isn't trying to leave or help us. I thought that might be the case, but not with all these men offline." She briefly thought about how crazy she must look, her eyes closed, and nearly rambling, but he needed to know. He needed to understand the gravity of the situation. He needed to understand what she understood, that very soon now, they would be out of options. "If we leave these woods without a resolution, it's all over."

She didn't open her eyes, and Will didn't say anything for a few seconds. Neither did the scout in the back. Silence ruled and it weighed down on Rigley, heavy like God’s judgement.

"Do you think you should go back to DC?" Will asked, finally.

Rigley's eyes opened. "Go back?"

"I'm not sure this is where you need to be right now."

Rigley had never heard Will sound like this, as if he was talking to a child, one whose feelings he didn't want to hurt. The directness, even his confidence, seeming to disappear, replaced by a wish not to make waves.

"If I'm not here, Will, if I go, how am I going to stop this from happening? How am I going to make sure what happened in Bolivia doesn't happen here? How am I going to know that you finished the job?"

She looked over at him, but his eyes stared intently at the road.

T
hera saw
the chaos around her. What had once been a group of controlled, skilled men moving around out here quietly, had morphed into something resembling horses in a stampede. Panicked and not understanding. Bullets rang out across the forest, and people were moving, running from hiding place to hiding place, though Thera didn't think they understood what they were hiding from.

Morena was causing all of it, Thera felt sure of that, even if she didn't understand why. Morena wanted all of these people gone, either a part of this shared consciousness or dead, she didn't care which. Why though? Why couldn't these people just sit out in these woods with their guns pointed at that black circle? Why had Thera and Bryan been brought back here, while their parents had been left back at their houses, bound and tied? Morena needed this area, needed it cleared, but no matter how hard Thera thought, she couldn't understand what would happen once Morena succeeded.

She tried to focus on that, trying to clear out the thoughts of the men that Morena added to her consciousness. They were scared, frightened the same as Thera had been, but there was no chance to calm them down. She and Bryan would be as strange to them as Morena. The only way she could help the situation would be to figure out what exactly Morena needed here, and if she figured that out, then perhaps she could also figure out a way to stop her. Before, Thera had thought maybe reasoning with Morena might work, maybe making her understand the love Thera and Bryan held for this world resembled whatever relationships Morena once had. Now though, out in these woods, Thera wasn't sure it would work. Morena was gone, giving them a separation she hadn't experienced before.

In these woods, with men trying to kill one another without knowing the reason, Morena was more or less absent.

Thera wasn't going to say anything to Bryan about it, because surely he had to see this himself, and speaking might bring Morena back, might make her understand Thera's thoughts. No, let her remain occupied. Let her think Thera was confined to this mental hole Morena had thrown her in. From the hole, nothing could hurt Morena.

Thera looked out, not from her eyes, but from her mind. She raised herself from the hole, peering around at the dark cavern that had once been illuminated by her own thoughts. She could feel when Morena was here, she didn't even need to peek out of the hole, such was the alien's presence. Morena was gone, had ventured out into the woods with all those other men.

Good. Thera had to act, because she might not have another chance. Thera could just as easily end up dead out here from a stray bullet, or, if Morena succeeded in whatever she was trying to do, forever lost.

She found Bryan, trying to listen to his thoughts without drawing them too far out. He wasn't ready to move, wasn't even considering it. That was fine. She would do this and he could stay put. If this didn't work, they both needn't die. She suddenly realized what she was about to attempt, also realizing at the same time how focused she was. Only thinking about action, about moving forward and trying to free herself and Bryan. She was tempting death, though, begging it to step out and take her.

Death.

That was a word Thera had rarely considered. At eighteen, death was like the South Pole—something you barely heard about and something you didn't think you would ever see, really would ever want to see. Now though, looking through Bryan's thoughts, she understood this might be her last human contact ever. This final year of high school, she had been intent on taking in everything, on making sure she didn't miss what would never come again. Now though, what might never come again was simply life, and this look through Bryan's thoughts could be her last encounter with it.

There's not time, Thera. You have to hurry, because she might come back
.

She knew the thought was true, knew that she couldn't sit here wondering at Bryan's mind, at this fucking human condition. She had to go.

Thera climbed out of the hole and into the darkness of her mind.

M
ovement alerted Bryan
. Had Thera not climbed upward, he wouldn't have even thought to look at her. His focus was on the outside world, on the guns and bullets and periodic screams from men. Morena was wrecking their formations, wrecking their plans, wrecking their lives. He was, to be honest, a bit enraptured with it—with her—although wracked with fear as well. This creature, this alien, was a force of nature. Nothing stopped her, nothing on this world.

Bryan thought that this might have been similar to watching Patton move through North Africa. Watching someone do perfectly what they were made to do, and clearly Morena was made to kill.

He had no thoughts of fighting back, no thoughts of somehow regaining control of his body. It wasn't fear of dying that made him stay still and watch; it was the realization that whatever he did wouldn't matter. He could beg or fight, but in the end, he would stay in this hole until Morena was ready to do something with him.

Thera's movement, though, brought him out of these thoughts, out of his awe at the alien now possessing him. He looked over, and somehow, for the first time in this mind, saw her almost as a physical being. He didn't understand it, but it still made sense. He had known they were in a hole, each one separated from the other, but yet it was all mental or psychological. There was no hole, nor any physical body to put into one.

But yet, Thera had left hers.

Thera was moving around up top, high above the dark space he inhabited, and somehow he could see her. Ephemeral, like a neon ghost, but there none the less.

He didn't know what she was doing, but a fear that he hadn't felt when looking out at Morena's work struck deep inside him. You didn't move around in here. You could speak, but you didn't try to get out of the hole, you didn't want to bring that kind of attention to yourself. Thera knew that as well as he, but yet there she was.

Bryan searched for Morena, trying to understand how close the alien was to Thera, to their mind.

Far away, and Jesus Christ, thank you.

Could he yell to Thera? Could he tell her to get back down, that she was going to die as sure as the men outside in these woods?

But he knew the answer to that. No. Morena would hear, and whatever was happening outside this pit wouldn't matter, because she would return in an instant. Somehow, this was her home base, something that she would protect at all costs, especially from something as simple as the two of them.

He didn't know what Thera was doing, and he wished he could help her, but what could he do? If he climbed out like she had, wandering around what was now Morena's mind, how would that help? This wasn't his home anymore and he had no more power here than a prisoner in a Russian gulag. Thera needed to come back to the place Morena put them, she needed to wait, to hope that something else could save them—because they were too far gone to save themselves.

Yet he couldn't tell her any of this. All he could do was watch.