by Platt, Sean
“Who?”
Sadeem’s hand was on her back, shoving Clara into a small, cunningly concealed door. He’d shown it to her before with a wink — a man conveying something he wasn’t supposed to. Behind the door was a closet beneath a subterranean set of stairs, but without a special key, you’d never know the closet was there. The place was full of secrets. Mullah tunnels reminded Clara of Derinkuyu. No wonder the Mullah had pursued their group so handily there. They were treading familiar turf.
“Stay inside until someone comes for you. Do you understand me?”
Clara nodded. He pushed the door, but she spoke again before it was fully seated.
“Sadeem?”
“We must hurry, Clara.”
“I’m scared.”
He looked for a moment like he might shut the door in his rush, but Sadeem paused long enough to meet her eyes. His look was soft. Sympathetic.
“Now is not the time for fear,” he said. “That comes later.”
The door shut. Clara was suddenly in full dark, the obsidian curtain pierced only by a tiny sliver of light at the short door’s upper corner.
She heard a growing hum. She put her eye to the slit, squinting, trying to see through the minuscule crack as the sound mounted, buzzing like a massive swarm of angry hornets.
She saw Sadeem. She saw Quaid.
She saw them pause their rushing about then turn to face something unseen, hands raised as if facing policemen.
Then Clara saw nothing more as the chamber filled with tiny buckshot-sized metal balls, the entire mass surging like a swarm — buzzing, frenzied, and furious.
Chapter Two
Chaos reigned beyond the glass as Ember Flats tore itself apart.
The Ark was open. Every human soul could feel the psychic buzz as judgment began and ended, as the Astral verdict was decided, as humanity failed its biggest test. Reptars prowled the streets. Shuttles obliterated any who crossed their path. There was a hum in the air, resonating between every human mind and the stone repeaters beyond the city: citizens all looking inward, seeing their faults, realizing the betrayal of Heaven’s Veil with its phony viceroy and the city’s ensuing destruction. Knowing they would die betrayed and could do nothing to stop it. Gulping each breath in fear and outright panic. Seeing, finally, that the time had come for the human race to be decimated so the few who remained could start all over again.
It had happened in the past, and it was happening now: an extinction-level event, unfolding before them. Kindred, standing beside Mara Jabari, gazed furiously up at the massive ship hovering above Ember Flats, hands balled into fists at his sides.
How hadn’t he known the Deathbringer was on its way? He must have seen it at some point, before the change. But more and more, Kindred found it hard to tap into his Astral side. Ever since he’d woken to his true identity back in Heaven’s Veil (an Astral in human form, somewhere between the Titan he’d once been and the man Meyer Dempsey still was), he’d been an intruder in an odd middle ground, able to touch the planet’s human and alien halves. He’d sensed nearby motherships; he’d felt the collective and Divinity inside it; he’d always been able to operate his old species’ technologies when he encountered them. Yet at the same time, he’d been as human as Meyer, complete with all his old memories.
But over the past months, Kindred had begun to feel his two halves like water and dye. The two wouldn’t stay separate; eventually, the dye claimed everything. Humanity’s imperfections had swirled throughout Kindred until there was no Astral left within him. And so now, standing before the big window, Kindred could still sense the Ember Flats mothership — but he couldn’t feel the colossus. Whatever the huge ship was, he was as clueless as the humans.
And it made him livid.
“What is it?” Piper asked, looking upward, her voice full of dread.
Kindred looked over, realizing that his anger extended to Piper. She suddenly struck him as an idiot. Cameron was dead, pitched right into the Ark’s fucking abyss. Cameron’s humanity had polluted it the way humanity had soiled Kindred — and now he was barely Astral while the Ark was coughing, choking on mankind the way Divinity had retched on Meyer’s emotions. If he’d not infected the collective, it wouldn’t have squeezed out the Pall like pus from a zit. And if Cameron hadn’t died in some vain attempt to confuse the archive’s judgment — or at least bias it, making it emotional rather than objective — then Piper wouldn’t suddenly be an obvious, shining, white-hot empath. The answers were all so obvious. And yet here she was, gaping as if her mind could see nothing despite her new gifts, asking the stupidest questions.
“It’s a ship,” Kindred snapped.
Piper didn’t look over. Instead she said another dumb thing: “It’s bigger than the city.”
Kindred clenched his fists harder. He felt the very human sensation of pain, fingernails cutting tiny moons into the heel of his palm. Piper sounded like this was all a big surprise — and yet it was obvious that if she’d just get out of her own way, she could see much more than him.
But Kindred was supposed to be the knowledgeable one, the man in charge. But now he was as low on the totem pole as his daughter — if that’s what Lila was. The panic and fury he felt at the loss of control was …
Well, it was very human.
“You said you had a plan,” Kindred said to Mara Jabari, ignoring Piper.
“It’s too late.”
He felt his control slip another notch. “What do you mean it’s too fucking late?”
“I didn’t know this was coming. None of us did.”
Goddammit. Kindred didn’t like standing still, motionless by the big windows with the others, lined up like targets in a shooting gallery. Beyond the palace wall, the city was killing itself. Every human was suddenly for himself as Titans pursued them, becoming black creatures with teeth and claws. But it was all shock and awe. The Astrals wouldn’t carry out their extermination hand-to-hand or one-by-one. You didn’t need to be an empath to see that.
This was about creating fear.
This was about preparing the city — and likely the planet — for whatever the ship would soon unleash.
“What was the plan?” Kindred asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What was the plan?”
Jabari looked over at Kindred’s raised voice. For a moment she looked dumbstruck, but then she sobered and answered him straight.
“There’s an escape vehicle.”
“Great.”
“But we’ll never reach it now.”
“Why not?”
“We weren’t counting on something like this.” Her eyes ticked toward the window, and Kindred knew she had to mean the enormous ship, which looked like a moon in low orbit. “Every projection we ran at the Da Vinci Initiate only considered motherships and shuttles. This is unprecedented. All the historical records mentioned ships of two sizes, never three.”
“Probably because by the time the big one shows up, everyone’s dead.”
Kindred, annoyed, swiveled toward Piper. Jabari saw his face and raised a hand.
Stop it, Jabari’s eyes seemed to say. Whatever is wrong with you right now, get a grip and try to help, or we’ll never get out of here alive.
“At the Initiate, we looked through dozens of mass exterminations — those suspected by the Ancient Aliens theorists and a few known only by us. The pattern is always the same. Every time the aliens come, we fall into some sort of equilibrium. There’s always a period of cooperation, where it’s as if we’ve formed a dual society. You’ll see great inventions: machines that fly, create food, help humanity wage war. But then all of a sudden the records stop. There’s a plague. A flood. A meteor strike. And afterward, only a small core of humans remains. Evidence of the new inventions vanishes, and it’s as if humanity’s clock is reset.”
“We knew this.” Meyer didn’t sound as impatient as Kindred — just the normal amount of restless agitation he always had under pressure.
&n
bsp; Jabari nodded. “We collaborated extensively with Benjamin’s lab. He and Charlie would both tell you the same things I’m telling you now. But what they didn’t know — what nobody knew other than the Da Vinci Initiate — was that the Astrals left behind a record of their version of events, too. And those records told us that—”
Somewhere unseen, a massive explosion struck, shaking the floor and glass in the mansion’s windows. Kindred heard several crashes from elsewhere as fragile items toppled and broke.
Jabari looked back, toward the commotion. “We have to get below. Come with me. There is a basement.”
Kindred grabbed her arm as she moved away. “Is that the way to your escape plan?”
“It’s the way to hide.”
“Hide from a global extermination event?”
“You don’t understand.” She was tugging against Kindred’s grip, but he held her firm. “This is a show of might. They won’t reset the human clock by killing us one by one. We must hide and wait for this phase to finish. Then maybe we can recalibrate and find a way out before they do whatever they’re planning next.”
“You said there was a way out. An escape plan.”
“Forget it. The records showed us what we thought were predictable patterns. They’d move the motherships to create a sort of global antenna, like what was happening with the Apex and the array in Heaven’s Veil before Cameron stopped it with his key. I don’t have time to explain, but they seem to have layered redundancies — and Cameron shutting down their first antenna wasn’t just something they knew was possible; it was something they practically encouraged. And—”
Meyer moved to Jabari’s other side. Her eyes weren’t as panicked Lila’s or Piper’s, but she was clearly pulling against Kindred, eager to run and hide. Meyer’s eyes, however, were furious.
“What do you mean, they encouraged it? My wife died shutting down that antenna. Did you know that would happen? Is this all some sort of … some game you didn’t bother to tell your former collaborators about? If the motherships are going to do the same thing now that the pyramid did and it was all for nothing—”
Another explosion, larger than the first. Deeper in the house, someone screamed. When the shaking ceased, new cracks had formed in the plaster. One of the smaller windows had shattered without breaking away, its clear surface webbed and opaque.
“We need to get below! The basement is a reinforced bunker. It will protect us if they level the mansion!”
“We’re not hiding. We’re getting out of here if there’s a way out,” Kindred told Jabari.
“You’re not listening! We knew the mothership would move away when the judgment event began. The shuttles would likely be too occupied to follow. But we have to travel in the open; do you understand? We can’t move unseen with the big ship above. They’ll see. They’ll know! If we blow our only chance now, we’ll never have another!”
Jabari tugged again. Kindred tightened his grip, turning her dark skin red beneath his fist. Kindred’s ambient anger — whether it came from inside himself or from the archive and the stone repeaters — made him feel powerful. He’d go outside and fight with his fists if he had to. As the expression went, it was better to die on his feet than live on his knees … or to hide, in a stone bunker, like a coward.
He’d done that before. Even if it was just inside of Meyer Dempsey’s memories, he’d tried that once, in Vail, and it had turned out to be exactly what the Astrals wanted him to do.
“We’re getting out of here. Your vehicle. Where is it? What is it?”
Jabari met his eyes, then Meyer’s. There were more flashes from outside. Screams were audible even through the reinforced glass. Screams — and Reptar purrs. She seemed to be weighing their mettle — trying to decide if there was any point in continuing to protest.
“It’s not just one vehicle. It’s a fleet of small vehicles. Taken together, we call it ‘the Cradle.’”
“What kind of vehicles?”
“The only thing we thought might be able to move unseen from above.”
“Cars in tunnels,” Meyer guessed.
“Submersibles,” Jabari corrected. “Like miniature submarines, able to skim the surface when it seems safe. The river isn’t deep. But it was the only chance we saw.”
“Who else knows?” Kindred fought his rising temper. Jabari had this plan all along. All along.
“Only a small inner circle. And the other viceroys.”
“Not all the other viceroys,” Kindred said.
“We didn’t know if we could trust you. Heaven’s Veil was special. It was the only site without Ancient Aliens significance. The only capital with a Money Pit.” She swallowed. “The only viceroy who seems to have been replaced by an Astral shapeshifter.”
Meyer and Kindred shared a glance. Then both turned to Jabari, fury thick in the room’s thin air. Was it possible that Meyer was the anomaly rather than Jabari?
“Where is it?” Meyer growled.
“You’ll never make it,” she said simply.
“Where!”
“On the Nile. Upriver, near the first of the jade monoliths. Away from the capital, at the end of the Orion Road. It’s an area we’ve protected from the freaks and cannibals in Hell’s Corridor, but you’ll need to cross their land to get there. We have an understanding with them, but you do not. Do you understand what that means?”
“We made it past the crews before,” Meyer said.
“It’s not just them. You can’t travel out of sight. Even if the mothership has moved away as we predicted, the colossus will see you. You’re a fool if you think the Astrals inside it don’t know exactly who you are and how to spot you. Not after what we pulled out there. You understand now why they let us tell the world about Heaven’s Veil and the two Meyers, don’t you? Every human mind inside the neural network is a collective we can broadcast on screens, so you can just bet the Astrals can tap it. All we did out there today was blow your cover. We turned every person in this city into another pair of eyes that will follow you wherever you try to go.”
“We’ll take our chances.”
“There are three submersibles. Each holds only four people. They run on diesel. We didn’t think we could trust electric; we didn’t know for sure how often we’d be able to surface to let solar panels charge the batteries. They have full tanks, and there are spare cans in each. But Meyer, they won’t get you far. It’s over 250 kilometers to the river delta, but traveling into open sea was always a last resort. The plan was to stop once away from Ember Flats, raise a satellite antenna, and use a signal we’ve pirated to get in touch with the others. But with the big ship up there with all its interference, you’ll never—”
“Which others?”
“The other viceroys!” She seemed threadbare, nearing panic. There was a fire burning beyond the wall now. Another window must have broken in a subsequent crash because now sounds from outside were obvious — including purring Reptars, and the discharging weapons of shuttles.
“But we always knew there might be unknowns!” Jabari continued, forestalling Kindred’s response. “Plan A was to establish contact viceroy to viceroy — something we could only do once outside the cities, after judgment began and Astral eyes turned toward us while they rallied their troops for global extinction. Plan B, for Ember Flats, was to make it all the way to the open water if communication couldn’t be established. We’d take the submersibles to Lesan Area, possibly to Alexandria, then into the Mediterranean. Again, we’d try to establish communication once away from population centers. But there was always the chance that we’d have to scrap it all — that something unexpected might happen like a giant fucking ship taking over half the sky!”
Kindred looked up at Meyer, his temper temporarily diffused. He’d never heard Jabari swear. Didn’t know she could. She looked wild-eyed, and wasn’t alone. Lila had shut down, practically in a ball on a chair across the hallway. Piper was mute, gazing at the descending chaos beyond and the unmoving, ominous eclipse of
the mammoth alien ship. Cameron was dead. Charlie and Jeanine Coffey were probably dead, too. Peers was missing — probably dead as well; why not? Clara was still gone. Leaving the city meant leaving her behind, wherever she was.
Safe. That’s where she was. That’s what Piper had said, and what remained of Kindred’s internal sense agreed. They shouldn’t be worrying about Clara. Time had come to make sure they were safe, too.
An itch made Kindred turn. Piper and especially Lila had both looked up and were now staring at Kindred, Meyer, and Jabari. It was as if the women had heard his thoughts about Clara. Probably had.
“Please,” Jabari said. “Try and understand. We ran every possible scenario. We couldn’t know this big ship was coming, and for all we know there are ships like this over every one of the capitals. We might never reach the other viceroys. You might end up out of fuel, bobbing around in open water in a tiny tin can. We’re all safer here. This was always—” She patted the wall beside her, indicating the entirety of the mansion. “Our last, best option if it all fell apart.”
Kindred watched her. Trying to see all the way down to the floor of her soul. This woman — unlike Meyer Dempsey but possibly like every one of the other viceroys — had been allowed to rule as herself rather than an alien puppet. What did it mean that she’d turned on the Astrals? What did it mean that, apparently, all of the other viceroys had turned on the Astrals, as well? Were the Astrals really that stupid? Were they really that ignorant of human nature, to fail at truly converting even one of their eight turncoats?
“We’re going,” Meyer said. “I’m not going to curl up in a hole in the ground and hide from the aliens … again.”
A rushing shout echoed from behind them, making Kindred jump. Feet coming fast, like someone mounting a sneak attack from the rear.
Kindred turned.
The newcomer struck.
Chapter Three
“Howdy.”
The hairless, alabaster-skinned Titan turned toward the sound, its expression the same as the one that seemed permanently affixed to the face of every Titan — vaguely surprised but eager to help whoever had sneaked up behind him, like a maitre d’ caught unaware.