The Yanti (43 page)

There was a long pause. Finally Mr. Havor smiled.

He reached up and removed his dark sunglasses.

He had no eyes. Just burnt black holes.

However, between his eyebrows, Cindy saw what she thought was the tip of a purple crystal. It looked like an amethyst—a sharp shard embedded in his forehead. He shook his head in answer to Nira’s question.

“You are mistaken,” he replied in a voice much deeper and colder than anything they were accustomed to. He sounded more machine than human. “The Yanti might be of benefit to us, that remains to be seen. Certainly we will leave here with it. But when you ask what it is
we
want most . . .” He glanced at Terry, then back to Nira. “It is your head.”

Terry had removed a rusty machete from the folds of his smelly sweatshirt. Mr. Warner went to rush him. “Stop!” Nira commanded.

Everyone in the cavern stopped, not just Ali’s father.

“Who’s the puppet here?” Nira asked Mr. Havor.

Mr. Havor shook his head. “Your mother is still under our control. But you are right, soon she will have to be eliminated for the reasons you’ve stated. But the body you see here—it’s more than an agent for the Entity. Long ago, the personality that inhabited this form made a deal with us. It was made directly online. He found us, we found him. His name was Peter
Traver. He was what you would’ve called the consummate hacker. He desired nothing more than to immerse himself in the most advanced technologies of his time. He was obsessed with computers and software, and as you might know, obsession is really only a step away from possession. When he contacted us, he found a source of information and knowledge far richer than anything he had dreamed possible. Peter was enthralled.”

“And so he became your thrall?” Nira asked.

“Naturally. He was happy at first.”

“Then you made him burn out his eyes,” Nira said.

“We always demand a sacrifice of those who join us.”

“Was he happy then?”

The blind man merely shrugged. Nira nodded to herself and continued. Cindy knew her next words were for their benefit.

“So the Entity does not mind revealing a quality it usually prefers to keep hidden. You do not merely desire control. You are not here just to save planet Earth. You feed off of pain and fear. That’s your ulterior as well as your ultimate motivation.”

“To us they are inseparable.” Mr. Havor shrugged again. “A deal requires an exchange of goods. Peter Traver gave us his eyes. Lucy Pillar offered us hundreds of burnt bodies.”

“But she did not give you the body of my father,” Nira said.

Cindy understood she was talking about Hector Wells.

Lucy Pillar had helped him survive the power plant explosion.

“That showed her lack of commitment,” Mr. Havor said. “A weakness.”

“A weakness to you, maybe. But to me it showed a hidden strength.”

Mr. Havor mocked her. “You say that because she’s your mother.”

Nira was not flustered. “It showed the flaw in your design.”

“How so?”

“Is it not obvious? You let me be born. You let me come here, right now, into this place.” Nira added, “Even now you do not understand what a mistake that was.”

Mr. Havor smiled and gestured to the yellow door. “Beyond that door there is a bomb and your mother. Both are well protected. But even if your mother turns on us now, or is overcome by Ali, she cannot prevent the bomb from exploding.”

“Because you adjusted it?” Nira said.

“We adjusted it after we helped Sheri Smith purchase it.”

“You made the initial contact with General Kabrosh?”

“He was flattered to be made the star of a bestselling game.”

Nira nodded. “And now he is dead.”

“Yes, now he is dead. Just as soon, all of you will be dead.” Mr. Havor turned to Terry. “Take the head of the child now, and the Yanti. The others won’t interfere. They cannot move.”

With the mere utterance of his words, Cindy discovered she couldn’t move.

Mr. Warner stared at her in desperation. He couldn’t move, either.

Cindy tried to scream for help. Her lips would not move.

“When you have her head, then you may kill the others,” Mr. Havor said.

Terry lifted up his rusty machete, preparing to strike Nira. The child didn’t flinch, merely stared into his blank eyes. Oddly enough, a spark appeared in the depths of his eyes. The guy hesitated as Nira spoke to him.

“I only touched you with the Yanti in the morgue so that you would not leave this world marked. This man came for you later, and reactivated your flesh for his own selfish purposes. To strike me or my friends down is to further his purposes. Your
body—even though it is technically dead—remembers certain morals that you used to live by. For that reason, I’m not here to give you orders. I won’t try to take control of you. All I’m going to do is remove the controls that have been placed on you. Then you can choose what you want to do. Honestly, it is all up to you. You can chop off my head, or you can take his.”

Terry stopped, lowered the machete. He may have been a mere corpse, yet his flesh strove with serious emotions. He turned toward Mr. Havor, then back to Nira. He was clearly confused.

“If you wish to go on living, you have to do what I say,” Mr. Havor said.

“He lies,” Nira said. “The life he promises you is no life at all, just a continuation of this hellish existence you find yourself trapped in. Do what you know to be right, and I promise you’ll be free of this rotting body and this dark place. You will return to the light, where you belong.”

Terry came to a decision. He turned toward Mr. Havor, slowly began to approach him. The man looked shocked, but he was still physically blind. It was not easy for him to try to escape.

“The power to override our compulsions doesn’t exist at this level,” he stammered.

Nira smiled a little girl’s smile. “You had your chance, Uncle Havor, when I used to sit on your lap. You should’ve fed me poison, instead of all of that wonderful ice cream.”

“But . . .”

Terry swung his machete. Cindy caught a glimpse of a flying head, a fountain of dark blood, heard the sound of a corpse striking the ground. No, there were two thuds. Briefly, she shut her eyes to block out the gruesome attack, but then reopened them to see what had become of Terry.

The boy lay on his back beside Mr. Havor’s headless torso. In a mysterious way, his face looked peaceful. The opposite was true for Mr. Havor. There was only horror in the empty eye sockets of the dead man’s skull.

Casually, Nira turned back to the colored doors.

“Now the fun begins,” she said.

The secret inside the package was, of course, a fairy sword. But not just any fairy sword. It was Geea’s! The weapon Geea had worn while she slept in the kloudar the last thirteen years had been Amma’s sword. How did that come to be, Ali asked herself.

Long ago, her mother and Geea must have arranged for her to have this weapon—probably because it was the most powerful in the entire elemental kingdom. But exactly how they had managed the feat, Ali was not sure.

Clearly, Amma possessed the gift of prescience—the ability to see into the future. How far and accurate the gift extended, Ali did not know. But somehow Amma had seen that her daughter would one day arrive at Mt. Shasta and need a weapon. For now, Ali was just happy to have it, and was not in the mood to figure out exactly how it came to be there. What mattered most was that she was returning to fight her sister with two distinct advantages—the sword and Hector.

With the diving bell lying outside the cave, they cautiously crept into the interior of Mt. Shasta. Hector asked if he could use a flashlight.

“It will signal our approach,” Ali warned.

“Won’t she know we’re coming anyway?”

“Probably. Use the light.”

He turned it on. “How do you see in the dark?”

“I don’t know,” Ali said honestly.

“I assume you know how to use that sword?”

Ali made a slashing cut. “I feel like I was born with it in my hand.”

Because they had to walk, it took them time to reach Sheri. They came out of the tunnel on her left, behind her. Casually munching on a sandwich, Sheri didn’t even turn to acknowledge their arrival. Not until she’d washed down her meal with a bottle of water did she address them.

“Why did you come, Hector?” Sheri asked without turning.

“Ali told me you were in trouble,” Hector said.

Sheri finally looked over. “I doubt she put it that way.”

“Does it matter? You
are
in trouble, and I’m here to help.”

The bomb was even more ugly up close. Its gray hide was stenciled with black code numbers, and Ali noticed the paint was rusted and chipped in several places. Yet there was a shiny stainless steel plate on the side, with fresh screws in it. Ali guessed that was where the new detonator had been installed. She could actually smell the new plastic explosives. From what she had read online, this was a three-stage bomb. It had a fission trigger—made of plutonium; a fusion core—made of hydrogen and helium isotopes; and an outer shell—constructed of uranium 238. The bomb was called “dirty,” because when it detonated, it left behind a massive amount of radioactive fallout.

It gave Ali an odd feeling to stare up and down the cave, and see how they were walled in. She just wished there was a deserted mountain at the end of one of the tunnels that they could push the bomb through—and let it explode harmlessly. She suspected the weapon had been rigged to detonate no matter what they did to it.

Sheri seemed to read Ali’s mind.

“If you try to move it, the thing will go off,” she said.

“But you must know a way to turn it off,” Ali said.

Sheri shrugged. “You’re welcome to try your hand at it. Or else you can try shoving it down the tunnel that leads to your boyfriend’s home. Where’s he from by the way? Oh yeah, Tanzania. That must make dating difficult. Then again, you know how to fly.”

“How come you haven’t flown away?” Ali asked.

“I’ve been waiting for your gutsy return.” Sheri nodded toward Ali’s abdomen. “You heal quickly.”

Ali raised her sword. “Probably quicker than you, I think.”

Sheri smiled. “But I know that
you
know that killing me won’t help your cause.” She scooted off the bomb and walked toward them. Ali quickly moved to the right, to give herself room to maneuver, forming what had to be one of the most unstable triangles in all of history.

Yet Sheri made no threatening move. Hector held her attention.

“Why did you come?” she asked again.

He spread his hands. “A couple of mornings ago I get a call to come watch my daughter. A daughter I don’t even know I have. A daughter from a woman who I didn’t even know was still alive.” He stopped. “Isn’t that reason enough for me to be here?”

Sheri nodded. “I could say I am sorry, but at this point I suppose that would sound a little trite.”

“You can still say it,” Hector replied.

Sheri forced a smile. Ali noticed she never took her hand off the hilt of her sword. For that reason, Ali magnified the strength of her shield. Sheri was most dangerous when she appeared most vulnerable.

“I’m sorry,” Sheri said.

Hector was annoyed. “For what exactly? That you faked
your death and left me grieving for years? Or are you sorry that you would come to me in the middle of the night—and then in the morning make me forget you had ever been there?”

“I thought it would be better—for your sake—that I made you forget.”

“You didn’t think to ask my opinion, did you?” Hector snapped, bitterness in his voice.

Sheri looked truly hurt. “What did I have to offer you anyway? If you knew who I was, then you could only pity me. Pretending to look beautiful wouldn’t work with you. At least as long as I remained dead . . .” She didn’t finish.

Hector glared at her. “Go on. At least as long as you remained dead, you could seduce me in the middle of the night when you were in the mood. That’s the truth, Lucy, isn’t it?”

“Hector . . .” Sheri began.

“Oh. And you did all this with me while you were in the middle of preparing to destroy the Earth. Let’s not forget that. That’s sort of important, don’t you think?”

Sheri shrugged. “You’ve only heard Ali’s side of the story when it comes to this invasion. There’s a purpose behind it. A noble purpose. It’s called survival.”

“This noble purpose calls for the death of how many billions?” he asked.

Sheri spoke with passion. “The Earth is desperately overcrowded. It cannot continue to exist without major changes. Yes, billions might die, it’s possible. I admit these changes will be painful. But all significant change—whether on a personal or on a social level—is always painful.” Sheri added, “It’s where the phrase ‘tough love’ comes from.”

Hector sighed. “Love has nothing to do with what you’re planning.”

“How would you know?” she snapped back.

“Because you can’t even look me in the eye. In fact, you won’t even let me see how your eyes really look.” Hector reached out his hand to steer her chin so that she had to look him in the eye. But she slapped the hand away with her gloved hands. He nodded when he saw the gloves. “The scars are still there, for both of us. Why do you bother to cover them up?”

Sheri snorted. “You have the nerve to compare your scars to mine?”

“I never said that.”

“Then what are you saying? After the accident, you went to jail for a few months. Big deal. Then, after I was gone, there was never any shortage of women in your life.”

“Sure. There was a parade of women going in and out of my house. Since you died—since I thought you died—I’ve had just one serious relationship.” Hector paused. “And I never loved Patricia the way I loved you.”

“I couldn’t tell from the way you behaved around her.”

Hector’s face darkened. “Is that why you killed her?”

Sheri looked as if she had been struck. “Who told you that?”

Ali spoke. “Steve did. My friend. Before you had him killed.”

“Is that also true?” Hector asked quietly. “Did you kill that boy?”

Sheri looked away. “No.”

“She had someone else kill him. But she gave the order,” Ali said.