United: An Alienated Novel (21 page)

Larish called to them from the computer desk in the living room. “The phosphorus mine was destroyed an hour ago. Jaxen must have returned and detonated the explosives.”

“Rune could’ve done it,” Aelyx pointed out.

“Either way, Jaxen’s probably alive,” Troy grumbled. “Those hybrids don’t go down easy.”

Eileen slashed a hand through the air. “No more talk about hybrids, or alien invasions, or secret plots. Let the authorities handle it.”

“Your mother’s right,” Bill said. “I want you all to clean up, and then we’re going to have a nice dinner in front of the idiot box”—he thumbed toward the television—“just like a normal family. I think the twenty-eighth Batman movie is on.”

“Sounds perfect,” Cara said, and smiled a bit too sweetly for Aelyx to believe. She led him and Troy up the stairs under the pretense of finding a change of clothes, then tugged them into a vacant room and whispered, “I figured out what our next move should be.”

Troy snorted. “I’ll bet it doesn’t involve the Dark Knight and a bowl of popcorn.”

“I want to find Jaxen and talk to him,” she said. “Face to face.”

Aelyx was so shocked by the absurdity of the idea he could only laugh. He and Troy told her, “No,” at the same time.

She held both palms forward. “Hear me out. Zane made it clear that he cares for the human race about as much as I cared for the sea monkeys I ordered off the Internet in third grade. Assuming the Aribol don’t blow our Voyager ship out of the sky, odds are they’ll capture the crew before they can tell us anything useful. That leaves one person with the information we need, one person who doesn’t want to see Earth destroyed.”

Aelyx didn’t know what a sea monkey was, but he imagined Jaxen saw humans in much the same way. “One person who’s part Aribol and has no regard for human life.”

“Except for my life,” Cara said. “Jaxen’s always liked me.”

Aelyx scoffed.
Liked
was putting it mildly.

“He could’ve killed me at the factory and the mine,” she pressed, “but he didn’t. He said the universe is a better place with me in it.”

Troy pointed back and forth between himself and Aelyx. “But he’ll whack both of us without batting an eye, which means you’d have to go alone.”

“Which is out of the question,” Aelyx added.

“Syrine and Elle can—”

“He would kill them, too.” Aelyx shook his head. “You’re asking me to risk my
l’ihan
, my sister, and my best friend. I won’t agree to it.”

Stubborn as ever, Cara propped a hand on her hip. “I promised I would talk to you about things like this, but I didn’t say I’d ask permission.”

“Oh, yeah?” Troy grinned. “Then I’ll tell Mom and Dad your plan. Should make for interesting dinner conversation, don’t you think?”

She glared at him. “You wouldn’t.”

“You have a short memory, Pepper. Let’s review all the times I’ve snitched on you.” He began ticking off items on his fingers. “There was sophomore year, when I saw that douche Eric sneaking through your bedroom window. And then the night you came home smelling like a distillery and yakked in Mom’s begonia bushes …”

“Fine,” Cara spat. “Never mind. It was just an idea.”

Troy patted her on the head. “I’m glad we understand each other.” The noise of running water stopped, and he pointed to the nearest bathroom. “I’m calling dibs on this one.”

“Whatever. I’ll take the master bathroom.” She jabbed a finger toward Aelyx and clarified, “
Alone
,” before charging away, angry because he didn’t want to send her unprotected into the arms of a genocidal sociopath.

He rolled his eyes.
Females
.

“Hey,” Troy said while peeling off his shirt. He pointed the garment in Cara’s direction. “Keep an eye on her. She can be sneaky when she wants someth—”

Just then, the bathroom door opened, releasing a cloud of steam, and Elle stepped out wearing a towel wrapped around her waist. Troy went mute at the sight of her bare chest, and in turn, Elle froze at the sight of his. There was much blushing and stammering from Troy until he blocked his view with one hand. “You can’t walk around like that. This isn’t the Aegis.”

“I forgot.” Elle adjusted her towel to cover herself. She backed away but couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from Troy’s navel. “It won’t happen again.”

Aelyx bit back a laugh. He considered giving the two their privacy, but the exchange was too entertaining to miss.

“Listen,” Troy said, and twisted his shirt nervously between both hands. “I already thanked Syrine, but I didn’t get a chance to thank you for what you did at the mine.”

“For giving you a concussion?”

“For saving me from myself.” Troy glanced at the floor, then up again. “If I had hurt Cara, it would’ve ruined me—my whole family. You don’t know what she means to us. I hope I can pay you back someday.”

Elle didn’t appear to like the idea of Troy in her debt. She mumbled, “You don’t owe me anything,” and then she turned and darted down the hall. The slamming of her bedroom door soon followed.

Troy shook his head and shifted his glance to Aelyx. “Girls confuse the hell out of me sometimes.”

In a human gesture of solidarity, Aelyx extended a fist, which Troy then bumped lightly with his own. “For once, you and I have something in common.”

Chapter Fourteen

T
hough her brother didn’t know it, Cara would’ve chosen the master bathroom anyway, because it was the best place on the second floor for sneaking out. A sturdy pine tree grew right outside the window, close enough to allow her to climb down. Her tree-scaling skills left much to be desired—her tailbone could testify to that—but as perfectly as these branches were spaced, not even she could botch it.

The real trick was returning before anyone noticed her absence.

She got right to work, locking the bathroom door and turning on the shower. She found an old clock radio beneath the sink and cranked up the volume to a pop rock station. The blaring music would give her an excuse for not responding if someone knocked on the door.

With the gears of her ruse in motion, she raised the window and removed the screen. A few precarious moments later, she stood on the adjacent tree limb, surveying the backyard for security personnel while the night breeze tossed her hair behind her shoulders.

The moon glowed full and bright in a cloudless sky, allowing her to pick out each soldier in the skeleton crew Colonel Rutter had left behind. Once the men finished their sweep of the backyard and strode to the front of the house, Cara descended the tree branches as if they were rungs on a ladder and jumped to the ground.

She wiped her sap-sticky palms on her pants while jogging across the lawn to where the shuttle was parked. She had no intention of taking the craft; the engine’s noise would give her away. Instead she rooted around the backseat until she found what she was looking for, then stuffed the object in her pocket and sprinted toward the woods at the rear of the lot.

She didn’t know how long she ran, but she stopped when the glassy bay came into view between the trees. She scanned the area until she found the best spot for what she had planned, a wide clearing in the woods bordered by thick oaks and maples. Then before she could change her mind, she scrolled through the list of contacts in her com-sphere and selected the frequency to the shuttle Jaxen had stolen.

She couldn’t see him with the hologram function switched off, but he answered with a smile in his voice that was easy to picture. “Why,
Cah
-ra Sweeney. What a nice surprise.”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“Your frequency is programmed into the system here. I imagine the same is true for your companions. If I cared enough to make the effort, I could track all of your spheres and pay the group a surprise visit tonight.”

Cara felt a pinch in her stomach. She hadn’t thought of that.

“Perhaps I should,” he added. “After all, you did kill Aisly.”

“That was an accident. She fell off the ledge … after
you
ditched her.”

“Semantics.”

From beside him, Rune demanded in L’eihr, “What does she want?”

“Rune makes an excellent point,” Jaxen said. “To what do I owe the pleasure,
Cah
-ra?”

Cara drew a deep breath and hoped she wouldn’t regret this later. “I want to meet with you. I’m unarmed and I’m alone. If you don’t believe me, track my sphere and compare it with the others.”

“That only proves where their spheres are located, not their bodies.”

“I give you my word. Nobody knows I’m here. But if you don’t feel safe meeting me in person, we can talk like this. All I want is information. If something doesn’t change soon, the Aribol will destroy both our worlds. I know that’s not what you want.” When he didn’t respond, she told him what he doubtlessly wanted to hear. “I need you, Jaxen. Please help me.”

There was a brief pause. “I’m locked on your signal. I’ll be there soon.”

By the time he touched down in the shuttle, Cara had positioned herself at the opposite end of the clearing, in front of a massive tree trunk at least four feet thick. Jaxen and Rune exited through the front doors and took a moment to sweep the area with a handheld device, likely scanning for weapons.

During their inspection, Cara noticed a shift in the dynamic between the two, a mutual intimacy that hadn’t been there before. Jaxen curled his arm around Rune’s waist, protective as ever, but now the clone reciprocated with casual touches to his chest and along the nape of his neck. At times she grew distracted from the scan and stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. Whatever she said made him smile, and he responded by lowering his hand and squeezing her bottom.

Cara hitched her upper lip in disgust. But then she noticed something that made her take a closer look at Rune. The clone hadn’t simply lost weight in her face. The chiseled angles of her jaw line made it seem as though she’d aged—significantly so—by at least ten or fifteen years. Jaxen had said he’d used Aribol technology to speed up her development. Maybe it had backfired.

He pocketed his scanner, and the pair strode forward.

“Stop.” Cara lifted both palms. “That’s far enough.”

Jaxen took another step. “I thought we were going to trust each other.”

Cara jutted her chin at the clone. “She’s got a mean right hook, and it’ll be hard to pretend I was never here if I go home with another black eye.”

“Fair enough.”

Rune stuck out her bottom lip, which looked oddly childish on her thirty-year-old face. “I can’t understand what you’re saying,” she whined in L’eihr.

“It’s nothing, my darling,” he told her. “She’s afraid of you, that’s all.”

While Rune gloated with a triumphant smile, Cara turned her attention to Jaxen. “There’s something wrong with her, isn’t there? She’s aging too fast. A few days ago, she and I could’ve passed for twins, but now—”

“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” he interrupted. But in contrast to his words, his gaze faltered and his voice grew terse. “Now tell me what you’d like to discuss.”

“The Aribol,” Cara said. “What do they really want from us?”

“You’re a smart girl,
Cah
-ra. What do you think they want?”

“Control.”

“See? You don’t need me for this.”

“But why are they threatened by the alliance? If the Aribol are as powerful as they claim, they shouldn’t care about humans and L’eihrs teaming up to share our resources.”

Jaxen quirked his head as if upset by something she’d said. “
If
the Aribol are as powerful as they claim? I assure you they’re more powerful than you have the ability to fathom.” He picked up a handful of dried foliage and threw it into the air. As the debris spiraled to the forest floor, he explained, “You and I are leaves at the mercy of the wind … and the Aribol are a tornado, capable of scattering us into oblivion.”

Chills raised on Cara’s arms.

“Would you like to know how it will happen?” he asked. “How they will destroy your world, if it comes to that?” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “It will start with a global blackout—not simply of the electrical grid. Anything powered by generators or batteries will cease to operate. Humans will be trapped in their communities, helpless to resist, with nothing to do but wait for the fleet to arrive.”

“The fleet?” Cara whispered.

“Yes, small ships that deliver concentrated shockwave pulses to liquefy soft tissue, like organs and skin and eyes. People will simply melt to the ground in a puddle of flesh and bones.”

He painted a vivid picture, one that stopped Cara’s breath.

“It may seem macabre,” Jaxen went on, “but the Aribol won’t harm the planet itself with radiation or fissionable explosives. Despite the vastness of the universe, worlds that support our kind are in short supply. They’ll cleanse the Earth of mankind and start over, seeding a new, more compliant race in your place.”

What he described was too horrible to process. A cosmic do-over at the expense of billions of lives? The Aribol couldn’t be that cold … could they?

“If any humans survive the initial attack, the Aribol will simply don their suits and find them during a ground invasion.”

“Suits?” Cara repeated. “Why would they need suits?”

“Irrelevant,” Jaxen dismissed. “The point is there will be nowhere to hide. They have the means to dispose of the bodies as well—microscopic nanites that transform organic remains into carbon and then die, so as not to affect the ecosystem for the following society.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’ve seen the nanites used on the Aribols’ home world. It’s an efficient process, though unpleasant to watch.”

Cara imagined tiny organisms rendering bodies into dust. Was that how the Aribol would dispose of Jake and the other members of the Voyager crew? She caught herself shaking her head. She didn’t want to believe it. “But I thought …”

“What?” Jaxen interrupted. “That there was hope? No,
Cah
-ra. While I usually admire your tenacity, in this case it will lead to your downfall.”

But there were still unanswered questions, things that didn’t make sense. “What about the phosphorus mines and the fertilizer plants? If Zane sent you here to pave the way for an invasion, why haven’t you targeted our armories?”