by Platt, Sean
He could only see the mammoth black ship, eclipsing the world.
It was moving. Somewhere. And the sound was like the vibrations of planets.
They came up outside the city. Beyond the wall, though Peers wasn’t exactly sure where. A glance around showed that the peril of cannibal clans was still present, but none of the vehicles or painted men seemed threatening compared to the thing slowly crossing the sky.
They were all ignoring the newcomers. Looking away, mouths open as they gaped at the heavens.
Between the ground and the black ship was a wide bright area, like something projected in three dimensions.
The space carried a message, written in English in what had to be fifty-foot letters.
It simply read, STAND BY.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lila didn’t even take time to stare Peers up and down before pushing past him. He had something in his bag that might be anything at all, and he’d been on the other side all along. But the ground was shaking like an earthquake and there was a bulletin hovering in the sky above Ember Flats. Even the cannibals were too transfixed to look away.
She stared into the sky.
STAND BY.
The message and presentation were so stark. So businesslike. It had all the character of a generic, black-on-white cereal box. And once the ship stopped moving — now directly over the city’s center, a line of blue light arcing between the behemoth and the Apex pyramid — it sat there in letters tall as most of the buildings, rendered in three dimensions and, she had to assume, somehow readable at all angles, rotating slowly.
Lila felt a tug as her still-moist shirt pulled against her front. She looked back and saw Piper pinching the fabric between thumb and fingers, dragging her subtly backward.
Lila’s mouth opened. Piper’s index finger shot in front of her lips.
Shhh …
As Lila looked around, Meyer turned to watch her. Then Kindred. Then finally Peers, who didn’t seem to know where to aim his gaze.
Lila moved back, obeying the tug. She turned after a handful of steps before Piper let her go. The group followed Piper as she moved away from the tunnel’s exit, which had come up in a rock scree. They hadn’t surfaced among the cannibal clans, but were definitely near them. They’d be easily seen if any of the monsters turned their heads, once they stopped caring more about the big blue letters hovering above them.
Down behind a rise, the clans dropped out of sight.
Lila peeked at the Astral message. There’d been beeps to alert whoever had whatever Peers was carrying, followed by shaking and noise, then a placeholder note in the open air. A message must be coming, and they wanted everyone’s attention. But for now, there was nothing.
“Anyone hurt?” Piper said, her voice low.
Heads shook.
“We need to get out of here.”
Peers was staring at the sky. “Where?”
Piper looked at Peers as if he were daft. She didn’t have the vacant look that Lila assumed must be on her own face. She appeared calm and in control. Even Meyer and Kindred seemed more shaken.
“To Jabari’s subs. To the Cradle.”
Lila was still staring at the message.
“Now?” she said.
“When else?”
“But …” She looked skyward.
“We don’t want to stand by.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can.”
“How?”
“I just do.” Piper touched her head. “It’s too much to explain.”
Meyer was looking skyward too, but his eyes were on the ship, and Lila could tell he was trying to look through more than at it.
“We don’t even know where we are,” he said. “None of the landmarks are visible, and I can’t see the sun.”
“We’re much farther north,” Piper said.
“How do you know that?”
She touched her head again.
“We can’t trust your feelings,” Peers said.
“We can trust them more than yours,” Piper countered.
“Can you feel Clara again?”
Piper squinted, frowned, contorted her face. “Kind of. But I don’t think it means anything. I can still feel Cameron, too.”
“Is she … ?”
Lila turned to Peers. All at once, something snapped.
“How dare you,” she said.
“I had nothing to do with—”
“How dare you!”
“Lila, I swear, I want to find Clara as much as—”
Lila’s hands flashed out in front of her. Before she knew it, they were clawing for his throat. Peers scrambled to back away, fell back against the dune, then rushed back like a crab when she dove again, Meyer’s arm restraining her.
“You took her!”
“I didn’t t—”
“You took her, you motherfucker!”
“Lila!” Meyer hissed. “Keep your voice down!”
“I don’t care who hears me! Got that?” She raised her voice and shouted, “I DON’T CARE IF THEY ALL HEAR ME!”
“Lila!”
Lila turned to Meyer and Kindred. Tears obscured her vision. She didn’t know what she was feeling. Sadness? Loss? Anger? Outright fury? It was all a soup inside her.
“He’s with the Mullah. You heard them. He’s got a tattoo to prove it!”
“It’s a brand,” Peers said. “And if you’ll let me explain …”
Lila lashed out, but Meyer and Kindred both moved to hold her. She could only flail one arm, and only halfway. A fan of loose sand sprayed at Peers, her fingers scrambling madly for whatever they could hold, finding nothing.
“He’s Mullah! That’s how he found us back in Turkey, when the Mullah were after us! That’s why he had that big cave full of alien gear: because he was working with them! They’re all in it together, and they took my daughter!”
“Lila! Quiet!” Kindred seemed agitated — furious, even. He kept shooting glances at the top of the dune, presumably at the cannibals beyond. It seemed as if he wasn’t just worried that Lila would give them away, but angry about it.
“Let her get it out.” The voice, strangely calm, was Piper’s.
“There are clans right there, Piper,” Kindred said.
“And they didn’t come when she shouted. They won’t come after us yet.”
“Yet?”
“The message just went up. They’re waiting for some sort of broadcast. The Astrals turned water to blood to set the stage, then shook the ground to get everyone’s attention. Those people down there won’t look away. You can barely look away. We’re safe. For now.”
“We’re not safe, Piper,” said Meyer. “Not until we reach the Cradle. And not even then.”
“We’re safe for now,” Piper repeated.
Her gaze was fixed on Lila, and the effect was hypnotic. Lila suddenly understood: Piper wasn’t guessing. She somehow knew.
“I can try and explain later,” Piper said. “For now you need to trust me. We’re going to get out of here if we follow instructions.”
“Your instructions?”
Piper shook her head. “No. It’s someone else. I can hear them. In here.” A finger went to her temple.
“The Astrals?”
“No. Someone else.”
“Clara?” said Lila.
“It’s a man. In my head, he sounds almost like Meyer.”
Peers shifted. Brushed sand from his shirt. He looked at Meyer and Kindred then said, “Seems like everyone is Meyer Dempsey these days.”
The hold on Lila had shifted enough that this time when she lunged, she managed to break free, making a loose fist as she leaped at Peers, then connected with his left eye. The impact against bone sent a shudder through her knuckles, hand, and wrist. But the pain didn’t bother Lila, as long as Peers felt it, too. After this long forcing herself to go numb, even pain seemed like a blessing.
“Lila!”
“Stop holding me back, Dad! What’s wr
ong with you? You should be killing him yourself!”
“If you’d just let me explain!” Peers said, hand over his beaten eye.
“Explain what? That you kidnapped my daughter? That you’ve been ratting us out the entire time?”
“I didn’t do either of those things! I’m — !”
“Where is she? Where is Clara?”
“I don’t know! I swear I don’t know!”
“He doesn’t know, Lila,” said Piper.
Lila stopped, sniveling, practically foaming at the mouth. Piper’s voice shut her down like flicking a switch, and now there was only the worry and sadness she’d kept so tightly behind an internal shell.
Her head fell. Her hand caught it.
“I was with them when I was a child.” She heard Peers from behind her curtain of black hair. “I made a mistake. A … a dreadful mistake.”
Lila felt hesitant fingers tap her back. When she didn’t flinch, Peers touched her again. Fury bubbled inside. She wanted to lash out. To grab it. To break that hand like a twig. How dare he? How dare he touch her after what he did?
“He’s telling the truth,” Piper said.
She wasn’t just talking to Lila. She was talking to them all.
Lila let her head hang. And she broke. Cried, until it was all out of her. She heard and saw nothing of consequence outside her own knees until she finally looked up, the Egyptian day still shadowed like dusk. The black ship hadn’t moved. Its presence was everything, except for the static crackle of energy moving between it and the Apex and the whisper of a warm breeze.
Lila looked at Piper. Piper looked back, a question on her face. And when Lila nodded slightly, Piper rose to her knees. Both Meyer and Kindred looked toward her, deferring. Whatever analytical power they’d had, it now seemed diminished. Meyer looked spent, and Kindred barely contained. Peers was off to the side, penitent, with his dog. Only Piper seemed clear. Something inside — not Clara but a strange man who sounded like Meyer — was telling them all what to do.
“We need to go.” Piper took a moment, seemed to reflect, then pointed. “That way. We need to find the nook where the Cradle subs are stored. Nobody has beaten us to them, and nobody will. They’ve not been discovered. The clans won’t follow, and the Mullah have stopped trying. They don’t care about us, only about recovering their man, plus whatever they lost. But they’re wrong about the Astrals. The Astrals didn’t take it. It’s gone somewhere else.”
“Is it Clara?” Lila asked. “The thing the Mullah lost?”
“I don’t know, Lila.”
“How do you know you can trust whatever’s telling you all of this?” Meyer asked. It wasn’t a challenge. It was simply a question.
“Because he gains nothing by lying.”
“What does he want?”
“To exist.”
“Who is he?”
“I only know he’s not Astral. He’s human, or something close.”
“What does that mean?” Meyer asked.
Piper went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “And he feels very familiar. And that I’d trust him in exactly the same way that I trust you.”
“Trusting a voice you hear in your head isn’t the same as trusting us,” Kindred said.
“Not trusting you,” Piper told Kindred. “Trusting Meyer.”
Kindred looked like he might protest but didn’t. Piper said, “We have to go. We can’t be here when the announcement comes.”
There was a crackle from behind them. From the direction of the big, black ship.
Letters vanished from the sky, replaced by the projection of a young-looking brunette woman in a simple white blouse. She was cut off at the waist, but otherwise she looked as if she were really there above Ember Flats — not a hologram at all.
Her voice was like soft, pleasant thunder. “Please hold whatever you are doing, and pay attention to the following message.”
Blue lightning crackled between ship and pyramid. Its activity seemed to increase, arcing to one side to form a tiny storm.
“This message is being shown to all eight of your remaining capitals, though anyone watching our broadcast channel from the outlands will hear it as well.”
More sparking. More lightning.
“Humanity’s current form has failed our tests. Your species, such as it exists, must be pruned back and allowed to regrow.”
“Pruned?” Lila whispered.
Nobody answered, but the genocidal meaning was clear.
The tiny storm to one side of the line between ship and Apex increased its fury, becoming something like a ball.
“Each capital is being given a vessel,” the woman said. “And as long as you are aboard the vessel, no harm will come to you in the days that follow.
The lightning ball seemed to stretch out. To take shape. To become something as long and as broad as the Apex itself. As the light show died, Lila could see that what had materialized there looked like a large boat, its keel nearly on the ground, its body propped up by blue-glass scaffolding.
“Each capital’s vessel will hold approximately 1 percent of the city’s population,” the woman said.
Lila looked at Meyer, Kindred, Piper, and even Peers.
“But it is up to you to decide who lives and who dies.”
Lila gaped. Watched the air, waiting for more. But then the woman in the sky vanished and the giant black ship began to move, ever so slightly, the blue lightning breaking its connection, an enormous blue spark churning in its metallic gut as it journeyed toward whatever it meant to destroy.
A killing storm.
A destroyer of worlds.
Beyond the dune and in the city, what remained of humanity began to panic and scream and rampage and kill.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mara watched the screen as the woman representing Divinity vanished. She didn’t fade away. She simply cut out of existence. And then the chaos began.
Not Astral on human. The Astrals seemed, according to the monitors, to have piled into their shuttles and left the surface sometime between when Meyer, Peers, Kindred, Lila, and Piper left the bunker and when the rumbling began.
No. This violence was human on human.
Mara flicked the screen, half expecting the other city feeds to have been cut. But the Astrals and the city were full of surprises. They hadn’t been cut off when Meyer and Kindred had been blowing the Astrals’ secret about Heaven’s Veil, and nothing had been cut during all the blood and proclamations of mass extermination. Even the house above still had power, thanks to its buried lines and Astral non-interference. And all the video feeds — along with the emotional co-signals broadcast by the rocks around the borders — were still live and perfectly clear.
It was as if the Astrals wanted her to betray them then lead Meyer and Kindred to that stage. It was as if they knew what she’d been doing all along — right down to hiding in this bunker, watching things go to shit — and were cool with it.
This wasn’t in the Initiate’s projections. At all.
A booming sound seemed to shake the room. But it wasn’t another ship-moving earthquake. It was someone assaulting the outer door with their fists.
She tried to ignore it. Rioters had finally made it onto the palace grounds. It was fine; the bunker had been built on that exact assumption. She’d covered the bases, unlike Dempsey. She’d heard his story — both from the outside world and filtered through the Astrals’ knowledge. He’d reached his conclusions through drug trips rather than logic and planning. No wonder he’d made so many mistakes. He was lucky to have reached his Axis Mundi at all.
Mara had planned better now, and better then. They wanted to flee the city under the big ship’s unflinching eye? They wanted to try and reach the Cradle — then the broadcast rendezvous with the other viceroys — despite the interference introduced by the ship? They’d never make it without the Astrals’ allowance.
Like their allowing her little resistance despite clearly knowing the entire time.
; She blinked the thought away, ignored the pounding, and watched the monitors. Whoever was up there would either give up and go away (the door was impregnable by anything other than explosives, and good luck finding those in an Astral-run city) or would be leveled by other rioters who wanted a try. The house must be sick with them.
She clicked away from the feed showing the big ship created by the blue lightning. It was large but not titanic. They’d be lucky to stuff 1 percent of the Ember Flats population inside.
People had massed around the thing but weren’t approaching. There was a force field or something surrounding the ship. The Astrals had apparently given each capital a Noah’s Ark, but the citizens couldn’t reach it to climb aboard. What a ripoff.
There was a beep from behind her. Mara hadn’t heard the sound in so long, it took her a while to figure out what it was. Then she opened the charging laptop computer and scanned the bottom row of icons — sure enough, it had come from where she’d thought.
Just the Astral collective dropping her a line.
Because they were old buddies, Divinity and the human viceroy.
At first Mara didn’t believe her eyes. It had to be an old message. Divinity had gone into a communication blackout around the time Cameron and Company entered the city. That’s when she’d suddenly found herself on her own, sensing shit rapidly approaching the fan, increasingly certain that her well-thought-out contingency plans A, B, and C would be needed.
Fortunately, she’d anticipated this.
Well, all but the enormous ship that ruined her plans. And that the aliens were apparently playing with her all along. It cast doubt on everything. Mara found herself wondering what would become of Meyer’s group as they headed toward the “secret” escape vessels. She wondered about the bunker, and if it was truly private or impregnable. She even wondered about the rioters banging on her door. And the force field around humanity’s only hope of salvation, of course.
Divinity’s message was the usual clipped, socially retarded brief:
Lifeboat perimeter deactivation code 091804.
Mara stared, her forehead wrinkled.
Lifeboat.
Deactivation.
Was this what she thought? It looked almost like a code to unlock the big Noah’s Ark thing. It sort of seemed like they’d given Mara — traitor to her masters, rebel who’d actually gotten away with nothing — the keys to her city’s only hope for survival.