Invasion | Box Set | Books 1-7

by Platt, Sean

  “Lila? Where are you cut?” Piper’s head ticked around, and she seemed to count, as if sure another member of their party had met their doom. But all six were accounted for, including the dog. Other mini-bunkers throughout the palace might be occupied, but even aides and employees hadn’t come down here with them.

  “Piper! The bathroom!”

  Piper rushed around the corner, and there was another scream. Meyer decided that his daughter would remain upright without him and that whatever was in the bathroom required his attention more than Lila did. So he went, distantly sure that both Jabari and Peers had shouted urgently at his retreating back, fear as present behind him as it was in front.

  Piper was in the bathroom doorway. Beyond her, a horror show. Blood wasn’t coming from a person or a some macabre aftermath. It was coming from the shower head, which Lila must have turned on and then left running.

  The tub was draining but still heavy with an inch or more of red syrup. Tiles were covered from shoulderheight down on the far side, and the curtain, which hadn’t been tucked in, was soaking from the other side. Blood from the curtain spatter had dribbled to the floor, leaving a puddle like a murder scene. There was no drain outside the tub, so the gore had already made it nearly to Piper’s feet, inching toward the threshold.

  The sink was dotted. So was the mirror. The walls had long streaks where Lila must have brushed them with her red fingers on the way out. The room wasn’t tiny, but the spray had made its way to half the nooks and crannies. It looked like someone had walked to the middle, swallowed a stick of dynamite, and let fly.

  “What the hell is going on, Meyer?” Piper yelled.

  “Meyer!” came a voice from outside. From Jabari, he thought. “Get in here!”

  Then Lila: “Dad! Dad?”

  Meyer forced himself into motion. Moving slowly across the slick tile, he made his way to the spigot and turned it, suddenly irrationally sure that the flow would refuse to shut off. But it did, and the noise of the clotting surge (coagulating in the nozzle, fanning the spray even farther out) ceased, and the shouting and yammering and general freaking out continued from all sides as Meyer stood with his hand on the switch, heaving breath, his fine suit and shirt — and, he was sure, his face — wet with gore.

  “Done,” he said.

  “Done?” Piper said, as if she didn’t understand the word.

  “MEYER!” came Jabari’s voice.

  There was a stomping of feet, then a slamming as if someone had struck the wall. Then Peers’s voice: “What happened?”

  “Dad?”

  “Meyer!”

  “Just a goddamned second!” Then to Piper: “I have to see what’s happening out there.”

  “What about what’s happening in here?”

  “It’s off now, Piper. It’s not going anywhere.”

  “THE GODDAMNED SHOWER WAS SPRAYING BLOOD!”

  Meyer pushed past her, fighting an uncharacteristic wave of nausea. His sinuses felt packed with meat. He could feel the greasy, organic slick of blood on his neck and hands and cheek, crawling across his skin, trying to cover him, filling his world with its rotting, suffocating reek.

  “Meyer!” Piper shouted from behind.

  He saw Lila, stock still and wet with more of the disgusting, stinking flow. It was easier and more useful to be annoyed than sympathetic, so he moved her aside, his eyes telling her that now wasn’t the time, blood shower or no. He’d come back. In ten seconds, after he was done with the squeakiest wheel.

  Peers wasn’t far from Lila, looking at her with shock, somewhere between concerned and disgusted. Everyone heard her scream, but something on the TV seemed to have grabbed the others’ attention while Meyer and Piper reacted. Now Peers was seeing what had caused Lila’s commotion, but it was clear by Kindred and Jabari’s echoing stares that whatever had happened on the television must be more pressing than the screams.

  “What is it, Peers?”

  He didn’t answer, but Jabari said, “Meyer. Come here.”

  She didn’t add hurry, but it was implied. Meyer crossed the room, dimly aware that he was leaving his own awful trail of red footprints, and faced the television.

  On the screen were shots from cameras in the city above — fixed-position feeds. A corded phone was lying beside it, as if someone had called Jabari on the antiquated hotline.

  “What?” Meyer said.

  “From the Nile to the pipes,” Jabari said, “every drop of water in Ember Flats has turned to blood.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Clara!”

  Clara was stopped in the middle of a street filled with commotion, people running hither and yon around her as if she was invisible. Her ears were perked, listening for something she’d almost — but not quite — heard. There were so many voices in her head already; adding Nick and Ella’s wasn’t too big a deal. But this was different. Like it was someone who mattered a lot, calling her home.

  Nick came and took her by the arm. Clara didn’t shake him away, but her muscles seemed to do something that baffled his grip. It was like she was a big inert dummy and he was making the mistake of grabbing her like a seven-year-old human girl.

  “Clara! What are you doing?”

  Clara’s concentration broke. The summons or call or whisper or whatever it was had faded the way desert radio broadcasts always did while on the move. It was a lonely sensation in the desert and struck Clara that way now: something anchoring her to a place or a person, dissolving like mist.

  She looked at Nick, his face so very urgent. Non-Lightborn citizens of Ember Flats were streaking by on both sides, many with red hands, red fronts, even red hair and faces. None of the three children knew what had happened — but Clara, at least, kept wanting to tell the frightened, crimson-covered people that what they thought was happening actually wasn’t, and that they needn’t be afraid.

  At least not yet.

  “I thought I heard something.” Clara was still trying to focus, hoping to pluck the voice or sound or whatever it had been from between human shouts in the panicked streets. Whatever it was, she felt desperate for more. It was like a song she couldn’t place, or a face once seen and mostly forgotten. She didn’t know what she’d heard or which slot it occupied in her mind. She only knew it was somehow meaningful or precious, and that she longed to hear it again.

  But it was still gone, and Nick pulling for her to get out of the traffic was impeding her concentration.

  “You didn’t hear anything?” she asked.

  “Same thing we heard back at that house,” Nick said. “You really want to be out here with all these people after that?”

  Clara thought back to the mental klaxon — the one that had sent them running for the Lightborn Hideout, wherever and whatever that was. It had been like a siren in their heads, but that hadn’t been the scariest thing. Clara was freaked out because it was closer to an alert than a warning. She had this weird sense that it wasn’t meant for human ears (or brains) at all. It had the feel of Astrals calling to other Astrals: “Hey, wake up, you aliens … it’s time.”

  But time for what?

  Not for this laughable horror show. Clara knew it was all supposed to be terribly frightening, but it just wasn’t. Seeing people cavort around covered in goo wasn’t scarier than the old supposedly scary movies she’d seen on any of the jukes she’d ever had access to. Splash a bunch of red stuff around, and everyone screams. It wasn’t real blood. Looked like it, smelled like it, probably even tasted like it for the folks who went for cups of water without turning on a light. But Clara could tell the difference.

  No, that klaxon had meant something else was coming. Something the Astrals maybe didn’t want the humans to know about just yet.

  “Come on. You seem cool and all, but we’ll leave you behind if we have to.” Nick smiled a little when he said it, but Clara wondered if that might be true. She could see fear in his eyes and hear it in their shared thoughts, and that fear had nothing to do with horror show. It
was about something wicked that had yet to reveal itself: something involving the blood, but not the blood itself.

  Clara let herself be led. She moved to the side of the street, out of the flow of shouting, rushing people. She and Nick joined Ella, and they tucked back so they wouldn’t be trampled. In front of them, people were fleeing left and right. There was no true bearing in the chaos. It was unadulterated panic, and the only direction any of these people seemed to be headed was away.

  “What was it, Clara?” Ella asked.

  Clara watched the girl’s curious, dark brown eyes, wondering what it meant that even her two Lightborn friends hadn’t heard …

  Hadn’t heard …

  Clara flexed her mind, still trying to hear the presence that had appeared so suddenly and vanished so soon. But it was gone.

  It had the feeling of wanting to lead her but hadn’t seemed to know how. It was reluctant and afraid, yet made her feel bold. It had been as scared as she was but felt stubborn enough to bully past its ignorance and lead anyway.

  It was friendly. Comforting. A safe presence she felt used to following.

  Sort of like Mr. Cameron.

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the middle of watching Meyer jam an oversized hiking backpack full of food and water and assorted gear, Piper felt a sudden, crushing need to cry. The feeling came out of the blue. But she had no choice, if she wanted to remain upright, other than to sit and let it come. So she did, and it washed over her, and Piper’s eyes watered without her having any idea why.

  She looked up. Nobody was paying her any mind. The room’s attention was squarely on Meyer (who was shouting orders like his old self, though without the harsh edge), Kindred (who was shouting similar, aligned orders, with that old edge), and Jabari. They were yelling. There was much profanity. Many threats, and options offered, like when Kindred told the viceroy, “You can come with us, or you can go fuck yourself.”

  Lila, off to one side, was dabbing her face with a beige washcloth that looked like it’d been used to clean the world’s worst nosebleed. She’d changed clothes and had done a fair job of cleaning herself considering that the only water left was frozen as cubes, but she still looked like she’d taken a run through a dripping meat locker. She wasn’t looking at Piper. Lila’s eyes were on Peers as he tossed in his own two cents, reasserting that he could get them safely to the Cradle, but Lila looked like she didn’t believe him. She looked, in fact, like she might jump on the man’s back and stab him with a nail file.

  Piper’s head sagged with the weight of an unknown feeling. She couldn’t find anything to hold in the emotion, so she waited for it to subside. It could be about Clara still missing; it could be about Cameron; it could be about something else entirely. Somehow, it felt like it might be about both Clara and Cameron, but that didn’t make sense. She only knew her own heavy sorrow. And yet there was hope in the sadness, as if it had meaning. As if some of the horror they’d lived through in the past hours and days and months and years had been worth it. As if there’d been — and maybe still was — purpose behind it all.

  The feeling passed, moving on like low-hanging mist dissolving in the sun, and then there was only the sound of arguing.

  “I don’t give a shit what you want to do,” Meyer was telling Jabari. “We’re going.”

  “You can’t get away! Where are you going to go?”

  “To your submarines. Then to the sea; what do I care?”

  “You can’t just go out into open water! You’re safer here.”

  “You mean where the water just turned to blood? You know we’re in Egypt, right? Any of this seeming familiar to you? What comes next?”

  “Frogs,” said Peers.

  “Well, fuck that,” Meyer said. “I’m not going to sit around and wait for frogs. You want to wait for frogs, Kindred?”

  “I hate frogs.”

  Jabari moved a foot closer, too far into Meyer’s personal space. Her eyes darted to Kindred then back. “What a shock that you agree with yourself.”

  “You don’t have to agree with me, Mara! This is a simple proposition. Whoever wants to come with me can come. Whoever wants to stay can stay. You want to wait for lice and boils and locusts and shit? Go for it. But if there’s a chance we can walk through the sea once parted by Moses, all the way to some vehicles you put in place specifically to escape this, then we’re going to take it.”

  “We have to stick together! For protection!”

  “Only one not going is you. We’ll be fine.”

  Lila tossed her washcloth to the floor. It landed with a splat.

  “I’m not going, Dad.”

  “You’re goddamn well going, Lila!”

  “Why?” Jabari said, advancing another inch. “You said whoever wanted to stay could stay.”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  “She’s an adult. And her daughter is here.”

  “You don’t know that,” Meyer said.

  “You don’t know anything!” Jabari screamed.

  “Peers,” Kindred said. “The tunnels. Where are they?”

  “I have an idea. I’d have to go up into the palace to see.”

  “Great escape plan,” Jabari said, looking around. “You don’t even know where you’re going. Maybe I shouldn’t worry about it after all.”

  “I can find them,” Peers said.

  “How?”

  “It’s … complicated.”

  Attention left Peers when Jabari started pacing, but Piper noticed that he’d grabbed his backpack and was holding it in his lap. A subtle change, but to Piper it looked as if he had something he meant to protect. He’d hugged it tighter when Jabari asked her question. What was in that backpack that would tell him the tunnels’ whereabouts?

  Piper’s eyes went to Lila. She’d seen Peers grip the backpack, too. She noticed Piper watching her and looked away.

  At the room’s center, Jabari shook her head, glaring at Kindred and Meyer, gesturing overtly at Peers.

  “He doesn’t have a clue. He won’t tell you what he knows or how he knows it. And you’re just going to trust him to get you out so you can hook into the satellite and talk to the other viceroys?”

  “Fuck the other viceroys!” Kindred said. “I don’t care what happens as long as he can get us out of the city.”

  “You’ll draw the ship’s attention! Bring it down on us all!”

  Meyer rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “Do you really think we’re hiding from them? The Astrals know exactly where we are.”

  “This building is made of repeater stone, same as the monoliths,” Jabari said. “They can’t see through the walls in here. It was part of the truce when we founded Ember Flats.”

  “Don’t be naive.”

  “We studied this! We did our research!” the viceroy shouted, her careful control starting to unravel. “You just dropped acid and followed the motherfucking godhead!”

  “Actually, Benjamin’s people inside Heaven’s Veil told me that Ayahuasca—”

  “Stay out of this, Piper,” Kindred said.

  “I’m on your side!”

  Meyer raised his hands, palms out. “Okay, okay. Calm down, everyone.”

  “I’m plenty calm,” said Jabari. “In fact, I’m the only sane one here.”

  “I said I’m staying, too.”

  “No you’re not, Lila,” Kindred said.

  “How can you not care? She’s your granddaughter!” Then it looked, for a second, as if Lila might add, “Sorta.”

  “We might have a better chance of finding her once we’re outside the palace walls anyway,” Meyer said, hands still halfway raised. “You heard what she said about the stone in the walls. Piper’s obviously tapping into something now. Right, Piper?”

  Piper fought down annoyance and indecision. Finally she nodded.

  “If Clara is outside, maybe that’s why Piper can’t really feel her now. Maybe if we go outside—”

  “You’ll find yourself covered in frogs and boils and
locusts?” Jabari said.

  “Logical,” Kindred said. “The Bible is just a story. It’s not a field guide to what’s going to happen next.”

  Jabari jabbed an accusing finger at the TV screen, now showing a feed of the Nile. The river looked as if someone had filled it with tomato soup.

  “The shuttles have mostly retreated,” she said. “I’m not seeing nearly as much here about Reptars or anything else, other than my people stampeding each other. They turned the water to blood. They did that once before. Did you ever stop to think that they’re not doing it because ‘the Bible says so,’ but because this is what they do and the Christian Bible is just one record of something that actually happened, for other reasons?”

  “You’re guessing,” Kindred said.

  “You’re guessing!” Jabari retorted.

  “Just … relax. We’re leaving.”

  “I’m not leaving, Dad!”

  “Goddammit, Lila!” Meyer said, his temporarily calm mood snapping like a twig. “We’re all going, and that’s all there is to it!”

  He turned to Jabari in the following silence.

  “Do whatever you want. Stay or go. I’m sure there are some of your people left around in other bunkers, hiding in rooms, wherever. Maybe you can get a clear frequency and talk to the other viceroys. I like you, and I’m grateful to you for taking us in. But you will not tell me what my family can and cannot do. We are leaving. I’d prefer to do so with a plan once we leave Peers’s tunnels. But we’ll go however we have to, even if that only means running. God knows we’ve done it before.”

  Jabari sighed then nodded.

  “I’ll unlock a tablet for you. If the feeds are still showing up down here on the TV, that probably means the house server is running. It’ll sync with maps to the Cradle’s location. It’ll walk you through how to de-dock the submersibles, how to pilot them, where to find and how to access the rendezvous checkpoint, everything. If I can reach the viceroys before you reach the broadcast hub, I’ll let them know you’re coming and that they should speak to you as they would to me. If not, the fact that you’re authorized by my fingerprint should convince them to at least hear you out.” Jabari looked earnestly at Meyer, her rancor gone now that she saw the futility of her cause. “But there are no guarantees. Even if you make it to our broadcast hub, they might not reach theirs. I’ve seen nothing at all that tells us what’s happening in other cities. They might all be dead. They might all have ships like this overhead, and water turning to blood might be nothing by comparison.”