by Platt, Sean
Luca met his eyes and swallowed.
“They’re aliens.”
Boricio said nothing, waiting to see if Luca would crack into a “Nah, I’m just fuckin’ with ya” smile.
The boy wasn’t smiling.
“What do you mean?”
“You really don’t remember, do you?”
“No, kid, and you’re about to piss me off if you don’t just fucking fill the spittoon.”
“I can do better,” Luca said.
“Yeah? Whatcha gonna do, show me a video? Put on a play? Just out with it.”
“I can heal you. And with it, the memories will return.”
“You can heal me? You mean make me walk again?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“You don’t remember how the other Luca healed you, do you?”
“I know he ‘fixed me,’ but … ”
A memory flashed back — how Luca had healed him, and other people, aging each time until he was old.
“Oh shit, I do remember, but it’s all foggy. Did you age?”
“He did, yes.”
“Well, you gonna get a bunch of hair on your balls if you heal me now?”
“We don’t have a choice. Not unless you wanna be infected, too.”
“No, I don’t wanna be fucking infected, boy. But I don’t want you hurting yourself. Why don’t you go get Rose, and we can talk this out.”
“You don’t believe me, do you? Rose isn’t Rose.”
“Of course she is,” Boricio said. His head was pounding, and he felt more confused than ever. He tried to remember the old man’s name, but couldn’t. “That old fucker, yeah, I can believe he might be infected. But not Rose. I’d know it if she was.”
“No,” Luca shook his head, “you wouldn’t. It’s good at hiding Itself.”
“Bullshit.” Boricio wondered why this little shit was fucking with him. “You’re not even the same Luca I know. Maybe you’re the one who’s infected?”
Luca was shaking, looking back at the door as if he heard someone coming down the hall.
“I have to do this now,” he said. “Can I heal you?”
“I want to talk to Rose,” Boricio said.
“I’m sorry,” Luca said and reached out for Boricio.
* * * *
CHAPTER 7 — PAOLA OLSON
Paola couldn’t tell if it was day or night from deep beneath the island’s surface.
She’d never felt so far from her mom.
She wondered where her mother thought she was. Desmond must’ve told her some lie to cover her absence. But what had he said? That she was missing? That she was sick and locked in the facility?
Horror found her.
What if he’d killed her?
Paola shook her head, refusing to give that thought more space to grow. Her mother couldn’t be dead. Paola would know it. Of that much she was certain.
Paola wished she could reach out to her mom and tell her the truth — where she was and that she was OK, for now.
But as Paola closed her eyes and tried to reach out to her mom, like The Light told her to do, she found nothing but interference.
Maybe she is dead?
No! No, she’s not.
Frustrated, she kicked at the glass wall, and screamed.
Paola wondered if the ceiling’s tiny holes held cameras, speakers, or some sort of hole to vent poisonous gas.
If there were cameras, was Desmond watching now?
Paola couldn’t believe that she’d been so stupid. That she’d not noticed Desmond’s infection. She wondered if he’d been infected all along, when he came and saved them. Or was it more recent? If it had been all along, why come and save them in the first place? Why not just let her and Mom die in the hospital? It was the perfect time to do so.
In Luca’s voice The Light said, Because he wanted to use you to find the vials.
Sometimes The Light spoke to Paola in her voice. Other times, it sounded like Luca. She liked it better when The Light sounded like him. She liked to think that a bit of Luca was with her. It made her feel less alone.
What do I do now? I can’t reach out to my mother. He’s got me in here, and nobody knows.
Reach out to another of them. We’re all connected. Everyone I pulled back to this world has a bit of me, a bit of us in all of them. Try someone else, someone who can transmit your message and let your mother know where you are.
Paola found a slight smile as she thought of the perfect person.
* * * *
CHAPTER 8 — BRENT FOSTER
Brent was in Times Square with Luis, standing off against a horde of aliens. They were on top of the cars, firing weapons blindly into the encroaching mass of infected and black, shape-shifting aliens.
“Come on, you fuckers!” Luis screamed like Rambo, holding a massive machine gun that looked like it could bring down a tank.
Brent was too terrified to scream anything. He kept firing his rifle, barely denting the onslaught.
Darkness overcame them.
He was then in a warehouse with Keenan and Lisa, the Black Mountain Guardsman he hadn’t seen since they were all on Black Island. They were at a card table, playing poker while gunfire erupted outside.
He found it odd that no one seemed the least bit concerned with the fighting around them. But then, just like that, some part of Brent knew he was in a dream. The same dream he’d had so many times before.
“Are you alive?” he asked Lisa.
She looked at him and said nothing.
So far as Brent knew, Black Mountain was something that didn’t even exist on this Earth. Perhaps she wasn’t one of the people Luca brought over, or brought back. She was a native of that world. Maybe she was still there, if anything could’ve survived. Or perhaps Luca brought her back to Earth with the rest of them.
If so, Brent didn’t know her last name or how he’d find her — assuming she wanted to be found. Maybe she was wandering around the country like some crazy person, trying to convince people of what she saw. Hell, maybe she was locked in an asylum.
Or maybe the government had her locked up to quiet her mouth.
Ed looked at Brent, brow furrowed, “Well?”
“Well, what?” Brent stared down at his cards. “It’s your turn.”
“No, I’m waiting for you to tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“About Jade. How is she?”
This part of the dream was new.
Brent didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t lie to Ed, even in a dream.
“She’s … ” he started.
Gunfire ended outside and brought a knock at the door. The warehouse had turned into Brent’s tiny living room back in Manhattan.
Brent stood, curious. The knock and change of locale was also new to the dream.
Lisa grabbed a blade from the table and was off her feet, asking, “Who is it?”
Ed grabbed his shotgun but remained seated, one eye on Brent.
A girl’s voice came from behind the door. “It’s me, Paola. I need to talk to Brent. Please, Brent, open the door.”
“I don’t trust her.” Lisa looked back at Brent. “Isn’t she dead?”
Brent stood and grabbed his gun from the table.
“You sure you wanna open that door?” Lisa asked.
“Please.” Paola sounded urgent, seeming so real against the dream’s artifice.
Brent approached the door, reached out, twisted the knob, and opened it.
Paola was standing before him, but she wasn’t in the hallway outside his apartment. The door opened into a dark glass cell.
“Where are we?” Brent closed the door closed behind him, shutting off from Ed and Lisa to seal himself in Paola’s cell.
“We’re on the facility’s eighth level, and I have so much to tell you.”
Brent looked at Paola, confused. “Am I dreaming?”
She shook her head. “Not anymore.”
**
Brent w
oke in the darkness, cold, terrified, and trembling on Mary’s living room floor. He looked over and saw Teagan stirring in the darkness beside him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Paola’s alive.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 9 — MARY OLSON
The darkness held a comfortable silence, and an icy chill that Mary felt tempted to curl into for the rest of her miserable forever.
Mary wasn’t sure how long she’d been lying in bed or how much of that time had been spent sleeping rather than staring into the gloaming that pressed on her lungs and left her so short of breath she could barely muster the will to want.
She reached out and sipped from one of the water bottles that Teagan had set on her nightstand. Mary could smell food there as well. The scent of roasted garlic made her stomach growl, but even with her body empty and her stomach chewing Mary from the inside out the thought of eating made her want to vomit. She thought she smelled sugar and cinnamon, perhaps a snickerdoodle. That made it worse.
She looked at the clock: 4:15 a.m.
Mary wondered why Desmond wasn’t beside her. She thought she’d heard him come home, but he could have had to go back. Work seemed to own him lately. She wondered if Brent, Teagan, and the kids were still there.
Mary felt an overwhelming guilt for burying herself in the room and avoiding contact with the world. It had been steadily creeping, but now the tragedy threatened to swallow her whole. They’d lost someone, too — their friend and Ed’s daughter, Jade. She had no right to hoard all the grief.
OK, Mary, time to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Get out of bed and do something other than this.
She undressed, turned on the shower to scalding, then stepped inside and put her head under the piping-hot water.
Pulsating water massaged Mary’s scalp and felt good on her skin, thawing the chill that had settled into her marrow, slowly bringing her back to life.
She sank to the shower floor, and let the warmth rain on her body, through her hair, down her back, all over every inch of her skin.
After her shower, Mary flicked a switch and turned on the overhead lights and looked at the plate of food on the nightstand. An apple, a sandwich that must’ve had garlic, and a small saucer with two cookies. It reminded Mary of the times during summer vacation when Paola would make her lunch and bring it to her office. Like Paola, Teagan always tried to overperform in the kitchen.
She smiled at the memory, and at Teagan’s sweetness.
Mary dressed in jeans and a charcoal tee, then crossed the room, sat on the bed and tore into the apple. It was crisp and sweet. Like the warm shower, it seemed to waken her.
Mary spun her head toward a soft knock at the door.
“Yes?” She wondered who else was up with the dawn.
“Can I come in?” Brent whispered to keep the house sleeping.
“Yes, of course.”
Brent stepped into the room, his hair a mess, eyes exhausted and hollow. He looked like he could use a shower. He shut the door softly behind him and turned back to Mary, seeming as if he had something urgent to say.
“What’s wrong?” Mary stood and set the apple next to the saucer.
“I’m not sure how to say this, so I’m just going to come out and say it and hope you don’t think I’m crazy.”
“What?” Anxiety rose to stab Mary in the gut.
“I don’t think Paola is dead.”
“What?” she asked, confused, and feeling as if Brent had just punched her in the stomach.
“Please, just hear me out. I had a dream, and in it Paola said she was being held on the facility’s eighth level.”
Mary stared at Brent, wondering why he’d raise her hopes then burn them by saying it was only a dream. “She died in front of me, Brent. I saw it with my own two eyes.”
Mary wondered if maybe Brent had snapped himself. He’d lost his wife, and Jade, and was trying to keep his shit together and be there for both Teagan and the kids. Maybe denial had bested him.
He shook his head. “I know it sounds crazy. But she also told me to give you a message, something that would prove I was telling you the truth.”
“What?” Despite her fighting it, a blossom of hope bloomed inside her.
“Paola told me about Hammy the Hamster, and how when she was in kindergarten she was afraid to go to school, so each day you put a drawing in her lunchbox of a hamster you called Hammy, who would give her a new message each day. Sometimes Hammy said, ‘I love you,’ and other times you’d have Hammy doing something funny like getting stuck in a toilet paper roll, with his little tail sticking out the back end.”
Mary felt as if the world had been ripped from beneath her — again. She fell back on the bed, only realizing she was sitting after she was.
“What? How?” were all she could manage, though Mary had a million brewing questions. “I saw her die. Who is holding her in the facility?”
A name flashed in Mary’s mind before Brent could answer, a name she was ashamed to even consider.
Then he confirmed it.
“Desmond.”
Mary stared at him, barely able to breathe. Words were impossible.
Brent sat beside her on the bed as Mary gasped for air, her heart racing, fairly certain she was having a panic attack.
“Relax.” Brent set a hand on her back, rubbing it as if Mary were a child. “We’ll get through this.”
She closed her eyes, focusing on her breath until she was able to stop gasping for air. She found a deep breath then held it as if it could keep her floating in an ocean of insanity.
Calmly, Brent said, “Paola is OK, that’s all that matters. We’ll find a way to get her out of there and take care of this.”
Mary had a million more questions, such as how the hell they could break her daughter out of a top secret government installation? Why did Desmond do this? And whom did she see die?
But she had to focus on her breathing, in, count to five, then out, long exhale.
Once slightly calmer, Mary launched her questions, too many at once, bombarding Brent like a reporter at a press conference assailing a senator.
“Paola wasn’t sure why he’d done it. And she didn’t know anything about the girl we saw die. My guess it was an alien. Desmond’s infected. She thinks he probably has been since his return. Now he’s controlling The Darkness, and planning something big. Paola was standing in his way, so he’s keeping her hidden underground.”
Mary’s lone bite of apple rolled in the acid and started to rise. She raced to the bathroom, landed on her knees in front of the toilet, and retched up the only thing she’d swallowed other than spit in God knew how long.
How could I not have seen it?
I trusted him.
I loved him.
I … slept with him … with It!
Her skin felt clammy, and itchy, corrupted by the alien’s touch. Mary wondered if he’d somehow infected her with The Darkness as well.
A horrifying thought surged to the front of her mind, demanding her full attention.
Oh God, no.
She retched again, this time nothing but water.
“Oh God,” she said, over and over.
Brent opened the door. “What?”
Mary shook her head, wiping vomit from her chin, and stood. She went to the sink and started to wash, unable to meet Brent’s eyes in the reflection.
She couldn’t tell him what she was thinking. Voicing the thought might make it come true.
Mary had to steer her mind back to Paola, and figuring a way to get her daughter back. The last thing she could think about now was that the thing posing as Desmond may have gotten her pregnant.
* * * *
CHAPTER 10 — BORICIO WOLFE
Boricio screamed as flames licked his insides.
Luca had laid both of his hands on Boricio’s arm. The fire had started there, then spread outward in every direction, waking numb flesh in its path. At first, the fire hurt. But then it f
elt strangely … good.
Luca was shaking, too, his whole body trembling so fast it was barely more than a blur.
But Boricio couldn’t tend to the boy, not while his brain was getting beaten by a barrage of memories shaking him free of the fog and confusion that had settled on him since waking up paralyzed.
Boricio watched as hundreds of memories unspooled at once, playing like a dozen screaming IMAX screens, with none of them making a cumdrop of sense … at first. But then shit started to click into place, and Boricio was putting two and two together like he had a goddamned Beautiful Mind.
Boricio remembered everything.
Remembered Guard Tard, the prison, the weeks of running away, and then the cause of his running — the horror that had happened to his Morning Rose. The alien infecting her.
Fire slowly receded, and time seemed to drip back to normal. The Boy Wonder slipped away from Boricio’s bed and collapsed, spent on the floor.
Rose stepped through the door and looked down at Luca. “What’s going on?”
The boy had aged nearly a decade, a ball’s hair over twenty. Luca didn’t seem to realize what had happened just yet, looking down at his Hulked-out outfit, pawing his body in confusion.
Luca looked up at Rose. “I healed him.”
She turned to Boricio, but it wasn’t his Morning Rose.
And it hadn’t been.
Some motherfucker had been pretending, wearing her body like it was goddamned Halloween.
It had lied to him.
Had made him feel safe. Loved.
Boricio wanted to do more than kill it. He wanted to destroy it down to the molecule, dig a ditch, and shit on its remains.
He looked down at Luca. “Can you give us a second, Hulk Junior?”
Luca, still clearly dazed, looked up at Boricio, then nodded and left the room.
The door closed, and Boricio sat up, moving his body for the first time since his arrival. His muscles were stiff, and pain prickled like a village of tiny needles, but at least he could move. Like the Boy Wonder said, he’d been healed, and now he remembered.