Invasion | Box Set | Books 1-7

by Platt, Sean

  He looked up at her. Trying to see the truth.

  She nodded.

  “You’re accessing the archive. I’m not sure how, but I can feel it in the collective. And if you continue, the balance might be upset. And then what’s left …” She didn’t finish. Meyer seemed to hear her say it from inside his head: What’s left will no longer be worth saving.

  Meyer looked at the surrounding memories and seemed, for a scant moment, to understand.

  He was somehow accessing the Ark, by focusing his thoughts from inside this room — this Nexus. He was scraping the few thoughts and deeds that humanity’s remainders had deposited in its banks thus far, just twenty years into the millennia between judgments.

  But he believed at least part of what she said: if he kept focusing on any memories in the Ark now, he might break it open.

  Then even the survivors would be lost, judged into oblivion.

  “Our species are in this together now.”

  Meyer looked up at Lila. Trevor. Heather. All the others he’d lost and missed. He softened his focus, trying to let them go. His head sagged. He tried to forget, knowing it wasn’t truly forgetting. A great energy diminished like a sigh. The floor lost its luster; shadows dimmed as the dark roots died and the room returned to its normal state.

  “Good,” Eternity said. “Better.”

  But Meyer watched her face, knowing now that he was like her. And that she was like him. They were linked beneath the surface, tied to one another for better or much, much worse.

  Knowing that now, for the sake of humanity’s scant future, he would have to keep his mind out of the places it longed to go. He’d have to do his best to forget them all — not through their will, as before, but through his own damned conscious choice.

  The lesser of evils. He didn’t have to like it, but it seemed he’d have to accept it.

  “Thank you,” she said, and in the moment, it struck Meyer as the most bizarre thing anyone, of any species, could ever have said.

  “Damn you,” he replied.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The dream wouldn’t leave Piper’s mind, clinging like the last tendrils of a spiderweb to the hand attempting to whisk it away.

  She moved faster and caught up with Clara. The group was small, and if Kamal’s hunch was right (something Piper found herself agreeing with even if it didn’t precisely make sense), they might be able to cover most of the distance to the monolith in relative stealth. It seemed to Piper that someone had strategically arranged pieces years ago, then forgotten the positions and rules of the game. Now Stranger’s side was playing out against the Astrals — except that even he no longer knew why he’d done what he had, or what was coming next.

  He’d been right about Kamal, though. And, apparently, about how his news would resonate with what Clara already knew.

  Piper neared the young woman, walking faster. It was still impossible to think of Clara as an adult. To Piper, she’d always be the little girl with the precocious gift. Clara had been then much as she’d been now. Only her body had changed, along with the fatigue in her eyes.

  It must’ve been hell for her.

  Years of unending work, holding back a tidal wave while they all blissfully forgot. Even the other Lightborn had given up, leaving her to fight alone. And now, Piper couldn’t help but feel like they were entering the endgame.

  “Water?”

  Clara looked back at Piper and smiled. It was a small thing, but Clara rarely smiled these days — especially with all the world had given them to cry about. She felt the creeping, stubborn sense from her dream retreating, entering the present in the growing sun.

  “Thanks.” Clara reached back, took the liquid-filled skin. They all had their own water, but it was Piper’s only offering. They’d been distant, with Clara living half her time in the Mullah caves, and her simple smile felt like healing.

  Clara took a drink and handed it back. Piper sealed the top and slung it over her shoulder.

  “Kamal said Stranger set things up so that they could have guns.”

  “I think they’ll be better against Reptars than sticks and harsh language.” It was meant as a joke, but Clara’s second smile fell flat. They both knew from experience that bullets weren’t much better. You could wound and kill Reptars with lead slugs, but you had to get lucky and hit them in a soft spot or, ideally, the eyes. A point-blank shot could sometimes smash through their glowing scales, but they usually kept coming. Yet another reason this was a fool’s errand, and that they might all be walking dead.

  “Why didn’t Stranger have Kamal stash some dune buggies, too?”

  Clara sniggered. She must have been keeping some water in her cheeks because a droplet shot from her nose.

  Piper let ten or twenty silent paces pass between them. Nobody was talking much. Peers and Kamal were leading the group, with Logan close behind. Kindred was nearby, but the two weren’t interacting or even seeming to notice each other. Stranger was nearly as far from Kindred as he could be while still keeping pace with the group — maybe thirty yards back, side by side with Sadeem. There were also several strangers from Kamal’s village. They walked in singles and pairs, the two groups not even trying to mingle. A grim thought struck her: maybe everyone knew this was a doomed errand, and there was no point in getting friendly.

  But no. Clara was this group’s leader, even if Kamal and Peers were in front. That’s what Kamal had told her: Clara says she knows what to do. And because nothing happened for genuine reasons anymore (or, perhaps, everything did), Clara’s intuition was as good a direction as any.

  “Kamal told me about Meyer.”

  Clara looked over. Piper had more or less said, So it turns out Grandpa’s an alien. What’s new with you? But Clara only gave her a grim expression of consent. It hadn’t taken long for Kamal to explain it, and once he had, Piper realized she’d already known. Her mind had returned to her odd dreams, and the gossamer memory of speaking with Clara. It was as if they’d already had this discussion. As if Clara’s mind had spent subconscious hours telling Piper’s what they were only pretending to broach now.

  “I thought he might,” Clara said.

  “Do you believe it? That Meyer is …”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like that?”

  Clara nodded. “Just like that.”

  Piper thought about pressing further. Somehow she’d expected a no. It might help Piper to reconcile what she didn’t doubt herself, though part of her very much wanted to. On one level she’d raised this so that Clara could talk her out of believing Kamal. But on another she had to tip a virtual hat to Clara’s straight-faced acceptance.

  “I felt like he’d changed when they returned him. And then when I learned that they’d returned someone else — and that the real Meyer had stayed on the ship — it all made sense. Now I find out he’s been one of them all along, and it doesn’t strike me as odd at all. Why is that?”

  “Because he’s not one of them. He’s himself.” Another tiny smile creased Clara’s lips, but it wasn’t for Piper. She was looking forward, smiling for herself. “And I can tell from what I see in the collectives — both collectives: he’s not what they expected, either.”

  “Can you talk to him? With your mind?”

  “Not directly. But he’s there, and so am I.” Clara looked over, and the maturity of her expression struck Piper as almost jaded. She’d once been a thirty-year-old in a child’s body, and now she was like an old woman in the body of a twentysomething. “And I can see how he’s spreading through their minds, as he realizes more and more that it’s his collective, too. He’s like a cancer. Something they set loose, and now can’t contain.”

  “Kamal said you know what we’re supposed to do.”

  Clara nodded, that cryptic little smile still on her lips. “We need the Ark. On the ship.”

  “Why?”

  Clara laughed.

  “Clara?”

  She kept chuckling, giddy like a kid.
/>   “What?”

  “It’s ironic.”

  “What’s ironic?” Clara seemed almost manic, and this from a woman who barely ever smiled. The change was almost scary, and Piper felt a need to push through whatever this was, to get a sensible answer for her strange mood.

  “Mom told me that you were always giving her crap.”

  “Giving her crap?” Piper searched her feelings. As Clara brightened, some of Piper’s own empathic sense was returning. Based on what she could feel from Clara, the woman wasn’t unhinging. Clara felt sure and confident, but Piper couldn’t tell why, or what epiphany she might be having.

  Clara turned to Piper, now openly smiling. “For playing games. For always being online. Mom said that when you guys went to dinner, she’d take her little pocket computer — her phone, though she said it was a computer, too — and she’d pull it out and mess with it at the table. And that when she did, you’d yell at her for it.”

  Piper felt her lips soften into a sympathetic crease. So it wasn’t confidence she was getting from Clara after all. It was nostalgia and sorrow.

  “Honey, I’m so sorry.”

  “She said that one time, she brought her headphones, too. And that you really lost it. You wanted to have a nice dinner out, but Mom put on her headphones and started watching videos right there at the table.”

  Piper put an arm around Clara’s shoulders.

  “Your Uncle Trevor used to do it, too. I hated it, but Meyer liked that it kept you occupied. He’d let them stare at their little screens like zombies because then we could talk without interruption. Every once in a while I’d try to lay down the law and insist that there were no devices at the table, but it never lasted. Because then Lila and Trevor would whine and roll their eyes and complain, and we’d usually end up fighting. So Meyer would say, ‘Just let them do it, Piper, so we can eat in peace.’”

  Clara laughed, reaching back to a time she’d never experienced. Some of the networks had survived the occupation, but they’d been paltry compared to the once-mighty Internet. There’d been no social networks after Astral Day, no constant pings of incoming emails chiming from everyone’s pockets. Before that fateful day you’d enter a group and only see the tops of heads as everyone stared down at their screens.

  “Everyone was like that back then, always checking this or that. And your grandpa used to love watching that series The Beam, about this hyperconnected future world where everyone was always online with body and mind. But when I suggested that the world was heading there for real, he laughed at me. But it was. Nobody could go five minutes without checking their email or something else inane.”

  “You make it sound so horrible.”

  “In concept. But trust me, I was as addicted like everyone else.” Piper sighed. “It was hard not to be. It was like everyone, everywhere, was on a drug. Even when you saw what it was doing to our culture — to our families, when everyone could sit at the same table and pay no attention to each other, like your mom and her brother at dinner — you couldn’t make yourself stop. Scientists said it was changing our brains. That for your parents’ generation, the constant multitasking and distractions was altering them on a biological level. There were studies, showing how modern kids’ brains worked differently from adult brains.”

  Piper looked ahead. Across the barren landscape.

  “Well, I guess we solved that problem. It only took an apocalypse.”

  She turned to Clara, but Clara was still looking forward, taking in Piper’s sarcasm like a point in a logical proof.

  “All it took,” Clara repeated.

  “Clara?”

  “That’s what made the difference, Grandma.”

  “What?”

  “The Astrals want us to form a collective like theirs. Each time they come back, I think we’ve come closer, but still no cigar. That’s what Kamal said Mara’s records showed — past cultures who seemed to have developed psychic bonds, like the Astrals’. But for one reason or another, those cultures weren’t enough, so the Astrals erased them and started over. This time, we hadn’t developed those bonds at all. We weren’t remotely psychic — at least not in ways we understood. But we’d still learned to think as a collective. And this time, it was in a way they didn’t understand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what the Internet was. Our collective. It allowed people all around the world to think as one. It was much more effective than anything the Egyptians or Mayans came up with; it was just made of wires and computers instead of thought waves. They shut it down when they destroyed our cities. But you nailed it.” Clara tapped her head. “Our brains were already changed.”

  “But you weren’t even around then.”

  “Mom’s brain was different. Dad’s brain, too. Yours, probably, but I’m sure it was a bigger difference for people raised after the collective was already built. Once the Internet was gone and the Astrals started planting those stones and waking our natural abilities, we had a head start with all those connections. The aliens thought they knew what we were capable of, but they were wrong. They underestimated our collective, and thought they could step on it like they had in the past. But this time, we’d become something different. Our collective was unique. They treated us like Cousin Timmy, but the Internet must have primed us to become something bigger. Better.”

  Piper watched Clara, feeling dizzy. She hadn’t been waxing nostalgic at all. This was something else.

  “They didn’t expect the Lightborn. The products of next-generation, network-ready minds exposed to the Astrals’ own intense psychic energy. They didn’t expect Grandpa, and what might happen if they tried to fix what they thought had broken with his special mind. They didn’t expect that trying to eliminate the problem might create the Pall. They didn’t expect Kindred. They didn’t expect Stranger.”

  Clara turned to face Piper. Her face wasn’t bothered, even with this daunting journey still before them.

  “And they didn’t expect me, born in the middle of it all.”

  Watching Clara’s suddenly hard and vengeful eyes, Piper swallowed. They were still marching in the hot sun, but suddenly she felt ice cold.

  “They can’t figure out our minds. They can only truly know us through their Ark — the relic they can’t touch until the next judgment, that’s ours to fill with memories and deeds in the meantime.”

  “Clara?” Piper asked, needing to ask a question, not wanting to know the answer. “Why are we going to the freighter?”

  “To take back the Ark,” Clara said, “and poison it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Liza was in an all-white space. It was like floating in the middle of nothing except that she could definitely feel a floor underfoot. The wolves had brought her here. Or at least, her ride had. She’d never actually seen the wolves.

  “Liza.”

  Liza looked up. She’d been looking down, trying to reconcile the floating. There was a woman in front of her. Medium height with short brown hair. Seeing her took Liza back in time and shook some of the dust from her increasingly foggy head. Because as she noticed the woman’s pretty brown hair, and how carefully it was styled, Liza became aware of her own rat’s nest. Hadn’t she once been an important person? She’d always kept her shit together, and yet here she was, in front of this other important person, with her hair all mussed. It was unforgivable.

  “Your name is Liza now, right?”

  Liza wasn’t sure how to respond. Yes, her name was Liza. But the woman’s implication was that it might not always have been.

  “Yes. And who are you?”

  “You can call me Divinity.”

  Liza’s brow furrowed. “Do I know you?”

  “We’ve met before. But you probably don’t remember.”

  “Why not?”

  The woman’s mouth moved. It was a human mouth, and that was confusing. Liza felt a little drunk, but she’d once been a perfectly cogent person. And as that person, she was quite certain sh
e’d known the word “Divinity.” And it referred either to gods (not relevant) or the high class of Astrals. But this woman was clearly human.

  “Because you’ve been erased.”

  “Erased?” The word, like the implication that Liza might not always have been named Liza, didn’t make sense.

  “Do you remember who you are?”

  “I’m Liza Knight. I run the rectory in The Clearing.” She could do better than that. “I was the viceroy of Roman Sands.”

  “I meant, do you remember what you are?”

  Liza puzzled.

  “Your erasure had complications. We thought we could do it cleanly, but we were wrong.”

  “Why were you wrong?” Liza asked, not understanding the context behind her own question.

  “The other hybrid was able to be erased during the Forgetting along with the humans. You retained your memories, per the intention. We thought the other Forgot because of the defects we’d already identified, and that implied your bond didn’t carry the same defects. His Replacement caused schisms and birthed a Remainder. We did not attempt to replace you. Do you remember?”

  Liza shrugged. It sounded like a lot of metaphysical mumbo jumbo. She was more preoccupied with what had happened to her backpack. Someone had wanted her to go and find it because that person couldn’t. Was it this woman? Liza wasn’t sure.

  “There were complications,” Divinity said.

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  The woman looked at her cohorts, whom Liza, with her foggy head, was only now starting to recognize. She’d missed them at first. They were white-skinned against the room’s background.

  “This isn’t working. Dissolve her erasure block. Do we need a probe?” the woman asked one of the Titans. The Titan shook its head. The exchange was simple but struck Liza as odd. Another strange, above-the-subconscious behavior Liza had never seen from an Astral.

  “Try to relax,” Divinity said.

  Liza opened her mouth to ask what that meant, but then one of the Titans tapped a tablet in his massive hands, and the air crackled. Every muscle in her body seemed to tense, and then it was over and her head was suddenly clearer, a bit more focused.