The Rogue World

by Matthew J. Kirby

  Finn’s thoughts left the Himalayas and returned home, imagining his life before this whole thing started. He thought of his mom, wondering what the G.E.T. had told her about her sons, the terrorists. She would blame his dad, like she always did, and Finn and Julian would be caught in the middle. That was a hard place to be, because the truth was that his mom was partially right. His dad definitely wasn’t perfect. But that didn’t make him a bad guy.

  At least, he hadn’t always been a bad guy. Now that he had signed on with Watkins’s plan, Finn wasn’t sure anymore. Still, sitting on that mountain in the cold, he wished his dad and his brother were there with him, just the same.

  “Look,” Betty whispered.

  Below them, something lumbered. Quiet. Slow. Big.

  The yeti had come back.

  No one made a sound. Finn couldn’t even hear Betty or Dr. Von Albrecht breathing next to him, but he wasn’t sure he was breathing, either. The creature made its way slowly to where it had crouched before. This time, the yeti knew they were there, and it knew they knew it was there. Apparently, it had decided it didn’t care, and watched them with its dark eyes, sniffing the air with its white nose.

  “What do we do?” Betty whispered.

  “What can we do?” Dr. Von Albrecht asked.

  “We can hope it doesn’t decide we’re with the G.E.T. and turn on us,” Finn said.

  The yeti let out a deep huff, releasing a jet of fog from its nostrils and mouth. Then it turned and regarded the Yggdrasil Facility with the same interest it had shown earlier that night. Finn could see the muscles underneath its heavy fur tightening in its arms and shoulders. He could almost feel its anger.

  “I don’t like this,” Betty said.

  Dr. Von Albrecht blew into his fist. “It seems—”

  The yeti raised both of its fists over its head and brought them down hard, slamming the ground. The deep thud reached into Finn’s stomach.

  “Oh no,” he said.

  The yeti pounded again. And again. And again. And this time, it also let out a roar that filled the valley. There was no way the G.E.T. agents hadn’t heard it down at their facility. But then a new sound reached Finn: a deep rumble that seemed to emerge from everywhere at once.

  “It’s happening,” Dr. Von Albrecht said. “We need to climb!”

  The professor and Betty turned and scrambled up the hill. Finn followed after them while looking back over his shoulder. Before he’d climbed far, he saw a group of people spill out of the main G.E.T. building. They were too far away for Finn to see who they were, or whether his dad or Julian or Eleanor were among them. The yeti must have noticed them, too, because it hit the ground and roared again.

  The rumble grew louder, and then it seemed the entire lower half of the mountain shifted and sagged. The crack widened, a deep fissure opening like a scream, while the yeti bounded up and away, disappearing as quickly as it had before. Down below, most of the people seemed to be rushing toward the helicopter, but a few broke away from the others and moved toward the transports resting near a radio tower. Finn hoped that was Luke with the others.

  In the next moment, whatever had been holding the snow at bay finally gave out, and the mountain released its immense burden. The smooth surface disintegrated, rushing down and away from Finn in a tumbling, churning landslide that appeared almost liquid, its thunder deafening. He lost sight of the facility below, as well as the people running to escape.

  “Finn, move!” Betty shouted from above.

  Finn looked down as the snow beneath his feet shifted. The edge of the avalanche had leaped up toward him, ready to pull the ground out from under him. He turned and clambered on all fours, scrambling until he reached higher, stable ground, and watched the place where he’d been fall away.

  Betty and Dr. Von Albrecht came to his side, and a few moments later most of the avalanche had settled, save a few places where snow continued to tumble in chunks. The Yggdrasil Facility was almost entirely buried, except for the tops of several towers. The snow had covered the helicopter, along with anyone who had tried to reach it. The transports were covered, too, but Finn knew where they were. He spotted the radio tower jutting out at an angle, bent by the force of the avalanche.

  “My God,” Betty whispered.

  Finn turned and ran toward the tent. “We have to hurry! I saw them heading toward the transports!”

  “Who?” Betty asked. “Luke? Did you see Luke?”

  “I don’t know,” Finn said. “I’m not sure who it was. I’m not even sure they made it inside. But I’m sure I saw someone.” He hoped it was Luke with Eleanor and the others. And he hoped his dad and Julian were still back in Cairo.

  Betty nodded as Finn reached into the tent and pulled out a foldable snow shovel. Then he turned and began the now much more treacherous journey down the mountain.

  “Are you coming?” he asked. “Even if they got inside the transport, their oxygen won’t last forever.”

  “Right,” Dr. Von Albrecht said.

  Betty went to the tent and pulled out their second shovel. Then she and Dr. Von Albrecht joined Finn, and together the three of them picked their way down the mountain. The ground was unsteady now, and their boots sank deep in the freshly tilled snow, but eventually they reached the bent radio tower. Finn looked around, trying to fix their position, and chose the spot he thought most likely.

  “I think it’s here,” he said. “Let’s dig.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  ELEANOR AND UNCLE JACK SAT AT A METAL TABLE IN A small room just off the cave chamber housing the Master Concentrator. Closed blinds covered the upper half of one wall; the other three walls were windowless. But Eleanor could still sense the alien structure, could still feel its artificial intelligence inside her mind, and wished she could get farther away from it. Uncle Jack sagged in his chair. His ribs were cracked, and he’d been electrocuted by the G.E.T. guards. But he opened his eyes and gave her a serious look.

  “Are you all right?” His breath came in wheezes. “When I realized you’d left me in that tunnel, Ell Bell—”

  “I’m fine.” She wasn’t sure how much to tell him about the Concentrator. She didn’t want him to worry, and she could only imagine how he’d felt when he woke up to find her gone. Back in Cairo, he had trusted her. He’d turned his back on Eleanor’s mom to help her, and she didn’t know how to tell him they had lost. She knew now she couldn’t shut the Concentrator down. Somehow, a new intelligence had combined with the first one, and together they were much too strong for her.

  He peered at her more intently. “But—”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Really. I—”

  The door opened, and Dr. Watkins strode in. He was wearing military-style fatigues instead of his usual suit. His hands were clasped behind his back, his brow set low. This was the man her mother had chosen to follow. This was the man responsible for the death of Amaru. This was the man against whom Eleanor had been fighting, one of the most powerful people on the planet. And yet compared to the alien intelligence she had just escaped, he was nothing but a feeble old man.

  “Where is my mom?” she asked. “And Dr. Powers and Julian?”

  “They are perfectly safe,” he said. “But we don’t have much time, so I’ll make this brief. We’ve lost control of all the Concentrators, including this one.”

  “You’ve . . . lost control of the Concentrators?” Eleanor tried to thicken each word with as much sarcasm as she could.

  Watkins either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Yes. I’m sure you sensed it. Every other Concentrator in the world has gone quiet, and this one has become the primary nexus for all the earth’s telluric energy.” He pointed down at the ground. “And we can’t reclaim any of it.”

  “The Concentrator is sending it into space,” Eleanor said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So why don’t you stop it?” Eleanor asked.

  Watkins wiped his brow and looked back up. “I told you we don�
��t have much time. And yet you insist on asking irrelevant questions.”

  “It’s not irrelevant,” Eleanor said.

  “Clearly I would stop it if I could. Clearly I must have tried. You are a very clever girl, and you must know the answer to your question.”

  Eleanor said nothing.

  “What did you just do out there?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  Watkins crossed the room to the blinds and pulled them open, revealing the Master Concentrator, its branches still wringing themselves together like fingers, twisting as if alive. “Something you did set the Concentrator off. Those . . . spasms began when you touched it.”

  “You’re saying it’s my fault you lost control?”

  “I didn’t say that. But you achieved something out there.”

  “What did she achieve?” Uncle Jack asked. Eleanor could hear the menace and anger in his voice, weak as it was.

  Watkins unfastened the button at the neck of his fatigues. “For the past few days that machine has ignored me. I haven’t been able to make contact of any kind with it. But Eleanor clearly did. It reacted to her. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Eleanor said.

  “Stop it!” Watkins nearly spat. “Stop lying—”

  “I’m not!” Eleanor said. “I really don’t know! I didn’t do anything different than before.”

  “And it let you in?” Watkins asked.

  Eleanor nodded.

  “Then what?”

  “Then . . . it tried to kill me.”

  From the corner of her eye, Eleanor saw Uncle Jack jerk up straighter, staring at her. She avoided looking back at him.

  “How?” Watkins asked.

  “It tried to . . . shut down my mind. The same way I shut down the other Concentrators. Like it was strangling me. It was way stronger than the others.”

  “It’s the Master Concen—”

  “No,” Eleanor said. “It was more than that. There was something else inside it. Like two intelligences had joined together.” For now, she kept the presence of the silent observer to herself. “Like they’re zooids.”

  Watkins lifted an eyebrow at her use of that word. “Have you been reading my work?”

  Eleanor nodded.

  “Where do you think this new intelligence came from?”

  Something in the way he asked the question led Eleanor to suspect he already had a theory of his own. “I don’t know, but I felt it arrive when we were taking off back in Cairo.”

  Watkins smiled. “You are a very clever girl.”

  “Whatever. Tell us what you’re thinking.”

  “Very well. I felt it arrive at the same time you did. When the alien ship landed.”

  “The—” Eleanor wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that. “The alien ship?”

  “Yes. You may be clever, but you would also be wise to remember you don’t know everything. A ship landed in England, near Stonehenge. And unfortunately, the whole world knows about it. Cell phone footage and satellite images went public before we could contain them.”

  “Well,” Uncle Jack said, “it’s about time the world knew what was really going on here.”

  “Really?” Watkins took an empty chair and joined them at the table. “Since you all ran off, the riots in Cairo have spread well beyond my facility at the pyramids. The Egyptians have started destroying the European settlements and expelling—even killing—the refugees.”

  “Why?” Eleanor asked. “They have nothing to do with it.”

  “Why, indeed. Because when the human mind is frightened, it searches for a reason. Something or someone to blame. And the first target it lands on is often something—or someone—unfamiliar. An outsider.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” Eleanor said.

  “Neither does an alien race channeling telluric currents to power its civilization while destroying an entire planet in the process. And yet here we are. The world has now connected this latest ice age to an extraterrestrial threat. They have all the details wrong, of course. But that doesn’t matter. Now the UN is coming after me, and I need to give them answers. Immediately. Before the world descends into complete chaos, destroying everything I’ve worked to achieve.”

  “You think I’m going to help you with that?” Eleanor said.

  “I think you care about this world as much as I do,” Watkins said. “And you’ll do almost anything to save it.”

  Eleanor looked into his eyes. They were watery and bloodshot from fatigue. He’d probably been awake since the ship had crashed and he’d lost control of his grand plan.

  But he was right. She would do almost anything. And she knew he cared about the world, in his own way.

  “Is the alien ship doing anything?” Uncle Jack asked. “Has it attacked?”

  “No,” Watkins said.

  “Have we attacked it?”

  “Not yet,” Watkins said. “And I would like to keep it that way, which is one more reason I need Eleanor’s help.”

  “I’m not going to help you lie,” she said.

  “I’m not asking you to. Quite the opposite, in fact. From you, I want nothing but the truth.”

  “I’ve told you the truth.” Eleanor found the room getting hot, and wanted to take off her snow gear. “You’re the one who has lied.”

  “I admit that readily,” Watkins said. “And I will continue to lie when the truth is too dangerous.”

  “After everything you just told me, you would still lie?”

  “Yes.”

  Eleanor couldn’t believe it. She wanted to scream in frustration. “The whole reason we’re sitting here is because you believed your own lie! You could never control the Concentrators! You only convinced yourself and the UN that you could.”

  Uncle Jack let out a satisfied humph. Watkins looked at him, and then looked back at Eleanor, and it seemed that the fight had slipped out of him.

  “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “Perhaps I believed what I wanted to believe. That is another human weakness, and I suppose it is possible that I am susceptible to it.”

  “You suppose it is possible?” Eleanor said.

  Watkins sighed. “Perhaps even probable.”

  Eleanor leaned away from him, shaking her head.

  “So what now?” Uncle Jack gestured toward the Master Concentrator convulsing on the other side of the glass. “We have this thing, and Eleanor can’t stop it. Neither can you. And now there’s an alien ship.”

  Watkins propped his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together before him. “Perhaps Eleanor gave us the solution.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “You say it felt as if two of the alien zooid intelligences had merged.” He looked out the window. “What if we adopt the same strategy?”

  “What do you mean?” Uncle Jack asked.

  “What if Eleanor and I combine our efforts and face the Master Concentrator together?”

  “If they can team up, so can we?” Eleanor said.

  “Exactly.”

  “But humans aren’t zooids,” Uncle Jack said. “What are you proposing?”

  “I don’t know,” Watkins said. “I’ve never tried anything like this.”

  “And you want to try with Eleanor?” Uncle Jack shook his head, but it was heavy, without a lot of strength behind it. “No. Not on my watch. She just said that thing almost killed her—”

  “Uncle Jack—” He was starting to sound like her mom.

  “I understand your concern,” Watkins said. “I do, but please remember, I’ll be exposing my own mind to the same risk.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Uncle Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Here’s the thing, Mr. G.E.T. Man. I know your type, and I’m betting that if things turn south, you’ll be the one who makes it out.”

  “Trust me,” Watkins said, “you do not know my type.” He turned to Eleanor. “While I respect your uncle’s concern, the decision is not his. It is y
ours.”

  Uncle Jack reached a hand toward her, wincing from the pain. “Ell Bell—”

  Eleanor cut them both off with a raised palm. She needed to think. She needed to put everything together, if she could.

  She now knew that an alien ship had landed just before the Concentrators had changed the earth’s telluric currents. The new presence she’d felt back in Cairo must have been the alien intelligence on board the ship, and she assumed from what Watkins had told her that it had come down from the rogue world to take control. It had merged with the Master Concentrator and become something too powerful for her to stop.

  But was Watkins right? Was it possible to join forces with him and stop it together? How far did their genetic connection go? Uncle Jack had it, too, but he didn’t seem to be in any shape to help.

  “If I do help you,” she said, “if we stop it, what then?”

  “What do you mean?” Watkins asked.

  “What will you do?”

  “Well, if we are able to shut down the Master Concentrator, that changes everything. But if you’re asking me whether the Preservation Protocol will be voided, that is not my decision to make. Contrary to what you may believe, I am not a tyrant. Recent developments certainly call our plan into question, but any deviation would have to be approved by the UN and the Global Energy Trust board of—”

  “That’s not good enough,” Eleanor said. “I’m not going to help you fix this just so you can go back to writing off most of the human race as an acceptable loss.”

  “I can promise you this,” Watkins said. “I will make certain you have the opportunity to plead your case. Your voice will be heard.”

  “Yeah, right,” Uncle Jack said. “You’ve called her a terrorist!”

  “You have my word,” Watkins said.

  “Don’t trust him, Ell Bell.”

  Eleanor didn’t trust him, but she also didn’t think he was lying. If Watkins promised something, Eleanor believed he meant it. But was that enough for her to help him?

  She turned and looked out the window at the thrashing branches. Whatever the Concentrator had been doing before, it appeared to have accelerated its activity after her attempt to stop it. Perhaps, strong as it was, the combined intelligence inside it felt threatened. That’s how it appeared, anyway, and if that was true, Eleanor felt a momentary flare of confidence. If it was afraid, that meant it believed it could be beaten.