by Platt, Sean
Alpha looked behind the woman. In the nest, he could just see the subtle glow from the true speaker’s body — translucent, sparkling, teeming with light. He found himself understanding why the few humans who’d seen the beings called them Divinity. The word finally held meaning, whereas in the past he’d translated it into something that meant space — confusing because space was empty, and the mind was the opposite. Now, standing before the human woman, Divinity made sense to Alpha. It suited the humans’ perception of gods. Which also made sense, because many had been humanity’s gods, as Earth’s ancients had seen them. The perception was its own loop, curling back on itself.
“I understand,” Alpha replied.
“The process will continue. Soon, use of a surrogate will be the only way you’ll understand. The capacity for groupspeak will remain dormant inside you. We will train you to use it again once you are ready. But you will not recall how or why, or what it means when the time comes, and you will not realize that groupspeak was once normal to you. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“You will become less able to see your true nature — the true nature of others like you, as those beside you now. You will experience that which you shut away, yet will have no control. It will consume you. You will at times sense only darkness. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“You will be filled with falsities, things you must know. But in that dark state, as many go when the time comes, you will not remember these events. You will not recall that when you were among the light, this fate was chosen by you. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
The woman looked at Beta. She said nothing, but a small nod passed between them. Alpha felt a new breed of fear, realizing they had groupspoken but he’d heard none of it. The new fear was hollow and sharp, frightening atop his existing terror because there were none to share his emotion. He was alone, and darkness was descending. Soon they — those he now clearly thought of as others, having no part of Alpha himself — would add more darkness to him, filling him to the brim like an overflowing vessel. He wanted to take it all back, but the darkness was heavy, like a drape. He was alone. And that was how he would die.
“You will adjust,” the woman said. “In time, it will become as you are, and you won’t remember that there was ever a difference. Do you understand?”
“I und—”
Alpha couldn’t finish. He bent at the waist, feeling his face contort.
He flopped onto all fours from the pain. At his sides, Beta and Omega let him fall. They were separate. They were not him. The woman was not him. The true speaker behind the woman was not him. Nobody was Alpha but Alpha.
Every muscle seemed to tighten at once. His bones might erupt from his skin.
“It is within your control,” the woman said. “The change. It is always chosen, by any who shift. It is necessary that you focus. That you do not allow it to happen, but in fact cause it to occur. To welcome the darkness. Do you understand?”
The darkness seemed to momentarily part. Finally, Alpha truly did understand.
He focused.
He allowed the change.
He stopped fighting the darkness and instead allowed it to change him.
He finished shifting then straightened. Everything was different. He seemed to know where he was, but his surroundings were strange. Somewhere he’d never been. He could seem to sense a force — the woman? — pushing thoughts toward him. It was odd and unusual. But he could learn to accept it, if this was how they communicated across distances, different as they were.
The woman looked to the muscular being on his left. “Take his robe. They will not accept it.”
The hairless beings removed the robe from his body. Once bare, he felt cold. But then the beings returned and laid a fine set of clothing on the table at the room’s center. He found he knew how to put the garments on and did so.
“The clothing is called a — ” the woman began.
He cut her off. “I know a suit when I see one.”
“When you are sent to your post, you will—”
“Let’s just take it one step at a time,” he said impatiently.
The woman looked at one of the other beings. Some sort of tentacled thing, barely visible, danced with light behind her. But he’d had enough of this, and of them telling him what to do.
“The memories,” said the woman. “Have your donor’s memories settled?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There was an imperfection. A chain of events. In the forebear, there was an unspooling. It was regrettable but is now rectified. We have taken care in this iteration to remove discursive stimuli from the stream before passing the donor’s essence into you.”
“Great,” he said, not understanding.
“Do you remember your forebear?” the woman asked.
“My father.”
“Your predecessor, to use their word.”
“Who the hell is my predecessor?” he asked, annoyed.
“The one whose life force was terminated by a human weapon. Below. An hour ago.”
He didn’t bother answering. He wanted to go home — enough with the stupid questions.
“Is there a mirror around here?” He’d pulled on most of the human garments already but now threaded the long cloth around his neck and began to tie an intricate knot that required no effort. He straightened the strip of fabric hanging down his front and ran a hand through his immaculately combed hair.
One of the Titans waved at a panel along the wall. It slid aside. He walked to the mirror behind the panel and wiggled the tie into place. He inspected his green eyes. His white teeth. His close shave.
“Do you know your name?” the woman asked from behind him.
Of course he knew it. But he wouldn’t play parlor tricks. Alien stooge or not, he wasn’t about to jump through hoops. That hadn’t changed. Not through the Astral ships’ arrival, not though the flight from New York to Vail, not through his first marriage or his second.
“A shuttle will transport you to the mansion below,” the woman said. “You will understand it as your home. But it may take another hour or two before the donor’s memories fully settle, but they will resolve with less potential for chaos than the corrupted set did within your forebear. It is important, during that time, that you do not interact with other humans who may have known the forebear. The forebear’s updates haven’t fully assimilated with the donor’s root memories following the untimely but necessary life force cessation. You must not interact with those who may have known your donor before the sampling until gelling is complete. It is possible they will recognize undue differences between you and the donor, and we will be required to remote-terminate you, draw a new sample from the donor in his cell, and spawn a new copy to replace you. Do you understand?”
He nodded, wishing they’d get on with it and take him back down to the viceroy’s mansion. He’d had a long day, and a granddaughter he wanted to play with.
It was stupid of the woman to keep asking him the same insulting question.
Of course he understood.
He was Meyer Fucking Dempsey, and nobody had better forget it.
Annihilation
Chapter One
Piper Dempsey watched Cameron step out from behind the rock outcropping, unsure of why exactly his body language made her certain he wanted to die.
“Stay low, Cameron,” Andreus whispered.
Instead of ducking like the others, Cameron moved forward. Into the gap between rocks, in full view of the massive silver sphere. He may as well have been hands to hips like a gunslinger.
“Cameron,” Charlie said.
“It knows we’re here either way,” Cameron replied without turning. “What’s the point in hiding, Charlie?”
As if the words were his cue, Cameron climbed to the rock’s top. Piper, not trusting herself to speak, could only watch him do it. She watched him clamber.
She watched his feet miss and drag dry lines along the rock’s side. She listened, wincing, as a scree of loose stone fell to the ground with a clatter.
She thought Cameron might stand. Instead, he sat on the rock as if watching a sunset, in full view of the mothership.
Piper finally found her voice. She reached up and took his wrist, tugging. But really, what did she think she would do? Drag him off, give him a concussion against the hot, baked ground?
“It’s going to see us.”
“It can already see us.”
Jeanine piped up. “We haven’t seen any shuttles since leaving the Mormon archive.”
Instead of striking Cameron as a sensible rebuttal, it must have hit him as fighting words. He’d been eerily silent through the trip. She wasn’t sure if the hard look in his eyes, on his usually boyish, recently older face, was an improvement or something worse.
“You’re right,” he snapped. “We haven’t seen any shuttles. No motherships. No Reptars slinking around the rocks after us … or maybe they’d put their safeties back on, and we’d get to watch a bunch of smiling Titans following like drones? They could get on tiny motorcycles then follow the RV. That’d be funny, wouldn’t it? They’d look like those famous fat twins on their bikes. Alien comedy at its best.”
Now Andreus looked angry. He’d been wearing a damp rag on his head since they’d left the RV in one of the few places with overhead cover a few miles back. Piper kept wanting to make babushka jokes, but she couldn’t quite manage. The man might be firmly on their side now, but he was still terrifying.
It would probably get worse. Piper was sure the warlord’s daughter was as dead as Cameron’s father and her own stepson, but right now his anger seemed blunted by hope. He’d be terrible once that was gone.
“Get the fuck off that rock,” Andreus said. “You’ll blow our cover.”
Cameron looked at Andreus with a fight in his eyes. The look, from the once-thoughtful and always-smiling man she’d loved, was awful.
Cameron’s jaw worked. He glanced toward the mothership parked over the Moab ranch. The ground was scorched and seemed to have taken at least one blast from an energy weapon, but much of what was once there seemed to be standing. Why, Piper had no idea.
Cameron backed up, stood, and raised his arms overhead, facing the ship.
“Hey, you!” he shouted in the thin desert air. “Hey! We’re over here, you motherfuckers!”
Piper was sure Andreus would tackle him, but Coffey acted first. She was simple but effective. She grabbed both ankles and pulled. Cameron fell on his ass, his body bending him in the middle to keep his head from striking the rock. Coffey couldn’t have known for certain it would work. She might’ve figured he’d end up quiet or dead, and either would be an improvement.
With Cameron unbalanced, Coffey dragged him down. A second later, he was in a jumble against the rock’s foot, his face full of frustration and stewing emotion. To Piper, it all seemed to be on one end of the spectrum: anger, desperation, maybe self-destruction. He’d done selfless, but he was through. And he’d done surviving, but it seemed like Cameron was finished with that, too.
Andreus and Coffey stood over him. Charlie came to Piper’s side and, shocking her, took hold of her arm in a way that was almost comforting, almost human.
Piper thought a fight might erupt, but Cameron only shook his head, looking at the dust, clearly sad. They’d all shed their tears in the three days it had taken to find a way back here — on foot, then right out in the goddamned open in the solar RV that the Astrals had conveniently left behind. Cameron — and unbelievably, even Charlie — had come from moments of privacy with red eyes. Piper had cried the most, and openly. But it wasn’t loss she saw on Cameron’s face now. It was something worse.
“They let us go,” he said. “They almost killed us back at Little Cottonwood, but then they had their time to cool off, and now they’re just watching again. They won’t hurt us. No matter what we do, we’re free to be slaves.”
“We don’t know that,” Andreus said.
Cameron’s eyes went to the warlord then to Charlie before they settled on Piper. When he spoke, Piper assumed his words were meant for Andreus. But he stared right at her, eye to eye.
“We know,” he said, “and now we’re in hell.”
Chapter Two
Nathan Andreus wanted to punch Cameron in the face. Not just to shut him up, either, though there was that. Mostly, he needed someone to hurt, and this group of five was all he had. Because about that, Cameron was right: There had been no Astrals since they’d left Cottonwood. Their absence had seemed lucky. But now, looking at Cameron, Andreus had to admit he’d always seen it as convenient as well.
“We stop whining,” Andreus said, “and we start finding solutions.”
“Just walk up there,” Cameron said, standing, seeming to make an effort to pull his little tantrum together. He tossed his chin toward the half-destroyed cliffside lab, the ranch house remains sticking their burned members into the sky like black bones. “That’s your solution. Just walk right on up.”
“There’s no cover,” said Charlie.
Andreus winced. He was trying to diffuse Cameron rather than fuel him. But Charlie had teed him up.
“We don’t need cover, Charlie. They want us to go in there.”
“We’ve already done this,” Andreus said. “The part where we pretend they can see us and act accordingly.”
“We weren’t pretending then, and we’re not pretending now.”
“You saw how they came after us. They wanted your satchel.” He nodded to the bag hanging against Cameron’s side, indicating the plate with its keylike ridges inside. The device, if the late Benjamin Bannister had been correct, was a key to the Thor’s Hammer weapon.
“Then what?”
Cameron shook his head then turned toward Piper, finding the group’s easiest audience. Andreus had been trying to keep his eyes forward since they’d left Cottonwood, choosing to believe they’d find something in Moab worth saving. That Grace was still alive out there somewhere, against all odds, and that he was still a father despite his recent role as widower. But Nathan had to admit that Piper, at times, had been one of the group’s most determined. They were a pair, same as he and Jeanine. Charlie was the odd man out, and sometimes it felt like they were two teams fighting for the man like a swing vote.
“Then what were they supposed to do?” Cameron repeated, facing Piper, eyeing the others. “If they’d taken the plate from my satchel, what would they have done next?”
“Used it,” Coffey said.
“Where?” Cameron met Nathan’s eyes, challenging him in a way nobody challenged Nathan Fucking Andreus. “Where would they go to use it? Dad says the Templars took Thor’s Hammer and hid it. They took this key,” he slapped the satchel, “and hid it, too, like removing the core from a nuke. So let’s say they caught us back there. What would they have done with the key? Thor’s Hammer is still lost.” His jaw shifted to the side, biting crosswise, eyes half-lidded. “I just keep coming back to the fact that once upon a time, someone pulled a fast one on the Astrals. And that all we’re doing, by keeping up this chase, is helping them find it.”
“We’re finding it to deactivate it,” Charlie said, his tone still neutral, drier than toast.
Cameron leaned against the rock, his eyes wanting to close. When he spoke again, he sounded as spent as they all felt.
“We should just give up.”
Nathan’s eyes flicked to Piper, expecting her to protest, to feed into his self-pity. But she stayed put, newly hardened by Trevor’s death, along with all the others.
“It’s lost,” Cameron continued. “They don’t know where to find it. If my father was still alive, it might make sense to go after it. Maybe we could have pulled another switcharoo and reached the thing with enough time to destroy it, but all we’ll do now is lead them right to it. We’ll see where they’ve been hiding, then we can stop pretending we’re alone, or ever h
ave been.”
Cameron shook his head, finally addressing Andreus with more logic than emotion.
“Nathan. You sent Tarantula into Heaven’s Veil to pick us up after watching me walk through the gates on satellite.” He looked at Coffey, knowing she’d have seen the same. “You’re a communications guy. I know you’re smart. But are you really that sure you ever outsmarted them? We made that mistake once, and what happened? It turned out that what we were getting away with was something they wanted all along.”
Cameron’s head bent skyward. At the right angles, they couldn’t see the mothership above the Moab facility, and might have believed they were alone.
“The network is down. But maybe it’s only for us. You know what our satellites can see from space. So what do you think they can see?”
Nathan looked into the endless Utah sky. He could almost feel alien eyes upon him. He resisted the urge to pull his signal detector from its pouch. He knew it was on and that if there’d been an Astral BB following them through this part of the trip, he’d have heard the detector alarm. But they didn’t necessarily need BBs to see what needed seeing. Not when the dumb humans crossed open land. Not when they circled to recover recreational vehicles they’d left behind before a raid, trying to fool themselves into believing they were fortunate to find them.
“So what should we do, Cameron?” Nathan said, not really asking for an answer. “If you’ve got it all figured out, what’s our next move?”
“Partner up,” said a voice.
Andreus knew it was Charlie, Benjamin’s longtime right hand, before turning to look, but hearing him now seemed so out of place. While Piper and Cameron had dealt grimly with their losses, Charlie had taken his like a mannequin. He’d known Benjamin almost as long as Cameron had — or maybe, Nathan now thought, longer. But the way Charlie acted, his best friend might merely be behind a bush, taking a piss, soon to return.
“They think we’ll find Thor’s Hammer,” Charlie said. “So let’s stop playing games and do it.”