Invasion | Box Set | Books 1-7

by Platt, Sean

  “You can’t get to it,” said a small voice. “That’s what he told me.”

  The women turned. There was a young boy, maybe six, standing a dozen yards away. He couldn’t possibly see the boat from where he was standing, and must have come up earlier to peek in.

  “What who told you?” Maj said.

  “The tall man in boots.”

  Maj’s head spun around, searching. These near-outlands were patrolled and had few problems with raiders and gangs so near the city. But troublemakers occasionally broke through. A man in boots might be a hiker intent on seeing the outdoors no matter what, like Maj and Ina. Or he might be part of a larger problem.

  “He’s not here,” the boy said. “He never was.”

  “Then how did he—”

  The boy tapped his head and said, “Something has changed. I can hear them now.”

  Maj resisted the urge to squat to his level. There was something in the boy’s strange manner of speech that told her he’d find it condescending — and would probably use that word to describe it, too.

  Lightborn.

  Maj and Viceroy Mara Jabari had talked extensively about their cities’ Lightborn, and in particular how the Astrals had ignored them entirely. The Lightborn in Ember Flats had formed a sort of commune, whereas here they’d spread out. There were few common denominators except that they all seemed able to predict the near future and read one another’s minds within a small, contained radius.

  The gifted children both fascinated and frustrated Jabari — one more thing her Initiate had failed to anticipate, and Jabari didn’t like loose ends in her research.

  The boy came closer. “You’re Viceroy Anders.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. And who are you?”

  “He says it’s a puzzle. That there’s nothing keeping anyone from reaching the boat, except their lack of ingenuity.”

  “Ingenuity, huh?” Maj said.

  “In Loulan Mu the test is opportunity. In Hanging Pillars it is bravery. In Ember Flats it is morality. But ours is about solving puzzles. If you can reach it in plain sight, you can board. That is what the man told me.”

  Maj fought the feeling of unease threatening to surround her. The boy’s voice was even, unconcerned, almost prophetic. His mention of Ember Flats knocked loose a bevy of worries Maj had thought she’d shelved — but now, as the sky dimmed with what looked like distant rain, she found herself thinking of Jabari, who’d set their next virtual meeting. Jabari and her select few were supposed to flee before then, anticipating particularly strong trouble in the Astral’s Capital of Capitals. And whereas Maj, Ina, and the others were supposed to wait, Jabari was the one who’d run the gauntlet to her Cradle first.

  But Ember Flats, since then, had gone darker than dark.

  What makes you feel you can believe this man?” Maj said.

  “Because well before I could see the cloud, he told me it was coming.”

  Maj looked at Ina. They both looked around.

  “Cloud?”

  The boy pointed. The women turned to see the largest of the storm clouds in the horizon’s dark heart. Maj saw nothing unusual. It was simply dusk approaching in the shortening autumn days, blurring the horizon from end to end.

  Except that the horizon seemed darker and longer than usual. And the sunset seemed a bit early, even with the storms on their way.

  Suddenly Ina gasped, as she’d done earlier. Hearing it, watching the horizon and its strange, overly dark shape, ice wrapped Maj’s heart.

  “I swear, Ina, if you make me force it out of you this time …”

  “It’s not a cloud,” Ina said. “It’s a black ship, big as Iceland.”

  In a small, original construction one-bedroom house in the rundown section of Roman Sands (a place that hadn’t been nice before the Astrals, when it was a South African armpit, and still wasn’t nice now) a thirty-one-year old man named Carl Nairobi squeezed his enormous frame through the doorway to find an unauthorized white man sitting behind his grandma’s shitty old chairs in his crappy little kitchen.

  “Hello, Carl,” said the man.

  “The fuck are you?”

  “You’re looking well.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me say, ‘What the fuck you doing in my house?’”

  Carl didn’t smash one fist into the opposite palm to punctuate his question. His broad shoulders, six-four height, and thigh-sized arms did it for him. Every inch of Carl was earned muscle. You didn’t have to have a job in Roman Sands. The government took care of everyone. It was part of what made the place so horrible. So Carl moved bricks. All day, every day. Sometimes he moved them for people who needed bricks moved because ever since Astral Day, Roman Sands had been the kind of place where things were always being knocked down. When nobody needed bricks moved, Carl went across the street to what had once been a park and moved the pile of bricks there from one side to the other. The next day, he’d move them back. It was mind-numbing. But books were scarce, and all but propaganda broadcasts were nonexistent. For Carl, who’d been incarcerated before the bugs and ghosts had plopped their asses on his town and changed its name, moving bricks was the equivalent of doing pushups or pacing a cell. While he worked, he played the golf course he used to work at in his head, imagining walking the links and keeping score. He’d never done it in life — wasn’t right for a black kid to play golf when football made people respect him — but he’d steadily improved inside his mind. The whole thing, body and mind, kept a man sharp. It kept a man sane.

  “That’s not what you said the first time.”

  Carl lunged at the man. He must have blinked when he did so, because by the time he reached the chair, the guy had somehow leaped behind him.

  “I’m not a vampire, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said the man from near his right ear.

  Carl spun. It was half turn, half punch. He had no qualms about killing the guy, and he’d ended one unlucky fellow with his fists before. That had felt terrible; Carl had only been a kid himself at the time, and the guy had been an asshole, undeserving of death. The cops hadn’t arrived in time, and Carl had never been punished. It would have felt so much better if he had.

  But this fucker? Well, he was in a man’s private residence. And this was the shit end of Roman Sands after a big announcement about End Times, so what the fuck ever.

  But the reach-punch missed again, and this time the guy was behind Carl’s other ear.

  “Admit it. You’re thinking I’m a vampire.”

  Carl drove an elbow hard into the man’s sternum. Without wasting the extra time it took to rotate, the blow landed perfectly. It folded the intruder like a deck chair, and two seconds later Carl was standing above him, watching the man squirm and gasp for air.

  “So this is what pain feels like.”

  “Bitch, you’re lucky you’re not dead. I killed motherfuckers before for less.” He clenched his fists and took a step.

  “Sure you have,” the man said, trying for breath, pressing his chest as if the feeling intrigued more than bothered him. He came up on one elbow. “But you didn’t kill the man who stole food from your refrigerator. And you had all the time in the world. That was before you broke your baseball bat. And you had all the room you needed to start swinging.”

  Carl’s fists sagged. “How’d you know about that? You been spyin’ on me?”

  “Yes,” the white man said, scooting back to sit up, still wincing. “I’ve been spying on you for eleven years. That’s how I know.”

  Carl felt his mouth form a frown. It had been about that long, yes. He remembered it vividly. The intruder had been unarmed, and Carl had caught him holding a loaf of bread. If it had been a ham or leftover lunchmeat, things might have ended differently. But the man that day had literally been stealing bread to feed his starving family. Carl had let him leave with the loaf.

  “Now, the gang of kids who came here two months ago? Them, you handled.”

  “I didn’t kill nobody that day.” />
  “Not that you knew. But the tall one? The one with the cap you thought looked stupid? You cracked a rib into his lung. He didn’t even try getting to a hospital, and died the next day.”

  “Had it coming. Those three was terrorizing this neighborhood. They wasn’t just coming to take my house. They raped like three girls I know ’round here.”

  “Yes. Of course. So you kind of liked it when they came for you, didn’t you? Saved you the trouble of finding them.” The man sat up straighter. “Why did you want to go after them, Carl?”

  “Don’t know. Seemed right.”

  “Even in Roman Sands?”

  “Maybe especially in Roman Sands.”

  “They didn’t have guns. Can’t get guns here anymore, or anywhere other than the outlands. Can’t smuggle them into the city. But would it have made a difference if they came at you with guns instead of chains and bats — and you with nothing but fists?”

  “Dunno. Who the fuck are you?”

  The man stood. Incredibly, he extended his hand. Even more incredibly — probably because he felt a bit beaten himself with all the man’s knowledge — Carl shook it.

  “You can call me Stranger.”

  “Seems about right.”

  “Can I sit?” Stranger gestured toward one of the kitchen chairs. There were four, despite Carl having lived alone for years. Each was made of peeling, chrome-colored piping and hard cushions embroidered in a flower print, oozing out at the seams.

  “Try it and find out.”

  Stranger sat. Pushed himself back and crossed his legs, making himself at home. Finally, unsure what else to do, Carl pulled out a seat and sat opposite him.

  “How’d you know all that about me?”

  “Same way I stayed out of your way the first two times you tried to hit me. Don’t let it bother you that it took three tries. I doubt anyone else could have hit me at all.”

  “Okay. So how’d you do that, too?”

  Stranger pulled a hand from his pocket. It emerged with a bright white Slazenger golf ball, marked with a 7.

  “Do you know what that is?”

  “It’s a golf ball. You think a black man don’t know what a golf ball is?”

  “Aren’t golf balls supposed to have dimples?”

  Carl held the thing up to point out its perfect number of dimples. But what was once a golf ball was now a smooth silver sphere.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Bet your friends wouldn’t have been supportive if you’d played golf like you wanted to.”

  “Wasn’t my friends had a problem with it. Shit. You didn’t grow up where I grew up.”

  “I didn’t grow up at all.”

  Carl set the sphere in his grandmother’s empty fruit bowl, center stage on the vacant kitchen table.

  “Why are you here?”

  Stranger sat forward. “Because you’re here, Carl.”

  “Who are you? Really.”

  “Grit in the works. Sugar in the tank. The wooden shoe in the gears. The wrench in the big, bad machine. My nature is disruption. Chaos. If I want to keep on living, this is what I must do.”

  “You an alien?”

  “Maybe. Sort of. Once. But I was always more human than Astral, and now I’m almost entirely like you.” He eyed Carl’s impressive frame. “Well. Not like you.”

  “What you want me for?”

  “You’re the man who’d chase down a rape gang because it needs doing. You’re the man who’d watch a man steal food he can barely afford because the other person needs it more. You’re the man who knows what’s supposed to happen, even though you tell yourself you know nothing at all.”

  “I sure don’t know what the fuck you talking about.”

  Stranger uncrossed his legs, recrossed them in the opposite direction.

  “Carl. Serious question. You heard the announcement, right? From Divinity in Ember Flats?”

  Carl suspected Stranger already knew the answer, but he nodded anyway.

  Stranger leaned forward. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Try it and find out.”

  “They’ve already found the vessel for Roman Sands. It was placed in a protected government area, right where Viceroy Knight would have wanted, so nobody could see it. But they’re not letting people on.”

  “Story of my life, man. Think I should get a suit and change my name to Gerald Huckabee the Third?”

  “They will let people on. And say what you want about Roman Sands, but everyone will get a fair shot.” Stranger leaned even farther forward. “But do you want to know more secrets?”

  “Okay.”

  “The broadcast came from Ember Flats because that’s where the Divinity that broadcast it was at the time. But it’s not just their ordinary mothership, like yours, that I’m talking about here. Some smart people saw this coming, and they thought the motherships might move off and form some sort of an antenna to call their buddies to Earth. That hasn’t happened. Because their buddies are already here. In a bigger mothership that settled over Ember Flats when … well, when something important was unlocked.”

  “A bigger ship?”

  “An enormous black ship as big as all the capitals put together.”

  “What’s it doing there?”

  “It’s not there anymore. It moved north.”

  “To, what? Europe?”

  “To the north pole.”

  “Fucking with Santa ain’t smart.”

  “It’s going to melt the ice caps, Carl. First the north. Then the south. There will be worldwide storms, and whatever doesn’t flood will burn. That’s why the vessels are boats. Just like Noah’s Ark.”

  Carl tried to keep his face neutral, but it betrayed him. He quickly recovered. After all, he’d resolved to die a long time ago.

  “The vessel for Ember Flats showed up right in the middle of their city, with a force field around it. The government there will be asked to mediate the process of deciding who boards. There might be a lottery. Nobody knows how it’ll be decided — only that it will, by humans.”

  “Like with us,” Carl said. “With Roman Sands.”

  “No. Each city has its own test. For Ember Flats, the Astrals want to see how morality and fairness play out. In Hanging Pillars, the vessel’s position and the challenge to reach it tests human bravery. In Canaan Plains, the viceroy can unlock a force field like in Ember Flats, but the ship is hidden, so it’s mostly about the persistence of those who seek it. And in Etemenanki Sprawl, the vessel is in the bottom of a volcano, seemingly unreachable. The Astrals won’t let people fly to it. So the test is about ingenuity, working with what’s there to be among the chosen few.”

  “What about this place, if you say Knight knows where the vessel is already?”

  “Roman Sands’s test is cutthroat. There will be an initial group put onto the boat, but then everyone will be given a choice. They can take a spot on the ship that’s already held by someone else, or they can pass. Pairs will be determined in advance, and from what I can tell, they’ll all be people who know one another. Friends given a chance to save themselves by dooming others to their deaths. You might be given the chance to swap places with your mother-in-law. With your childhood bully. With your spouse, even. For every trade, two things happen: you get to live, and the other person gets to die.”

  “There’s not enough spots on the boat for that.”

  “It’s tiered. Like a tournament. They’ve thought this out, Carl.”

  “And how do you know so much about it?”

  “Same way I know you used to have an invisible friend named Maurice. Same way I know your mother used to chew her nails until her own mother died, and she looked down at her gnawed-down hands across her chest in the casket.”

  Carl shoved his surprise as low as it would go. “Okay. So why you tellin’ me?”

  “Because the person whose spot you’ll be given the chance to take is the man who murdered your sister. And because I need you to refuse.”

  Chap
ter Twenty-Four

  When Clara blinked and realized she’d apparently been standing in the middle of the Hideout floor in some sort of a trance, her first reaction was embarrassment. She’d already put a flag on top of her head as the resident weirdo — inside a group finally weird enough to welcome her. Now she was blacking out (and losing a decent chunk of time according to her internal clock) in the middle of a conversation with Nick while both were on their way over to speak with Logan? Not good.

  But Clara wasn’t the only one blinking and looking around. Nor was she the only one wearing a half-confused, half-embarrassed look. She heard an out-loud fog of muttering alongside a subtler one in her mind.

  Whatever that was, it hadn’t only happened to her.

  Whatever had knocked Clara into another place (or at least out of this one), she wasn’t alone.

  “Nick?”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. Nick was looking at his hands as if he’d never seen them before. Looking at the floor as if grateful to find it. At the ceiling as if it might have vanished.

  “Nick?”

  He’d turned away, was walking off slowly, as if just waking up. Clara, unsure what else to do, followed. She couldn’t shake the not-quite-departed vision. It hadn’t been like seeing someplace else. It hadn’t even been like being someplace else. It was more like sharing space that didn’t exist. It was mind to mind, soul to soul — and yet whoever had abducted her to take her there just now, Clara could barely say.

  Sort of like sharing minds with Mr. Cameron, as she’d almost done in the street on the way here — despite a certainty that he’d left the world for somewhere else.

  Sort of like the other whispers she’d heard, but not really. When she’d sorta-kinda overheard the Astrals muttering their plans, that had been like unintentional eavesdropping — like overhearing conversation in a public place.