by Platt, Sean
There was a knock at the open door. Lila flinched.
“Hey, Trevor,” Christopher said, turning after a flinch of his own.
Trevor looked embarrassed. He’d known about Christopher and Lila from the beginning. He’d always liked Christopher more than he liked Raj, and that gulf had doubled after his new brother-in-law adopted his current position under Meyer. But he still didn’t like lying — or thinking about his sister and one of his best friends having sex.
“Hey, Christopher.” Then: “Have either of you seen Piper?”
Lila shrugged. She didn’t track her stepmother at all hours. “No.”
Christopher shook his head.
“Why are you looking for her?” Lila asked.
“Because nobody’s seen her since the attack,” Trevor said. “She’s gone, and nobody has any idea where she is.”
A terrible noise swelled from outside and killed her response.
Lila thought she knew what it was but had no desire to find out for sure.
Chapter Six
“Penny for your thoughts, kiddo?”
Cameron was outside, sitting atop a picnic table between the half-cliff lab and the old ranch house he’d once shared with Piper — as cohabiting civilians at first, then as lovers once they’d finally stopped kidding themselves. They’d lived in that house for three months before the mothership had taken her. That riddle, at least, had been solved in short order. The motherships connected to their stone network and began to colonize. Communications resumed, making it immediately obvious who’d become Queen of Vail — of Heaven’s Veil, today.
Cameron turned to the voice behind him. It was Benjamin. He wanted to sigh at his father’s choice of words, but that wouldn’t be fair. Benjamin was just doing his best. The way he always had, even back when Cameron had abandoned him to his ancient rocks and dreams of little gray men. He’d been right about the rocks. The little gray men? So far, not so much.
“Dan used to call me that, you know,” Cameron said.
“Penny?”
“Kiddo. The penny for thoughts thing — that was Mom’s expression. It’s like you have nothing of your own.”
“I used to tell you bedtime stories about carbon-dating limestone.”
“Just sit down, Dad.”
Benjamin looked touched as he took a seat. Cameron sometimes still referred to his father as “Benjamin” or “Ben” when he talked about him to others but usually didn’t refer to him as anything when they spoke directly. Calling him Benjamin to his face felt cold, but “Dad” always felt too familiar. It wasn’t lost on Cameron’s father that a few years of reacquaintance was all it took to begin healing the gulf between them. Given a decade, they might share a hug.
“You know someone has to try getting into Heaven’s Veil, Cam.”
“I figured. I assume it’s going to be me?”
“Charlie wouldn’t last a day. I need Danika to help run the lab. The other assistants might consider it an imposition on their jobs. It’s not worth the money I don’t pay them anymore. It’s down to you or Ivan, and I doubt you think Ivan leading this is any better an idea than I do.”
Benjamin had situated himself on the bench seat. Cameron was on the top, feet where his ass should be. He wondered if it was an improvement or a worsening of their relationship that Benjamin assumed Cameron should be the one to cross the 250 miles to Heaven’s Veil. On one hand, it was a dangerous trip that Cameron had already taken twice, there and back, on his old man’s request, and the kind of thing most fathers would try to protect their sons from. On the other, something lit a little inside Cameron whenever he was included in the unfolding plans. It’s how he and his dad had been in his teen years. It meant he’d been forgiven for walking off, for leaving one father behind to find another in his agent, Dan.
“Ivan would go in with guns blazing,” Cameron said.
“He wants to stay anyway, to coordinate the resistance. But you ask me, they need controlling more than coordinating. Anyone who prefers living here in the outlands and declares him- or herself a revolutionary is questionable.” He waved the idea away. “Bah, that’s not fair. I’m sorry. They’re good and noble people.”
He didn’t say more, but Cameron could read a bloom of guilt on his father’s face. The people who’d died in the failed raid — the one Benjamin had agreed to, even though Ivan had dreamed it up — wore heavy on his conscience. The lab and the group of rabble rousers had always worked toward the same basic goals but remained fiercely independent. Benjamin’s small crew needed the lab and found the Moab ranch land worthy of their intense study, but the revolutionaries feared it. This property was an alien place and always had been, from its haunted grounds to the plugged-up money pit under the stone arch.
Cameron looked across the flat landscape, then the miles-wide sky. He’d come to this place through the canyon, and at that time, the vast openness had sneaked up on him. It had taken months to get used to the wide-open skies. Everything felt so unprotected. But the point had been moot on arrival; there’d been a mothership over this place. Today, the ships didn’t seem to care about it at all. As if to put a fine point on his thoughts, Cameron saw the tiny silver flash of a shuttle passing in the far distance, out on patrol. The shuttles had come here, too. He felt almost insulted by the spheres’ blasé attitude toward the ranch.
“You know,” Cameron said, “most fathers and sons aren’t like this.”
“Aren’t like this how?”
“One always leaving. One always sending the other away.”
“Oh, I don’t know that it’s so bad.” Benjamin shifted on the bench, watching a second far-off shuttle as if they were at this table to have a picnic in better times. “We live together. We work together. We’re seeking common goals. We collaborate.”
Cameron wondered if his subconscious mind was trying to pick a fight — if he wanted to find a way to be angry so he could justify leaving … which, he’d realized over the past half hour, he very much wanted to do. Benjamin was right; they were close right now. Cameron shouldn’t want to leave. Even though Cameron had already figured out that he’d be going to Heaven’s Veil, he wanted that announcement — that command and order — to come from his father. If it was Benjamin’s decision, Cameron would have to go. He wouldn’t be going because he desired it. The old guilt of leaving the first time was still too pungent a memory.
But he did desire it. He did want to leave. And his reason had nothing to do with the mission.
“It’s fine. I can go,” Cameron said.
“Ivan’s already talked to Saul. Three of his people will go with you.”
“No,” Cameron said. “I’ll go alone.”
“Cam …”
“I’m faster alone. You taught me to hide and keep a low profile, and I got damn good at it.”
“Last time, you had—”
“Vincent, Dan, and Terrence,” Cameron finished. “How did that work out?”
“You can’t possibly be blaming yourself for Vincent and Dan. You weren’t even there when—”
“Oh, I agree it doesn’t make sense. Or change my feelings. You sent Vincent and Terrence to meet up with us. And Dan …” Cameron sighed. “Well, Dan stuck with me for long after he should have. You sent me to Meyer’s ranch, and they were only there to help. Whether it’s my fault or not, they were there because of me. This time, I go alone or not at all.”
“Then don’t go.”
Cameron gave his father a look. He’d never been good at bluffing. Of course Cameron would go. It wouldn’t be an assault, so an army wasn’t required. Just intelligent reconnaissance and a good pair of hands. They’d tried repeated assaults. The Astrals didn’t so much as bother seeking the source to stop further incursions. Their best brute force efforts were that insignificant. This last attack — on the blue pyramid rather than on the impervious ships — was supposed to change things, but again they’d been swatted like flies.
“Fine,” Benjamin said, looking down at his h
ands. “Go alone.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow, if you’re ready. I always assumed someone would need to go in. I didn’t think Ivan’s stunt — our stunt, I suppose — would be some sort of death blow, but I did believe that it might buy some time. Seeing as it didn’t even start so much as a street side trash fire, I feel the clock ticking. I have since they started building the Apex, and look how quickly it’s progressing. If they’re working this quickly on the visible structure, I worry they’ll be working as fast underground.”
“But why would they build a big thing like that to dig under it? How do you even know that’s what they’re doing?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Why did they wait? If they wanted to dig up this old thing, why didn’t they start when they got here? Or the minute they docked at the capitals?”
“Charlie thinks they needed to establish their colonies to control the capitals first. And if the Hammer is down there, it might be inside a larger structure. Something they need to excavate the door of, and feel no hurry to do in the way we might.
“But why, Dad? Why about all of it? You told me — me and Piper, actually — that there are records in the past of mass die-offs, but—”
“Mass exterminations,” Benjamin corrected.
“But if they’ve just come here to … I don’t know … just wipe us out, then why the stone network? Why the abductions? Why go to all the trouble to narrow it down to the Nine? Why set up the capitals, the outposts, the patrols, all of it? I mean, shit, there are planes in the air again. The Internet is back. Why colonize if they only want to find the master kill switch and erase us all?”
Benjamin sighed. “I don’t know.”
“You’re the expert! You spent your life researching this stuff, all over the world, in every—”
“I don’t know, Cameron.”
Cameron looked again at Benjamin — his father’s kind yet serious hazel eyes. His mop of still-mostly brown hair. His full beard, surprisingly devoid of gray. Benjamin had never had an ill intention. He’d accidentally destroyed the lives around him through what had once seemed a selfish pursuit but had since proved itself to be the most important hobby in history. Researching the past and extraterrestrial visitations was the one thing his dad had always excelled at, far outstripping his aptitude as a husband and father. The idea that he’d come up blank now yet feel a pressing need to surge blindly forward wasn’t just maddening. It was a living, breathing terror.
Cameron watched him for another few seconds then shook his head, resigned. He’d made the trip before and could make it again. Off he’d go, no matter what was known. Because even beyond the mission, there was a prize at the end of this particular rainbow.
“I can leave at sunrise.” Cameron sighed. “I’ll go back the way I came last time. Just tell me what you need once I’m there.”
Benjamin nodded. “It’s simple. I have something you’ll need to take with you, then either install it yourself, or get it into Terrence’s hands. But there’s still something we need to discuss about the trip itself. About which roads you should take to get there in one piece.”
“I won’t take roads,” Cameron said. In this day and age, roads were for dead men.
“That’s what we need to talk about,” Benjamin said. “About you — and the Andreus Republic.”
Chapter Seven
Piper went to the fourth little white house beyond the viceroy’s mansion, staying low and feeling stupid. She ducked behind the long row of hedges out front and felt even stupider. The grounds were surveilled. The alien network supposedly couldn’t read individual human minds, but she’d heard Cameron’s thoughts plainly once upon a time.
It was hard to believe she was successfully hiding from anyone, but standing upright and being seen by naked eyes was an idiot’s game.
Piper’s body tingled with nerves, watching the front porch past the hedges, wondering if she should walk up and knock. Houses to the left and right — Christopher’s and Heather’s, though Heather’s was necessarily larger — were quiet. So was the one Piper was steeling herself to approach.
Homes inside the sprawling grounds were made of wood, built entirely by human hands and human equipment, unaided by alien ships. None of the Titans had so much as glanced toward the construction, so far as Piper could recall. It was as if they’d been saying, Sure, build whatever, we don’t care.
But they’d needed the structures, due to pride if nothing else. Heather was first to insist, saying that if she wasn’t wanted in the main house, she’d need her own — not out with the commoners, but close to her children. A classic Heather Hawthorne power play, passive-aggressive in perfect measure (Heather wasn’t unwanted in the mansion at all, and even had her own suite), but Piper hadn’t argued. They’d all felt raw, and she’d felt desperate for peace. It had taken months following her abduction before Piper could finally settle into her new normal and feel something close to surrender.
As the sea of hippies around Meyer’s old house had grown to include well wishers, refugees fleeing the dangerous outlands, and sycophants of all stripes, willing human labor had become simple to find. That was the thing about Heaven’s Veil citizens: to a greater or lesser extent, everyone was here because they agreed to lie down as pets. Getting those hands to build not just Heather’s house but also several more (for other should-be-close-but-not-in-the-mansion staff) had been simple.
Piper glanced around, searching for cameras out of habit. There would be some, yes. But getting caught would require something less pedestrian than glass lenses. And it would mean she’d have to admit to wrongdoing, which she may or may not have been up to.
The thought made Piper touch her jeans pocket, brushing the hard lump of plastic and metal inside — the tiny slip drive she’d taken from Meyer’s office after the attack.
This is ridiculous, she told herself.
Still, Piper fished the drive from her pocket and held it in the hand nearest the shrubs while mounting the small white home’s porch. At least this way she could toss it casually into the bushes at the sound of a shout.
Piper knocked. After a few seconds, a huge head of poufy black hair greeted her, stylish sunglasses poking into its massive halo as if saved for later.
“Hey, Piper.”
“Terrence. Hey. Can I come in?”
“Uh … sure.”
Terrence stepped aside to let Piper enter then left the door open with the screen closed to summertime insects. He looked perplexed, but of course he would. She’d always been cordial with Terrence but had missed the intense bonding period he’d spent with everyone else. Thinking this now, Piper felt more alone than she had in while. People living on the grounds could easily be partitioned into two groups: Piper and Meyer in one, those who’d remained in Vail when she’d left in the other. Even the children weren’t really in Piper’s camp. Not anymore. Meyer was her only confidant, and her feelings for him were … complex.
Terrence turned from the door after Piper was sitting in one of the wooden chairs around his kitchen table.
“Can you close the door?”
Terrence looked at her strangely then pushed the solid door closed. After the lawn’s brightness, the LED-lit house seemed dark to her unadjusted eyes.
Terrence walked over and sat opposite Piper.
“What’s up?”
Piper didn’t know where to start. The minute she pried at one edge and found it loose, this whole thing would pop wide open. Her question wouldn’t be easy to ask — and without the answer Piper wanted, she might be hanging herself.
“You saw what happened with the plane?”
Terrence nodded slowly. Despite all the changes, he hadn’t lost his ability to be cool.
“Of course.”
“Is everything … okay?”
“Okay how?”
“With security.”
Terrence nodded. He responded slowly, his deep voice falsely casual. “It’s fine. Not a scrap of debris. We
didn’t have to do anything. A couple of shuttles just carried it off.”
“Did you see the plane come in?”
Terrence nodded. “We came out at the general alarm.”
“Did you know that was going to happen? With the … the force field or whatever?”
“No, I was pretty surprised.”
“You seem blasé about it all.”
“It’s over now.” Terrence shrugged.
“But we almost got suicide bombed.”
“Apparently, it was never a threat.” He tipped his head. “You know, if you’re worried about security, you should maybe be talking to Christopher.”
Piper didn’t want to talk to Christopher. He was too much of a wild card for this, and Piper had no idea where his loyalties lay — if they were where they were officially supposed to be, or elsewhere. And Christopher, unlike Terrence, had never hot wired a radio connection across a hundred miles for her.
“You know what I was thinking about the other day?”
Terrence shook his head.
“Raj’s watch.”
“Why were you thinking about Raj’s watch?” Then Terrence’s cool dark eyes grew uneasy. “Was he asking about it? Was Raj asking about his watch or something?”
“No, no …”
“Because I gave it back to him. Years ago, I mean. Before that all happened with the ship. He might have lost it when—”
“Not literally about the watch, Terrence,” Piper said, strangely calmed by his unease. An angle occurred to her — a way to ask what she wanted — and she grew calmer still. “I was remembering the way you used that watch to get through blocked communications when Cameron and I were on the road.”
Terrence hummed acknowledgement but didn’t say more, clearly uneasy. Back then, he’d been subverting the Astrals (before they’d even been called Astrals) and working with Cameron. Now, he was more or less employed by the aliens and was supposed to consider Cameron an enemy. Everyone seemed to hide those facts in front of Meyer, more comfortable saying they were allegiant to the capital and its viceroy than to the ships pulling the strings. But in the end you took one side or the other, not both. Sometimes, it seemed to Piper that everyone in Heaven’s Veil had chosen security over their species. Ironically, few seemed at peace with that choice, but the contents of a person’s heart didn’t determine morality or bravery. Actions spoke louder, and they’d chosen to act for the colony — and therefore against people like Cameron. Herself included.