A minute later, they were crawling over one last block of houses to look down at the open grounds and the large, C-shaped body of the Drexel College of Medicine.
Somehow, despite the Catastrophe and the fifteen years that had passed, the old building looked just as she remembered. Aside from the big alien ship sitting out in the front lawn, that is.
Al pulled the ship to a resting hover.
“Welp,” Jarek said, “guess it’s about time for strange encounters part two.”
Rachel couldn’t do much more than stare at her mom’s old workplace. “I never thought I’d come back here,” she finally said.
She felt Jarek’s gaze linger on her.
“Not even to meet some weirdo arcanist pretty boy and his blood-sucking alien sidekick by their spaceship?”
The ghost of a smile pulled at her lips as she met his eyes. “So you think he’s pretty?”
Jarek grinned. “Touché, Goldilocks… Touché.”
“And spaceship?” she added.
“I mean”—Jarek waved in the ship’s direction—“if the space shoe fits…”
“Yeah,” Rachel said slowly, staring at the strange ship. “What kind of shit decisions did we all make to end up here?”
“Peyote,” Jarek said. “Not even once.”
He moved into the back cabin and reappeared shortly with guns and sword strapped on. “Everyone ready?”
Nods all around.
“Right,” Jarek said. “Take us down, Al.”
No one was in sight around the alien ship as they descended. Once Al dropped the boarding ramp and swiveled the ship around to face them toward the other ship, though, Haldin was sitting at the bottom of a slender staircase that had descended from the side of their ship.
He watched them from across the twenty yards that separated them and slowly raised a hand in greeting.
Alton appeared at the top of the ship’s steps and descended behind Haldin as Rachel and the others deboarded and Al locked Jarek’s ship up behind them. Haldin stood and stepped down to the patchy grass to clear the way for Alton, and the slender staircase folded in on itself behind them, moving with a kind of organic grace, until it merged smoothly with the ship’s hull.
A few seconds later, the alien ship lifted silently from the ground.
At first, its movements seemed more clunky and awkward than the smooth flight they’d witnessed the day before when the ship had lured Mosen and his squad of assholes away from Unity. As it rose above Drexel, though, the ship stabilized and shot off northward.
“Guess there’s more than two of them, then,” Jarek mumbled beside her.
It seemed that way. As Alton and Haldin approached, though, the thought was quickly lost in a sea of more pressing questions.
“Oh hey, guys,” Jarek called. “Fancy seeing you here. Long time and all that.” He pointed skyward after the departing ship. “Didn’t wanna introduce us to the fam?”
“Al’Krogoth and his ilk would have a much easier time finding us here with that ship sitting out front,” Alton said. “The precaution seemed prudent.”
“Right, yeah,” Jarek said. “Good call. Al-who now?”
“Al’Krogoth,” Alton said. “Zar’Golga’s second-in-command, and the leader of the raiding party you confronted back at Unity.”
“The brownish one,” Haldin said.
“Ahh,” Jarek said. “Rusty. Gotcha. Yeah, that guy was a dick.”
Alton didn’t seem to disagree. Haldin looked a bit amused.
“Why did you bring us here?” Rachel asked.
“You know at least part of the answer to that,” Alton said, studying her curiously.
“My mom was a professor here, yeah. What does that have to do with anything?”
Alton gave her the kind of smile that was normally reserved for children who’d asked adorable but ultimately ridiculous questions. “Everything.” He looked over his shoulder at the old building. “This is where it all started.”
“Yeah,” Jarek said, “which is drama-queen speak for…?”
Alton gave Jarek an amused look. “For ‘this is where her mother started the infection that nearly wiped my people from the face of the Earth’.” Alton turned his smile on Rachel. “So maybe we should all step inside to chat.”
13
Inside, the halls of Drexel felt more cramped and claustrophobic than Rachel remembered, but maybe that was just the lack of lighting talking, or the fact that she’d been smaller the last time she’d been here. The accumulated broken glass and debris left by what she imagined had been a steady stream of looters and junkies looking to find some fun shit in the big science labs didn’t really help the place feel warm and welcoming either.
Most of those looters had probably been sorely disappointed, just like Rachel had been on the few occasions her mom had let her explore the lab instead of sitting around in her office, bored to death and wondering when they’d go home. Contrary to what the cartoons and movies had told her, it turned out most of the toys in real-life biology labs were little fun to play with and unbelievably expensive to break.
There was a muttered curse and a scuffling sound from the second floor overlook as they entered the building. The following footsteps headed steadily away, though, and they shrugged them off as those of a startled looter.
Tracing her way along familiar hallways toward her mom’s old lab, the nostalgia returned in full force. In the reactionary map of her mind, this place was somehow clear of the stain of tragedy that would forever tarnish her childhood home. In her mind, this was still just the place her mom had worked.
Given what Alton had said outside, though, that perception might be about to change.
“What did you mean back there?” Rachel asked as they came out of the stairwell on the second floor and started for the south side of the building. “About my mom starting an infection, I mean.”
“Exactly what I said,” Alton said. “It wasn’t just her, of course, but she was the one who put the”—he waved a hand—“je ne sais quoi into the virus that left us dependent on human blood.”
“And why the hell would she do that?” She paused by the door to her mom’s old lab, which Alton had passed by. “It’s this one, by the way.”
Alton looked at a door down the hall then back to her and shrugged. “Perhaps it was one of her collaborators’ labs they worked in. It matters very little.”
“Well if it matters very little,” she said, reaching for the door handle.
The knob turned, but the door caught on a deadbolt, which was kind of surprising given that the building had clearly had its fair share of people poking around for goodies.
“Allow me,” Alton said, a dim red glow springing up in his eyes as he stepped toward the door.
“Easy there, Red,” Jarek said, stepping up behind Rachel. “I got it.”
Rachel rolled her eyes, reached out with her mind, and applied the minute force required to slide the deadbolt open. She shook her head at them. “Neanderthals.”
Haldin smiled at her while Jarek and Alton frowned at one another.
She held the door open for everyone but Alaric, who insisted she go first. She stepped through the door and straight into another afternoon of her childhood.
Everything was more or less as she remembered—shelves and black bench tops all laden with scales, beakers, flasks, pipettes, and dozens of other instruments. Everything appeared to be in half-decent condition, aside from the light coat of dust that covered every horizontal surface.
Haldin and the others spread out through the lab space, inspecting this or that.
A tired sigh escaped Rachel as she turned back to Alton. “You didn’t answer my question. Why would my mom want to make you…”
“Our dependence on human blood was not the desired effect,” Alton said. “The virus was only intended to be lethal to us and benign to you. They succeeded at both of those goals, as well as at dispersing the virus across much of the planet’s population. Many of my people
grew horribly ill. Most of them died before we even understood what had happened. By the time we traced the malady back here, we’d ceased feeding, hoping to at least slow the disease’s progression. No one had yet realized the blood that carried the curse was the only treatment for it as well.”
“So you were already feeding before this all went down,” Jarek said.
Alton inclined his head. “On occasion. It has been our way for millennia and for dozens of planets and species before yours. We are bred predators.”
“That’s all very poetic and guilt-free,” Jarek said, “but it sounds like we were just being good prey, adapting to survive. And for that you blow up the damn planet?”
Alton wrinkled his nose. “That was not a democratic decision. The eldest of us at the time was already addled with the infection when he commanded the extermination of Earth, but the raknoth are a loyal people. Enough of them were desperate and afraid enough to listen.”
“You make it sound like you weren’t involved in any of this,” Rachel said.
Alton glanced at Haldin. “I went elsewhere when the madness was unfolding.”
“Convenient,” Rachel said.
“Not for the people elsewhere,” Haldin muttered.
Where the hell was this elsewhere? And, more importantly, “Why are you even telling us all of this? Let’s say we decide to believe anything you’re saying. What’s your end game here?”
“In a word, peace,” Alton said.
Jarek gave a bark of laughter. Lea and Alaric contained themselves but looked no less dubious.
“I think you’ve lost us,” Rachel said.
“My people have no particular love for this planet—”
“No kidding,” Jarek said.
“—but we cannot leave. As I said, for now, we’re bound to the human race.”
“Your food,” Rachel said.
“More like our vitamins. The blood is required to keep the infection at bay, but it is not our sole sustenance.”
“I don’t understand,” Rachel said. “That sounds like a fixable problem. One that doesn’t require human lives.”
“I don’t disagree,” Alton said. “Even ridding ourselves of the virus completely should have proved no more than a minor annoyance. We are quite adept at manipulating biological machinery to our will, and yet none of us have been able to crack the solution to whatever it is your mother created.”
“Why do you think it was her?” Rachel asked.
“Because that’s what her collaborators told us the day we showed up here,” Alton said. “They only laid the groundwork. They didn’t understand whatever change she’d wrought on the virus after the fact.” A knowing smirk crossed Alton’s features. “They said it was like sorcery.”
There was a scary thought. Her mom had been talented in the same way Rachel was. If she’d decided to play dirty… was it possible she could have used her abilities to produce her very own designer virus? Rachel sure as hell wouldn’t have known where to start with such a thing, but she also wasn’t a virologist as her mom had been. With enchanting, after you got past givens like control and energy, you were really only limited by your own understanding and imagination. Was there any reason to think it couldn’t work on a living organism as well as it did on, say, a staff or a pendant?
More importantly, would her mom really have done something like that? The raknoth were dangerous, vicious killers, true. But viral genocide? She wasn’t sure she could believe that one.
But then why was her heart beating so fast right now?
“What did you do with them? What did you do to my mom?”
Alton held up his hands. “I didn’t harm your mother. I was merely one of the small group that elected to try to fix our problem instead of taking the human race down with us.”
“And I’m just supposed to believe that?”
“Believe what you will,” Alton said, “but I never even saw her. When we finally traced the origin of the infection back here, she slipped out just ahead of our arrival.” He glanced at her mom’s corner office then back to Rachel. “I imagine she was trying to protect you and the rest of her family by leading us on a chase.”
Something about the way he said it only deepened the nauseous feeling creeping into her gut. Jarek and the others were watching her as if she were a pressure-triggered bomb that Alton had just stepped on.
“And did you chase her?” she asked quietly, not wanting to hear the answer and at the same time needing to.
Alton watched her, weighing his next words. “The elder of our group sent four of our best hunters after her and…”
Nausea boiled up into her chest, threatening to spill over into rage. She said nothing, waiting for him to confirm something she realized now she’d always known deep down in her gut.
The attack that had robbed her of Dad and Grams, her mom’s disappearance—none of it had been an accident. She’d always wondered, had always been suspicious. But now she knew. She could see it right there in Alton’s eyes.
Her voice was a ragged whisper. “And?”
Alton dropped her gaze. “And he compelled a small group of common thugs to harass her home in an attempt to—”
Something snapped inside her, and raw, crackling power surged through her before she’d even consciously thought about the channeling. The only thought in her head was putting the motherfucker who’d helped destroy her family through the wall. And she did.
Alton struck the wall with a flash of red eyes and kept on moving, smashing straight through drywall, insulation, and brick with a thudding crash. He disappeared in a mess of flailing limbs, leaving nothing but the sound of a few late-falling bricks and the gentle pour of daylight through the ragged hole in the wall.
Over by the counters, Jarek was facing Haldin, hands half-raised in something like a boxer’s stance.
Haldin stepped back, holding out his hands. “Easy, guys. We came to talk, not to hurt you.”
Rachel ignored him and crossed to the new hole in the wall.
Below, Alton was picking himself up from the paved parking lot she’d blasted him into, his skin crawling with tendrils of scaly green around his glowing red eyes.
She jumped down after him, channeling energy off her fall and into the air around her so that she touched down lightly from her second story jump.
Alton regained his feet and raised his hands in peace, his eyes dimming and his skin shifting back to that of a normal human.
Rachel drew more energy from her batteries and hit the raknoth in the jaw with a solid telekinetic punch.
Alton jerked back a few steps at the blow but didn’t drop his hands. “I’m not here to fight you, Rachel.”
She didn’t give a damn what he was here to do. Even if he hadn’t been the one to make the call, he’d apparently stood by and watched his people destroy her family. He sure as hell didn’t get to just decide they could have peace now.
She raised a hand and called forth the energy to lift Alton from the ground. He was heavy, heavier than any creature that size had any business being, but Rachel wasn’t exactly in the mood to care. She squeezed her hand into a fist and closed the telekinetic walls in on him with enough force to crush organs and crack bones—on a human, at least. The raknoth made a face of discomfort but otherwise didn’t flinch.
She slammed him to the ground with a growl. “What are you here for, you son of a bitch?”
He sat up but stayed on the pavement this time, hands still held up in a non-threatening manner. “I came to get my people off this planet before our masters come looking for us.”
For a second, Rachel was tempted to see if she could concentrate bursts of heat well enough to burn those creepy eyes of his out of their sockets. With each second Alton remained docile, though, her curiosity regained ground on her anger.
“The rakul?” she asked.
Alton nodded. “As long as we’re bound by your blood, we’re all in danger.”
“What the hell does that have to do with me? W
hy bring me here?”
“It may be nothing to do with you,” Alton said, slowly rising to his feet. “It may be everything.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean? If it was some arcane super-virus keeping them here…
“You want me to undo what my mom did?”
Alton said nothing.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You take my mom, my family, you nuke the fucking planet, and then you come to ask me for help? Do you have any idea what those sick fucks did to my family? You ruined everything in my life, AND NOW YOU WANT MY HELP?”
It was only in the following silence that Rachel realized she’d been shouting by the end. She whirled at a soft sound behind her, ready to blow something else through the wall, but it was only Jarek. Behind him, Haldin was touching lightly down to the pavement as she had.
“I’m not expecting you to change what your mother did,” Alton said quietly. “But I had hoped that together we might try. Rachel, I… There’s not much place for sympathy in our culture. But I wish now that we had handled things differently.” His gaze shifted over her shoulder toward Haldin. “Many things.”
Jarek stepped up beside her. “Hell of an apology, man. ‘Sorry we blew up the planet and murdered everybody, guys, I almost feel bad about it.’ Real touching stuff.”
Alton’s jaw tightened. “I can hardly be blamed for the collective actions of my people. The raknoth have wronged your kind, but it was not solely by my hand, and it was not so much worse than what you have done to species on your own planet in the past.”
“Alton.” Haldin’s tone was reproving as he stepped around them to join the conversation.
“Regardless,” Alton said, “there is more at stake here now, and if we do nothing, both of our peoples will pay the price for it.”
“It always comes back to the vague doom-mongering with you guys, doesn’t it?” Jarek asked. “Maybe you could give us something more specific, like who the hell these masters of yours are.”
“You’d understand it’s not mongering if you knew what we’re potentially dealing with here,” Haldin said
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 35