In that single instant, Nate felt more shocked and confused than he had since this entire shit show had started.
Then gravity took him, and he was falling.
28
The Circle of Rice
A couple hundred yards of empty, halogen-seared darkness.
That was all that separated Nate’s last eight seconds of life from the rushing shadows of State College below—newly gauntleted hand be damned.
I need you to fly.
“What?!” Nate screamed.
Fly, the Excalibur repeated, like maybe it was simply an issue of misunderstanding. Control your descent.
The dark street rushing closer.
“You said you had it under control!”
Closer. Tiny figures pointing up at him.
“I can’t fucking—”
STOP SNIVELING AND FLY, DAMN YOU.
The pavement soaring up to meet him. An oddly playful tickle, creeping up his insides, inviting him to give in, relax, and accept the inevitable.
A scream broke the spell.
His scream?
Didn’t matter.
He clenched every muscle in his body—
Definitely his scream.
—and strained with everything he had. He wasn’t even sure what he was straining for. He just strained, willing himself to miraculous flight, his mind frantically dancing with the image of Tony Stark taking flight on his repulsors.
Something kicked his feet, buckling knees to chest and sending him spiraling off-kilter. Nightmarish blue streets spun to dark sky and glaring troglodan ships. Back to floodlight streets, and sidewalks and shop windows, all closer than ever. Too close. Entirely too—
He threw his hands and legs out, willing it with all his might. Repulsors! Repulsors!
“REPULSORS!”
Resistance kicked at his extended hands and feet, and he noticed somewhere on the periphery of awareness that his hands were both encased in gauntlets now, and that those gauntlets appeared to be expanding up his forearms.
Then he smashed through a plate glass window and lost track of everything but the all-consuming cacophony of crashes and bone-shaking impacts. He had the brief impression of a human bowling ball, bouncing between the bumpers, and then it was over, and he was lying on his back. The world was dark, and he couldn’t move for the pain.
I think that went quite well.
“Fucking magnificent,” he groaned, trying and failing to sit up in the darkness. “Thanks for... all the help... ass-bot.”
You are welcome, Nathaniel. Though I am detecting hints of aggression and insincerity in your tone.
Nate grunted, tasting blood again. Considerable as it was, he realized it wasn’t just the pain keeping him down. He was also pinned. Pinned under... He blinked, squinting up at the dim outline of whatever was dangling above his face. A box. He squinted more. A cereal box? His eyes began to adjust to the dim lighting, and he stared in dumb incomprehension at the knock-off fruity circles parrot resting a few inches from his face.
A grocery store. He’d crashed into a grocery store.
His eyes drifted easily closed as he tried to think.
Sweet Jesus, he was tired.
McClanahan’s, he thought wearily, disjointed fragments and images of the moments before the crash bouncing around behind the comfort of his eyelids. He thought maybe this was McClanahan’s. His eyes blinked open for a moment, and he almost laughed at the fact that it had been this very store he’d come into almost exactly three weeks ago, right before all this shit had started. Three weeks ago, when his biggest concerns had been public humiliation, and begging a cashier to ring him up a bag of rice after hours for his beer-soaked phone. And now… and now…
He blinked sleepily, too tired to cap the thought off with a proper conclusion, vaguely remembering something about concussions and falling asleep. Too tired for that, too. The Excalibur said something, he was pretty sure, but his eyes were already drifting closed again, pulled by lead sinkers.
They snapped open a moment later.
Only it couldn’t have been a moment, he realized, as he registered the jostling motion of his body, and the arms wrapped around his chest.
He jerked violently back to his senses—just in time to crash to an unpleasantly solid black-and-white-tiled floor.
“Dude!” someone hissed.
Marty.
Nate relaxed, adrenaline sputtering out, exhausted body deciding that maybe the floor wasn’t so bad after all. Not if he wasn’t actually about to die.
“I’m sorry, dude,” someone else whispered. Zach. “He just went all freaking Magikarp on me!”
“Nate?” Marty’s voice again, shortly followed by a gentle hand on his shoulder, trying to turn him over from where he’d landed in—or maybe curled into—a fetal position. “Are you okay?”
Nate allowed himself to be rolled onto his back. The dim shape of Marty’s face was outlined by the unnatural halogen lights flooding through the windows. Gwen’s face appeared over Marty’s shoulder, looking equally concerned. With an involuntary grunt, Nate lifted his head enough to see that they were indeed in McClanahan’s, that the store was a wreck, and that Kyle and Zach were right there too, along with Kelsey and a few others—Todd and Emily among them—all still in troglodan chains.
“Still alive,” he rasped, noting his own wrists were mysteriously free of troglodan shackles before giving in and resting his head carefully back to the floor.
“Which is pretty frickin’ weird,” Kyle said quietly, coming to join the huddle around Nate. “I mean, good weird, but—”
“Kyle…” Marty said.
“What?” Kyle asked, trying and failing to spread his chained hands. “You’re not a little bit curious what the shit is going on, here?”
“I, for one, am intrigued,” came another voice from the nearby group. Jogger Girl, Nate saw with the beginnings of a frown. Was she the one Marty had been talking about earlier? What had it been? Tara? Tessa?
“—should probably get the flight cadet here out of plain sight before we all sit down for tea,” she was saying, glancing out the front windows before turning back to him with a faint, mercurial grin.
“Tessa’s right,” Marty said, clearly not sharing Nate’s uneasy feeling about the oddly present and resourceful—and, admittedly, rather cute—addition to their crew. Nate wasn’t sure himself why it mattered. Only that the whole serendipity theory was starting to feel a bit thin.
Probably because she is a member of the 501st S.A.S.
“What?” Nate breathed, before he could stop himself.
“What is it, Nate?” Gwen asked, crouching down beside him.
“Nothing,” Nate said, a little too forcefully. He made a show of trying to sit up, just to draw attention from the reaction. Gwen quickly grabbed his arm to help him.
How long have you known? How do you know?
Approximately 13.6 hours. Service records and facial recognition. And because you were being an intolerable ass puppet, to answer your third question.
Nate drew up short from asking why Ex hadn’t told him sooner, taken aback both by the predictive acuity, and the unprecedented freestyle insult.
“How’d you, uh… How’d you find me?” Nate asked the others, mostly to fill the silence as Marty stepped in to help Gwen get him up. He tried not to stare at Tessa. No reason to tip his hand until he knew more. Especially not here in the middle of a freaking invasion.
“—close to where we landed,” Marty was saying, grabbing his other hand to help him. “And it was, uh… kinda hard to miss when you came down.”
Kyle snorted. “Yeah, insomuch as it sure looked like you sprouted Iron Man hands and started screaming, ‘Repulsors! Repulsors!’” He frowned down at Nate’s hands. “All of that right before you actually flew, by the way.”
“Kyle!” Marty shot their friend a dark glare before turning back to Nate.
“I’m not sure I’d call that flying,” Tessa muttered, quietly enough t
hat he almost missed it.
Cheeky little spy, wasn’t she?
I believe I like her.
“What about the others from the ship?” Nate asked, ignoring their openly curious stares and looking around just to make sure he hadn’t missed the hundred evacuees hiding under the overturned shelves. “How long have I been out?”
“Not long,” Marty said. “Five minutes, maybe. But the others, uh... Well, they kinda scattered when we hit the pavement.”
“Dude, that’s like saying Nutella is kind of delicious,” Kyle said. “They ran for their fucking lives every which way, and I can’t say I blame ‘em. Even if it was stupid.”
“Some of them—a lot them—got snatched right back up,” Marty explained, his expression darkening. “Those… things are still out there, in the streets. The…” He looked at Nate uncertainly. “The trogs?”
That brought everyone’s silent attention right back to Nate.
He sighed, pretty sure he was out of reasons to play dumb. “Troglodans.”
“Right,” Marty said, watching him cautiously. “Yeah. Well, the troglodans, then, they’re still out on patrol.”
“Reasons why we really shouldn’t be standing near windows,” Tessa chimed in, gesturing pointedly to Nate’s slow going excavation from the floor.
“I thought we could get back to the house,” Marty said, dutifully beginning to haul Nate to his feet with Gwen’s help. Nate managed not to wince or groan too much, but they both stayed at his sides anyway.
“Grab Copernicus and whatever supplies we can,” Marty continued. “Keep going out of town. Take cover out in the countryside, maybe.” He looked thoughtfully around the store. “We should probably grab what food we can while we’re here, and go from there.” His attention drifted slowly, almost timidly back to Nate. “Unless you can explain to us what’s going on here.”
The silence inside McClanahan’s intensified, each distant sound of the trogolodan occupation that much sharper for it. Everyone—even the few strangers hanging back, pretending not to be listening in—leaned in a little closer, hanging on a thread for whatever answer Nate could give them. He could practically hear their chains vibrating with curiosity. Could feel the Excalibur hovering there, waiting to see what he would do. Waiting to see if he would run from his failure, or stand up and fight.
Outside, a distant explosion shook the air.
They needed to regroup. He needed to regroup.
“We should get away from the windows,” was all he said, turning after Tessa, who’d already disappeared into the back.
Are you sure about her?
There was enough of a pause that Nate worried he might’ve lost his companion again.
I could be surer if you’d prefer to collect a DNA sample, Ex finally said, but barring that, yes. 2nd Lieutenant Tessa Kalders is indeed an active member of the 501st S.A.S. I assume her jogging path yesterday morning was not accidental.
Nate paused at the Employees Only door, wondering where her buddies in the black SUV might’ve ended up in all of this. Wondering whether they were allies or foes in this situation. Aware of the eyes on his back, and of Marty and Gwen looking questions at him.
What do we do about her?
The Excalibur rippled with something like amusement as Nate detached himself from his worried friends and pushed through the door.
I would be far more concerned with the Beacon, little hobbit, and with what the gorgon Knight will do about you once she’s finished out there.
29
Round Table
The McClanahan’s staff break room was small. And dark. And sure as shit not the kind of place Nate had imagined his eventual confession might unfold in. Especially not in attendance with Todd, an Air Force spy, a few random strangers, and a full round of troglodan shackles and chains.
Yet here they were. And here they should probably remain, their trusty spy had concluded after a peek out the stockroom exit. At least until the surrounding area calmed down from their prison break, and the trog street patrols moved on. Given the sounds of ships passing overhead, and the occasional rumble of not-so-distant ground vehicles rolling by, no one was inclined to argue. Which, for the moment, left them all packed in a small room, waiting for answers in the dim glow of the floodlight apocalypse trickling in from the opaque vent pane up high in the corner.
Nate leaned heavily against the plaster wall, not sure where to start, feeling like he should be out there, doing something. Anything would’ve been better than just standing here. Yet here he stood, caught in a full system freeze just trying to process everything that’d happened.
He couldn’t even manage to pry his eyes from the floor until Gwen slid in beside him, debugging a small hunk of his glitched code with her presence alone. At least she wasn’t terrified of him. Not outwardly, at least.
He glanced up at a clicking sound and saw Zach fiddling with the boxy little countertop LCD TV. Like the lights, it wouldn’t turn on.
“Just checking,” Zach explained at the questioning looks. “Thought maybe we could get a news network. See what’s going on out there.”
Nate was ashamed to realize just how much he didn’t want to know what was going on out there. Even more so that the Excalibur could no doubt feel his cowardice, and his petty relief at not yet having to face the truth.
“—thing could be worldwide,” Kyle was saying. “Jesus H Christ, this could really be it.”
“So what are they doing in State College, then?” Todd said, speaking up for the first time. “Why’d they know Nate’s name?”
Nate tensed, half-expecting the Greek god to puff up and come get in his face, demanding answers, but Todd only eyed him warily in the dim blue light, looking deflated and far less than godly.
Nate let some of the tension out on a heavy breath, eyeing 2nd Lieutenant Tessa Kalders for a second before deciding it didn’t really matter anymore what she was here for. Either she could help, or she couldn’t. Just like him.
“I was told they came here looking for something called the Beacon,” he started slowly. “Honestly, that’s the only part I know for sure.”
“The Beacon?” Marty echoed, trying the word on for size.
“Told by who?” Zach asked.
“Dude…” Kyle said, eyes widening in sudden realization. “All that stuff with the background radiation and the weird EMFs and everything…” He pointed an accusing finger at Nate. “And you suddenly got interested right after…” He glanced at Emily, and Nate could practically see the pieces clinking together in his friend’s head. “Is this all…?”
“Maybe,” Nate said. “I think so.”
Kyle swiped a fist through the air. “I fucking knew it.”
“But who told you all this?” Zach repeated, more insistently.
“Kind of a long story.”
“A story that involves you turning into the Terminator?” Kyle asked. He peered suspiciously at Nate. “I mean, you haven’t always been, uh… you know, a Breaker of Chains, have you?”
“No, I…” Nate resisted the urge to sigh again, suddenly feeling like this was all a mistake, and that he should’ve simply pulled Tessa aside, filled her in on what he knew, and then… well, he didn’t know what exactly. But he had to do something.
“Look, I don’t know how they ended up in State College, specifically. All I know is that something happened to me a few weeks ago, when…”
“When you saved me from that car,” Emily spoke up, frowning like something had just occurred to her. “And then, that thing with the bike.”
“The bike?” someone asked.
But Emily was watching Nate, eyes wide in the dim light. “I thought I was imagining things from the adrenaline or whatever, but I swore I saw you, like, vanish, right before it all happened. Just for a split second. And then the videos all disappeared, and… That was all you?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?” Kyle asked.
This wasn’t helping.
“I tol
d you it’s a long story.” He looked around at his friends, and came to his decision. “Now’s not the time. I need to talk to Tessa, and—”
“Wait, why?” Kyle asked, before shooting her a no offense shrug.
“You guys need to start getting your supplies ready,” Nate pressed on, ignoring Kyle’s question, and Tessa’s innocently curious look.
“You guys?” Marty said.
“What about you?” Gwen asked beside him.
Nate took a breath, trying to convince himself enough to at least get the words out. “I have to find the Beacon before they do.”
His friends all broke out at once.
“How?”
“Why?”
“According to who?”
“Not alone, you don’t,” Marty said, drawing a hush between them. Then his friends all looked around at each other and exchanged a solemn nod, like the Knights of the Freaking Round Table.
“No,” Nate said, shaking his head. “No, listen. You guys have to get to safety. I was supposed to… Look, it might already be my fault that this is happening.”
“I don’t believe that,” Gwen said, without a trace of hesitation.
“Yeah, man,” Kyle added. “Full scale alien invasion? Give the rest of us pesky humans some credit. How could this all be on you?”
“I—I don’t know!” Nate cried. “I don’t know, okay? I just—I didn’t know it was gonna happen like this. I didn’t—The Merlin—I didn’t understand…” He clenched his fists, fresh waves of pain cascading through his tensed muscles. How could he possibly explain any of it to them? He didn’t even understand himself.
“Uh, the Merlin?” Marty asked.
“Like, the Merlin?” Kyle added.
“As in, the wizard?” Zach asked.
“Wait. Dude.” Marty was gaping at him now. “That homeless guy in the park?”
The Eighth Excalibur Page 27