by Sean Platt
Cameron glanced at the trio preparing to try for the ranch house, maybe for the money pit that had so fascinated Benjamin.
He felt the hand return to his back. He turned.
“There’s something you’re forgetting,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“They can travel through space, maybe time. They can read humanity’s minds with rows of rocks. They can fly faster than the eye can see, and they can level cities.”
“I’m not forgetting any of that,” Cameron said grimly, knowing a punch line was coming.
“They have everything under control,” she said. “But they can lose it, too.”
Cameron looked at Piper, unsure how to respond, feeling a scintilla of hope for a reason he could barely understand. He’d expected a platitude that meant nothing. And this, too, seemed to mean nothing. But it mattered. For all the world, it mattered.
Cameron opened his mouth to reply. But then he saw movement in the corner of his eye and knew their time was up.
Andreus was giving the sign: now or never.
CHAPTER 4
Lila stared out the window, watching the city attempt to settle. It didn’t seem to want to.
She could sympathize. Lila wasn’t sure if she was angry, afraid, or some third terrible emotion. There had been a time when she’d been happy, a time when she’d been innocent, looking forward to little things like movies and time spent with friends. But those days were so far gone as to feel like another person’s memories. These days, Lila was a mother whose child was closer to a sister, with a family that had been shattered like glass on tile. People kept coming and going. She’d grown used to Piper in their strange new digs (also more like a sister than a stepmother), but now she was gone, too. So was Trevor. And not long ago she’d seen her mother run across the lawn with her father, sure in a bizarre way that they were leaving as well.
Leaving her trapped with Raj.
Lila wanted to shiver. The thought made her glance at Clara, who was now sleeping peacefully. She’d been restless a while ago, following her return to the room after … after whatever that was up in the network center. After Raj had trussed Lila’s mother and Terrence, who were supposed to be friends but seemed to have become enemies. After Dad had turned on Raj and shot him with darts to knock the asshole flat.
Then the shuttle out front. Terrence being taken away under Titan and Reptar guard. The shuttle flying high, disappearing somehow through the mothership’s titanic silver belly above the Apex. Terrence maybe gone forever, just a shade from family himself.
The door opened without a knock. Lila turned to see Christopher, his dark eyes worried.
“Where’s your father?”
Lila shook her head.
“When did you see him last?”
“He was running off with Mom.”
“With Heather?”
Lila nodded. The tension in Christopher’s voice was unnerving. Lila wondered if she’d been rationalizing all she’d seen and realized with horror that she probably had been. Not long after Terrence had been taken away, guards had begun to mill about, alerted but unclear on their orders. She’d seen shuttles buzz by like agitated wasps. Meyer’s leaving the grounds on foot was, as Christopher seemed to imply, a bit unusual, and leaving with his ex-wife not long after his current wife had turned traitor was stranger still. Maybe they were leaving too. Soon, Lila, Clara, Raj, and Christopher would be the only people left. They could become the new viceroys, with Mo Weir as an assistant and a direct line to Divinity in the mothership overhead.
Christopher went to the window, where Lila had been a moment earlier.
“What is it, Christopher?”
“We’re not being told.”
“By who?”
Christopher opened the sash without answering. Lila realized how odd the city sounded. Everything was still, but the silence felt pregnant — the kind of quiet where agitation pauses in its tracks, freezing in unnatural positions. Sometime after Lila’s mom and dad had left the grounds, buzz from the Astrals — both inside the house and outside in the streets — had become … uneasy. There was no other word for it. They weren’t precisely nervous, because they didn’t seem to get nervous. But Lila, with echoes of the old psychic intuition she’d felt before Clara’s birth and occasionally thereafter as her mother, could sense that unease coming from them all.
Something had gone wrong, and Lila hadn’t wanted to ask what it was. The last time the city had seemed this unsettled, it turned out an armored tank had crashed the walls and taken Trevor and Piper away. Lila had thought them dead, and believed her mother dead as well. This felt worse. Like the city itself had taken a stake through the heart.
“Who’s not talking, Christopher?” Lila repeated.
Christopher returned to full height shaking his head, sighing, frustrated.
“Take your pick. The Astrals. Captain Jons, who’s now sending orders through the house like a dictator.”
“How can the human police captain send orders through the house?”
“I don’t know. Ask Mo Weir.” He made a little gesture of fake recognition. “Oh, wait, no, you can’t. Because Mo isn’t talking either. Only Raj is talking.”
“Raj!”
“Oh yes. Raj has lots to say. He’s giving orders like the viceroy himself. Stuff your dad wouldn’t let him do if he knew. That’s why I need to find him. To shut that little motherfucker up.” He looked at Clara, still sleeping, and Lila. His eyes almost seemed to apologize. Raj was Lila’s husband and Clara’s father, but nobody, here and now, was ready to fault Christopher for speaking his mind.
“It’s fine. He is a little motherfucker.”
Lila told Christopher the story of what she’d seen earlier, how Raj had been lording over her mother like a dictator on the prowl, and about her father’s change of heart.
“Your dad shot Raj?”
“With a dart gun.”
Christopher went back to the window then the door, unsettled like the falsely calm city. “That might explain it.”
“What?”
“He’s claiming the viceroyship, if you can believe it. As interim head, anyway. Says Meyer is compromised.”
“Nobody will believe that.” Lila almost laughed.
“The Astrals are scattered, Li. My people don’t know who to listen to. Remember, Raj outranks me. Doesn’t seem to matter that his position is symbolic; there’s nobody around to contradict him, and everyone knows he’s listed as commander, even though that’s not a thing in our hierarchy. So he’s taken control of the guard, sending people all over the house and grounds like chess pieces. Telling them to watch out for your father. I heard him say he was taking credit for ‘having it handled’ when your mom knocked him out or … ” Christopher shook his head, half squinting as he continued, “or something. I don’t know. I just need to find your father.”
Christopher’s urgency was making a nervous bubble rise inside her. It was strong intuition, bordering on foreknowledge. But Clara was the clairvoyant, not her. Her creeping sense of unease wasn’t a real thing. It was Lila jumping at shadows like always.
Outside the door, down the hallway, she heard the rushing of feet. A moment later, Lila’s mother burst into the room, her front dark with a thick, brick-red stain, her hair a halo of black loose ends, her makeup smeared, her face a mess. Her usual arrogance was gone. Her confidence — fake or put on — was missing. Her self-importance and sarcasm had fled. She simply spilled into the room, running on bare feet, ramming into the door frame as she turned, striking the wall, rebounding, facing her daughter with a countenance full of fear and sorrow and tears and snot.
“Mom?”
Lila’s stomach dropped like an elevator. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh in an instant, her internal temperature dropping to zero.
“Lila!” She grabbed her by both upper arms, marking them with filth as if she’d spent the last hour running, crawling through the streets on hands and knees.
The r
oom’s complement doubled then tripled as uniformed men and women poured into the hallway. Their feet ceased as they saw Christopher, as their quarry stopped running and stopped in front of Lila. A few had their guns out, some raised, some still pointing. Christopher could hear high-pitched shouts from behind: Raj, seeing the chase, coming to shout his orders.
“Mom, what is it?”
Heather watched Lila for a long moment before practically crumpling — from fear, from exhaustion, from lack of breath and an overload of adrenaline. And from sadness judging by the tears streaking her face.
“It’s your father,” she said, too low, fighting to speak, to form coherent words with the guards settling into place behind her.
“What about Dad?”
Lila could already see what was coming. Heather began to sob, alarming her daughter, who’d never seen her mother so ruined.
“He’s dead.” Her eyes came up, somewhat harder. “Raj killed him.”
CHAPTER 5
Andreus and Coffey went first. Piper watched them go, feeling the warm presence of Cameron’s back beneath her hand. His body shielded hers. From the rear, she supposed Charlie guarded them both. But to Charlie, this all seemed academic. Either the Astrals knew they were here, or they didn’t. If they did, they were either letting them reach the lab, or they would soon raise a clawed (or powder-white) hand to stop them. Their course of action was the same regardless.
There would be no surrender. Not now. Not after Trevor. If they stopped now, they might keep living, whereas if they forged on, they might die — and really, hell, all of humanity might perish alongside them. Maybe it was selfish, but for Piper, that right there made the chance worth taking. Because she couldn’t return to a life of ease now. The minute she sat with peace of mind, content with the Astrals in charge, Trevor’s death would no longer matter. He’d have died for nothing. She’d rather go herself than let that happen. As horrible as it sounded fully articulated, she’d rather the entire species die than let that happen.
The bald warlord and his lieutenant crossed the space to the destroyed ranch house. Piper felt a twinge of loss; she’d learned to love Cameron inside that house. That was before she’d boarded the mothership and ridden it to Vail, back when it had still been Vail. Before she’d met Meyer again aboard that ship (though exactly when or how that had happened she couldn’t recall through the fugue that had found her) then traveled with him to their new homes as god-king and queen. Before that sense of conflict that had lasted for two years, loving her husband as much as she feared him.
“It’s insulting,” Charlie said behind Piper.
“I’m not going to just walk up there, Charlie,” Cameron said.
“This is like playing peekaboo with the mothership. Do you really think they can’t see us when we hide behind our hands?”
Cameron looked like he might reply, but it was like dealing with a robot. To Charlie, this was all odds and binary decisions, as it had been the entire trip. When they’d decided to recover the RV from Cottonwood’s front (mainly to recover the remote cell phone and check the network, Piper suspected), Charlie’s opinion had been fatalistic: They’d survived on foot, so they might as well flaunt it in an RV. And if they died, they died.
Piper had found it hard to be so sanguine after escaping the archive. She’d been terrified. But now, mainly by thinking back to Meyer, she was more on Charlie’s side than Cameron’s. Maybe the Astrals were letting them go like they’d let them before. But now there was a splinter under their shape-shifting skin. On the way to Cottonwood, the Astrals had felt they were abiding a plan. Now the same was true, but the human group, reduced in number though it was, had introduced an element of doubt.
We made them show their cards, Piper kept reminding herself to steel her resolve. Then, perhaps more to the point and telling in a way she knew was important, again by thinking back to Meyer: we made them angry.
They were no longer playing chess with computers. This wasn’t about human guile versus Astral omniscience. Now it was about ancestors and progeny, universal parents and Earthbound children. Emotion could unseat them all, it seemed — and if the stunt in the Mormon archive had pissed the aliens off, that was as encouraging to Piper as it was discouraging to everyone else.
Andreus and Coffey sprinted from cover to the home’s remains, keeping pointlessly low, looking senselessly upward.
Nothing happened. They made the house without incident then scampered down the stairs into its low-beam basement and were gone.
“How long must we wait,” Charlie said, standing tall, not bothering with the pretense of hiding, “before we pretend they’ve been sufficiently distracted enough so that we can go too?”
“Shh,” Cameron said.
“You’re insulting yourself. We all are. If they didn’t want us here, they wouldn’t have let us come.”
“Maybe we evaded them, Charlie. The network is out. Maybe they can’t access our satellites to see us.”
Charlie pointed at the mothership. “I don’t think it needs satellites to see us. Ask yourself a simple question, Cameron. Why did it come back?”
Back. Piper knew that was wrong. “Back” implied this was the same mothership that had been over the ranch before, but that ship had moved to Heaven’s Veil. And everyone knew capital motherships never left their posts. They were somehow bound to the Apex pyramids. This one was bonded to …
“The money pit,” she said.
Both men turned to look at Piper. The pan was open ahead. They should already be crossing it, making for what was left of the lab. It had been built mostly into a cliff, and from what they could see, that cliff had been mostly reduced to rubble. But the place had a lower level as well — and if Charlie was right, the Astrals wouldn’t have hit it too hard and wouldn’t hit it again. They’d needed Benjamin to read the tablet left by the Templars when they’d moved the Hammer from under Vail, and if there was any hope to find the weapon again, it was here.
The damage the ship — or possibly shuttles — had done to this place matched Piper’s feeling of their lost control.
It had been a tantrum. A petulant child destroying a house of blocks for spite; a man breaking a mirror with his fist to teach his reflection a lesson.
Charlie had it all figured out, because he was rational.
But when the Astrals had discovered their ruse in the canyon, they’d struck Piper as less than logical.
The way Meyer, increasingly, had been both more and less reasoned at once.
“What about the money pit?”
This time, Piper pointed.
“You don’t see it?”
The men squinted. To Piper, the warbling of hot air was clear as day. There was a long, narrow, perfectly straight mirage between ship and stone arch. Between the floating sphere and the place Benjamin had never been able to leave alone, sure that the fathoms-deep pit, like the one below Meyer’s Axis Mundi, held a secret. Or a port. Or a source of power.
“The arch?”
“The beam.”
Charlie had already lost interest. Cameron was staring, squinting. “I don’t see anything.”
“We’re wasting time,” Charlie said, looking at the lab, perhaps eager to see what Benjamin had left behind. He was the scientist; Benjamin was the archeologist and ancient aliens theorist. Right now, Charlie knew less than Cameron, who had more history traveling the world with his father. But if there were still records inside, Charlie’s computer brain was dying to parse them … and, he’d made clear, was positive they’d been spared on purpose.
Cameron seemed about to object, still looking for the energy beam from the pit he couldn’t see, still sure the ship would incinerate them the minute they broke cover.
But Charlie followed Andreus’s plan. Not ducking. Not running. Simply marching in the open, obeying either faith or a certainty that the Astrals wanted them here as badly as they’d wanted Benjamin to decode the tablet for them.
Cameron followed with a shrug. Piper took
the rear.
But there was a flicker of something unseen behind her. The movement of shadow.
Cameron allowed her to pass, but Piper could see the truth: whatever invisible thing was behind them, he’d seen it too.
CHAPTER 6
Raj watched Heather crumble into Lila’s arms, satisfied. The guards had let her enter the grounds because she’d barged through; they’d failed to shoot her despite his orders. But now their incompetence felt like a good thing because Heather was delivering Raj’s promotion for him. Announcing the big man’s death, and the logical ascension of his next in command.
Not Trevor. He’d left, declaring himself a traitor in the process.
Not Piper, who had no official title and who’d proved herself to be a turncoat as well.
Not Lila. She was weak and clearly unfit to lead. Lila was blood but wouldn’t take the position if offered.
Definitely not Heather. Heather wasn’t just a traitor; she was more honorary on capital grounds than anything else. Nobody liked Heather except for her family — because they had to.
Not Christopher.
Not Terrence.
And not Mo Weir, of course, considering Mo was only an aide.
No, the only logical person to step into Heaven’s Veil command was Raj.
Raj, who’d handled the traitors time and time again.
Raj, who’d always had the city’s best interests in mind.
Raj, who’d served the viceroy more faithfully than any of his family, and who’d turned on Meyer when the big man had betrayed the Astrals to help unleash the virus that had killed the network and stabbed his overlords in the back.
There’d still been a chance that Meyer would return and take the reins. He’d turned out to be a shit but had managed to talk his way past Mo and the Astrals once already. He was slippery enough to do it again.
But if Meyer had died some time after Heather had knocked Raj out with that brick? Well, it was surprisingly excellent news. He hadn’t known. He’d woken up woozy under the ministrations of maddeningly smiling Titans, unsure what had come of Heather and Meyer. He’d shouted commands to apprehend them since, but of course they’d already wrangled control.