Invasion | Box Set | Books 1-7

by Platt, Sean

  Piper ran, listening for pursuit behind her.

  The tunnel wasn’t long. After a few minutes, they reached a set of stone steps, and Piper got the answer to at least the first of her questions: the tunnel existed because it wasn’t a tunnel at all. It was a series of interconnected basements with doors knocked through adjoining walls, supports added to hold back the soil between them.

  They emerged in the home of a small old woman with a shock of white hair. She was wearing thick glasses — one of the stubborn few people who’d refused vision correction and kept the eyeglasses industry afloat. They stormed up through the basement door with a crash and found themselves staring right at her. She was in a wheelchair, a shotgun leveled directly at one of the lead monks’ chests.

  With a clucking tongue, the woman raised her weapon’s barrel, pointing it at the ceiling, then slid it into a makeshift holster on her wheelchair’s side. That, Piper had many new questions about. Did the woman just sit here all day, waiting? Who kept a shotgun in a holster, especially on a wheelchair? And how had she kept the weapon from the police and peacekeepers?

  Gloria pushed to the front and nodded briskly to the old woman.

  “Mary.”

  “I’d say it’s good to see ya, Gloria,” the woman said, her voice carrying a slight Appalachian accent, “but I guess tha’ad be a lie.”

  “Peacekeepers,” Gloria said, out of breath. The abbess wasn’t a small woman. Piper was winded, and she’d maintained a decent yoga routine even in her new station as Queen of Sheba. Gloria, who didn’t seem to be in peak condition, was probably knocked flat.

  “Yeh, I saw. Ran by an’ raised a helluva holler. I guess you’re retired now, ain’t cha?”

  “I don’t know if they followed,” Gloria huffed.

  “I guess if they did, they’ll get a chest fulla buckshot,” the old woman said mildly.

  Gloria nodded. Without a parting word, they ran again, leaving the woman to her apparent duty.

  Out in the streets, Piper saw a pattern in their duck-rush-duck movement. She fell into step without effort, but again: it had the feel of something the monks had rehearsed — on paper if not in life.

  “The others,” Piper said, catching a glimpse of the distant church. Still just a steeple, nothing unusual. But what did she expect? For it to be on fire? The church was only a building and, in itself, had committed no crimes. The peacekeepers would appear and keep peace. It’s what they did. It’s why Heaven’s Veil had so little crime despite its heavy air of malcontent.

  “They knew what they were signing up for,” Thelonius said, his tone short.

  “You can’t go back.”

  “No.”

  “What will you do?”

  “We’ll have to head into the outlands. That’s the plan.”

  “The plan?”

  “It’s always a good idea to know your exits,” Gloria said. “On a plane or in life. I didn’t want any of this, but it’s hard to feel bad. Everything happens for a reason, and is right in the end.”

  Piper thought that sounded like an icy answer. She glared at the abbess, her sneakered feet pounding concrete. Like the others, Gloria had discarded her robe in the old woman’s home. They were all in the normal clothes they’d been wearing beneath: jeans, tees, and sneakers. As if they spent their days ready to run at a moment’s notice.

  “How can you say that?” Piper hissed.

  “No matter what I say … nothing changes,” Gloria said, still searching for her breath.

  “The outlands,” Franklin repeated. They paused along the side of a building, his gaze asking for peace. “We’ll need to get out of the city.”

  “How?” Piper asked.

  “It’s not hard to get out. I doubt they’d chase us.”

  “You doubt they’d chase us?” Piper said.

  “Not us,” said Gloria, pointing at the entire group. Then she pointed instead only at the former monks, excluding Piper, and corrected her: “Us.”

  “So just you, then. Not me.” Now feeling colder, angrier. Apparently, this was a group that just cut and run — all for one and … well, and apparently that was it.

  “Not you. You’re the viceroy’s wife.” Realizing how she’d taken her exclusion, Franklin rushed to clarify. “You have to go back home.”

  Piper assumed she’d heard wrong. “You think they’ll just let me go back to him?”

  “No,” Franklin said. “You’re not understanding me. You’re the viceroy’s wife, so you have access to the mansion.”

  “Access? What the hell do you mean?” Piper wanted to scream. She’d heard gunshots a few seconds ago, and was hearing Reptars purring nearby. They were barely concealed, nowhere near … well, nowhere near wherever they were going, as a group or in pieces. The issue felt undecided, hanging by a thread.

  “The drive,” said Franklin, pointing at Piper’s pocket, where she’d restowed it. “The information we were about to send to Moab before they broke in. You can get it to the network hub. We’re fairly sure it’s in the mansion.”

  Piper’s patience broke. She’d nearly died a few times today and would live with the screams of others who hadn’t been as lucky. The world had been turned then turned again. She couldn’t keep up and longed for it all to stop long enough to get her head straight. These weren’t her enemies. But they were the only people she could shout at, and the number of things they were taking for granted was stupid.

  She didn’t know what the network hub was.

  She didn’t know where it was.

  Even they didn’t seem certain exactly where it was.

  And besides, Piper didn’t know what she was supposed to do with this hub if she found it, the drive, or anything else. Send the information to Benjamin? Okay. But how? Astrals controlled the networks, and the Astrals wouldn’t be happy that Piper was trying to share her contraband. Even if there was a way to send a signal — and she had a clue how to do it — the Astrals would surely block it.

  How did mansion access matter? If the peacekeepers had been sent to pursue her, there was no chance she’d be allowed back on the grounds. Even if she was, there was no way she’d be left to roam free. There was no way she wouldn’t be searched. There was no way — no way in the deepest pit of Hell — she’d be able to take what she’d shown to the monks and magically deliver it to anyone outside the city. Worst of all: Franklin had left a copy on the church computer. There would be no question of what Piper had taken from her husband. She was caught red-handed, and the evidence — whatever it was evidence of — would die with her.

  “It’s the best chance we have,” Franklin said. “The tablet in that photo—”

  “Might not mean anything!” Piper almost shouted. She felt near tears. They were tying knots with her arguments. So what if some device was missing? It didn’t mean a damned thing, and wasn’t worth the loss of more lives.

  But even as she screamed at Franklin, Piper knew she was fooling herself. She hadn’t just seen the tablet. She’d seen the other files, too: a plan nearing completion. A clock that would soon start ticking. Repetitions of some of the stories Benjamin had told her in Moab, only this time from many years past. Whoever had written what she’d seen, he or she had been human. Alien work done by human hands, before the hammer fell. And it was indeed a hammer meant to fall.

  She remembered what Charlie, Benjamin’s colleague, had said a long time ago.

  Contact has only ever been phase one.

  What’s phase two?

  Extermination.

  Yes. That’s why she’d stolen. That’s why she’d run. The Astrals meant to use whatever they’d left behind.

  “Then we can just take it to Benjamin. We can ride to Utah. Or walk, if we have to.”

  “Something tells me they won’t just let us go if we have the drive.” Franklin looked at Piper. “Or if you’re with us.”

  “But I can’t just — !”

  Piper stopped protesting when she heard a low, rattling growl from around the
corner in front of them. She stepped back to feel the press of bodies behind her. For a moment, she wondered why the monks wouldn’t back up too, but then she turned and saw the problem. They’d taken shelter to catch their breath and plan in the most closed-off place they could find: a dead-end alley that would soon be their grave.

  “Go. We have to get out of here right now,” Franklin said.

  “It’s out there.”

  “We can’t go back. We have to run. We’ll split up.”

  But they couldn’t. By the time Franklin was finishing his sentence, the alleyway’s open mouth end was eclipsed by an enormous, slinking black shape. It moved into view, almost too wide to enter. It entered anyway, its powerful haunches taut, its black-scale skin shifting with that strange luminescent blue glow bleeding from beneath.

  Despite its sheer bulk, Piper’s attention was drawn to its eyes — its double-lidded, color-shifting eyes.

  First, they were yellow.

  Then black, vanishing into the churning skin of what passed for its gruesome face.

  Then red.

  Then a blue as bright as the deepest ocean.

  The Reptar came on tapping claws, its body like a beast, its movements like an insect. Its mouth opened. Piper saw rows upon rows of needle-tipped teeth, arranged in concentric rings. The jaw seemed to unhinge too far then almost flatten. Its core made a noise like specters stirring. An inhaling, grating rattle, something wet and boiling into a gurgle.

  Piper raised her hands in surrender, knowing it was futile.

  “I’m the viceroy’s wife.” She tried to keep her voice even, fighting panic’s downward drag.

  The Reptar roared, its breath rancid like soured meat.

  It coiled its twisted haunches to spring.

  There was a noise like thunder, and the thing’s head disintegrated. Piper found herself spattered in gore — a curious blend of red blood threaded with glowing blue, like something squeezed from a firefly.

  Christopher stood at the alley’s mouth, just behind the Reptar’s body, holding something that looked like a sawed-off shotgun that had been somehow modified, covered with tubes and gears. Terrence was behind Christopher, with Trevor beside him. To Trevor’s other side — unbelievably — stood Heather.

  “It works.” Christopher handed the weapon to Terrence with a satisfied nod. “What d’ya know?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Meyer stopped, his head cocked, Mo Weir dashing to his side. Mo never ran. It was odd to see his blazer flapping, the man nudged into urgency against his will.

  “What was that?” Mo asked.

  Meyer wasn’t sure. It had sounded like a gunshot, but it felt like forever since he’d heard one, back when he’d almost felt like another Meyer Dempsey. He remembered the sound concussing his eardrums and the way it made everything sound muffled as if by ill-fitting earplugs for a while afterward.

  “Was that a gun?” Mo asked.

  They were still inside the house, nearing the front door. The sound had been like the striking of a mallet and had definitely come from ahead, but that only told Meyer it had happened outside. The house had no sense of auditory direction. All sounds that didn’t originate inside came from the door, from all over the city, above and below.

  “So you heard it,” Meyer said.

  “Of course I heard it. Why wouldn’t I hear it?”

  “I thought it … never mind.” Mo wouldn’t understand. Plenty of what Meyer heard these days came from inside his head. He could hear the Astral discussions even now: Reptars on patrol, curiously disturbed, quiet Titan minds, Divinity’s overarching judgment — and, when Divinity saw fit, its orders to the viceroy.

  Mo was moving forward. Meyer hung back, curious. Christopher carried a pistol. It wouldn’t thump like that, and since Meyer had ordered him to the gates where there’d be Astrals, gunfire didn’t make sense. You didn’t hear guns inside Heaven’s Veil. Peacekeepers used their teeth to enforce order, and shuttles blasted silent energy rays. Humans hadn’t been stupid enough to fire their primitive weapons inside the city in months. It was possible Christopher had run off to the gate as Meyer had asked then fired a shot, but why? And besides, Christopher’s pistol would have made a distant crack, not that low, heavy thumping sound.

  Mo shook his head, approaching Meyer. He’d been willing enough a few seconds ago, but that simple report had taken the wind from his sails.

  “I’m going back. We can monitor this from your office.”

  Meyer rubbed his temples. They’d both seen the new message on his phone. Meyer didn’t know if he could trust whoever had sent him Piper’s whereabouts, but he could easily believe that her disappearance at this specific moment wasn’t a coincidence. Piper had trekked through what was now outlands with Cameron Bannister then spent months with the man and his crew at the Utah lab the Astrals perpetually ignored. If the man waiting outside had come from some sort of rebel camp, perhaps Piper was on her way to meet him. Especially given the information she seemed to have stolen.

  Meyer didn’t know how he felt about any of it. A sense of betrayal? Anger? Crushed dignity, owing to the Astrals cutting their human viceroy from the loop and handling everything themselves? Or was it jealousy? Everyone talked readily enough about Cameron Bannister, but Piper was tight-lipped despite knowing him best — at least around Meyer. What did that say about their relationship in Meyer’s absence?

  “No, Mo. Come with me.”

  “We’re not soldiers.”

  “And it’s not a war. I just want to see.”

  Mo shook his head, still heading away from the front door. “If you want to see what’s happening around gunfire, you’re on your own.”

  Meyer wasn’t sure he wanted to see what was happening after all.

  But he ran through the door anyway, feeling the skies open and exposed — nervous and conflicted for the first time in what felt like forever.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Cameron heard the loud, low thumping report echo to his position from inside the city. Immediately afterward, he saw the shuttles stir and shuffle without leaving the gates.

  Cameron swore from his concealed position behind a burned-out car. This had always been the plan’s trickiest part. Crossing the outlands — especially with Nathan Andreus’s permission and offer of a vehicle — had been easy. But getting past the gates and its guards, even after ditching the bike and approaching slowly on foot? Now that felt downright impossible.

  He heard a low, deep stirring in the distance. The sound of Reptars, seeming to scream out in unison. He looked toward the shot’s apparent location, somehow expecting a flock of birds in startled flight. But nothing happened beyond that growl. No movement of shuttles.

  He’d been here for over an hour, staring at the gates, waiting for a solution to surface from nowhere. He had no way to communicate with Moab; his helmet had shattered when he’d rolled through that field of (apparently alien) ball bearings. He had no way of speaking to anyone inside the city. He had no line to Terrence, no line to anyone friendly in the Heaven’s Veil resistance. He could go around to where Terrence’s church stood against the wall (and now that he thought about it, probably should), but that would mean approaching through a razed, baked pan of land, passing the massive statues denoting artists’ attempts to capture the face of Divinity. Heading around to the church would mean moving in plain sight, and if any shuttles or Astral guards were in the area, he’d be dead. Besides, he’d be giving away more than just himself if he went to the church. The Astrals weren’t stupid. They’d let him make contact before striking — and that would spell the end for Benjamin’s contacts. And for Terrence.

  He sat back against the destroyed vehicle, trying to think. Cameron had a singular mission: to get the Canned Heat to Terrence. He could hook the thing to the hub on his own, with or without Cameron’s help. He liked the idea of taking a rest and perhaps staying hidden in the city for a while before heading back (ideally leaving a newly freed Internet behind) but
didn’t need to do anything beyond making contact and delivering his parcel.

  Stripped to its basics — getting the Canned Heat over the wall and into Terrence’s hands, without taking a Heaven’s Veil vacation — the idea sounded more manageable. But regrettably, even more manageable didn’t take him to possible.

  Maybe he could sneak up to the fence and throw the thing over when no one was looking.

  Maybe he could lure a hawk to the ground, tie the Canned Heat to its legs, then somehow train it to find Terrence.

  Shit.

  He had no idea how to do what needed doing. He’d anticipated improvisation, but now that he was here, Cameron found himself clueless.

  He was about to walk a wide circle around the city, searching for weak spots (or possibly carrier hawks), when several loud sounds boomed from behind him.

  Cameron turned then stood enough to peek through the car’s shattered windows. His breath caught in his throat.

  The double set of gates were opening wide, and the shuttles were moving out of the way, circling around toward the city’s center and rear, out of sight.

  Ten minutes passed. The gates stayed open, seemingly unguarded for no reason at all.

  Cameron stared at the wide-open gate for what felt like an hour before deciding that the shuttles seemed to be gone, and the gates would stay open.

  And worst/best of all, he knew the gates hadn’t merely opened. They’d opened for him.

  It didn’t matter if it was a trap. If the Astrals knew he was here, flight was futile anyway. If they knew he was here, he’d have to take his chances at a trap or die running.

  There were still things they didn’t know. There was still a chance, no matter how slim.

  Between a thin chance and none at all, Cameron’s choice seemed clear.

  He stood.

  Walked forward slowly.

  And waited to see what would happen.