by T. M. Catron
“Why aren’t they any closer?” Mina asked.
Then, her skin began to prickle. The hair on her arms and neck stood on end, like a current of electricity was raging through the Factory.
Doyle roared in anger.
Startled, Mina tore her gaze away from the ship to look at him.
He still stood in the middle of the window, but instead of being robed in blue light, the blackness of the aether swirled and gathered around him. Doyle shuddered, and it rose up like liquid darkness, towering over the hybrid like an upside-down tornado.
He raised his arms, palms up, like he was about to direct some hideous choir from hell.
And then he threw the aether at the glass.
Mina braced herself, expecting it to shatter. But the aether spread out along the window in twisting, writhing tentacles of smoke. It swirled around her and Lincoln, stealing her breath and threatening to crush her body. Doyle disappeared behind the aether.
“NO!” he yelled.
The aether backed off, then crept along the adarria and pushed itself inside the grooves.
As it disappeared into the walls, the adarria came alive. They twisted and, just like the aether, writhed as if angry. Mina and Lincoln barely got their fingers out in time before the grooves clamped down with a snap, changing as the adarria changed.
They backed away, stunned.
Flashes of yellow fire erupted from the new grooves like solar flares. The hot, viscous light forced them to back away before they were singed. Afraid of being blinded, Mina squeezed her eyes shut.
When the light shining through her eyelids had diminished, she dared to open them again. Doyle still stood with his back to her, his profile standing out in sharp relief to the next wave of blue energy erupting from the Condarri ship, this one brighter than the last.
Without thinking, Mina ran to him. In the increased gravity, though, her sprint was more like a tired jog. With every step she made closer to Doyle, the wave grew in intensity. She had just reached out to grab his shirt when the energy pulse hit.
This time, the aether appeared before Doyle had raised his hands. It shot back out of the adarria, swirled once around him, and then melted back again into the grooves. The flares erupting from the adarria threw Mina back. She flailed, desperately trying to keep her balance, but she felt her feet leave the ground. The window grew smaller as she was tossed the length of the room.
Her body arced through the air. The ceiling grew closer, then farther away as the stone floor rose up to meet her. Mina braced herself for the fall that would likely kill her, but the aether swept in just in time, cushioning her descent. She sprawled on the icy floor, unharmed.
Once again, Doyle had saved her.
But Mina didn’t have time to be relieved or annoyed. On the far side of the command center, he was again battling with the blue light. From here, Mina could see that was exactly what was happening. Each time the aether entered the adarria, it sailed out to the Condarri ship.
This time, it tangled up with the blue light, and the two forces fought, clashing together as lightning streaked across the mass like a warped storm.
Mina climbed to her feet to stare out the window in awe. The blue Condarri light was easier to see than the aether, but the darkness soon overwhelmed it.
When the blue light retreated, Mina almost cheered. But she was too awestruck to do more than watch. Weary, Doyle sagged against the window.
Then he jumped back in surprise. The aether returned, swirling through the room like dark magic and then floating around him. When it cleared, Mina tore her gaze away to see what Doyle was staring at.
Three more Condarri ships, bigger than the first, were heading their way.
“No,” she whispered.
Framed against the giant square window, the ships grew bigger as they approached the Factory. It looked like a movie screen, but the special effects were real, and if they all attacked at once, the screen would shatter.
This time, Doyle didn’t send the aether out of the ship. Instead, he let it grab him and carry him upward until he floated in the middle of the window.
And then the adarria began to move.
At first, Mina didn’t notice the shifting symbols at her feet. But when she almost lost her balance as the adarria moved out from under her, Mina realized the whole room was moving.
The adarria writhed as if in pain or anger. Since Mina didn’t have anything to hold onto, she held out her arms to balance and crouched low. From the shouts and cries of the others, they were having similar problems staying upright. If Mina could have walked on water, this is what she imagined it would feel like—static and fluid at the same time.
Then the Earth outside shifted. The Factory was moving. In another final blaze of white and yellow light, the Condarri ships disappeared and the stars turned into arrows of light.
The aether dissipated. Doyle stayed suspended in the middle of the window for one more moment, and then he dropped to the floor, sprawling on his side.
Finally giving up on her quest to stay on her feet, Mina collapsed on her hands and knees. The grooves of the adarria stopped shifting. The yellow flares swished through the floor. And then the room went still.
Chapter Four
After making a valiant effort to stay upright, Lincoln had finally been thrown to his feet sometime after the second wave and before the three additional ships appeared. He’d watched the entire battle from the cold floor of central command.
From somewhere off to his right, near a column, Nelson cursed.
At least he was alive.
From the sounds of people stirring, everybody was.
With a groan, Lincoln slowly got to his feet. Mina got to him before he’d regained his balance and put her arm around his waist to steady him. His bum leg wasn’t helping anything.
Outside the window, stars shone peacefully like pinpricks of light. They were the only light in the room besides the lingering effects of a few flares on the walls. The remnants of the fire burned into Lincoln’s retinas. He blinked rapidly, trying to erase it.
“What was that?” Lincoln asked Mina. His eyes finally adjusted, and he looked around. “Where’s Doyle?”
“I’m here,” Doyle called.
He emerged from the shadows to the left of the window. His face, always strong and sharp, looked haggard and pale.
Mina gasped.
“I’m alright,” Doyle said to her unasked question. He took a deep breath and checked on everybody. The others joined the group slowly, as if they were afraid to approach the hybrid.
Lincoln had trouble believing any of it. Except he’d seen it happen, so unless he had hallucinated the same thing as everyone else, Doyle had just fought off three alien warships. By himself.
“What was that?” he asked.
Doyle motioned for them to follow. “You just saw the full force of Condar attack the Factory.”
“Why aren’t we dead?” Mina asked. She looked like she wanted to let go of Lincoln and go to Doyle. She never took her eyes off his face.
“I stopped it with the aether.”
“And then what happened?”
“I moved the ship.”
“You flew the Factory?”
“Yes.”
“Where are the other hybrids?”
“Safe. They helped.”
“Why didn’t we just blast the aliens out of the solar system?” Nelson asked. “Surely a ship this size wouldn’t have had trouble.”
“If you think I’m a coward, Nelson, and that we should have stayed to fight, you are sadly mistaken.”
Nelson paled. “Oh man. I didn’t think that. That was the most serious bit of voodoo I’ve ever witnessed. I only wondered why we couldn’t attack those ships the same way they attacked us.”
“This ship is meant neither to fly nor to attack. It is a factory only. It’s more like a space station that can move. The adarria are the only ones who can fly it though. In the end, it took every bit of strength I had to m
ove the ship and control the aether at the same time.”
After that confession, the conversation trailed off into a lengthy, awkward pause. Doyle refused to volunteer anything more about the battle, and no one wanted to interrupt his silent brooding.
“Where are we going?” Carter finally asked.
“The labs.” Doyle’s voice cracked. He sounded weary and defeated. “We’ve been trying to get into them since I was here last. But ever since we set the aether free, the adarria closed them off to us.”
“I thought you could communicate with the ship,” Mina said.
“I can, but they’ve obeyed me in everything but this.”
“Obeyed you?” Carter asked.
“Maybe not the right word. Responded would be more appropriate. But they opened just before the Condarri attacked.”
Lincoln made a mental note of the change in semantics. Doyle didn’t seem like the type to use the wrong word. He was careful in everything he said and did.
“What’s in the labs?” Nelson asked.
Doyle smiled for the first time since they’d left the elevator. “The labs are where the hybrid offspring were spawned.”
As they left central command, they walked through a labyrinth of dark corridors. The adarria light raced ahead of them, lighting the way to wherever they were going. The reliance on the adarria unsettled Lincoln. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way the light had moved in and out of the symbols during the battle. The adarria commanded it. If they controlled the light, what controlled the darkness?
Doyle, he thought. Doyle controls the darkness.
But then, nothing about the last few months was settling. And to survive, Lincoln needed to keep one eye on the present, and one eye on Doyle. His earlier thought returned as if some voice other than his own were jamming itself into his brain—you’re going to die here.
Lincoln shook off the idea and focused on memorizing their turns. Left, past five doors. Turn right, past another. Turn left. Soon he was lost in the labyrinth. Too bad the Factory corridors weren’t marked like streets.
They are marked, but you can’t read them.
He pulled his shirt sleeve away from his rash, allowing the coolness of the Factory to soothe the fiery itching. The cold air brought some relief to his brooding too.
Considering the circumstances, Lincoln thought things could be worse. He could be starving to death. Or maimed by fire. And out of all the people still left on the planet below, Lincoln was the only one getting some answers to his questions. Well, one of the only ones. He smiled despite himself.
“Good to see you do that,” Mina said quietly beside his shoulder.
“I was just thinking. We’re the first humans ever to walk on an alien spacecraft.”
Mina grinned. “Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?” She glanced up at Doyle. “What are you smiling about?”
“If I tell you,” Doyle said, “you’ll be mad at me for ruining the moment.”
He stopped at another corridor, a wider one than any they’d traveled previously. The lights whisked upward to a ceiling far above, glowing like real lights for a moment before going on ahead.
“We’re not the first?” Mina asked in the growing darkness.
Doyle gestured for them to enter the new corridor. “Where do you think the Condarri got human DNA?”
“I knew it!” Nelson said. “Ever since the towers landed, I knew it! All those alien abduction stories are true, aren’t they?”
“Not all of them.”
Doyle led them down the corridor toward a giant archway on the right. White light glowed out from it. Another hybrid stood waiting at the door. His short, dark hair and bulky build reminded Lincoln of Halston.
“Dar Ceylin,” he said, holding his fist to his heart.
“What’s that mean?” Lincoln asked. But when he looked through the archway, he forgot to wait for an answer. A room the size of a football stadium opened up before them. Transparent columns ten feet in diameter stretched up all the way to the ceiling. Each one contained a glowing, clear liquid inside it. They looked like giant test tubes.
“Wow,” Carter said, his eyes drawn upward to the nearest tube. “There must be fifty of them.”
“What are they for?” Mina asked.
“Those are the artificial wombs,” Doyle said. “When the lab was operational, each grew ten thousand offspring at a time.”
“Offspring?”
Doyle shrugged, then winced in obvious pain. “Just the name for the hybrid children.”
“Sounds cold,” Mina said, a look of worry on her face.
Doyle turned to her. “Did you expect anything different?”
Mina didn’t reply and instead glanced at the other hybrid at the door. He had followed them in and now fell into step beside Doyle. His presence made her uncomfortable, like he was a lion ready to spring if she faltered or showed signs of weakness. Mina stood up straighter.
At the base of each womb, a ten-foot by ten-foot wall of stone stuck up out of the floor. Adarria were etched into it alongside a control panel with buttons at human height.
Finally, buttons—something Lincoln found oddly comforting in this foreign place.
Doyle stepped to the first one and put his hand on the adarria there. The buttons lit up, each one flashing golden. Then, a shimmering hologram as tall as Lincoln appeared in front of the group. It was a faceless woman, larger than life, with her internal organs showing. Symbols displayed around her with lines drawn to various points of interest.
Then the hologram shifted to a human fetus, floating in the air without an umbilical cord. Its arms and legs were mere stubs. Its forehead was bulging. Was it human or an offspring? As they watched, golden adarria surrounded it. The fetus twisted, its limbs seizing.
“It’s in pain,” Mina said. “Stop. Doyle.”
“It’s not real, Mina,” he said. The adarria writhed around the baby and then released it. When they left, the offspring had new marks on its chest. Then Doyle shut down the hologram.
“That was a hybrid?” Lincoln asked.
“Yes. A female. Just a rendering of the actual process from years ago.”
“So that’s how it happened,” Mina said.
“Yes.”
“Why would the adarria shut you out of here?”
Ignoring her question, Doyle turned to the silent hybrid next to him. “This is Nicholas. He and Li finally got us in here. You met Li in the command center. He told us about the attack.”
Nicholas nodded to the humans, and his eyes scanned them up and down. Then he turned to Doyle. “We need new source material.”
“I know.”
“Wait… what?” Alvarez asked.
“The material used to breed the hybrids was used up years ago. And since—”
“You mean DNA?” she asked.
“Yes, tissue samples.”
Nelson whistled. Carter stiffened, his hands balling into fists behind his back.
Lincoln’s face turned hot with anger. “I hope you don’t mean what I think you mean.”
Mina remained calm, despite the fact the mood in the lab had grown suddenly tense. “You want to make more hybrids,” she said.
“We want to defeat Condar,” Doyle said fiercely. “Can you think of a better strategy? You saw what just happened. I couldn’t have asked for a better demonstration. Do you think wielding the aether is easy?”
Mina seemed taken aback by his curt words. Irritated but still very aware of Doyle’s power, Lincoln refrained from commenting. Doyle’s moods seemed to shift with the wind.
Nicholas frowned. “Want me to put them in the detention center?”
“Wait a minute!” Lincoln said. His heart skipped wildly in his chest. With a sickening drop in his stomach, he realized it had all been a ruse. Doyle was going to use the humans to create more hybrids. Yes, Lincoln was going to die here—as part of some mad science experiment.
“No. No one is to touch them,” Doyle told Nicholas.
He looked around at each of the humans in turn. “And you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“But that’s why you brought us here, isn’t it?” Mina stared at Doyle with her mouth hanging open.
He looked at her. “No. But if you want to help, this is your chance.”
“But that would take years,” Carter said.
Lincoln shook his head at his friend, amazed that he was so practical. Always even-tempered. Even now.
“We have time. I can hide this ship from the Condarri. We’ll leave the solar system while we plan it.”
“What happens to Earth in the meantime?” Nelson asked.
“Is that all you’re worried about?”
“Not by a long shot. But let’s just start there.”
“The same thing happens to Earth that’s been happening to Earth. The Condarri need it. We don’t know what for and may never know. But if you want to get rid of them, we could use some volunteers.”
“No way, man. No frickin way.”
“We’re not exactly volunteering,” Lincoln said.
“What about the Glyph DNA?” Alvarez asked. “You need that too, right?”
“We do. We’ll get it before we leave.”
Alvarez threw her hands up in the air and laughed. Her voice echoed through the lab, bouncing off the floors and absorbed by the wombs. She walked away to the door, shaking her head.
“You’re going back to Earth to kill another Glyph?” Mina asked.
“No,” said Doyle. “We need living tissue samples.”
“Living—What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to bring it here.”
The corridor outside the lab turned left, then right. Doyle ignored dozens of others branching off on either side. In the distance, the end lit up when the adarria flashed. The space beyond looked dark and empty. But the group didn’t go all the way to the end. Instead, Doyle stopped them at a doorway on the right.
When they entered, the first thing Mina noticed was how bare it was. Stone bunk beds floated triple on both walls in a long, narrow room, starting at the door and ending far down in a blank wall with another open doorway. The low ceiling was smooth stone without lights. The berths didn’t have mattresses, pillows, or blankets.