The Deep Beneath (32 page)

The hush that had fallen over the scene did not last. A single round was fired, the sound of the gun blast echoing off of the huge cave’s upper walls. Instinctively, the four humans walking with Tex ducked as if it would protect them from the projectile launched in their direction. Tex did not bend. He stood still, rigid even, and stared in the direction of the gunfire. In an instant more brief than a sneeze, Tex stopped the lone bullet and the alien ship shot its weapon at the soldier who had fired it.

There were no more shots fired at them. The soldiers that remained appeared to value their lives more than any mandate they had received from Commander Sturgis.

Tex resumed walking and the others stayed with him.

They were less than five feet from the ship. The town had become nearly silent. The only sounds were the crackle of a few small fires and low moans from the injured.

The relative quiet was rattled by a loud voice. “You are making a very grave mistake,” Commander Sturgis said. She walked from the direction of the hallway that came from the A.H.D.N.A. facilities. Two soldiers flanked her on either side. They had packs strapped to their backs and held what appeared to be fire hoses in their hands.
Water cannons.

Commander Sturgis and the soldiers stopped at the edge of the town square. She was dressed from head to toe in black camo.
She looks ready for battle.

Dr. Randall turned to face her. “You are the one who has made mistakes.”

“You should know better, Will. What did you work for all these years? Remember the reason we’ve done all that we’ve done here. They warned us, back in ’47. How can you go with them?”

“I have finally come to my senses. And I have you to thank for that,” Dr. Randall said. His voice was calm and assured. It boomed in the now quiet cavern that held the small town. “Your forced confinement gave me time to think. To see things clearly.”

“You’re delivering yourself into the hands of the enemy.”

“Funny. I thought we were running away from the enemy,” said Erika.

Sturgis glared at her. “You have no idea what you’re walking into. Does the sight of these bloody bodies sicken you? I hope not, for your sake, because it’s only the beginning.”

“Come on,” Dr. Randall said. He turned from Commander Sturgis and resumed walking toward the ship.

“I don’t care if you and the kids go. Gives me less mess to clean up. But I won’t let him go,” Commander Sturgis yelled. “I need him here.”

“You can’t stop him, Lilly. Not anymore,” Dr. Randall said.

“We’ll see about that. Do it,” she said.

The soldiers flanking Sturgis stepped forward and pointed the nozzles of their wide hoses at Tex. They pulled back levers on the hoses and simultaneously sent four jets of water in the direction of the group making its way toward the alien ship.

“Surround him,” Erika shouted.

She, Ian and Jack shuffled quickly to surround Tex, and Ian shoved Tex behind them. But Tex did not need their protection. Apparently he learned how to deal with Sturgis’ water maneuver after the Bell Rock dousing.

Tex remained calm, his eyes focused on the water. Before it could reach them, it froze in the air, suspended for a brief instant in a beautiful glistening arc of ice. It stayed suspended for only an instant before it crashed to the ground and shattered into countless fragments and crystals. The ice caught the light of the glowing trees and street lamps and sparkled like diamonds of new fallen snow on a moonlit night. It would have been beautiful had it not been on a battlefield soaked with blood.

The panels on the side of the ship opened again and fired on the soldiers that held the hoses. Before the ice had time to begin melting, the four men were on the ground, parts of them vaporized.

Sturgis did not even look down at the dead bodies. She walked forward with confidence as though her attempt to stop Tex had not just failed, as though she had not just watched four men get obliterated.

“I told you. You can’t stop him,” Dr. Randall said.

“Maybe I can’t. But she can.”

Alecto stepped out from behind Commander Sturgis. Erika’s heart beat faster and her back ached as though it remembered what had happened to her the last time she’d been face-to-face with Alecto. Erika was glad that Tex was with them this time.

Alecto was dressed in black from shoulder to heel instead of the nasty A.H.D.N.A. standard issue that Tex had been forced to wear. She wore a holster slung low on her waist, and Erika spotted a large gun in it.

“So sorry you have not had the opportunity to meet each other formally,” said Sturgis.

Tex stared at Sturgis and Alecto but didn’t say a word. They had surrounded Tex to protect him from the water, but now all four of them shifted to get themselves behind him.

“Without further ado, H.A.L.F. 9, meet your sister, Alecto.”

“My name is Tex.”

Sturgis ignored him and turned toward Alecto. “You know what to do.”

Alecto raised her hands, and Tex was pulled as if on an invisible rope away from the ship and from them. Erika reached her hands toward him as did Dr. Randall, but they were unable to grab him back. He flailed his arms and tried to push himself back, but his feet skidded across the ground. Alecto’s face was passive and emotionless as she pulled Tex to her.

Alecto lifted Tex’s body at least four feet in the air. She dropped her hands and Tex fell on his backside. The town was so quiet that Erika could hear him loudly exhale and wince when he landed. Alecto stood over him but seemed to have him pinned to the ground. “Hello, brother,” she said.

“Alecto, come with us,” Erika shouted. “You don’t need to play lab rat for Sturgis anymore.”

“Her name is Commander Sturgis. Show respect,” Alecto said.

Erika’s feet left the ground and she hovered in the air. It was a strange sensation of freedom yet helplessness at the same time. But the giddy feeling of magical flight soon gave way to pain as she was thrown sideways, away from the ship. She landed hard on her sore shoulder. A loud oomph escaped her lips as the wind was knocked out of her. Jack and Ian ran to her. Erika pushed herself up, and Jack offered her a hand.

“Leave her out of this,” Tex said.

“Why do you care what happens to that human? Is she your mate, 9?” Alecto’s words were mocking, but her tone was calm and even, almost mechanical.

“I told you. My name is Tex.” He was still on the ground. He strained to raise himself up. He stopped struggling and appeared to give in to defeat.

Erika’s heart sank. How could she, Ian, Jack and an old man get him away from a being that could toss them around like pillows?
And why aren’t the aliens shooting Alecto and Sturgis like they did the soldiers?

But Tex was not defeated. Alecto coughed and choked as she grasped at her neck. She pulled at her throat as if to loosen an invisible cord that strangled her. Tex remained still as Alecto rasped for air.

She narrowed her huge, black eyes. Her arms left her neck and raised over her head. Tex had been pinned to the ground but now hung in the air. Alecto flung her arms and Tex flew about twenty feet. He landed a few steps away from Erika. Dr. Randall ran to him. Now none of them were near the underside of the ship where they were supposed to stand.

As soon as Erika reached him, Tex rose and glared at Alecto.

Erika was focused on Alecto too, but it was Sturgis who fell to her knees. Her hands were at her neck, pulling and grasping. Her knees gave out and she collapsed to the ground. Sturgis’ eyes bulged and her face turned as red as a tomato.

Erika briefly indulged in a moment of quiet satisfaction that Sturgis, the woman who had sentenced them to death, suffered from the effects of the weapon she had created. But the thought was fleeting. She could not bring herself to want even Sturgis to die the horrid choking death that Tex could render.

Alecto bent down and examined her leader’s face.

“Don’t worry … about me. Get … him,” Sturgis rasped.

Alecto turned her attention back toward Tex. Erika, Ian, Jack and Dr. Randall were at his side. Alecto lifted her arms again in an attempt to lift Tex and throw him. But he did not move, and Commander Sturgis remained on the ground and in his mental grasp.

“Erika, get yourself and the others to the ship. Stand directly beneath the doors at the bottom as I told you. They will pull you in,” Tex said. His eyes never left Sturgis.

“I’m not leaving without you,” Erika said. “Why don’t the aliens just zap Alecto and Sturgis the way they did the soldiers?”

“The aliens consider them assets not to be destroyed and have asked me not to kill them. We can discuss this later. Now go. Hurry.” Tex stood his ground, his eyes wide and focused. His whole body trembled.

Behind her, Dr. Randall cried out as if wounded. As she turned to him, Dr. Randall fell to his knees. He held his head in his hands and struggled with the pain as he toppled to the ground. His eyes were wild, his mouth open in a silent scream. Alecto’s hand was outstretched toward Dr. Randall.

“What are you doing to him? Stop it before you kill him!” Erika screamed.

Ian knelt and put his hand on Dr. Randall’s shoulder. The touch did not appear to offer any comfort. The doctor’s eyes rolled back in his head and a strangled cry of agony escaped his lips.

Tex held Sturgis in his death grip and Alecto likewise held Dr. Randall. The two beings, the only two of their kind in the whole universe, exacted their revenge on their makers and looked on the scene with no more emotion than if they were watching paint dry.

Erika tried to think of something that she could say – something she could do – to stop the two dangerous minds from finishing the jobs they had begun. The only thing she could think of was to go to the ship as Tex told her in the hopes that the aliens inside could help them.

“Let’s go to the ship,” she called to Ian and Jack. “Maybe the aliens will do something to stop this battle.”

Jack and Ian both nodded, but before she could take a step toward the ship, Erika was overtaken with piercing agony. It felt like someone had stabbed her in the head with an icepick. She grabbed her head in her hands, a futile gesture but instinctively all she could do. The torture dropped her to the ground and she screamed, all the while knowing that her screams would not make the pain go away.

Jack called out her name, and she thought she heard Ian’s voice as well. But it was all a blurry nightmare. Sight, sound and smell, all obliterated by the overwhelming pain. She thought only of it stopping and didn’t care how it happened.

Erika felt arms around her, but she didn’t know whose arms held her or if it was even real. Agony gripped her. She wanted to let the anguish take her to the place where darkness rules.

But there was a voice in her head. It was unlike the muffled sounds and screams of the others. Despite the rush of blood in her ears, this voice sounded clear as crystal. As even as a pane of glass.
“Push back
,” it said.

Tex?

She heard it again, even louder and more clearly this time. “
Push back against her,”
it said.

I don’t know how
, she thought. But she tried to do as the voice bid her anyway. She imagined that a thick, metal gate surrounded her mind. She imagined it coming down around her brain the way the lockdown gates had come down in A.H.D.N.A. And as she concentrated on building her wall, the pain lessened. It wasn’t gone, but Erika no longer felt like she would just as soon die from the pain as live.

“Tex, do something,” Jack said. “She’s going to kill Erika.” Jack’s voice was close. He was above her. He held her in his arms.

“Alecto, this is between you and me. Do not involve these humans in our battle.”

“You are weak, brother. Your human DNA has made you vulnerable, just as Commander Sturgis advised me.”

“You are part human too. If I am weak, so are you.”

Erika’s body shook from the exhaustion of holding Alecto’s mind at bay. Her head throbbed, her breathing shallow and rapid, and her throat parched. But Jack’s arms surrounded her in warmth and she tried to focus on that. Jack was her lifeline. Her strength.

“Our parents improved on your imperfections and created me. My DNA was stripped of its –”

“Humanity,” Tex said.

“Yes. And of its deficiencies.”

“Being human is not a weakness,” Erika said. Her voice was hoarse and shaky.

“9 is the proof. His human feelings for you have made him vulnerable,” Alecto said.

“Like your feelings for Commander Sturgis? Why should you attempt to exact revenge on me for threatening the life of your commander if you do not have human feelings for her?” Tex said.

“I am trained to have loyalty to her and to the program. ”

Erika prayed that something would happen soon to make Alecto release her grip on Erika’s mind. The pain was a blinding white-hot poker in her grey matter.
I will not be able to hold her off much longer
.

“Release them and I will release her. It is our fight, not theirs,” Tex said.

“I do not trust you, brother.”

“Nor I you.”

Erika’s head felt like it was being squeezed in a vice grip. She tried not to think about what would happen if she couldn’t maintain the invisible fortress she had constructed around her mind.

“My God, you two are like children armed with too much power. You’re going to kill them. Then what? You both will have lost the only parents either of you will ever have. Let them go; then you can go bananas on each other if you want. Just leave the humans out of this hybrid battle,” Jack said.

Neither of them loosened their mental grip on their human victims.

“I can’t hold her off … much longer,” Erika croaked.

Finally Tex said, “I will agree if you agree.”

Alecto didn’t answer.

“Come on,” said Jack. “On the count of three release them. One … two … three.”

The pain in Erika’s head vanished. She gulped in air and realized she had been taking only shallow breaths. She sat up and Jack gave her a hand up.

Sturgis rasped as air once again flowed freely into her lungs. Her face had turned a sickening purply blue but soon returned to its pale pink color.