by Sean Platt
Liza thought back. Oh yes, she’d felt shifted loyalties before. In a way, realizing what she’d apparently always known (something that, right now, felt more like integration than realization) was a relief. She’d wondered, long ago, if she was just a dirty traitor. Now Lila realized she was being true to herself, though she hadn’t seen what her true self was before now.
“Our Founders seeded observers in your population. They’ve always been among you, moving from host to host upon their passing. The Founders also seeded each test population with chaos. Before now the element gave the experiment variation. This time it triggered a fault. Another of our hybrids manifested an anomaly. We tried to purge it, and the anomaly spread systemwide. There’s only a small unaffected cluster.” Divinity sighed, frustrated. “I would rather not tell you this, but there is no other way.”
“You and me and them,” Liza said, nodding toward the Titans. “This is the ‘unaffected cluster’?”
“Yes.”
“But you said my ‘erasure’ didn’t take. And I’m not stupid enough to believe that any of the three of you are acting normally, for Astrals.”
“It’s a matter of degrees.”
Liza considered, then said, “Why are you telling me this? It’s not just so that you can have a fourth.”
Liza’s intuition — surely from her human half — was prickling. Since when did Astral command beg humans for help? Maybe Liza had Astral in her, but the collective hadn’t grabbed and compelled her — though arguably, that might have been what had happened when she’d been on the surface, before she’d stepped into that shuttle and come up here. No. This one was asking for help, even if she was doing it sideways. It didn’t fit. Something was terribly wrong … and right now Liza, as the newcomer, had a surprising amount of power.
“When we accessed you earlier, before your erasure, there was something in your record about a sabotage plot. A reason you were, from the start, more allied to Astrals than humanity. It struck us as a counterpoint to the imbalance in the other direction — toward humanity — that we’ve seen in the other hybrid.”
Liza was seeing more and more. She could peek into the Astral collective, sure, but the old viceroy also had her human cunning. And right now, that superpower duo of abilities was pointing her toward one inescapable conclusion: This particular woman, whatever she was to the Astrals, was in a hell of a bind. And she thought Liza, for some reason, held her key to salvation.
“It’s spreading, isn’t it? Whatever’s gotten into your system and is causing trouble … It’s getting worse.”
“The human collective is new to us. Their minds have changed in a way we don’t understand. We were unable to complete the Forgetting because their minds work like a hologram: as long as one node remained, others could be rebuilt.”
A smile crept across Liza’s lips. Combining human memory and Astral insight, she thought she could see the problem in a way this woman couldn’t. Liza didn’t know how to solve their problem or even begin to crack its shell, but she did get it in a way that they couldn’t. She had a different frame of reference, and to Liza, a metaphor for the problem — still with no solution — was clear as glass.
Divinity was saying that the Astrals couldn’t blank humanity’s memory banks (minds) because they couldn’t erase all the servers (people) at once — because each mind in the collective held all the data (memories) and could repopulate the rest at any time.
Humanity’s minds were like the cloud, back in the days of the Internet.
“What’s that smile for?”
“You really can’t tell?” Liza asked. “You can’t read my mind?”
“Eternity’s abduction has put knots throughout the system. And the hybrid’s pollution, working on her, has made it … difficult … to see.”
“You’ll have to kill us all. As long as one human mind keeps popping up …” Liza shrugged, suddenly feeling very much herself, suspecting there was still an ace far down in this hole — one that, when revealed, would trump all the rest. “You’re fucked,” she finished.
“We can’t kill you off. We’re too intertwined. We can bluff, but eradicating this planet’s experiment, at this point, also eliminates us.”
Liza watched Divinity, sensing what was coming, enjoying the unfolding.
“You had a way out,” Divinity said, now almost pleading. “I could see it in your observer’s record. It’s why I sent for you. It’s why I sent you to that canyon! You needed something. I can’t see what it is, what you once knew, but I know it’s there, buried in your mind! What is it? Think!”
Liza had already figured it out. Just as she had so long ago.
Divinity knew Liza had once known a way to disrupt humanity’s virus, but Liza’s mind must have been hidden enough to stay mostly invisible. She was half-Astral but living undercover. Now Divinity was guiding Liza’s no-longer-foggy brain toward what it once thought of as salvation.
“You don’t know why you need me,” Liza said.
“It’s something you once had. Something you once planned! I can sense the potential, but with the collective compromised—”
“Where is my backpack?”
One of the Titans reached behind himself and procured the thing, holding it out to Liza.
“It’s full of junk,” said Divinity. “But your mind seemed to once feel—”
“Not junk,” said Liza, cutting her off.
Her hand effortlessly found what she was looking for. Her fingers went right to it, as if guided.
She pulled it out. Held it up. Watched Divinity puzzle the item, savoring the obvious shift in power.
“Take me with you to the next colony,” Liza said, slowly revolving the thing in her hand. “Make me a queen there, and I’ll show you how to end your ‘experiment’ on Earth for good.”
CHAPTER 39
Melanie watched Meyer until she was sure he was in a trance. He was trying to reach out to Clara and the others, believing Melanie (rightfully) about the Ark but trying to find a way to assist their doomed mission anyway. And that was human hope: tell one of them that their situation is futile, and they’ll go back and start hammering the same nail.
‘Hammering the same nail’? Melanie thought. You’re just as bad as they are.
The new human mental network had proved difficult to crack, but in the end it came down to the Archetypes. Their external collective had somehow married right back to the more sensible, internal, organic collective, giving them redundancy just like their old Internet had. Unless the Forgetting was applied to every mind at once — which was more or less impossible — the ones they didn’t hit in any cycle kept spreading their knowledge back to the others once pressure abated. They’d make one sector Forget, then that sector would be reminded of everything below the surface once attention turned to the following sector. Any time the Forgetting was relaxed, people began to remember for real. It had been a twenty-year game of Whack-a-Mole, never slowing or stopping.
“Whack-a-Mole”? That’s even worse than hammering nails. Or individuality or conceit or arrogance or “pride” or “self-confidence.” In another five years, we’ll all be processing human magazine articles, wondering if we’re too fat, splitting into genders, trying to figure out why He’s Just Not That Into You.
The fact that she even knew the human culture references necessary to make the internal joke was bothersome. The pollution was pervasive. Intrusive. It pressed her every sense, fooling Melanie into believing she needed to have senses, to have her body, to consider herself “herself.”
Well, not for long.
The collective was so twisted and fogged that it could barely see its directives, and Melanie could no more issue imperatives than hear the dissent that shouldn’t be there. Getting Meyer off the ship would help; he was twisting the Nexus like an enemy’s neck. But even after he was gone, they’d have trouble piloting the ships or issuing orders until they were finally out of orbit. Until the Archetypes were gone, the ship’s proximity would wor
sen the sickness. That was human hope in its worst form: aggressive, unwilling to settle until it had ruined everything.
But now, even as Meyer tried in vain to help the group heading toward the beached freighter, those problematic Archetypes were all in the same place — lined up like the ducks in a shooting gallery that she shouldn’t see as an apt metaphor.
They’d eliminated the Warrior and the Innocent.
Now the King, Fool, Magician, and Sage were together, waiting for slaughter as Melanie reached around Meyer’s trance and tapped the Reptars on their big black shoulders, warning them that enemies were approaching.
That only left the Villain, but Melanie could sense that one, too. Nearby, maybe even on the ship. Reptars up here could kill that one while the Reptars on the planet handled the other five.
That would shock Meyer right out of this little game, then the release of his hold on the collective — and the Nexus — would relax enough for them to kill him as well.
It would be enough. Then Melanie could stop thinking of Whack-a-Mole and hammers on nails and ducks in galleries. She could stop considering her reflection and this strange attachment to her surrogate. She could stop taking pride in what she thought and who she was and how she looked. She could stop believing that it was better for her surrogate to keep on breathing than that Meyer be prevented from taking the damned ship captive.
She opened her eyes. Meyer was sitting quietly in his chair, weapon in hand. She wouldn’t try to get it because that would wake him. But the collective’s pollution could work for Melanie even as it was working against her. She couldn’t see most of the others, let alone issue imperatives, but maybe that meant he wouldn’t see her — as focused as he was on poking Kindred and Stranger and Clara, trying to show them the nature of their ship’s power — and how many Reptars were truly waiting.
Surprise was everything.
Melanie pushed through the fog, through her limited point of view, and found her body. Her core. She saw Meyer’s trance to the side, as dominant in the collective as it had been in the human collective unconsciousness when he’d taken his drugs.
He could speak to them and try to show them the truth, yes.
But Melanie could reach out to the Reptars on the ship first, doubling their Doubling, using an inch of the Nexus’s power through the archive to make the illusion that much more convincing.
Let Meyer show his people exactly how to come.
The Reptars would be prepared, and waiting.
CHAPTER 40
Kindred went left when Stranger went right.
Kindred knew nothing about battle tactics; Meyer hadn’t been a veteran, and he, along with everyone else, had spent the last two decades having forgotten pretty much everything but his name. Even so, splitting up to attack a target seemed logical. Not that it would make a difference. The monolith was in a low V, the sea miles distant, highlands of the side even farther from the water. They’d approach from above, marching down what was essentially a long dune. There wasn’t any cover. It was laughable to think they could take anyone by surprise.
But even from up here, looking across the V at the tiny black specks that were all he could see of the other group, Kindred knew this was their best shot. You attacked from two directions. It made sense, even if it was a fool’s errand.
He could feel the Ark’s power, even from here. They’d just been here yesterday, and his daughter (in a matter of speaking) had been slaughtered aboard this same ship, with the same power thrumming in the background. Just yesterday he’d looked at the Reptars and heard a voice from the sky inside his mind and realized they didn’t have to stay. Then they’d been somewhere else, and in the moment — just for the moment — the idea of teleporting made total sense, before it vanished like fog in a breeze. He’d dreamed the whole thing. He and Stranger both, according to what the others said.
But right now, feeling the Ark’s power, Kindred could believe it.
I remembered something yesterday. I realized something obvious, that anyone could see.
The power was a low thrum. Something that seemed to reach out and invite him forward, its song hypnotic. They could march right in there. Sure, there was plenty to fear. But so what, when you could see all the terrible things and know precisely where the traps lay?
Kindred felt knowledge almost percolating. Threatening to rise. Below the surface and beside his resentment. He remembered things long passed. Events he wasn’t even sure he himself had participated in.
Receiving a message from Divinity when he’d been viceroy of Heaven’s Veil, Trevor in his office, claiming to search for books, Raj clattering around somewhere overhead, slowly going bad.
Hiding in the bunker under Vail, Piper in the corner, bloody spatter from the first man she’d ever killed not yet scrubbed from her neck, close to catatonic, rocking, still young enough to feel bad for a necessary murder.
Himself on the ship, kept in a cell. Piper, also aboard.
You were a Titan back then, said a voice. You did not see Piper on the ship. You were another thing, in fear of becoming me.
Meyer’s voice. From somewhere.
Focus, Kindred.
Meyer inside his mind, the sensation curiously doubled, as if he was talking to himself. Which, by a certain definition, he was.
There are only three Reptars left.
Kindred looked behind him, catching curious glances from Logan, Piper, Kamal, and the man and woman whom Kindred had met but whose names had yet to register. From Kamal’s crew — brave, selfless enough to storm a place they knew to be swarming with enemy soldiers for the greater good. But according to the voice in Kindred’s head, there were only three. And yet he knew they’d only managed to kill one of the potential hundreds they’d seen before.
Aft, amidships, and near the door to the bridge. You will know when you see them.
Kamal was slowly shaking his head, seeming to ask a question with raised eyebrows.
Clear your head. If you focus, you can see.
Kindred didn’t know what the voice meant, or where it was coming from. He didn’t know whom it belonged to. But the Ark’s power was like sweat on his brow. He could sense it calling him forward, feel his mind calming — welcome change from the cauldron, stewing with anger and resentment, plagued by jealousy and pettiness and hate. He wanted to march forward, heedless. He wanted to cross the V, to the ship’s other side. Find Stranger, and let the end come.
If you focus, you can see.
But it was hard, and Kindred didn’t want to.
Ahead, at the freighter’s towering metal side, was a tall, black-haired form, waving him forward.
His ex-wife, Heather, whom he’d already died once saving.
CHAPTER 41
“Stranger?”
But Stranger’s eyes were on the person near the ship’s rear: Trevor. He’d never known the boy, and yet he’d raised Trevor from a baby and taught him to ride a bike, tolerated his teenage angst, as annoying as it had been. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The jeans looked clean. How long had it been since he’d seen a clean pair? Denim could last a long time — but their little village, which had thought nothing of the curious blue material in the same way they thought nothing of the other old-world items that didn’t make sense — only had a few intact pairs among them, most ripped through at the knee and converted to anachronistic shorts.
But Trevor was standing there in his jeans and tee, the way he’d looked on the last day of his life, so far as Stranger remembered of that time he’d never known or seen.
“Stranger!”
He flinched when Clara touched his shoulder. He’d been about to rise. Energy wafting from the ship was like second heat, and Stranger could think of little beyond heeding its cry. Kindred, across the dunes, was calling him. Maybe they could meet in the middle, link arms like schoolgirls, and skip the rest of the way down. It would be the end of them both, and maybe all of it. But did it matter? The Ark’s song was so alluring.
“Are you okay?”
“There are only three,” he said.
“Three what?”
He was already too distracted to answer. Movement at the ship’s other end caught his eye. There was someone there. A woman in her forties.
Lila.
“Stranger? Three what?”
Lila waved, seeing their little group where they pretended to hide. She put her hand on the ladder bolted to the monolith’s side, raised a leg, and climbed. Trevor, at the other end, began to do the same.
Stranger could hear the Reptars in his head. This wouldn’t be as hard as they’d all imagined. All puzzles were hard until you knew the trick, but once you saw it, the whole thing cracked open, so obviously simple.
Lila stopped. Then Trevor. Stranger’s children hung on their ladders, their large smiles obvious even across the distance. They waved. Beckoning.
More movement, this time across the dune. Someone shouted — a voice that was half hiss, half yell, as if the shouter was somehow trying to be quiet even while calling out. There was another shout from behind Stranger. Over his shoulder, where Clara and Peers and Sadeem and some fellow named Marcus were waiting and failing to understand how easy this whole thing actually was.
There were eleven of them, and thanks to Kamal’s group’s preparation (something Stranger got credit for arranging, despite his lack of memory), their group was armed. Bullets weren’t always efficient against Reptars, but Reptars fought with claws and teeth — and aboard that entire ship, there were only three.
Three foes between them and the Ark. Between them and the end of everything. Between the end of his and Kindred’s twenty-year tension and its final resolution. Between the anger and hatred that tore at Stranger’s gut — the guilt and pain he’d increasingly learned to feel but could no longer abide.