The Synth must be stopped.
The voice wasn’t Ex’s. His voice? He couldn’t…
“Earth,” he thought he heard himself mumble.
The word struck like a lightning bolt.
This thing was coming for Earth?
He couldn’t seem to get the words out. Couldn’t even remember where he was until an iron grip yanked him back to the quiet New York City rooftop, where Iveera had taken hold of his arm.
“If the Synth ever penetrates this far,” Iveera said quietly, having apparently grasped something of his little episode, “all sentient life in the galaxy may already be as good as dead.”
Nate tried to swallow against a parched throat, feeling clammy after whatever had just happened. “And the Black Knight? You think he’s…?”
“The Merlin feared that Groshna’s corrupted Excalibur might’ve had something to do with the Synth. That perhaps the Black Knight had been… repurposed by the enemy, so to speak. Resurrected out in the darkness, in the millennia following the Great War. Twisted into some manner of synthient servant, with the corrupted Excalibur to match—the dark seed of a plot to overthrow the Alliance’s most powerful defenders before the new war begins.”
Nate could barely think straight for the steady stream of Ex’s oaths of blackened hands and repugnant villains and vile sorcery.
“But then Groshna…” His eyes widened. “But then we’re…”
“I cannot say in either case,” Iveera admitted. “I tell you this primarily to inform your Excalibur of the nature of the threat, should our brush with the corruption prove… persistent.”
The blackened curs are welcome to try.
“Beyond that, the Merlin had not the time to tell me, just as we have too long tarried while that blackened demon escapes. We must return to the Atlantic for the ships, and depart for the Golnak relay posthaste.” She lifted a few inches from the rooftop on silent gravitonics, fixing him with an expectant look. “Are you ready to fly?”
“I…” Nate dropped his gaze to the pavement, only then really registering what she was saying. Ships. Departure. Posthaste. As in right the hell now.
Suddenly, despite all the I’m coming with you bravado of a few minutes past, he couldn’t help but wonder what the hell he was thinking, standing here in his neat little alien armor, talking with his alien pseudo-ally about their drastic non-plan to run off and… and what? Save the Merlin? Slam the lid on some unspoken darkness coming to gobble the universe up whole?
This wasn’t how the world worked. This—
This is happening, Nathaniel.
“I… need to talk to my parents,” he dully heard himself say. He wasn’t even sure why he said it, only that the words rang with the empty echo of everything he was suddenly terrified at the thought of leaving behind. “I need to…”
What? Speak with your friends? Request a leave of absence from school? Look at what they have wrought on the world, Nathaniel. There is no going back.
His eyes traced down to the park—to the remnants of the troglodan invasion that had just changed the world forever, and to the seemingly endless list of reasons he couldn’t go on with this madness, and the even longer list of reasons he couldn’t not.
Ex was right. He knew Ex was right. But—
“I need to feed my dog, goddammit!” he cried out of nowhere, throwing his hands wide in helpless anger. He didn’t know who he was trying to convince. Certainly not Iveera, who seemed less surprised at the outburst than he was. She just hung there in the air, watching him for a few long, degrading seconds before finally speaking again.
“Are you ready to fly?”
Somehow, those five words seemed to say it all.
Life as he knew it had ended, and something else was coming. Something none of them, not even the Excalibur Knights, were prepared to face. Not without their Merlin. Maybe not even then. But all he could do for sure was try. Or not.
“Okay,” he whispered, beginning to nod.
Iveera was already drifting off on gravitonic wings. She turned eastward as he looked up, facing her back toward him and gently accelerating, silently expecting him to follow.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself, reaching for his thrusters.
Nathaniel?
This is what you wanted, isn’t it?
No, it’s—
We’re going, okay? I just—
Look down, Nathaniel.
Frowning, Nate followed Ex’s instructions, honing in on the exact spot by nearly subconscious communication. He froze at the pair of tiny figures he spied below, looking up from the edge of the park. Froze until they clarified in his Excalibur-enhanced vision, not so much magnifying as resolving into unmistakable definition in every tiny detail.
It was Marty and Gwen.
He looked to Iveera, too stupefied to communicate that she needed to wait, that he couldn’t leave after all. Back to Marty and Gwen, both squinting up his way like they were trying to figure out if it was really him. Back to Iveera, who had halted over the park now, watching him like she’d seen what was happening and was waiting to see what he’d do.
He could only stare down at his friends, barely daring to trust his eyes.
“I will return within three hours,” came Iveera’s voice in his head. “You should make whatever farewells you must.”
It was only the word, farewells, that tugged him back to harsh reality.
“But your ship,” he said, grasping at the mental image of the smoking wreck she’d ridden into Atlantis like a dying steed. “It can’t just pull itself back together like that, can it?”
“Not quickly enough,” she agreed, seemingly unconcerned by the detail, or by the additional fact that the ship was presumably still at the bottom of the ocean. “Which is why we are going to take yours.”
“Mine?” Nate asked blankly.
“Three hours, Nathaniel,” was all she said.
He looked up in time to see her copper form rocketing away between the buildings across the park, rapidly dwindling from sight.
Three hours.
Best make the most of your time, little hobbit.
He looked down to Marty and Gwen, who were turning back from the direction of Iveera’s speeding departure. It was only then that he noticed Kyle and Kelsey in the park behind them, along with Todd and Emily and a few others—Tessa Kalders and her two SAS partners hovering nearby, keeping watch on the group and the proceedings in the park. Everyone was there.
Everyone but Zach.
The realization hit him with such sudden, awful clarity that he didn’t even think about leaping off the building. He forgot to be afraid as he plummeted to the street, calling on his thrusters only toward the end in his desperate rush to correct his obvious misunderstanding—to reach street level and realize that he’d only missed Zach’s face in the group.
He hit the ground harder than he meant to. Marty and Gwen gaped at the cracked asphalt beneath his feet. He gaped right back, searching the line of faces behind them. Searching it again. Zach’s name caught in his throat.
Kyle couldn’t meet his eyes.
Gwen couldn’t look away, shock and devastation plainly written across her face.
He fixed his eyes on Marty, silently pleading with his friend to say it wasn’t so, to tell him that they’d only been split up.
Marty just shook his head, red eyes brimming with tears.
“He saved us, Nate. He saved us.”
47
A Quarter of Everything
“It happened faster than…”
“Faster than any of us knew what to do,” Gwen provided.
“Yeah,” Marty whispered, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, steeling himself to get back on track.
Nate sat there quietly, wanting to tell his friends that they didn’t have to relive this now. That they could do it later, when they weren’t surrounded by the watching eyes and muddling chaos of the lingering park evacuees. That he wasn’t sure he could bear to hear it at all.<
br />
But he needed to hear it. And he could see it in Marty’s face that his friend needed to say it. And later… Well, he couldn’t think about later right now. Not beyond the next few hours.
So he sat there and quietly listened while his friends told him how the trogs had found them shortly after Iveera had taken him. How they’d been rattled and frantic, thinking he was dead. How Tessa and her two colleagues had whipped them into shape and gotten them moving, worried the abduction would draw attention to McClanahan’s.
How they’d been too late anyway.
“We almost made it out before they got there,” Marty said, shaking his head. “They hit the first car just after Tessa got it hotwired, thankfully before we could all load up.”
Judging by her sooty face and clothes and the ugly gash over her eyebrow, he was guessing it must’ve been something of a close call for Tessa, but she remained silent outside their huddle, not exactly pretending like she wasn’t listening, but at least maintaining a respectful distance.
“Everyone ran for the one SUV after that,” Marty continued. “The guys even brought one of the trogs down, I think, but…”
“It was my fault,” Gwen said quietly. “If I hadn’t been so…” She glanced over at Nate, then back to her feet, unable to finish.
“I’m the one who drew their attention,” Marty said. “I’m the one who dropped the damn gun when…” He shook his head, lips trembling.
“It’s bullshit,” Kyle said, rousing for the first time since they’d sat down and looking from Gwen around the circle almost angrily, as if daring someone to argue. “You guys arguing whose fault it is, it’s… If Zach hadn’t…” He fought for control, lips and brow working, quivering back and forth between something like a snarl and a sob. “We never would’ve made it out of there,” he finally managed. “They would’ve hit the SUV with that grenade, and… Fuck.” He slouched back down, hanging his head. “Fuck.”
Silence descended on the circle, thick and uneasy.
Nate found himself looking around, half-expecting Zach to step in and rib Kyle for his riveting command of the English language just to brighten the mood. The slip was like a phantom dagger nestled gently between the ribs. Almost worse was the way his friends, and even Todd and Emily, all avoided his eyes. Like they’d somehow let him down, and not the other way around.
I should’ve been there, he wanted to say, but the words hung in his throat. There was no end to the things he should’ve done since this had all started—since well before that too, truth be told. Sniveling about the fact had never gotten him anywhere. And much as he wanted to think Zach deserved his apologies, somehow, the thought of speaking them out loud only seemed like it would dilute the memory of his friend’s sacrifice. So he sat there in silence, paying his respects and apologies to Zach and no one else.
You do your friend honor, little hobbit.
Nate swallowed against the sudden aching in his throat, gripped by unexpectedly powerful gratitude at the simple fact of being not alone.
Slowly, uncertainly, the creeping tendrils of life began to work their way back into the cold circle as the precious minutes ticked by. It started with a few comments about the ongoing trickle of evacuees, and about the group’s rather abrupt journey, getting overtaken and abducted outside of Philadelphia—SUV and all—and summarily dished off here in New York, where many of the trog forces from State College had apparently congregated after Groshna had arrived, and where they’d just so happened to see the two Knights fly in to save the day.
At first, Nate tried to answer what questions he could about the trogs without saying too much, but soon enough, they’d slid into everything from Nate’s encounter with Groshna all the way down to Atlantis and the Black Knight. Once he’d started, it was hard to stop. Hard to imagine snuffing out what feeble glints of curiosity and awe had returned to his friends’ faces as he spoke.
Even with such surreal distractions, though, they never seemed to make it more than a few minutes at a time before the weight of Zach’s absence settled back in on a heavy breath of silence, and they sat there absently listening to the fading din of the encampment, and the helicopters that’d begun swooping down, bringing troops and supplies in, and medevacking the badly wounded out.
Nate didn’t tell his friends about the estimated fatality count he’d seen on Iveera’s holos. It wouldn’t bring them any more comfort than it’d brought him, knowing that their loss was only a tiny sliver of the total or that, all told, it hadn’t been nearly as catastrophic a day as it could’ve been. The logic rang cold and hollow enough in his own head.
All he really knew was that, whatever pain he and his friends were collectively suffering right now, there was at least eighty-thousand times more of it striking across the globe right now. Probably more than that. A worldwide tsunami of loss and suffering, for reasons he still couldn’t explain in any satisfying depth. He wasn’t sure such reasons could even exist. Especially not when Kyle spoke up in the middle of one particularly lengthy silence.
“I just can’t stop feeling like I’m missing… like we’re missing… I don’t know. A quarter.” He shook his head, looking abjectly defeated. “A quarter of everything.”
The words hung on the silence, immutably true.
“A quarter of everything is still everything,” Marty finally said, his voice not much above a whisper.
The three of them shared a look then, and it was as if some part of Zach were stirring within them, amalgamating from the pieces and memories they each carried to surface as a near whole for some final farewell.
“Out-nerded,” they whispered as one.
Nate wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry. He might’ve found out in short order, had that not been the moment he caught sight of Lieutenant Colonel Jaeger marching toward their huddle from the encampment with a few of his SAS crew in tow.
Just what he needed right now.
“Friends of yours?” Kyle asked.
Nate looked around to answer and realized the question had been directed not at him, but at Tessa, who’d risen to her feet and was ineffectively dusting off her grimy clothes. “Just the bestest,” she said, rather lethargically, before straightening up and favoring the incoming officer at upright attention. Beside her, the other two SAS guys did the same.
“At ease, people,” Jaeger said, as he drew up and looked his team over. “Glad to see you all pulled through.”
Nate traded a look with his friends, and saw the same grim thought reflected in their eyes: they hadn’t all pulled through. Somehow though, Nate didn’t expect the Lt Col would be falling to his knees with the grief of their loss as he turned to regard Nate.
“Whatever you want from me,” Nate found himself saying before he could think about it, “I don’t have time.”
“Why?” Jaeger asked, calmly looking around their circle before turning back to Nate, his dark eyes entirely too keen and discerning. “You got someplace to be, kid?”
Nate stiffened, all too aware of the round of suddenly attentive stares his friends shot him. He swore he could hear the realizations clicking into place—that he’d barely mentioned a word about Iveera, or what she’d gone flying off to do. Certainly, he hadn’t mentioned why, or what his part was in all of this moving forward. He hadn’t even realized himself, how thoroughly he’d kept the spotlight trained away from what happened next.
“This is our medic, Emily Carter,” Jaeger broke into the uncomfortable silence, waving forward a twenty-something, five-foot-ten band of solid lady iron as if he were making a grand peace offering. “I thought she might have a look at your friends while we have a word.”
Take it or leave it, his eyes said. Or maybe that was Nate’s own inner voice, assuming that emotional blackmail was exactly the knife Jaeger had intended to twist. Either way, he kind of wanted to punch the clever bastard as he rose to his feet, waving down his friends’ concerned looks, and turned to face his magnanimous extortionist.
“You’ve got fi
ve minutes.”
“So what is it?” Jaeger asked as they drew around the decidedly non-private barrier offered by a few scraggly trees. “Rescue mission? Revenge?”
Nate frowned at the Lt Col, surprised by the acuity of the guess, and not really sure how to answer. He’d fully been expecting the man to open up with threats about how much trouble he was already in.
“I take it something critical slipped past you and your friend Katanaga out there in the Atlantic,” Jaeger rolled on, unperturbed by his silence. “Imagine you two are looking to rectify.”
Nate’s frown deepened despite his best efforts. “How did you…?”
“We’ve still got satellites out there, kid. And believe it or not,” he added, swinging a finger back and forth between them, “as far as I know, we’re still on the same side here. So why don’t you tell me what the gorgon’s planning, and we can go from there?”
“Meaning you can decide whether or not to have your people try to drag me off to Area 51?”
Jaeger met him with an even stare. “Do you see me waving my dick around here, kid?”
“Kinda hard to tell, what with all the kid this, kid that.”
“Okay,” he said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender that was still a few degrees too condescending for Nate’s liking. “Nate. That better? Let’s start with the thorn I’m guessin’s still buried in your ass beneath that shiny armor, Nate.”
“You mean that you’re sorry you ignored everything I told you when it actually might’ve made a difference?”
He showed Nate a humorless grin. “That’s the one.”
Nate waited a few seconds, waiting for more. “Hell of an apology, there.”
Jaeger’s grin turned positively icy. “Who said anything about an apology?”
Nate bristled, but Jaeger pushed on before he could say a word.
“Look, we took what intel we had, and we passed it up the chain. Chain did the same. We did our jobs. Simple fact is the world wasn’t ready for this.”
The Eighth Excalibur Page 42