Cole ignores the jab and leans his head to the side, looking out the wide window and at Hyperion beyond it. “What’s it like?” he asks, and turns to Maigo. “To be the Voice for a Gestorumque and a Mashintorum? I’m not sure that’s been done before.”
Something about the way Cole is talking doesn’t jibe. He knows a lot about the Aeros and Ferox, but he’s speaking with the kind of intimacy that says he’s not just knowledgeable—he’s experienced.
He’s just trying to get you worked up, I tell myself.
I step in front of him, blocking his view of Hyperion and Maigo.
“Tell me about the new Gestorumque.”
“You can’t defeat them,” he says.
“I’m not the one with a sunken aircraft carrier,” I say. “Or two dead-again Kaiju. And I’m certainly not the one who gave them a Kaiju for the Voice that’s been hibernating inside Prime for millennia.”
“An unfortunate oversight of the Mashintorum’s first Voice.”
“And yours,” I say.
He gives just a hint of a nod. “Perhaps.”
“You have a track record of miserable failures,” I say. “Island 731, the lab in Lompoc, Area 51, and now the Sidorenko. You have lost thousands of men, multiple facilities and I can only guess at how much money. And for all of the death and destruction you have wrought, you still have nothing to show for it, aside from strengthening the enemy.”
“There have been other failures,” Brice says, sounding eager. “And there is still the citadel in—”
“There is no place in the coming war for turncoats, cowards or uncertain allegiances,” Cole says, and he cranes his head around to face Brice.
“You can’t control me anymore,” Brice says with enough fire to convince me he really intends to jump ship from GOD and join the good guys.
Cole glowers at the man, locking eyes with him. Brice does his best to return the glare, but lacks the intimidation factor. I’m about to step in when Cole growls a single word. “Petunia.”
There is a moment of stunned silence as everyone, including Brice, tries to understand the significance of the word. Then blood pours from Brice’s nostrils. He raises a hand up, touches it to the blood and looks at the bright red now coating his digits. “Oh, no.” Then his eyes roll back and he collapses to the floor.
Joliet dives to the man’s side, checking for a pulse, but I’m already certain about what she’ll find.
“He’s dead,” Joliet says, looking ready to put Cole in a hurt locker. And she’s impulsive enough to try. But she won’t have any more luck than Woodstock.
I hold out a hand, signaling her to calm down. That doesn’t stop Hawkins from wrapping one of his arms around Cole’s neck. He isn’t squeezing hard enough to knock Cole out, but it won’t take much more pressure to send the bulbous asshole to sleepy time.
“Petunia?” I say. “Petunia? It’s not that uncommon of a word, you know.”
He grins. “I speak it quite rarely, I assure you. Very few of them—” He motions to Brice with his head, despite the limited movement. “—rebel against GOD. If they survive their own experiments, many of them live long lives. If it makes you feel better, you can add his death to your list of my failures. Or yours. Boston. Washington, D.C. Los Angeles. Salt Lake. Has the Mormon church forgiven you yet? No proxy baptisms for you, I’d guess.”
Lilly steps closer to the man, and I notice her claws are extended.
I glance at Maigo. She’s glaring at Cole from behind her hair. Fists clenched.
Collins has a hand on her sidearm, a big ass revolver.
Even Watson looks ready to throw down.
Cooper is the only one of us who looks unruffled by Cole’s comments and the fact that he’s just murdered a man inside the Crow’s Nest.
A low growl fills the room, and I’m surprised to see Buddy, the FC-P’s mascot Australian Shepherd, snarling at Cole. I’ve never heard the gentle dog growl. Lilly looks down at the dog and grins, the pair coming to some kind of silent truce in the face of a mutual adversary.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” I say to Cole, pinching my index finger and thumb together. “You are this close to being lynched. So, I suggest you answer my questions now and—”
“You have yet to hear of my successes,” Cole says. “Everything you have said is true, but in failure, there is refinement. The hardships of life strengthen.” He looks at Collins. “Don’t you think?”
She pops the button from the revolver’s holster, but stops short of drawing the weapon.
“The Island gave us you,” he says to Lilly. “And your adoptive parents.” He turns back to me. “Boston gave us you.” To Collins. “And you. The fires of that city turned the FC-P from a joke, into this planet’s best defense against Kaiju.” To Maigo. “Washington freed you from Nemesis, a girl with unmatched strength and DNA that allows her to pilot that.” He leans to the side, looking out at Hyperion. “And Salt Lake gave Nemesis a new Voice, whose influence has only increased her lethality.
“You all have become a fine sword.” He smiles. “GOD has simply provided the fire to refine your edge.”
I laugh and realize it sounds a little crazy. “Are you actually taking credit...for us?”
He lowers a sinister gaze in my direction. “You don’t really think a religious senator snuck the creation of the FC-P into a bill to defend the United States from paranormal and demonic threats, do you?” He laughs. “Not as sharp as I’d hoped. The FC-P exists because I willed it to. Your trials and tribulations have been manipulated from the beginning. Even General Gordon was a pawn, his greed for life made him malleable. Like you, Jon. Like all of you. Clay in the hands of GOD.”
My mind reels from this revelation, part of me screaming that it can’t be true, and the rest of me seeing the puzzle pieces fall into place. We’re just another one of GOD’s creations, perhaps the best of its creations. What really solidifies this for me is that we have become what GOD has been working on all along: the best defense for Earth against an Aeros invasion. We’re definitely not ready for the fight, but we’re still the best chance this planet has.
I glance at the levelheaded Cooper, raise my eyebrows and motion to Cole’s face with my hands. She gives a nod. “I’m not going to stop you.”
I cock my fist back and refrain from delivering an 80s style one-liner before driving my knuckles into his mouth.
The punch stings my hand, but seems to have no effect on Cole.
Then he grins, and I see that he’s bleeding...
Purple.
35
“Aww shit,” I say. “Are you serious?”
Cole chuckles through his purple stained teeth. “You’ve been right about a lot, Jon. You have good instincts. About Gestorumque. About Portland. And you should trust them.”
How the hell does he know about Portland? I think, and then I realize that if we’ve been manipulated from the beginning, by GOD, then it’s likely that we’ve been monitored all this time. They practically gave us Future Betty. They allowed us to take GOD’s files, and probably just the files they wanted us to have. They’ve invaded our lives? How much have they seen? I feel violated, but not just for myself. For my wife. My daughter. For everyone in this room. But at the same time, I realize how inconsequential all of that is in relation to the fact that the bead of blood dangling toward the floor is purple.
It’s alien.
He’s one of them.
A Ferox.
A shape shifter.
And he’s not just hiding in plain sight, he’s covertly directing the actions of nations.
“If you think complimenting my instincts is going to lead to a My Little Pony Brony hug fest, you’re mistaken.” I step closer, ready to knock his alien teeth out. “I’m going to—”
“Let me go,” he says.
“I was going to say something about your ass and a unicorn horn, but—”
“It wasn’t a suggestion,” he says, lifting up his handcuffed hands. He slowly spreads h
is arms apart, and it’s like the cuffs aren’t even there. The metal stretches and pops apart without a hint of resistance from the links or any struggle from Cole. Hands free, he takes hold of Hawkins’s python-like arm and calmly pries it away with the same effortless exertion. Hawkins shakes as he resists, his face turning red, but there’s no stopping Cole.
With his neck free, Cole leans forward and whips Hawkins across the room. Lilly dives in front of her father, catching him and easing him to the ground.
I’m about to suggest a calm resolution, as I’m not sure this is a fight we can win, but hotter heads react faster than I can talk.
Joliet dives forward with surprising speed, landing three punches before Cole calmly swats her aside while staring at me as if to say, ‘Really? Really? This is the best you can do?’
Collins is next, drawing her revolver with typical lightning speed, but in that fraction of a second it takes her to lift the weapon and slide her finger around the trigger, Cole closes the distance and slips his meaty digit behind the hammer. With a twist of his hand, Cole elicits a shout of pain from my wife and frees the weapon from her grasp. The revolver hits the floor around the same time I think, Screw it, to the idea of a peaceful solution. I drive my fist into the side of Cole’s head.
It’s a solid punch to the temple. The kind that crumples a man’s legs under him. But Cole barely flinches. Hawkins mentioned that he’d knocked Cole unconscious before their trip back, but it now seems likely that the big man-alien was faking it.
“This is not helping solve your problems,” he tells me.
I swing again, but he leans back and avoids the blow. Does that mean he’s toying with me, or did the first punch hurt him?
“We are on the same side of this war,” he says.
Another swing and a miss. “This is your war. You brought it here.”
“We brought your simple people out of the caves. We strengthened you with Atlantide blood. We gave you technology. Taught you how to defend yourselves. Your planet.”
“You taught us how to kill each other,” I say. “En masse. You gave us nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological warfare and genetic nightmares. You gave us genocide.”
“A sword can’t be—”
“You’re the forge that refined humanity,” I say in my most obnoxious, sarcastic voice that sounds a little bit like Yoda. “Blah, blah, fucking blah.”
He settles into a more relaxed posture, his grin returning. “I have always found you amusing, Jon.”
I flip him off with both hands and step closer, obscuring his line of sight.
“Whether you agree with the...manipulations used to influence your species into a warlike people is of no consequence. You would not exist without it. None of you would. The people you love. The cities you protect with such devotion. All of it exists because you have been infused with a desire to expand, to explore and to fight for those things. You revolt against the idea of being controlled because that is exactly how you were conditioned. It’s an ideal that the founding fathers of the United States fully understood, and not one of them was Ferox.
“Freedom is everything. It is the right that unites us. You speak of genocide, but you have yet to comprehend it. The worst genocide in human history was the holocaust of World War II. Between five and eleven million people were killed, seventy-eight percent of them Jewish. The slaughter was confined to Nazi occupied Europe. A single continent.”
“Which the Ferox no doubt organized,” I point out.
“A final lesson, to help the world understand the stakes.”
I feel another swing coming on, but I resist. The girls are almost ready.
“Imagine an even more efficient holocaust not confined to a single continent, or planet. Imagine the slaughter of hundreds of billions, spread across the cosmos, over millennia. Imagine fighting against this unstoppable purge, to the point of extinction, only to rally back, again and again. Finally, upon discovering a species sympathetic to your plight, a victory. You mewl over a few thousand years of manipulated evolution, while we have endured millions of years of evolution and conditioning to the point that we no longer physically resemble the race we started out as.”
He’s actually managed to bait the hook and interest me in his story of cosmic woe. I don’t say anything, but he sees the question in my eyes.
“The Ferox were once Aeros,” he says. “We are now genetically different enough to be considered a different species, but we were once the same, separated only by a subtle shift in skin color, white and gray. What would you do under similar circumstances? Would you roll over and let your species be eradicated, or would you do anything to save them—” He glances at the others congregated behind me. “For the people you love. Freedom, love and loyalty, are emotions taught to humanity. Your once primal drives to reproduce have also been refined.”
“Bullshit,” I say.
“An individual with no concept of love will not risk himself for another. Empathy lacking love is nothing more than the curiosity of a sociopath.”
“Says the sociopath,” I say.
“There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
I flinch back, verbally slapped. “Did...did you just quote the Bible?”
“The words of the Anomaly,” he says. “You don’t need to love the Ferox, Jon, but when the war comes to your planet, you will fight, and you will join the Ferox, or perish. And that is something your love, and the love of billions, won’t allow. Not without a fight.”
“Well, you’re right about that,” I say. “We’re not going down without a fight. Against the Aeros, or you.”
I step to the side and see a glimmer of surprise on the chubby man’s face, as Lilly flings Maigo past me. She strikes with the force of a wrecking ball, driving her heels into Cole’s chest. There’s no defense against a hit like that, and Cole flies back through the room, into the broad stairwell where he topples down the stairs and out of view. The house shakes when he stops against the brick wall.
We’re about to chase after him, expecting to see a twisted, broken body, but we stop short when we hear his bones breaking. The slick crack of bones, popping of joints and slurp of flesh is impossible to mistake.
Neither is the growl that follows it.
A flowing mane of black hair rises first, followed by a smooth, gray snout framed on either side by three red eyes, six total, and a sharp-toothed snarl. Bony spikes jut from the flesh of his face. A muscular body rises up, followed by a twitching tail tipped with a tuft of black hair. All of Cole’s fat was simply misdirection, hiding powerful mass that looks like a cross between The Rock and a lion. As it steps back onto the hardwood floor, its long claws tap out an irritating rhythm that reveals frenetic energy hidden just beneath the surface of this monstrosity.
The Ferox that used to be Zachary Cole, twists its neck from one side to the other, popping vertebrae into place. It takes a deep breath, filling its powerful chest, and lets it out with a sigh. For a moment, I think the monster might start monologuing again, but he dives to the side, heading for Woodstock.
Despite not standing a chance against the monster, Woodstock balls his fists, and shouts, “Bring it on, Nancy!”
But the attack is a feint. While the Ferox bounds for Woodstock, its tail lashes out around Maigo’s leg and yanks. She falls hard, hitting the floor, and she’s then flung down the staircase. The move is well thought out, and clearly vengeance for Maigo’s attack, but also it’s far from lethal.
Never one to shirk from a fight, Lilly dives into action, raking her claws across the Ferox’s shoulder. The attack draws purple blood and proves that the creature isn’t impervious. But it also makes the alien angry. With a roar that hurts my ears, the Ferox dive-tackles Lilly. Hawkins launches himself at the Ferox’s back, but he’s caught around the waist and tossed across the room, crashing into a work station.
Lilly is pinned.
Collins is bending to pick up her gun, but won’t be fast eno
ugh.
“Cole!” I shout. “Don’t!”
The Ferox turns its horrible, alien head toward me and lets out a bark. Then it leaps away from Lilly, bounds across the office, charging through workstations.
Collins and Cooper both track the creature with guns, but they’re vastly different. Collins’s fires lethal rounds. Cooper’s fires tracking darts—the same kind we use to observe the movements of the cryptids we’ve discovered. I grasp Collins’s arms and shove them up just as she fires. The bullet punches into the ceiling. A moment later, Cooper pulls her weapon’s trigger and the small projected device finds its mark in the Ferox’s thick hide.
Monster-Cole jumps Hawkins as he tries to get back up and then flings itself at the broad window stretching across the Crow’s Nest’s east-facing wall. The usual view of the ocean is currently occupied by Hyperion’s face. Glass gives way to the Ferox’s solid mass, shattering and exploding outward.
I run to the broken window in time to see the alien throw itself off the deck below and land in the yard with less effort than it takes me to lift the toilet seat at night. Then it’s gone, bolting around the house.
At the sound of people taking action, I shout, “Everyone stop!”
I turn to find Lilly and Maigo in the stairway leading to the roof. The girls could easily throw themselves from the roof, and could probably catch Cole. But what good would come from that? Would they kill him? Would he kill them? Neither possibility does us any good. I point at Cooper, who holds up the dart gun with a grin. “Let’s see where he goes.”
No one looks happy about it, but we’ve all trained with Hawkins enough to hear his voice urging us to use our brains before our brawn. When the big man gets to his feet and looks at me, I hitch my thumb at the window. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting really tired of replacing this window.”
36
In the moments after Cole’s escape, an adrenaline-fueled FC-P tried to spring into action, but then we got the collective shakes, followed by exhaustion. Cole, no doubt in human form once again, had made his way inland and was now headed toward the West Coast, probably on one of GOD’s private jets. Or maybe he discovered the tracker and put it on a plane. Who knows? Reality feels broken. He’s manipulated us on a level that has left me questioning what’s real. My life for the past few years has been arranged and guided in a way that only God is supposed to do, and even then, most people hate the idea of a higher power influencing their lives. But even that is a manipulation. It’s exactly how the Ferox want us to feel.
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