Invasion | Box Set | Books 1-7

by Platt, Sean

  But beneath her (lack of) factual knowledge and suppositions, Piper recalled something further down. Something that felt like collective consciousness. Something that even now felt like a gossamer thread connecting her mind to Lila, and Lila’s mind to the new life growing inside her. Connecting them all. But most of all, that thread ran between Lila and Trevor. Between the children and their mother as well, yes, because they were linked by blood.

  And to their father.

  Get the children out.

  Because just as the children had their descendants, Meyer had his.

  Duly connected to its source — to the network Benjamin had shown her and Cameron what felt like a thousand years ago — the mothership continued to descend. Beneath it, the blue column of light sparked and hummed. The aggregate thoughts of humanity flowing into the nexus. Into the ship. The ship itself “plugging the hole” as she’d sensed Lila thinking even from a distance — not with debris to destroy it, but like a plug in a socket.

  She comprehended without understanding.

  She knew that Meyer was aboard but didn’t believe she’d seen him or spoken to him or been near him.

  She knew that Lila and Trevor mattered. That Meyer mattered. That the other eight human cogs, simultaneously docking at their own nexuses around the world, mattered.

  They’ve been here before.

  And something else Benjamin thought, though Piper had no way to know it, other than through intuition and three months’ worth of cobbled discussions:

  And if we fail, they will be here again.

  Piper saw a field filled with fossils. Fossils from the new age, again somehow cast in stone, as it always had been before.

  Enormous protrusions emerged from the sphere, like legs from the thorax of an enormous insect. The blue column of energy buoyed the craft as legs descended, finally making tentative contact with the ground. The ship sighed its weight onto them, depressing the turf. Then the ship settled its lowest point into the bunker’s indentation, atop the home’s shattered foundation, the blue glow now only visible as a halo from beneath.

  “Contact,” Piper whispered.

  Trevor and Lila were ahead of her. Christopher, Raj, and Terrence were behind. Piper looked down when she felt a hand slide into hers, then up at Heather’s terrified face.

  Piper couldn’t help but feel some of Heather’s fear. Somehow, she seemed to know that the last time this loop had unfurled, it had all gone wrong — and the time before that, and the time before that.

  She stared forward as a door appeared in the ship’s belly. Compared to the stadium-sized breadth, the door was insignificant, the curved surface into which it was cut appearing almost flat.

  A human shape appeared in the doorway, backlit and visible only in silhouette.

  The being came forward, descending an extending ramp. Behind it, more human shapes appeared. The latter were larger than the first. Taller. Broader. A gaggle of gods standing behind a single ordinary man.

  Piper stepped forward, moving between Lila and Trevor. She took his hand in hers. His human hand in her human hand, skin to skin.

  Behind her, Heather said, “That’s not him. That’s not the Meyer I know.”

  But it was the Meyer that Piper knew, sure as anything.

  She looked up at him. He was waiting for her to speak first — that familiar handsome, cocksure smile on his face. But still Piper couldn’t help thinking of the ship that had destroyed Moscow, the footage of menacing spheres on the news, the destruction of the bunker, the story she’d heard about Vincent and the people who’d died with him, burned alive.

  The ship’s very presence was a menace. The air smelled like fear and death.

  “Are they here to wipe us out?” Piper whispered, fear returning despite her relief.

  “No,” Meyer said, still wearing his maddening smile.

  Behind him, the enormous mothership idled and hummed. The large, human-shaped silhouettes waited in the doorway. There were pops and crackles as the ship harvested thoughts from below. Gathering information. Watching them all.

  “They’re here to save us.”

  Piper wanted very much to believe him.

  But she didn’t.

  Colonization

  TWO YEARS LATER

  Chapter One

  The gray fighter jets made another loop. Piper watched them screech through the clear blue sky, near the fence surrounding Heaven’s Veil, a nervous flutter in her chest.

  She couldn’t place the source of her nerves. Part of it was probably fear for the pilots. The resistance kept playing with fire, but at least she could usually understand what they were trying to do before they failed. These fools, on the other hand, were begging to be slapped by the patrolling Astral shuttles, then sent down in scraps. From the occupation’s first day, humanity had been testing the alien ships’ defenses. They’d never come close to making a dent. Even Black Monday hadn’t made a ding. So why, after all this time, did dissenters continue to spit in Fate’s eye?

  Maybe that’s just how humanity is, Piper thought as she watched the circling planes.

  Humans never gave up, no matter how stupid or futile their attempts might be. A strength and a weakness — an obsessive-compulsive breed of obstinacy. Those who couldn’t accept the obvious would slam their heads against the inevitable until they exhausted their numbers and dwindled to nothing.

  That’s what Meyer always said anyway. As much as violence still bothered Piper, none of it seemed surprising to the alien envoys. Resistance had been assumed from the start. It had been factored into the Astrals’ grand equation as predictable. Inevitable. Maybe even essential.

  Piper stood on the mansion’s porch, watching dead men circle in their obsolete tin cans, feeling something like pity. Meanwhile, the shuttles protecting the city beneath the mothership remained at their posts, not bothering to intercept, apparently unimpressed.

  Once the formation again vanished behind the enormous, shimmering blue-glass hulk of the Apex at the city’s center, Piper turned to go inside. The day was warm, so the large doors had been propped open. The home’s doorway was downright titanic without at least one door closed, and Piper felt uncomfortable walking between them in her simple blue dress, as if she were entering a cathedral without proper attire.

  But of the three Astral classes, only the Titans might have passed judgment on her wardrobe. And of course they never would.

  Two of the stoic figures were standing just inside the foyer, turning a small, transparent cube in their hands, passing it from one to the other as if trying to solve a puzzle. The Titans looked up without comment at the clacking of Piper’s low heels. Maybe they thought her clothing was fine for the lady of the house. Maybe they didn’t, but were too polite to say anything. She almost wished the cloaked figures spoke so she could ask, but in two years of living among them she’d never heard a word. Meyer had heard them all in his own way, of course. But Meyer was different now.

  Piper wound through the home, fingers brushing stone columns, her path through the maze practiced but still not quite comfortable.

  In the west hallway she passed another Titan, this one female. The creature’s pale bald head inclined toward Piper atop her massively sculpted shoulders. As she looked back up, her pale face affected the vaguely polite smile they all wore, seemingly all the time. She wanted to take the smile as genuine, and maybe it was. Unlike the Reptar Astrals, Titans were so human-looking. Two legs, two arms, ten fingers and ten toes, two eyes, a nose, a mouth. Massive, muscular, powder white and hairless, yes — but humanlike nonetheless. Proof of Benjamin Bannister’s seeded-human-origin theory perhaps.

  But the Titans weren’t human, no matter how much respect they seemed to show the Dempseys. Piper always tried to keep in mind that they hadn’t been as respectful to the rest of the planet. Plenty of people saw Piper Dempsey as a traitor to her species for all her privilege, and maybe she was. Getting friendly with the house ambassadors only made her feel worse.

 
; Piper flashed an unnatural smile.

  She found Meyer in his elegant but humble office, unattended, without even Mo Weir to answer his questions or take his orders. Stalking the room alone, Meyer looked like the giant he’d been back in the old world. Seeing him this way, in this human room so like his New York office, settled her slightly. She allowed an exhale, but still felt the bunching in her chest.

  Meyer looked up as she entered and smiled. After watching the Titans, Meyer’s genuinely human expression felt like a breath of fresh air.

  “Hello, Piper.”

  “Those jets are still out there.”

  “Yeah?” Feigning interest. Meyer held what looked like a glass tablet and was barely offering lip service while he worked on something else. But the tablet wasn’t glass, same as the Apex. Piper also knew she couldn’t operate the thing if she tried, whereas Meyer used it for most of his work when he wasn’t using the office terminal or his human cell phone. It didn’t matter because she hated to touch it. Living here, surrounded by the enemy, was bad enough.

  “It’s making me nervous,” she told him.

  “I could have them shot down, if you’d like.”

  Piper watched Meyer, but he kept his eyes on the tablet. His casual comment chilled her.

  “No, please.”

  “Okay then.” He looked up, the slow smile returning. Almost the old Meyer. Almost. “How’s your day?”

  “Meyer,” she said, “what do you think those jets are doing out there?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Aren’t you concerned about them at all?”

  Meyer set the tablet aside, looked at Piper, and shrugged. “Should I be?”

  “It doesn’t make sense. When’s the last time there’s been such an overt attack?”

  “It’s not an attack, if I’m understanding you right.”

  “They’re fighter jets. You think they’re just circling the city for kicks?”

  Another shrug. “Maybe. We can’t police everything that happens, Piper.”

  Piper didn’t know what bothered her most about that simple statement: Meyer not seeing the fighters as a threat, his lack of concern over the resistance’s possession of jets in the first place, or his casual use of the word “we” in conjunction with humanity’s enemy.

  “It’s just … what is the resistance thinking?”

  “Who knows.” He laughed.

  “No — I’m actually asking you to tell me what they’re thinking. The Astrals still have their mind-reading stones lined up all over the outlands. So what are the pilots thinking? Why are they just circling, asking to be blown from the sky?”

  “I keep telling you, the monoliths don’t work like that,” Meyer said. “They don’t read every thought from every person. They can’t be tuned in like a radio tuning a frequency.”

  “Then what good are they?”

  “It gives them an average. A temperature of an area as a whole.”

  “So what’s the ‘temperature’ of Heaven’s Veil?”

  “Pacified. Compliant.”

  Piper sighed, her fingers rifling through a stack of important-looking papers on Meyer’s desk, looking for nothing. She wondered if the Astrals had authored any of these pages. If so, had they committed to paper for human benefit? Or was this human-to-human bureaucracy — the metropolis running as any human city ever had — under human hands, ignoring the alien bosses above?

  “I think they’re up to something,” Piper said.

  “The people?”

  “The jets.”

  “Maybe they are. It’s fine. As long as the guard shuttles intercept them outside the borders, there won’t be any debris falling onto people’s homes. That was a mess last time.”

  “A mess?”

  “Yes, a mess.” Now he seemed impatient, probably exasperated by Piper’s intrusion. This was classic Meyer, as he’d been even before Astral Day. Clever, intelligent, and occasionally too arrogant to see past his own absurdity. His family was safe, and the overlords had successfully made contact. Now it was time for business.

  A klaxon blared. Piper’s heart stuttered at the alarm. Meyer rolled his eyes.

  “Goddammit,” he muttered.

  “What is it?” Piper yelled above the bray.

  Meyer touched his finger to his temple and closed his eyes.

  “Meyer!”

  “Hang on.”

  “Is it the jets? What’s going on?”

  “Hang on.” Finger still to temple. Eyes still closed. As if he had all the time in the world.

  “Do we need to hide in the—”

  “Piper, if you don’t shut the fuck up, I can’t listen!”

  Piper’s eyes were on the hallway, toward the alarm and stomping feet. The house was a place of business during the day, and now she could hear administrators rushing by. She didn’t need to peek at the chaos to imagine the panicked humans rushing about like dumb animals, Titan guards marching into assigned positions. Outside, Reptar peacemakers would be finding their stations, looking hungry.

  Piper watched Meyer turn his attention inward, listening to Divinity’s voices in his head as the klaxon filled the home with fear.

  His eyes opened. They were the same human eyes Piper had fallen in love with — and yet she fell a step back, nearly as afraid of Meyer as she was of the blaring alarm.

  “Yes, they say it’s the jets.” His finger fell from his temple. “But this time, they’ve brought something with them.”

  Chapter Two

  Trevor heard the blaring alarms and stood from his chair fast enough to knock his water to the floor.

  Despite the tumult, Trevor paused to watch the glass shatter. It was okay; he didn’t want the water anyway. He’d been trying for over a year to transition to drinking only water but still didn’t like the taste, forcing himself to hydrate only because his body needed fluids. Supposedly, the systems installed by the Astrals when they’d built Heaven’s Veil did something to flawlessly purify the water, but to Trevor it still tasted fetid. Secretly, he’d have given anything for a Coke. He’d been meaning to flaunt his position as Heaven’s Veil royalty and command a shuttle to seek caches of sweet carbonation in the outlands, but he hadn’t mustered the guts to ask. Speaking to the muscular, white Titans (who supposedly understood English even though they never replied with words) always creeped him out.

  Trevor ran to the window. Whatever was happening seemed to be on the home’s other side, so he rushed into the hallway, realizing the irony of running toward the alarm rather than away from it.

  Lila burst from her room, and Trevor collided with her, knocking the breath from his lungs.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes wide.

  “I don’t know. Didn’t you look out your window?”

  “No.” She sounded rushed, panicked. “Do we need to get to the basement?”

  “You can go to the basement. I’m never going into a basement again.”

  “Have you seen Raj?”

  “Why would I have seen Raj?” Annoying Lila, wasting seconds while something important unfolded. He shoved at her, trying to get into his sister’s room and her precious front-facing window.

  “Get out of my way! I don’t care about Raj and his stupid—”

  Trevor stopped when he saw his niece on the floor of Lila’s room behind her, surrounded by letter blocks. “Oh, hi, Clara.” Then, back to Lila, hissing: “Take her downstairs, stay here, find Raj, whatever. Do you know where Mom is?”

  “Probably in her house. Or maybe pacing the grounds between like she does.”

  “Hi, Trevor,” Clara said from behind Lila, barely audible.

  Trevor smiled at the two-year-old. Her voice was small and, when klaxons weren’t blaring, adorable. Even Trevor, as a teen boy, wasn’t immune. Some people were a little afraid of Clara, but Trevor didn’t understand why. So she’d walked early. So she’d talked early. Who cared?

  The alarm died. With the air silenced, Trevor could hear a commotion co
ming from outside Lila’s window. He desperately wanted to see it — partly because it was surely exciting and partly because he was number two around here, the second Dempsey below his father in the media’s eyes. He should be up front, where he could make decisions. Where the cameras could see him.

  “Mom’s not at her house. I saw her in the mansion earlier. Downstairs. Talking to Dad.”

  “I didn’t see her,” Lila said.

  “Hi, Trevor,” Clara repeated.

  “Hi, Clara.” Then to Lila: “Go and find Raj, but see if you can track down Mom too. Don’t go outside. You hear me?”

  Lila looked like she might protest. She didn’t like taking orders from Trevor, but she’d been exhausted almost nonstop since becoming a mother.

  “Fine. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to look out your window. Then I’ll go outside.”

  Again, Clara said, “Hi, Trevor.”

  Trevor nodded to Lila then crossed the extravagant bedroom to greet his niece while approaching the window. He patted her on the head as he passed. Trevor was beyond her, halfway to the window and able to see the first fireworks outside, when Clara said, “Don’t be afraid.”

  Trevor turned back. Lila’s arms were out, reaching for Clara to smuggle her downstairs. But Lila had stopped, staring at the blocks around the little girl, her mouth open.

  “What did you say?” Trevor asked.

  Lila broke her paralysis and lifted Clara into the air, Trevor looked where the girl had been sitting. Where Lila had been staring.

  Her blocks were arranged to spell DECEPTION.

  Chapter Three

  Heather saw Meyer striding through the home’s foyer as the alarms fell quiet. Piper chased him like a yappy dog, in heels and a little blue dress. Surely, Heather thought, because that’s how Meyer likes her.