It should have been enough. Maybe it would be, one day.
Now, though, she sat with the others in Paul and Persephone’s living room and tried not to notice most of them watching her, as if they’d halfway expected her to already be sporting a noticeable baby bump. That would come soon enough, probably, but even if the baby was developing at roughly three times its normal rate, it wouldn’t be enough for her to be showing yet.
Grayson came into the room, and she had to force herself not to gasp. Persephone had vaguely mentioned something about “making sure he looked the part,” but Kara hadn’t realized what that meant until now. His hair was cut short in a severe military style, and he wore brown contact lenses to hide the brilliant green of his eyes. Although she knew the plan was for him to change into hiking gear as part of his disguise, now he wore the black jumpsuit Lance had ordered, probably to check the fit and overall look of the outfit one last time.
Even though Kara had not been with the group that infiltrated the alien base the first time, she could tell Grayson’s current appearance was just a little too close to the mark. Paul’s eyes narrowed, and Persephone paled before reaching out to take her husband’s hand. Michael nodded, as if in approval. And Lance — well, he only sat up a even straighter next to her on the couch before saying,
“Looks good. Seph, looks like you’ve got a second career as a hairstylist lined up if the whole psychic thing doesn’t work out for you.”
She made a sour face. “Very funny. Not much involved — we got some clippers at a beauty supply store, and I looked up how to do it online. Don’t think I’m going to give my stylist a run for her money any time soon.”
Grayson looked a little puzzled, but then he glanced down at himself and smoothed his hands over the waist of the jumpsuit. “It’s really close. Your seamstress did a good job.”
Lance’s tone sharpened. “Close, but not exact?”
“The fabric feels a little softer, but it looks right. I doubt anyone will get close enough to feel it…and if they do, I’m going to have more important things to worry about.”
The words were spoken carelessly enough, but Kara knew the bravado was only for show. His muscular frame seemed to fairly radiate nervous energy, like a spring that had been wound too tightly. And what would happen when he finally blew?
She wished she could go to him, put her arms around him and let him know that she didn’t consider him expendable, that someone in this world cared about what happened to him. Right now, though, that didn’t sound very feasible, and besides, something in the set of his jaw told her he probably wouldn’t be too receptive to that sort of display. No, she would have to hold on to what had passed between them at the creek and hope it would be enough.
Lance looked at his watch. “It’s almost two. Are you ready?”
Grayson nodded. “Yes. I’ll go and change.”
He left the room, and Kara crossed her arms and said, “So you’re really going ahead with this.”
Her words had been directed at Lance, but, surprisingly, it was Persephone who answered. “I don’t think we have much choice. Grayson knows what he’s doing. I don’t feel anything from him but determination.”
Of course you wouldn’t, because that’s what he is feeling. Never mind whether it’s right or wrong.
Kara knew any further protests would only be met with more of this unwavering calm, this certainty of the path ahead. From where she sat on the love seat, Kiki looked troubled. She wouldn’t protest, though, not when everyone else seemed so determined. Kara couldn’t even say whether that was a good thing or not. At some point you just had to let things take their course…whatever that meant.
Grayson returned, this time wearing a T-shirt, khaki cargo shorts, and brown hiking boots, a Sun Devils baseball cap covering his freshly shorn hair. From one hand hung an innocuous-looking gray backpack. You’d never guess that pack carried more than twenty pounds of C-4.
Before she realized what she was doing, Kara had risen to her feet and gone to Grayson. “You get in and out,” she whispered fiercely. “No heroics. Got that?”
He nodded, but she could tell from his expression that he did so only to humor her. For a few seconds he hesitated, and then he placed his hand on her stomach, so quickly an onlooker would have missed the movement altogether if he hadn’t been watching closely. “You be careful, too.”
And then he turned and said to Paul, “I’m ready.”
Paul had already been standing at the edge of the room, car keys dangling from his hand. They’d decided Paul would be the one to drive Grayson to the drop-off point. Lance would remain here, to be their remote lookout, as it were. Not much fun for Paul, who would have to loiter near the hiking trail in Boynton in case Grayson actually did make it back out again, but Paul had already said he wouldn’t just dump Grayson there and then leave.
Persephone wasn’t overly thrilled with this part of the plan, although she’d kept her protests to a minimum. The risk for Paul wasn’t all that huge — he’d be near a known hiking trail, in an area that got enough traffic that he should be safe enough during daylight hours. Still, Kara understood all too well the strained expression on the psychic’s face, the worry that the man she cared about was putting himself at risk.
Whereas Lance…
He stood off to one side, next to the fireplace, and he was giving Michael a run for the “great stone face” competition. Whatever he might be thinking, he wasn’t showing it. Maybe he’d been willing to put himself in harm’s way. But he was more valuable here, because he was the only one with even a chance of seeing what was going on and reporting back on it. Persephone’s clairvoyance wasn’t reliable enough for something as important as this.
Kara stared across the room at Grayson. He looked more like himself in his current getup, but dark contact lenses covered the green eyes she’d thought so striking, and his regular features were so still they might as well be a mask. For an instant she thought she saw something pass over his face, swift and subtle as cloud shadows racing over the desert floor, but she couldn’t begin to say what it was.
He pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on, covering those unfamiliar dark eyes.
“Let’s do this,” he said.
* * *
No, Lance had been less than happy about being left behind, even though he understood the reasoning behind it. As Persephone had said many times, she wasn’t technically a clairvoyant. She could see things sometimes, but the visions came and went at their own whim, and not by her control. So naturally it fell to him, the only one with this sort of training, to give the group their sole window into what was happening out beyond Boynton Canyon.
They sat around the Olivers’ dining room table, hands clasped together as if they were holding an old-time séance. This had actually been Michael’s idea.
“Transmit it to Persephone and me, and we’ll pass it along to the rest.”
Lance had been more than a little skeptical, especially since he wasn’t sure he’d be able to maintain focus while experiencing that sort of contact, but damned if he hadn’t felt something similar to a small but powerful electric current running down his arms and into Michael’s and Persephone’s fingers. That charge seemed to make its way around the group as they laced their fingers in one another’s, eliciting a startled gasp from Kara and a muttered “what the hell?” from Jeff Makowski.
But Lance didn’t have time to think about any of that, didn’t have time to do anything but let his mind drift free from his body, let that finely tuned part of his consciousness break loose, moving across the hot sand and scrubby mesquite and juniper, focusing at last on a narrow trail, hardly more than a track, and the silver pickup truck moving along it. A sign announced the location of the trail head, and there was a slightly wider spot in the road where you could park. The pickup stopped there, and two men got out.
Paul wore the Aussie digger hat that no one had the courage to tell him made him look more than a little foolis
h, while Grayson still had on the Sun Devils baseball cap. They appeared to converse for a moment, and then Grayson set off along the trail. Paul removed his hat, ran his hand through his hair, and replaced the hat. He was probably wishing the monsoon rains from the day before would return.
No such luck, though; the day was mercilessly bright. Paul leaned up against the pickup, on the side that afforded a little shade because of the junipers growing next to the trail head, and settled down to wait.
Shifting focus, Lance watched as Grayson moved sure-footed over the rocky trail, rising as it headed farther back into the canyon. The rock walls to either side seemed to move ever closer to one another as the way narrowed, and the spot was further choked with manzanita and even the odd scrubby pine. But the hybrid kept walking quickly, pack slung casually over one shoulder as if he carried nothing more threatening than a few spare water bottles, a fresh T-shirt, and a GPS tracker.
At length, though, he reached the spot they had determined would be best to change out of his hiking gear and into the uniform all the hybrids wore. He did so with an easy economy of movement, stripping off the shorts and T-shirt, removing the baseball cap…and strapping the C-4 to his body, around his waist and to either thigh, before pulling the jumpsuit over everything. The little blocks of C-4, designed to be inconspicuous, did not even show up as bulges once he was fully dressed again.
Down the table Kara made a frightened little sound, but Lance ignored it. No, they hadn’t told her about that part of the plan, but really, what had she expected? It wasn’t as if the hybrids walked around carrying backpacks, and Grayson had to get the explosives into the base somehow.
The image wavered slightly, and Lance set his jaw, focusing only on the half-alien man, on the way he carefully stuffed the backpack out of sight among several clumps of manzanita before he headed back up the trail again, moving ever closer to the junction with the narrow ravine that would lead him down into Secret Canyon and to the back entrance to the base. It felt darker here, although the sun was still high in the sky. It was only the canyon walls leaning in toward one another high above. Or maybe it was something else…the dark energy from the alien stronghold flowing outward and touching the territory all around it.
A fancy, and one Lance wouldn’t allow himself to entertain. Watch. Observe. He was only a set of eyes, a camera to transmit the images to everyone else in the group. Faintly he was aware of Michael’s rough, firm grip on his left hand, and Persephone’s warm, delicate fingers on his right. Because of them he could feel his own power amplified, strengthening and sharpening the vision so it was clearer than any remote viewing he had ever done.
Grayson’s steps slowed. It seemed he had begun the final approach to the base, and so he approached with extreme caution, moving from one outcropping to the next, using the stunted manzanita bushes as cover as he inched ever closer. At last he came to the spot where the ravine opened out into a narrow little canyon, a place that should have been just as deserted as the narrow defile through which he’d just come…but which hummed with activity.
Two soft-sided trucks, obviously some kind of army surplus vehicles, were backed up to the loading dock, which yawned open. Because of the angle of the light, you couldn’t see what was inside, but there was no mistaking the forms of the men loading boxes off the truck, putting them on some sort of odd hand trucks that floated a few inches off the rocky ground rather than rolling along it, and moving the hand carts inside.
Every single one of those men looked just like Grayson.
Persephone’s fingers tightened on Lance’s, and from across the table there was a sudden intake of breath that could have only come from Kara, but other than that everyone remained still, their minds turned inward, focusing on the impossible images flowing into their brains. Lance breathed in as well, maintaining the focus, not allowing himself to think of anything except the scene playing itself out on the flickering movie screen inside his mind.
Grayson was hesitating, watching the ebb and flow of the men who wore his face as they went about their business. After a few minutes, they seemed to be finished with unloading the truck. Two of them closed it up, got in, and drove away, down a barely perceptible track that seemed to lead back toward Boynton. Four remained in place to guard the entrance, just as Grayson had described in his last hypnosis session with Persephone.
That stance Lance remembered all too clearly — feet slightly apart, hands on the guns at their hips, dark eyes blank and yet at the same time piercing, scanning the area like a laser-guided burglar alarm. The hybrids weren’t the kind of soldiers who would get bored and start chatting about baseball scores or getting drunk or their last lay. No, they would remain fixed in place, implacable, unswerving.
Once again he could feel Persephone’s grip tensing on his, and this time it didn’t relax. He didn’t blame her for being worried, but he couldn’t think about that right now. There was nothing any of them could do for Grayson, except hope that the combination of his hybrid reflexes and strangely human mind would be enough for him to get the drop on them.
Even as this thought passed Lance’s mind, Grayson walked out of the ravine, in full view of the four hybrids guarding the service entrance. What the hell?
Something must have passed between them mentally, because none of them made any hostile moves or did anything but acknowledge him with a nod so faint it was barely perceptible. He approached them, hands obviously empty, nothing but another of their brethren, come perhaps to beef up the detail or to relieve one of them.
And then…
So quickly Lance still wasn’t sure exactly what he was seeing, a knife came flying from seemingly nowhere and buried itself in one of the hybrid soldiers’ throats. The other three reacted swiftly, soundlessly, closing on Grayson at once, but with another flick, this time of his left hand, another knife flashed through the air and lodged itself in yet another jugular. The soldier dropped, and the remaining two were on Grayson.
Or rather, they were on the space he had previously occupied. He’d dropped to the ground, swung out with one leg, toppling the soldier closest to him. A muffled blast, and the hybrid fell away, blood pouring from a gaping hole in his chest. This time the last soldier standing did manage to draw his weapon, but another muzzle flared, and he fell, too, bleeding from the stomach. For good measure, Grayson reached out and snapped his neck with one swift motion before rising to his feet. A quick glance downward — apparently to make sure none of his erstwhile compatriots’ blood had gotten on his uniform — and then he was dragging them away from the door, shoving the bodies behind a pile of boulders that sat to one side of the back entrance. He returned, straightened his jumpsuit slightly even as he slipped into his breast pocket the key card he’d lifted from one of the dead men, and put one thumb up to the faintly glowing blue scanner next to the large metal door.
Lance didn’t quite hold his breath, though he knew if this part didn’t work — if something about Grayson had changed forever when Persephone’s energy blast passed through him — then all that virtuoso killing would have been for nothing. But the door slid open at once, and Grayson moved inside.
They had successfully infiltrated the base.
* * *
Maybe it hadn’t really sunk in, even after all this time. Maybe Kara had just managed to convince herself that Grayson wasn’t like all those other hybrids, was different on some fundamental level. Seeing it all play out, though, in those too-sharp images somehow filtering through from Lance’s own remarkable mind, brought home to her that, whatever else he might have become, Grayson had been created to be a finely tuned killing machine.
She sat rigid in her chair, eyes tightly closed, and watched as Grayson slipped inside the base and shut the door behind him. As soon as it was closed, his entire body language changed. He straightened, and his shoulders went back as he stared ahead with an all-too-convincing facsimile of the same blank gaze as the soldiers he had just killed. A few strides, and he was in the corridor and moving
eastward, to his left.
According to what Grayson had told Lance and Paul about the layout of the base, the level with the reactor was directly above this floor. No access there for the hybrids, but detonating approximately twenty pounds of C4 directly beneath it would be enough to blow right through the roof and into the reactor. Since a fusion reactor depended on an extremely delicate balance of perfect conditions to continue operating, chances were it wouldn’t be in any shape to power anything for quite some time to come afterward…if ever.
In the hallway were more hybrids, but none of them seemed to pay any attention to Grayson. Why should they? He was one of them, after all.
Kara swallowed, thinking of how she had once been cradled in those powerful arms, felt those tight, grim lips pressed against hers. Amazing how a shift in expression and demeanor could change him so much that she wasn’t sure if she would have recognized him if she’d passed him on the street.
He stopped at a door, ran his stolen key card through the lock next to it. The door opened without a pause. Why shouldn’t it? This area was only more storage, something innocuous, safe.
Funny how Persephone and Lance and Michael had spoken more than once of their own adventures inside the base, and yet Kara had never gotten a very clear image of it. The place was strangely prosaic, proportions and technology — aside from those strange hover hand carts — not so very different from what she would have expected to see in any military installation. Were the aliens really not as advanced as she had feared, or were they borrowing human technology when it suited them? It would be that much harder to prove anything strange was going on in the base, should they ever have to abandon it to be discovered by human beings.
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