Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 (4 page)

Stop sounding nuts. None of that’s true. He’s excited; that’s all.

“You think we’ll even find it?” Michael asked, trying to focus on anything but the lunacy in his mind.

“We’ll find it,” Bryan said. “It was too big not to find.”

They kept walking in silence, fifty feet, a hundred, and then Michael lost count. He kept his flashlight pointing in front of him and his feet moving, trying not to think.

“There it is!” Bryan shouted, and Michael looked up.

It was the worst thing he’d ever seen, even if he didn’t know it then. He would, though, eventually.

What fell from the sky the previous night seemed to have both hit with a viciousness that destroyed the Earth, and yet landed as gracefully as a feather. Black, scorched earth lay out a hundred feet in all directions from the object in the middle. No trees, no green grass, nothing but black ash, the wildlife incinerated by whatever fire this thing brought. There should at least have been trees—burnt, dead trees, but still standing. Nothing. Empty space with a white globe lying in the middle.

Michael kept walking forward, trying to get closer now, trying to see what could have made this amazing sight, what could have burnt through everything around it, could have destroyed the landscape.

He looked at the white orb in the middle, not needing to shine his light to see it. No wonder they saw it so clearly the night before, despite the fire burning across it; the orb produced its own light, and with each step they took forward, it seemed to brighten. With each foot Bryan moved closer, the thing’s light reached out further and further into the black ash surrounding it. The orb looked perfect, which Michael felt was a weird thought. Perfect? To describe something he had never seen before? It didn’t make sense, that a concept such as perfection should be used here, but it was the only word that fit. Whatever lay in the middle of the ash circle, the globe that shone with white light was perfect.

Bryan stopped just before his feet touched the ash and Michael stepped up next to him.

The thing hadn’t made any indentation on the ground. It sat perfectly on the dirt, fully above ground level.

“What is it?” Michael asked, not expecting an answer but having to say something. Having to express something about what was before them.

Bryan didn’t respond, at least not with words. Instead, he took a step into the ash, Michael’s jaw opening as he did. Not one step though, that would have been permissible—the sheer beauty of the orb would make nearly anyone step a bit closer. Bryan kept going. Slowly, but walking toward the orb nonetheless.

“Bryan!” Michael shouted, not moving, not wanting to put any part of himself into that ash. Ash from this Earth, but ash created by something not from here.

Bryan didn’t turn around. He dropped his flashlight and kept moving forward, one foot after the other, carrying him on a direct line to the center, to the orb.

Michael had to make a decision. He could go into the ash and grab Bryan or he could let Bryan continue his march. That was it. Did he sit here and watch, screaming as loud as he could and hope that Bryan heard him? What if he didn’t? What if Bryan couldn’t hear anything right now but the thoughts in his own head? And when he reached the orb, what would he do? Touch it? The questions inside Michael flew around his brain so fast they felt like a cloud, each one mixing with the next, so that he couldn’t decipher anything individually.

He moved, shutting down all the noise inside his head. Bryan was thirty feet in front of him and picking up speed, but Michael could make it if he ran.

So he did, his feet following the directions of his brain, and his brain focused only on stopping Bryan from reaching the orb.

Fifty feet from the middle, he caught his friend, grabbing him by the shoulder.

“Bryan!” He shouted, close enough that it should have hurt Bryan’s ears. Michael’s hands pulled him roughly around, halting his movement.

For a second, maybe less, Bryan wasn’t there. Right then at that moment, Michael would have put his palm on a Bible and sworn his eternal soul to the fact that Bryan wasn’t the person in front of him. His eyes were empty, not glazed like Wren’s, but completely vacant. Uninhabited. Michael stared at a shell, something that might have a brain and a spinal cord, but nothing besides electrons firing inside it. Even an insect would have more going on than what looked back at Michael.

But then it was gone, the emptiness replaced, Bryan coming back. His friend. The one that drove him here.

“Hey, are you okay?” Michael asked, unable to keep his normal calm.

Bryan blinked a few times, not saying anything, seeming to still be returning to reality.

“Bryan?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. I just, I just wanted to touch it.” He turned around partly and looked over his shoulder at the glowing orb. Not moving, not trying to venture further inward, but looking.

The glow was gone, Michael was sure about that. Had it been glowing at all? Or had Michael’s flashlight been shining on it? It couldn’t have been Bryan’s, because he dropped his. Michael turned back to look at the orb, making sure that it wasn’t glowing, that his eyes weren’t tricking him. Nothing.

“I think we need to go,” he said.

“Okay.”

S
he felt its steps
. Not directly, not how she would have felt them if she had been fully awake, but she felt enough to know that she had landed somewhere. That there was another creature here—creatures, most likely. She could only latch on to one, and his mind beamed out to her like the stars she had passed in the blackest parts of the universe. She didn’t know what made it stand out like it did, not yet, but then again, she didn’t care right now either. The important thing was that she had landed. Bless The Makers, she had landed. How long had she traveled? How long since she felt her home world end in a flash of heat and wind? The capsule slowly fed her mind the information surrounding her, but it would take time. She grew dormant during the trip, her mind taking a state akin to hibernation, unable to think at the levels she could when they first boarded.

No matter. There was a creature out there; she felt it. And at least on a primitive level, it felt her too. It had come out here, wherever here was, and nearly touched the ship. Nearly touched Morena.

It was gone now, but she could still feel it, the connection still alive.

Where was she? And Briten?

Morena felt for him, frantically, needing to make sure he survived. Having to make sure he was here with her, that all of this wasn’t for nothing. She found him, inside the capsule, though not like her. Not anymore. He was in the Ether now, floating in a space of nothingness. The Ether.

That’s what this had come to? Her lover, her husband, lost in a place without thought—not even allowed to die. Morena couldn’t weep, not in this current state, but her mind cried out, wanting justice, wanting another chance, wanting to save Briten. Could she? Was it possible? She had heard of some being brought back from the Ether, but those were creatures of a different time, shortly after The Makers began life. Myth and legend, nothing concrete.

She had to try though. She wouldn’t let him languish in that space for eternity, not without trying to bring him out, to bring him home. Except this world wasn’t Briten’s home, but then her world hadn’t been his natural home, either. This place, it would have to be a new home for both of them. Morena could do that. She could make this place home and then bring her husband from the Ether, bring him back to life.

She could at least try.

And if she failed, then they would both die here, on this world—together.

T
he clock
on his nightstand said three in the morning.

Michael hadn’t stopped staring at it since it showed one. He couldn’t sleep though his body was exhausted. He felt like there was a ship’s anchor attached to his neck, weighing him down no matter how hard he struggled to move—at least his body felt that way. His mind was an anthill. An infinite number of thoughts traveling through tunnels, working incessantly, each one seeming to have its own agenda. He couldn’t make them stop, couldn’t even slow them down. They worked on their own accord, following some agenda that he wasn’t privy to.

It all went back to what he saw earlier that night. It all went back to Bryan walking into the field of that thing’s destruction, of turning him around and seeing…nothing…a shell. He couldn’t push past it, didn’t understand it, and couldn’t shut his mind off.

He reached to the nightstand and picked up the cordless phone. He could hear the television in the living room, but didn’t hear his father moving around at all. Hadn’t heard him moving in a while, so most likely he was sleeping. Wren had a tendency, if one could call it that, to eavesdrop on Michael’s conversations. There was a lot that his dad did to him, but that annoyed him the most. The complete invasion of privacy. They fought over it constantly, creating a natural sense of protection about all Michael’s conversations. Tonight, though, it was more than protection of his privacy. He didn’t want his father to hear this. He didn’t want anyone to hear it besides Thera. He didn’t even know what he would say, not really, and didn’t know how someone might take it. Because he didn’t know how to take it.

He dialed Thera’s number. He was the only one of all his friends who simply remembered people’s numbers. That happened when you didn’t have a cellphone to keep up with them all.

“Hello?” She answered the line sounding like he expected her to, still half asleep.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“I know. What’s up?”

He loved her. She answered in the middle of the night without hesitation. She answered in the middle of the night, sleeping, without any anger toward him. She answered because he called, and that by itself was more than he deserved.

“We went out there. Bryan and me.” Michael didn’t know where to begin. Did he just blurt it all out? Did he tell her how frightened it made him?

“What happened? Are you okay?” Her voice cleared up some, adrenaline probably spiking in her body, splitting the fog of sleep.

“I am. I…” He trailed off, unsure how to say it. “I don’t know if Bryan is, or was. Something strange happened out there. I don’t know how to say it because I don’t know what it was.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bryan, he…left, I guess. Not like physically, his body was still there with me, but his mind went away. He started walking toward it, Thera. Like we’re standing there in this forest, and this huge white orb is in front of us, and ash all around it—I guess where it landed, the fire scorched the entire area—and he just starts walking toward it. Walking to touch it, and I swear to God, it started glowing, Thera. Each step he took, the fucking thing got brighter. I screamed to him but he didn’t even slow down, just kept walking to it, and finally I chased him down.”

He paused, realizing he’d been rambling. Realizing that all the ants crawling around his head had just crawled out of his mouth. He wasn’t done, though.

“When I turned him around, there was nothing. He was empty, like nothing behind his eyes. Bryan wasn’t there.”

He fell silent and Thera said nothing. They sat quietly for a few seconds, Michael feeling relieved just to have told someone.

“When we rode home, he wouldn’t talk about it. I asked him what happened, and he said he just wanted to see it up close, but that’s bullshit. He couldn’t do
anything
because he wasn’t there.”

Another pause and still Thera remained quiet.

“Are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. I’m trying to keep from saying I told you not to go out there.”

“Didn’t you just say it?” Michael asked, smiling, glad to smile about anything.

“Did you call the cops?” Thera asked, ignoring his joke.

“No. I came home and tried to go to sleep.”

“Jesus, Michael. Are you going to call them? Do you want me to? Someone needs to know about that thing; I’m surprised no one does yet.”

“Yeah, I will. I want to check on Bryan tomorrow first and then I’ll tell them something is out there,” Michael said.

“Is he okay, Michael?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I hope so.”

B
ryan knew
he was in trouble, all he had to do was look across the table at Julie to understand that. She hadn’t gone off on him yet, though he really did deserve it. He stood her up last night, not even calling with an excuse, and she was pissed. Rightfully. They weren’t talking, just sitting in O’Charley’s, her watching the television behind him and he moving food around on his plate with his fork. Chicken fingers. He wasn’t hungry, hadn’t been all day, hadn’t eaten since…

Last night.

And he couldn’t tell Julie that. He couldn’t tell her he didn’t show up for the movie last night because he went to the place that she specifically didn’t want him going. So silence ruled over the table, silence that she obviously wanted him to break.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking up from his plate.

She didn’t look away from the television, the one showing sports that she would never watch on her own. But this wasn’t on her own. Bryan’s actions drove it.

“I am. Michael needed me.” He knew as he said it that he should have told her almost anything else. Anything besides that name.

“That’s great. Were you able to help him?” She still didn’t look down at his face.

“Listen, I’m sorry, Julie. I’m really, really sorry. His father,” and he was already lying to her, so why not go ahead and make it something big, something that might get him out of all this goddamn trouble? “Wren hit him while he was sleeping. Just slugged him in the face, screaming about something or other.”

Julie looked at him then for the first time since they had sat down. “Hit him?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he okay?”

Oh, Lord, what was he getting himself into here? He couldn’t remember lying to Julie before, especially not about something of any importance.

“Yeah, he’s okay,” Bryan said. “He just wanted someone to go blow off steam with. He was scared that if he had to stay home, he’d end up hurting Wren, so I went and picked him up and we drove around for a few hours.”

Julie looked at him, her eyes big and honest, letting him see the hurt that lived there, but she was going to forgive him. She wasn’t okay, not completely, but this was better than nothing. It was better than her staring over his shoulder and watching a television program she couldn’t stand. It was better than not talking.

Even if he had to lie to her?

Bryan didn’t know the answer and he didn’t really want to contemplate it either. He had lied to her, and now things were looking like they might shape up, that he might be out of the dog house. That was enough for right now, even if it wasn’t enough for later on.

“You could have called,” she said.

“I know.”

Dinner went on and speaking resumed, at least for Julie it did. Bryan tried to focus on her, on her voice, on what she said, but he couldn’t. There was the immediate crisis, her anger, but after that his mind went back to the only other thing it could focus on. That orb out there beyond the field. He literally couldn’t stop thinking about it. The only few seconds of relief had been this dinner, at the beginning with Julie’s anger. Now that things were back to level again, nothing she said sounded the least bit interesting. And it wasn’t that he found her boring, just…

That orb.

But it wasn’t an orb. He didn’t think so at all, though he hadn’t said anything to Michael about that. Hadn’t spoken to Michael about it at all, really, because something happened out there. Something happened and he thought it was still happening. The word
obsession
floated across his mind as he looked at Julie, her talking and him nodding. He had been obsessed when he was out there, though he couldn’t remember much. Just a want, a
need
to get to that thing, to get as close as he could, to lay across it if possible. To touch it.

That’s what he had wanted, to feel it on his skin. But why? He didn’t know, but he couldn’t kick it. He still wanted to touch the thing. Still wanted to go out there and see it again. He remembered what it looked like, but not clearly, crisply—as if he watched it through a lens, one that was cloudy and scratched, only giving him a semblance of reality. He had never looked through that lens before, never seen anything but the clarity of reality until last night.

He saw the orb though. He saw the spaceship—and that’s what it was. Whether or not anything lived inside it, that thing wasn’t some goddamn rock. It was built, and exquisitely so.

I’ve gotta touch it
, he thought.
Tonight.

Julie kept talking and Bryan kept thinking, not a single connection being made between the two of them.

M
ichael had finally quit calling
, Bryan thought. It was far too late for Michael to call his house, and this stretch of twenty minutes between cell phone calls was the longest yet. Bryan hadn’t answered any of them, had actually turned his phone off at dinner with Julie so she wouldn’t ask why he wasn’t answering. He didn’t know exactly what Michael wanted, but he had an idea, obviously.

Michael wanted to know what Bryan thought about last night. He wanted to know if Bryan was okay, and Bryan’s answer wouldn’t suffice:
I don’t know
. He didn’t, but he was leaning toward no. He wasn’t okay, but he didn’t care, not really. Not enough to answer the phone and talk to Michael. He’d rather not be okay and sit here in his truck, looking at the forest line in front of him. He’d rather not be okay and see that thing again.

I should call him
, he thought, a piece of him rational and calm—understanding how wrong this was.

I’m not going to
, he thought, another piece of him, also calm—but understanding that he was going forward.

He stepped from his truck, not bothering to lock the door. He would be quick. He could do that at least. He could get in there, see it—
touch it
—and get back out here. He could be done with the whole damn thing in just a few minutes. That would be good; that would keep him safe, and once he was done, he wouldn’t have this urge anymore. It would die once he got his fix.

His fix. He smiled at that, the moon above lighting on his face as he stood in the dark field.

He started walking, his flashlight on and leading the way. He knew where he was going, knew exactly the spot he wanted.

Bryan didn’t react when the flashlight dropped to the ground, its light shining crookedly off his path, illuminating another area that he would never see. He didn’t realize when his thoughts slowed down, and when the lens he described earlier fell over his eyes. The deeper he moved into the forest, the thicker that lens grew, until Bryan saw nothing but gray mist. Still, he walked forward, his feet sure and steady over the uneven ground, littered with branches and roots sticking from the dirt.

He reached the edge of the burnt land and didn’t pause. He moved over the line between living plants and dead ash as quickly as he had the previous mile of forest.

The orb in front of him was glowing again, though Bryan couldn’t see it. He saw nothing, only thought that he was about to have his fix, that he was close to his fix, that soon—only seconds away—he would be able to scratch that itch and lay this all to rest.

He didn’t slow when he reached the orb, but walked forward like a sleepwalker. Intent on his own yearnings with no idea, and no care, what happened in reality.

He leaned onto the orb, stretching his arms out to either side, turning his face to the left so that his cheek lay across the white surface.

The woods surrounding the orb were bright, the shadows unable to creep in for two hundred feet, far past the line of burnt trees. Bryan lay across a massive lightbulb, one that would have blinded him had he been able to see.

The needles moved out of the orb fast and with purpose. They pierced Bryan’s skin quickly, sinking deep into his flesh. His eyes widened and he let out a small gasp, his mouth not closing once the air exited. He stood there, attached to the orb by the sharp needles plunged inside him, for hours.

And when he straightened, his clothes ragged and blood soaked, the light on the orb died.