Michael rolled his eyes and directed his gaze down the stairway as if the empty space suddenly required his subdued attention.
“You look like shit, Mikey,” Jarek added, not hiding his concern now. “And I can only assume there’s some angry telepathic juju floating around nearby if the…” He hooked a thumb toward town. “You know. I just, uh… Promise you’ll talk to me if anything starts to…”
Michael watched him flounder with exactly what it was that anything might start to do then finally nodded. “I will.”
Jarek was less than convinced. After everything he’d seen Michael go through, he didn’t doubt the big guy was the suffer in silence type.
And if Michael was feeling the telepathic heat right now…
Suffice it to say, Jarek doubted walking around with the guy who was, as far as he understood it, basically a messenger satellite was doing any major favors to their efforts to lay low. But it wouldn’t be the nail in their coffin—he had to believe that. As far as they understood it, Michael’s condition was a one-way arrangement—receiving but not transmitting.
No. It wouldn’t be the nail in their coffin. That blow would more likely fall if anyone decided to press the issue. Mosen had made it more than clear just how little he liked having Michael around, marked as he was. If Mosen or anyone else so much as caught a whiff that anything was awry with Michael… Jarek didn’t want to think about how it would go for their happy little platoon if and when that happened.
So, instead, he unslung the duffel from his back and offered it to Michael. “Dandy. Wanna do the honors, then?”
If Michael thought his connection was putting the group at risk—and Jarek trusted the younger man would know better than him on that one—Michael wouldn’t keep quiet about it. Probably.
It was good enough for now.
Michael took the bag with a slight frown. Ragged as he looked from their travels and, before that, from weeks of intermittent telepathic assaults, his burly frame still had no trouble supporting the hefty load as he slung it over one shoulder. “You’re not coming?”
Jarek waved him on and pointed down the stairs. “Might just go, uh… For a minute.”
Michael’s expression softened, and he clapped a hand to Jarek’s shoulder. “She’s okay out there. Probably better off than we are. I have faith.”
Jarek fought the urge to swallow against the sudden lump in his throat and managed to pull on a mask of mock sternness instead. “You know I don’t approve of the F-word, young man.”
A faint touch of amusement alighted over Michael’s features. “My bad, Papa Slater.”
Jarek shook his head, the title drawing Mosen back to the forefront of his thoughts. “That smug bastard.”
Michael gave a knowing nod, looking thoughtful. “I’ll say this much for him, though. Dude’s loyal to his people.”
That much was hard to argue. Much as he hated to admit it, and much as blind devotion never failed to scare the crap out of him, Jarek was actually pretty impressed by how hard Mosen had proven himself willing to fight for his men—and how faithfully those Mosenites followed him in return.
“Yeah…” Jarek waved at the duffel at Michael’s shoulder. “Well, why don’t you go make sure every hungry mouth in there knows we’re loyal too? I’ll be in soon.”
Michael looked like he had something else he was thinking about saying—a few somethings, maybe—but he finally gave a nod and turned for the doorway.
“Hey, Mikey.”
Michael turned, waiting, and Jarek found he couldn’t quite decide what it was he wanted to ask—could only grasp at general directions, all of which suddenly seemed like topics for another time.
“Uh, make sure who’s-a-what’s-it on lookout gets a bite too.”
Michael cocked his head. “Chambers?”
“Right. Like I said.”
Michael’s look was slightly quizzical, but he gave Jarek a thumbs up and left to go feed the troops without further question.
Jarek stood in silence for some time, his thoughts winding themselves in unpleasant knots. His stomach rumbled, reminding him he should’ve grabbed a can of something before he’d handed the bag over.
“You should eat, sir.”
Al wasn’t wrong. But the thought of stepping into a crowded space right now… Food could wait a little longer.
“Is that what that means, Mr. Robot?” Jarek asked, starting down the stairs. “It gets so confusing sometimes, being a real boy. The rumbles. The pulses. The massive erections. Who can keep track of it all?”
“Would that I could avoid it, sir. Particularly the latter.”
Jarek smiled and stepped outside to take a seat on the building’s front stoop.
“How are you doing, buddy? Still feeling like you’re short a few limbs without the Net?”
“Short a few limbs and locked in a padded room, sir. And with you, no less. Can you imagine?”
Jarek shook his head. “The horror.”
He wanted to say more, wanted to promise Al that they’d see this thing through. That they’d save the planet and eventually restore the Net and, along with it, all of the thousands of petabytes of information and media and other digital distractions his friend no longer had access to. He wanted to promise it to Al as much as he wanted to promise it to himself.
But they’d both know he was talking out of his ass, so, for a long while, he just sat there, trying to enjoy the companionable silence that he and his old friend had so often passed together.
One month, Rachel had said the last time he’d talked to her, just before the Net had cut out and their comms had ceased to function outside of close-range communication.
One month until Haldin and Elise would complete their… was merger the right word? No one seemed to know. Not even the raknoth.
One month until they finished doing whatever the hell it was those two were doing with Alton and Lietha, at least.
One month of surviving this relentless hounding, flying on some blind hope that the product of this apparently unprecedented raknoth-Enochian merger would somehow give them an edge against the rakul. Against the things that were so old and strong that even Drogan, Mr. My-Warrior-Honor-is-Bigger-than-Yours himself, had fled the scene like a frightened child when they’d first arrived in force.
After the run-in Jarek and Michael had had with that giant mutant-wolf-looking bastard back at HQ, though, Jarek couldn’t say he blamed ol’ Stumpy for being afraid of the things.
As for the Enochians…
Jarek didn’t know what to believe.
Whatever happened, whatever shit hit in the end, the only thing Jarek knew for sure was that he wanted—needed—to face it with Rachel at his side.
But first, he had to find her.
2
Fifteen years earlier—or, hell, maybe even just a few months ago—it might have been a nice view that greeted Rachel as she skirted out from under the cover of the ruined apartment building and darted across the street to the overgrown lookout point. Now, though, she just felt naked out there, standing in the open in broad daylight.
She clutched her staff tighter, as if its tiny weight could somehow protect her.
If Johnny felt any similar consternation, he sure did hide it well.
“Hmm,” the red-headed Enochian said, letting the tall grass slide back over the sign he’d been inspecting before looking back out over what crumbling skyline remained of Pittsburgh. “Wonder why they decided to call it Point of View Park.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Rachel saw him turn an expectant grin her way.
“You know what I wonder?” she asked quietly, pointedly keeping her stare directed across the wide blue of the Ohio River and fixed on Heinz Field. “Why a freaking stadium?”
“Because you Earthlings love your football,” Johnny said as if it were blatantly obvious. “I’ll bet you five fortune cookies Nelken’s dad used to bring him here. It’s probably like his safe place or something.”
She finally
turned from the view to study the Enochian. “How the hell do you always know these things?”
“I mean, it’s just a guess. Father and son bonding over the game and all tha—”
“Not the dad part. That part actually makes a surprising amount of sense. But how do you even know what football is?”
He shrugged. “I was stuck on a ship for a year with nothing to do but study Earth and get beat up by Hal.”
The shadow fell across his face—the same one he always got now when he talked about Haldin.
He covered it up quickly enough, cocking his head in thought. “Well, beat up by Hal and Elise. And Alton. You get the point. And you’d be impressed how much you can pick up about a culture through their movies.”
“If you two are finished,” came Drogan’s voice from behind, “perhaps we might consider taking productive action.”
The raknoth drew up beside Rachel, his eyes warily sweeping the open sky before sliding down to their objective.
“Considering’s the easy part,” Johnny murmured. “It’s the doing I’m less excited about.”
“It’ll be fine,” Rachel said.
He grinned over at her. “Well now that you said so . . .”
Rachel turned to Drogan. “You’re sure the others will be safe back there?”
They’d left the rest of Johnny’s people—precious cargo included—back in the heavily wooded hills, on the other side of the giant urban butte they were currently looking down from.
She wasn’t even sure why she bothered asking Drogan for the reassurance. They either would be okay, or they wouldn’t. There was no true safety on this planet. Not anymore.
Still, it made her feel a touch better when Drogan gave her a confident nod. “As long as Franco and the others do nothing foolish to betray their position, our… maturing allies should be free to continue their change in peace.”
Rachel sure as hell hoped so.
Haldin and Elise were two of the only hopes she’d had to cling to since the rakul had arrived and the Enochians had begun their respective melds with Drogan’s raknoth kin, Alton Parker and Shieth’Lietha. The idea of raknoth establishing symbioses with their hosts rather than completely overriding them was a novel one. And, she was hoping, one that would produce something tremendously powerful, given how gifted Haldin and Elise had already been to begin with.
Drogan hadn’t exactly kept it a tight secret that he was less than convinced Haldin and Elise would arise as the all-powerful weapons the rest of them were hoping for.
Rachel wasn’t so sure what to think.
Johnny, unsurprisingly, had faith in his friends.
Rachel wanted to believe that faith was well-placed—not in small part because the alternative was that, if this gambit didn’t pay off, they’d be stuck right back where they’d begun. Eleven preposterously strong Kul, a planet-full of potential furor fodder, and naught but her staff, Drogan’s claws, and Johnny’s guns to fight their way through the impossible odds.
Of course, there were other friendlies out there too. The scattered remnants of the Resistance, for one, and Zar’Krogoth’s forces for another.
And then there were Jarek and Michael, who, last she knew, had somehow ended up on the road north with that savage bastard Mosen.
Her heart ached at the thought. She hoped to god they were still together watching each other’s backs and that Michael hadn’t fallen prey to—
No.
She couldn’t think about that now.
With any luck, their mix-matched band of fighters would manage to rally here, just like they’d talked about before they’d lost the Net. Nelken, Alaric, Krogoth—someone would have a plan. They’d pull together, make their stand.
No matter what happened, she was sure there wasn’t a soul among them at this point who wouldn’t go down swinging.
Maybe it would be enough.
But having a pair of Enochian-raknoth hybrid super soldiers in their corner sure as hell wouldn’t hurt either.
In the meanwhile, Rachel would’ve gladly settled for the ability to reliably communicate with their brewing heroes.
Getting answers from the merging couples had been like herding cats—and cats who were tripping on ayahuasca, at that. As far as she and Drogan could tell, Haldin and Elise were floating back and forth between profoundly deep sleep and complete unconsciousness.
As for Alton and Lietha, that was a slightly stranger question.
At times, the raknoth seemed to be coupled in dreamlike states with their respective humans. Aside from the occasional brief stints where the raknoth would telepathically communicate mostly-coherent updates to Rachel or Drogan, Alton and Lietha spent the remainder of their time in their own kind of trance-like state that Drogan had referred to as “the builder’s space.”
Apparently, it was a thing—or at least a loose translation of one—with raknoth and their fresh host bodies during a standard body snatch and the subsequent remodeling.
Johnny had taken to calling it “the body shop”—a moniker that at some times amused him and at others seemed to depress him.
Rachel, upon first witnessing the crude “gastric inputs” Drogan had installed to allow them to give his kin the raw materials they required for said body-building, had decided she wasn’t overly keen on delving into the details, as long as it worked.
At any rate, for now, it was just the three of them, and this rendezvous with Nelken and the Resistance wasn’t about to happen on its own.
Pushing all thoughts of Jarek, the changing Enochians, and the future at large aside, Rachel gave Drogan a resolute nod.
“Let’s see what there is to see, then.”
The hike down to the nearest bridge wasn’t far—no more than half a mile—but, between picking their way down the trail and Drogan stopping every hundred feet to perk his ears and sniff warily at the sky, it took them a good fifteen minutes.
The bridge itself was long and narrow, two lanes crossing the wide berth of the Ohio River, overarched with faded yellow steel. Harmless enough, as bridges went. But that didn’t stop something about the heavy silence in the air whispering to her just how exposed they’d be out there in the middle of its paved span.
Drogan and Johnny seemed to be having similar thoughts, but, unless one of them happened to be hiding a boat in their pocket, the only real alternative was swimming, which carried all the same vulnerability and added the bonus of getting all their gear soaked.
So, by some unspoken agreement, they all started across the bridge at a light jog.
Much to Rachel’s relief, no elaborate death traps sprang. No highwaymen popped out to collect their dues.
Nothing happened at all—until about three quarters across, when Drogan snared her arm in a steel grip.
“A ship,” he hissed.
The intensity in his voice shot a tingling burst of panic through her chest.
“Where?”
She couldn’t see anything but partially-cloudy skies all around.
“West,” Drogan hissed, reaching for Johnny as well.
The westward sky seemed every bit as clear as the rest, but Drogan’s senses were far sharper than hers. No reason not to trust him. Instead, she turned her attention to their next move.
Nowhere to run but forward or backward. Nothing but barren pavement and the faded yellow steel of the bridge’s arch.
“Run?” Johnny asked.
“No time,” Drogan grunted, shifting to wrap his arms around her and Johnny as if preparing to carry them along for a jump.
“No,” Rachel heard herself say.
No time to run. Jumping would only leave them exposed in the water.
They needed to be invisible.
“Down,” she growled, dropping her staff, grabbing fistfuls of both of their jackets, and falling to the road.
Maybe it was sheer surprise on both their parts, but Johnny and Drogan hit the pavement with her.
“Lie still,” she whispered.
Drogan squirmed.
“They may have already seen—”
“Shut up,” she snapped.
She’d seen how fast raknoth ships could move. If it was one of the Kul out there, and if they’d already been spotted, it didn’t matter now whether they ran or not.
So Rachel focused on what she could control, shaping her will into a single abstract thought, then she opened the channel and let the energy flow.
She’d never tried something like this before, but hell, if her mom had managed to enchant a virus that had brought the raknoth to their knees, why should invisibility be beyond Rachel’s grasp?
The energy crackled through her body like an electric river, and the air immediately around them took on an odd, oily effect.
She tried her best not to focus on it.
Unlike most of the channeling she was used to, this feat was far more mentally strenuous than energy-intensive, bending and shifting light to present the facade of empty pavement where they lay—it was a lot to keep straight in her head as she channeled.
And, while the channeling demands were the secondary challenge, that’s not to say they were negligible. Within seconds, she felt the beginnings of the channeling fatigue creeping into her bones.
Worst of all, she didn’t even have any way to know whether it was working. But the lack of feedback hardly mattered now. They were out of time.
She could barely make it out as a faint blip in the distant sky, but something about the way it moved… That was definitely a ship out there—definitely not a human one.
And it was coming straight for them.
“We must take cover,” Drogan whispered, though he didn’t move a muscle.
“Let the lady work, Stumps,” Johnny whispered. “Trust her.”
“You do not call me that,” came Drogan’s hissed reply, followed by a murmured, “Flame Head.”
Rachel closed her eyes and shut it all out—the visual input that was only distracting her, the tickling urge to break into manic laughter. All of it.
She sank deeper into her task, picturing nothing but empty pavement, willing the image to life, embracing the crackling stream of power flowing from the batteries on her belt, through her body, and into the air around them.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 85