Invasion | Box Set | Books 1-7

by Platt, Sean

  Clara slipped out from under Logan’s arm, laying it gently on the hand-woven blanket. She looked back at him, taking a moment to wonder. He’d never stopped being a good man. They hadn’t lost their pasts, but Kamal’s people had. Who had woven that blanket? A filing clerk? An Ember Flats Senate page? What necessities had driven this settlement? And what coincidences were yet to unfold in this carefully crafted drama to surprise them all?

  Before leaving the hut, Clara moved to the other pad and checked on Piper. She was asleep like Logan, with a loose lock of dark brown hair spilled across her forehead. With her eyelids shut, her big blue eyes were invisible — charming weapons disarmed, shut now to look inside where demons played.

  Light spilled through the cracked door. There was a small plastic-edged travel mirror nearby so she picked it up to look herself over. Her eyes, so far as she could see in the scant light, were no longer puffy or red. Tears, once Peers had confirmed what Clara already knew, had finally come with the night to cut clean tracks through the filth on her face. But there was a basin near the mirror, so Clara used a rag to wipe herself until she was presentable. Then she turned to the door, and the source of light.

  A fire burned ahead, low but far from coals. To the right she saw a lump in the open sand: Kindred sleeping. And to the left — exactly the same distance away, in an identical position on the opposite side — was Stranger.

  Clara grabbed another government-intern-made blanket from the pile and wrapped it around herself like a shawl to shield the winter chill. She moved forward, watching two heads turn to greet her as the third, across the fire, lifted its chin to watch her approach.

  “You’re awake,” said Sadeem.

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Your mother?”

  “It’s a lot of things. Can you feel the network, Sadeem?”

  Peers and Kamal both looked back at Sadeem, but the old man simply shook his head.

  “I’ve never really been able to.”

  “I’m surprised Kindred and Stranger can sleep. The network itself is becoming brighter and more alive, but every time I closed my eyes, it was like those two were standing right beside me. They’re so bright inside. And they’re …” She frowned, then finally shrugged resignation. “I don’t know. Different somehow.”

  “We were talking about that,” said Sadeem. “Come, sit.”

  As Clara was deciding where to plant herself, Peers and Kamal both moved aside to widen the space between them.

  “Please,” Peers said. “Kamal says he’s forgiven me for assaulting him back in Ember Flats, but I don’t trust him.”

  “It was mostly that woman anyway. Jeanine, I think. But yes. I am planning to kill Peers in his sleep. Not because I’m still mad. But, because … you know. To close the circle.”

  The stupid jab of humor was, in the dark and quiet, surprisingly rousing. Clara felt her lips turn up despite trying to hold her face serious. Then she sat.

  “They do seem different,” Sadeem continued, looking at Peers. “In some very … significant … ways. We think it happened when your mother passed. Based on what Kamal said he learned from Mara Jabari, a similar change happened in the first Titan replica of Meyer when your uncle, Trevor, was killed.”

  “What kind of change?”

  Peers turned to Clara. “Did Piper tell you how we got here? To where we were when you came over the dune to find us?”

  “She was too upset about Mom. She said she’d tell me later.”

  “What about Kindred? Stranger? Did they say anything?”

  “I haven’t talked much to either of them. I ran up to Kindred when we found you and hugged him. Stranger wouldn’t come to me, so I had to go to him. But it’s like I said: They’re different somehow. They still won’t go near each other — even though when I look inside, it’s like they’re magnets. They’ve always had that attraction on the network, but it’s so much stronger. Now, to resist the pull, it’s like they’ve reached some sort of agreement. If one can’t do something, they both won’t do it. I feel like they want to talk to me. But they can only do it together, and won’t approach each other.”

  Clara looked at Peers. “So how did you get here?”

  Peers glanced at Sadeem as if for authorization. Then he said, “We teleported.”

  Clara’s mouth opened, then stalled.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I know how it sounds. But it happened. Piper, Kindred, Stranger, and that woman from the rectory — Liza Knight — were on the freighter. Astrals were everywhere. They’d been hiding in the shipping containers, guarding something, and we woke them. We were dead for sure. But then all of a sudden we were gone from the freighter and right where you found us.”

  “You lost time,” Clara said. “The Astrals did something to you then dropped you off.”

  “No. Something happened. We all felt it. I don’t know what happened to Liza, but I’m sure of what happened to the rest of us. You could feel something in the air. Like the charge before a thunderstorm, or static in a thick carpet. There was something on the ship, Clara. Kindred and Stranger were … powering it, maybe. Or powered by it. Stranger said it felt like he suddenly understood that there was no here or there and that he could just sort of step sideways and leave. And, it seems, take the rest of us with him. With them.” Peers emphasized the final word with a glance toward Kindred.

  “But teleporting? How is that possible?”

  Peers shrugged. “I guess possibility isn’t what it used to be.”

  Clara shook her head, at a loss. Apparently the three of them had been discussing absurdities for a while.

  “Peers thinks Kindred and Stranger are the King Archetype,” said Sadeem. “Two heads. Maybe the power on the ship can somehow join them. Make new things happen.”

  “What power?”

  “The Ark, maybe,” said Peers. “But how it got there is another story.”

  “I thought you said the King’s two heads were Kindred and my grandpa.”

  “Maybe they were,” Sadeem replied. “Who knows? Maybe they shift. It made sense, at the beginning, that you’d be the Innocent. But now what you do is more like magic, and the things you say make me think that magic is still growing. Peers was once the Fool, but sometimes now he has the knowledge of a Sage.”

  Sadeem’s eyes flicked toward Peers, who looked away. Clara was curious but not enough to pry. She’d long felt a secret in Peers, somewhere deep, both when he’d had his memories and when he hadn’t. But now that secret felt dulled, as if finally confessed. She would learn the truth if she needed it, but for now was content to grant the man his privacy.

  “Perhaps the Mullah wrote one legend on top of another,” Peers said. “People used to say that uncertainty was the only certainty in life. The Legend Scroll mentions the Seven Archetypes, but if they came from chaos, who’s to say the legend itself couldn’t have uncertainty within it? Maybe the Archetypes can change. Perhaps its predictions are prophecies that shift in the wind.”

  “Not very useful, then.”

  “Even random can be predictable, Clara,” Sadeem said. “If things occur randomly for long enough, eventually every given possibility will occur.”

  “I’m too tired to understand that.”

  “It’s like those thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters,” Kamal said. “If you let them go on forever, they’ll eventually write Shakespeare.”

  “Right,” agreed Sadeem.

  “If you don’t let them type long enough,” Kamal added, “they’ll only write Valley of the Dolls.”

  “Clara,” Sadeem said, throwing Kamal a look, “what was it you said to Logan before we left the Mullah caves? When you grabbed my arm. Something about your cousin.”

  “Cousin Timmy.”

  Sadeem nodded.

  “It’s a thing Stranger used to say. Almost like his catchphrase. Funny thing is, my grandpa had a Cousin Tim. When I mentioned it around him one time, he lit up. For a while I thought he might be getting his
memories back, but it was just a dead end.”

  “Is it the same Tim? In Stranger’s expression and your grandfather’s family?”

  “How could it be?”

  Again, Sadeem, Peers, and Kamal traded a knowing glance. What had they already discussed — and maybe decided — that they weren’t willing to say?

  “Just tell us what it means to you, Clara,” Peers said.

  “It was about underestimating people. Pigeonholing them, then trivializing their abilities. Stranger once told me a story to go with the expression, but I didn’t know my grandpa had a Cousin Tim until after the Forgetting. I don’t see how they could be related.”

  “Why did you say it to me?” Sadeem asked.

  “I was still sort of in a trance. You started getting all worried and going on and on, and it just came to me.”

  “As a rebuttal? I was worried, and you wanted to assure me that there was nothing to worry about?”

  Clara thought. She’d just come out of her semi-coma. She’d been fully mental for a while, seeing the human grid, seeing the wall finally fall to release the Astrals’ meddling repression from their memories. The moment it collapsed, a strong red force had lashed out and grabbed her from the Astral side, pinning her down and refusing to let her move. She’d barely been conscious when she’d said that to Sadeem, still half-submerged.

  “I don’t know, Sadeem.”

  “It might be important, Clara.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

  His eyes flashed with intensity. “Think!”

  “I … I don’t know,” Clara stammered, taken aback. “I guess I had this feeling that you shouldn’t count us out. That you were forgetting something important, and that we weren’t just victims.”

  “Us as in us? Or us as in humanity?”

  “Humanity. I think.”

  “But why?”

  “Stranger’s story was about a musician. Someone whose family and friends never really gave him any credit, even after he made it big, because he was always just Cousin Timmy. To them, he was worth encouraging because he had dreams of being a star, but not because of his talent. Stranger described it as a backhanded complement. Someone who got patted on the head and patronized rather than given his due.”

  “What does that have to do with humanity and the Astrals?”

  Clara was about to repeat that she didn’t know and maybe add that she wished Sadeem would leave her alone about some random thing she’d said while basically high, but then someone took Clara’s hand. Kamal, to her surprise.

  “Close your eyes, Clara.”

  Clara looked at the three men. She saw Sadeem’s urgent gaze, Peers’s patient stare, and Kamal’s oddly understanding expression.

  “I have something to tell you that may help. Something I think I’m supposed to tell you, and that I’m only just now starting to understand. But before I say it, I need you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and tell me if you can see your grandfather on that network of yours. The grid that shows all the minds left in this place, recovering their memories. The place you spent all your time while trying to fight the Forgetting. Tell me if you can see Meyer there now, Clara, at his place in that network of human consciousness.”

  Clara closed her eyes, seeing the fire’s red-orange through her lids.

  She drew a deep breath.

  Then another.

  And another.

  She could see her grandfather, just as Kamal had asked. A bright node like all the others, his connections somehow different. It took her a while to see why, but then she did. The nodes representing individuals were connected mind to mind, each touching others around them. The matrix shifted and moved, nodes floating in front of her vision like icebergs through an ocean of light. The nodes moved — old connections broke, and new ones formed. But each always kept about the same number of connections to the rest — five or six per person at any time, humanity’s remainders joined like neurons in a brain.

  All except for her grandfather.

  He was connected to them all.

  “I see him,” she said with subtle awe, watching his instance on the grid and seeing how the connections were all brightening, growing strong like strings in a braid. It hadn’t been this way before. This was something new.

  “Have they underestimated him?” Kamal asked. “Is it possible the Astrals knew Meyer Dempsey as one thing but aren’t quite able to see that he’s grown into something more? Is it possible that just like Cousin Timmy in Stranger’s story, your grandfather isn’t a person the Astrals can see for who he really is … even if the truth is right in front of their alien faces?”

  Clara opened her eyes. Peers and Sadeem were watching Kamal as intently as she was. Whatever Kamal was insinuating, the others hadn’t seen it coming any more than Clara had.

  Instead of answering, Clara asked a question.

  “He’s an Astral, isn’t he? All this time, we thought he was back — but my grandfather’s like Kindred, isn’t he? Just another copy of the real Meyer Dempsey?”

  Kamal’s lips pursed into a smile and slowly shook his head.

  “Close,” he said, “but no cigar.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “They can hear you.”

  “Of course they can hear me.”

  “They can see us.”

  “Of course they can see us!”

  “Meyer …”

  “Dammit, Carl, I meant what I said. Will you just fucking—”

  “Setting aside the fact that I might kill you, I can’t possibly imagine how this will—”

  He was still learning the trick, but with a parody of fingers-crossed Meyer pushed in what felt like the right mental spot, doing his best to squeeze Carl’s gray matter from within the neural network. He doubted he could control minds, but he sure could see a lot more than he used to. What he was doing wasn’t quite like a vampire glamouring prey, but it didn’t feel that far off. Carl’s mental node, even from the inside, still felt like its own thing. But with the right pressure applied, Meyer bet he could make what amounted to a very strong argument.

  “Just do it,” Meyer said.

  “What if I paralyze you? I don’t even see why you’d want—”

  “Just do it!”

  Carl wrapped his enormous arm around Meyer’s neck and squeezed. Meyer was blacking out, thinking he’d made a rather obnoxious mistake in judgment and readying himself to tap out when the door slid open and two Titans entered. The tall blonde who called herself Eternity clacked along behind him on tall black heels.

  Push.

  Shove.

  All from inside the new headspace, pushing Carl’s will around like a child strapped in a stroller.

  Carl turned, his spine obeying like a reflex in the fractional second before his cortex received and evaluated the message. This had felt like the dangerous make-or-break moment in Meyer’s plan. Carl was right; the Astrals would see and hear everything that he and Meyer did. But if past experience had taught him anything, they’d probably hear their thoughts as well. Meyer felt confident that he could keep the aliens out of his head, but he wasn’t so sure about Carl.

  Carl had to believe that Meyer wanted Carl to make him pass out, when in truth Meyer actually wanted the Astrals to rush in after they saw what was happening. Then, in the space of seconds, the real plan would force Meyer to push Carl in a different direction.

  If he couldn’t “convince” Carl quickly, the plan was dead before its birth. Meyer wasn’t big, fast, or strong enough to do what had to be done. He was sixty-eight fucking years old, his wrestling days long behind him.

  Push.

  Shove.

  Meyer felt recognition click — along with a bit of knee-jerk resentment wherein Carl felt annoyed by Meyer’s deception.

  Despite the rush, Carl didn’t hesitate. Meyer flopped to the floor as Carl released him, landing at the first Titan’s bare feet. The second Titan moved to intercept Carl but was predictably slow. Carl moved like a bolt, easily
dodging. Titans could be fast when necessary, but Carl needed only a second. By the time the Titan spun to where Carl had dashed behind him, he had Eternity in the headlock he’d promised to Meyer.

  “You’re kidding,” Eternity said, her smooth-as-silk voice coming out in a croak. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  Meyer grabbed one of the Titans. It turned and gave him a pleasant, no-offense-intended smile. The other was still moving toward Carl but hesitated when he dragged Eternity two quick steps back and tightened his python’s grip on her neck.

  “Let us out of here,” Meyer said. “Send us back to the surface.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Show her how ridiculous we are, Carl.”

  Carl squeezed. Eternity made an urgent squeaking, waving an arm.

  “Ready to send us back?”

  The Titans were looking at Eternity as if awaiting instructions. Carl was meeting them eye to eye, keeping his distance. The Titans seemed to be weighing whether they could get to Carl before he ended Eternity, and deciding correctly (in Meyer’s opinion, anyway) that they couldn’t.

  “I can’t send you back. The Archetypes are all we have.”

  “Sounds to me like that’s your fucking problem, not ours,” said Carl.

  “You can’t kill me. This body is only a mouthpiece. We’re a collective. If you stop this body’s functioning, it’ll be no different than when Clara’s father killed your—”

  “Do you think I don’t know about that?” Meyer asked. “Your girlfriend was just in here, acting shocked at what I ‘pretended’ to know and not know. She was talking about me knowing myself, which I’ve been pretty good at since I started Fable and decided that being a sonofabitch wasn’t a bad management strategy and leaned right into it. But I know what happened when Raj killed him, and I doubt you’re interested in having another—”

  (Meyer Dempsey)

  “—death on your hands.”

  “Death is immaterial,” the woman said from under Carl’s flexing armpit. “Even for you. A body is only a body, and what matters is the energy that’s always free to—”