Deception

by Alex Bratton

  “Speaking of such things is treason!”

  “I committed my treason some time ago. The Condarri have no control of me now, and neither do you.”

  Two more hybrids stepped into the circle of light. The first jumped to his feet and joined them. They all lined up across the fire from one other like they were drawing battle lines. Three against seven.

  Mina slid back, hoping no one looked up. Was Doyle down there? She wished she could see their faces to check.

  “How are you hiding your adarre?” the second hybrid asked again.

  In answer, the first hybrid lunged at the second with a long knife, slashing him from navel to chin. The hybrid fell screaming into the fire. Flames sputtered and scattered like fireworks. Together, the other hybrids lunged at one other, now six against three. Guns fired, the sound cracking painfully loud in the tight space.

  Mina lost track of who was doing what. Someone stomped through the fire, sending a burning log rolling down the hill. Someone else screamed. Another gunshot, part of the ongoing firefight. Two moved back into the light—the rogue leader against a female hybrid. The rogue slashed at her while another tried to grab him.

  “Traitor!” another one yelled and lunged.

  The rogue elbowed him in the face, and the hybrid’s neck snapped back. The leader reached for the other’s neck and twisted, crunching bone, and wrenched her away from him.

  The rogue stood panting in the middle of the carnage, doubling over with his hand on his side. Were all the others dead?

  No, someone was behind him. The next second, the rogue’s face twisted in agony as the shadow behind slit his throat.

  He sank to his knees next to the fire.

  Mina clamped a trembling hand over her mouth, holding her breath. The other hybrid would hear her and come find her too. She rolled to remove herself from view, wishing her heart would stop beating so loudly.

  She listened in terror a long time, staring through the leaves, refusing to move her body. Above her, the sky clouded again, and another grumble of thunder rolled across the mountains. When it rained, Mina still lay there, allowing herself to breathe more easily. The hybrid wouldn’t hear her over the downpour. The rain drove harder than before. Even beneath the protection of the leaves, it soaked her in minutes.

  She lay there all night, long after the storm had abated. When dawn crept into the cloudy sky, Mina finally rolled over to look below, wishing the night had been a dream. Male and female bodies lay where they had fallen, some charred from fire, others mangled beyond recognition. The rogue leader lay near the extinguished fire, unmoving. She broke camp, hastily attaching her wet tent to her backpack.

  The route around and down to the bottom took ten minutes. Mina crept carefully, shivering slightly even in the warmth of the day. She needed to see, to be certain.

  Beneath the stone wall, bodies lay piled around each other. Mina avoided the women, preferring not to look into their dead faces, but she couldn’t avoid the men. She peered at each one, hoping not to see Doyle among them. The rogue leader lay with his mouth open in the mud, a large pool of blood beneath his body.

  Mina stepped on something and looked down. A pale hand rested on the ground, neatly severed at the wrist. She moved away, resisting the urge to vomit then turned and walked back to examine it. It was pale and purple with strong, yet fine, features. A woman’s hand, not Doyle’s.

  After rechecking the bodies, she counted them—nine. One of the hybrids had survived, the one who had killed the rogue leader. If Doyle had been here, he had lived, but Doyle wouldn’t have killed a rogue, would he? And if he hadn’t been here, another hybrid was lurking close by.

  On instinct, Mina glanced around to be sure she was alone. Then, she turned and headed back up the slope toward the ridge. She climbed through waist-high vegetation. Based on what Doyle had told her, she had just witnessed a faction of loyal hybrids hunt down a group of rogue ones. Each group had attempted to ambush the other. All of them were looking for a fight.

  Doyle had mentioned a rift. He hadn’t said it was an all-out war.

  Now, Mina had a different kind of waiting to do. She needed to be cautious, but she couldn’t hide anymore. Doyle would find her, and they could plan their next step. In the meantime, she needed food. On the ledge, she’d eaten some more of the hybrid food, but it tasted terrible. Doyle had packed human food like dried jerky and granola, but Mina wanted it to last as long as possible. She would only eat it when she couldn’t find anything else.

  She hiked until she couldn’t walk, finally collapsing near some rocks to rest. When she closed her eyes, glimpses of fire and blood streaked across them. That night, she slept little. The next day, she put as much distance between herself and the battle as she could. The direction didn’t matter. Doyle would be able to find her regardless of her aim.

  Throughout the day, the forest turned warm and steamy. Mina gathered a few greens and ate them raw. Lighting a fire risked attracting the wrong people. Then, she camped in a sheltered nook with a rock wall at her back. Doyle had to be close by. He would pick up her trail, if not tonight, then tomorrow.

  At twilight, the air cooled, causing her to shiver in the damp, but she didn’t pull out her blanket yet. Doyle might have been waiting for nightfall to get her.

  A twig snapped somewhere to her left. She tensed, expecting him to appear around the corner. Afraid of attracting a stranger, she didn’t call out. Instead, she listened for what felt like an hour with her heartbeat pounding into her throat.

  But no one appeared. When Mina finally allowed herself to relax, disappointment washed over her. Stupid to be disappointed. Doyle could still show up at any time.

  The next morning, Mina worried she had hidden too well, but Doyle had always been able to find her before. She hadn’t honed her ability to hide well enough to outsmart him. She worried about other hybrids, though. If she made herself as visible as possible, who else would see her wandering around? No, the best thing to do would be to live like Doyle had shown her—quietly and carefully—until he could catch up to her.

  Mina maintained this attitude for another day, but on her fifth day by herself, her alarm grew. She lived in a state of expectancy, constantly looking for Doyle to walk through the trees and tell her to follow him. Why hadn’t he found her yet? By staying near the creek, was she increasing her chances of someone else finding her? She couldn’t shake the memory of the dead hybrids in the woods. If they had brutally killed one another, what would they do to a human?

  On the sixth day, Mina left her camp and hiked north, the feeling of abandonment growing with every step. Within two hours, she had climbed up to a narrow parkway hugging the mountainside. Weary of fighting her way through bramble and over rock, she took the road.

  By afternoon, the heat became so stifling Mina toyed with the idea of getting under the trees again. Then ahead, someone whistled, a song coming from around a bend. Mina turned right and climbed up the side, quietly hiding in the trees above eye level. A passerby would have to look up in just the right direction to see her.

  The whistling grew closer. A man walked around the bend with a walking stick in his hand and a sack thrown over his shoulder. Gray hair peaked out from under a blue baseball cap. Mina pressed herself closer to the earth, waiting for him to pass. The man wasn’t armed, didn’t carry a backpack, and walked easily along the road as if he felt safe in his surroundings. Did he live nearby?

  Mina warred with herself, her instinct to make herself known fighting with her desire to stay out of sight. But Mina was tired of hiding and tired of being alone. She could follow him awhile, see where he went.

  With her mind made up, Mina began sliding down the slope after he passed. Just before she jumped down onto the pavement, her foot dislodged some small rocks and debris. The rocks clattered down with leaves onto the road. She held her breath as the man turned, his eyes following the sound until he looked directly at her. Since hiding was out of the question, Mina completed her drop to the g
round.

  The man watched her land on her feet, gripping his walking stick tightly in both hands. “You gave me a start,” he said. “What were you doing up there?”

  “Trying to hide from you,” Mina admitted. She brushed off her hands and pant legs.

  “Why were you hiding from me?”

  Mina shrugged. “Habit.”

  The man nodded, his look neither surprised nor suspicious. Hiding was a way of life now for everybody.

  “Where you heading?” His voice was rich and deep. It put Mina at ease, and so did the genteel Southern accent.

  “Nowhere in particular. Where are you heading?”

  “Going for a walk.” He jerked his head back in the direction he’d come. “Live just around the bend.”

  He’s not too smart to tell a stranger he has a cabin on this remote section of road. But she said, “That’s not something I thought I’d run into again, someone going for a walk just for the heck of it.”

  The man smiled and walked toward her. She tensed, but he lowered the walking stick and stopped ten feet away. White whiskers peppered a brown face. Crow’s feet appeared around blue eyes when he smiled. Mina smiled back in relief. He was too old to be a hybrid.

  “Name’s Solomon,” he said. “If you’re interested, I can offer you a place to stay. Are you willing to work?”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “You going to hurt me?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then tell me how long you’ve been out here by yourself.”

  Mina hesitated. The true answer was only six days, but she was unwilling to explain or admit why she was suddenly alone, so she said, “Since the beginning.”

  Solomon raised his eyebrows in surprise. “No kidding?”

  She shook her head, peering closely at the elderly gentleman. “Do you live alone?”

  “No, with my grandson and some others. Do you want to see?”

  Mina took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. What was she doing? “Yes,” she said.

  Chapter Seven

  Lincoln waited for Baker at the tunnel entrance. The sun was setting, shining through a gap in the trees directly onto the tunnel. He shaded his eyes with a hand and examined the new sketch he’d drawn. Too bad Carter wasn’t here to see the finished product. He had a better eye for these things than Lincoln. To look for clues, Lincoln had attempted to reduce the last of the illustrations onto one small piece of paper. Clues to what he didn’t know, but he and the rest of the team had hoped that by looking at the overall picture of the hieroglyphs under the mountain, they could make some progress.

  Again, he cursed his inadequacy at deciphering alien cryptography. He was a computer engineer, not an archeologist or linguist. He stuffed the drawing into his pocket and looked out over the hazy valley, sweating in the heat. Why hadn’t Alvarez, Carter, and Nelson shown up after the attack? Had they made it out? They weren’t in the valley when the alien ships appeared. Lincoln had kept careful watch for them, but neither he nor Baker had spotted them. Maybe they’d seen the Glyph too and run away.

  Baker’s behavior bothered him. She acted like she wanted to find the team, but she insisted they go back down into the silo. Why?

  Lincoln’s increasing panic at his friend’s disappearances outweighed his concern for Baker and her gun. He needed to look for his friends, not waste time down in the silo.

  Baker emerged from the tunnel behind him, her dark, tightly curled hair wound into its usual knot at the nape of her neck. “Is that it?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Lincoln was convinced if the team had thought it safe to return here to find him, they would have already done so. No point staying here anymore.

  They hiked down the mountain. At one point deep in the trees, Lincoln thought he found several sets of prints in the mud, but they disappeared over a rocky area. Baker examined the ground near the rocks.

  “Here,” she said. “Looks like they came down this way. Also looks like one of them is injured. The heavy one, Carter, he’s dragging his right foot.”

  Lincoln’s stomach clenched. “They’ll be slower now.”

  “If they have any sense at all,” added Baker, “they’ll leave him behind.”

  Lincoln rounded on her. “It’s nice to know you haven’t lost your sense of decency!”

  She shrugged. “In case you haven’t noticed, the old rules don’t apply anymore.”

  “They wouldn’t leave Carter behind!”

  “That’ll make our job easier, anyway. We shouldn’t have any trouble catching up to them.” Baker smiled, but Lincoln didn’t quite know how to take her. Why was she so eager to find his friends? It wasn’t out of concern for them or for Lincoln.

  Despite her confidence, Baker lost the prints two more times before they disappeared altogether at a creek. Lincoln imagined all sorts of horrible reasons for the team to have gone to so much trouble to hide their trail. Good job, too, for a bunch of nerds. Had they panicked when the invaders attacked? Had they been pursued? Why hadn’t they waited for him? Did they think he was dead?

  Possibly. Maybe more than one thing had happened.

  Baker paced back and forth at their last known location, examining the ground. As he watched her, Lincoln decided this turn of events was best. She couldn’t be trusted.

  After a day of searching, they reached a narrow mountain parkway Lincoln remembered from the trip to the mine. Their convoy had barely fit on the switchbacks. Lincoln had closed his eyes once as the wheels of the truck ahead scooted off the road for a heartbeat.

  “They've got to be using this,” said Baker. “It’s the only way they could walk undetected, and if Carter’s injured badly, it’ll be easier to help him on the road.”

  “Do you think the road’s safe?”

  “Probably not, but they may not have a choice.”

  Lincoln looked up and down the empty road. They had a fifty-fifty chance of guessing the right direction.

  Baker must have been thinking the same thing. She nodded at the slope in front of them and said, “Let’s climb to the top. We can see more of the road that way, maybe spot anyone using it.”

  Lincoln hesitated, but Baker’s hand went to her gun and rested there. She watched him carefully. Apparently, she hadn’t changed her mind about letting him go.

  The journey to the top took thirty minutes. After that, they followed the ridge, looking for an opening in the trees. When they didn’t find one, Baker climbed a tall tree to look out over the valley. Unable to trust her to tell the truth, Lincoln followed, but his journey to the top was not as effortless as hers. Panting, he pulled himself up beside her. Mountains spread out on either side of them. The road wound below like a snake.

  Baker pointed opposite the sun. “There.”

  Lincoln squinted through the trees. Way down the road, something moved in the middle. She had good eyes. “Looks like a speck.”

  “Two specks,” she corrected.

  “Only two?”

  “May not be your team, but they’re heading away from the spot where they entered the road. Let’s go see.”

  Back on the road, they set off at a faster pace, jogging along the blacktop. Weeds and underbrush hung over the pavement, and tall grasses disguised the edges and intermittent guardrails, making the side of the road look safe. In reality, the steep drop on their right would mean death to anyone who fell over it.

  Around a bend, the parkway switchbacked down a steep grade with the twisting pavement below visible through the trees. Two men were walking on it, both tall with dark hair, one stockier than the other. Not Carter or Nelson. Lincoln paused to watch, but Baker shouted at them.

  “Hey! Up here!” She waved.

  The pair below stopped to look up through the trees. Baker hurried toward them. Lincoln hesitated. Now would be a good time to slip off, but to go where?

  Baker reached the men and began talking excitedly. Lincoln sighed and headed for them. Maybe they had seen Alvarez, Nelson, and Carter. He’d be stupid to
pass up an opportunity to ask. When he reached them, the group turned to him. Lincoln stopped and gaped.

  The face of Lieutenant John Halston stared back at him. Halston had stabbed Lincoln the night the team had arrived at the mine. The dark-haired, stocky man recognized Lincoln, too, because he grinned and muttered something to Baker, who looked pleased.

  “Surrey!” he said, extending his hand.

  Lincoln ignored it and looked from Baker to Halston then to another dark-haired man he didn’t recognize. The tall stranger nodded at Lincoln but didn’t speak. Baker watched the stranger too, her eyes gleaming with something like awe and reverence.

  Lincoln didn’t have time to figure out why. His ears were ringing in anger.

  “Aw, you’re not still upset about our little misunderstanding?” Halston asked.

  He moved to clap Lincoln on the back. Lincoln, almost on reflex, swung at him, his fist connecting with the shorter man’s jaw. Surprised, Halston reeled to the side but didn’t fall. He straightened, massaging his jaw and swearing. The other man smirked.

  Lincoln turned to Baker. “You were in on this all along!”

  “We’re lucky we found these guys,” she said.

  Lincoln tried to calm himself by taking a deep breath. He gestured to Halston. “This guy almost killed me, remember? You do whatever you want. I’m getting out of here.”

  “Hold it,” she said, pulling her gun and blocking his exit.

  The three surrounded him, but Lincoln was too incensed to be intimidated. “So, we’re back at this? I don’t know what you want, but I can’t help you.” He squared his shoulders and stared down the barrel of her gun. “Now get out of my way.”

  “Give me the drawings,” she said.

  “Put down your gun first!”

  “You are not in a position to negotiate! Hand them over.”

  Lincoln flung his pack to the ground. Halston opened it behind him, emptying everything onto the road. He found the inner compartment containing the thick stack of papers and pulled them out.

  “Is this all of them?” asked Halston, standing.