McKenna grabbed a beer from the cooler, then paused to glance at her, as if uncertain whether to interrupt her or not. But Casey was ready to talk, ready to demonstrate what she’d found. McKenna wasn’t a scientist, but he was smart, and besides, it was sometimes good to share information, get your findings out into the open, rather than just letting them stew in your head.
Producing the vial of fluid she’d stolen from Project: Stargazer, she said without preamble, “They found this in the Predator’s blood. In layman’s terms, it’s like distilled ‘lizard brain,’ the part that kicks in under extreme survival conditions.”
McKenna took a gulp of beer. “So?” he said, sensing she was eager to tell him more.
“Remember I told you they rip out people’s spines?”
“Trophies, you said.”
“Right. But if a Predator’s first and foremost a survivor, wouldn’t it make sense to collect DNA ‘souvenirs?’”
McKenna raised his eyebrows. “From people’s spines?”
“Brain stem. Close enough.” Casey knew she wasn’t painting a clear picture. It was a bad habit. Her thoughts seemed to coalesce cleanly in her head, but getting the words out in the proper order was another thing entirely. “Look, suppose—just suppose—that these space creatures are… siphoning off our lizard brain juice.”
Now McKenna laughed, although she could tell he was a little insulted. “You don’t have to overdo the layman’s terms.”
She held up a hand in apology. “I think they’re attempting hybridization,” she said. “It would explain the human DNA, now, wouldn’t it?”
McKenna’s brow furrowed. Casey could see his mind working and knew she’d been right in her assessment of his smartness. McKenna might be a rough-tough soldier boy, but there was a brightness about him, an ability to take information on board, adapt, calculate the odds, make quick decisions. If she was being honest with herself, she guessed she should never really have doubted his intelligence. You didn’t get to be an officer in the Army Rangers without being mentally agile.
“Collecting survival traits from high-end specimens,” he said, nodding.
“From the strongest, smartest, most dangerous species on every planet they visit, to make upgrades to their own race. Hybrids.”
McKenna studied her. “Are you just pulling this theory out of your ass?”
“This new Predator, the bigger one,” she said, ignoring the question, “did you see its eyes?”
His nod was almost imperceptible, but it was there. McKenna knew exactly what she was talking about.
“They’re evolving, Captain,” she said. “Changing.”
“Being upgraded,” he murmured.
“And here’s the clincher,” she said. She leaned toward him, as if so eager to impart her information that she wanted to close the gap between the words leaving her mouth and reaching his ears. “Project: Stargazer? The shitshow that recruited me? A stargazer’s a type of flower—an orchid. And not just any orchid…”
McKenna fixed his gaze on hers. “A hybrid,” he said softly.
* * *
After speaking to Casey, McKenna did what he maybe should have done as soon as they arrived here. Using one of the burner phones they’d acquired, he keyed in the most familiar phone number of his lifetime.
It only rang once. When Emily answered, her voice was frantic.
“It’s me,” McKenna said.
“Tell me he’s okay.”
McKenna turned to look at his son, sitting apparently contentedly with Nebraska, who was smoking a cigarette, and taking care to blow the smoke in the opposite direction. “He’s fine. He’s with me. I’ll bring him home when it’s—”
“It’s okay,” she interrupted. “Don’t say anything. Be safe.”
She hung up. No explanation.
McKenna frowned. Emily’s message had been loud and clear. She wasn’t alone.
* * *
Emily ended the call, trying to hide the vengeful sneer on her face. Her boy was okay—that was all she had needed to know. She turned her back on the cadre of black ops agents who’d filled her kitchen, and dropped the phone into the sink’s garbage disposal. One of them shouted and another reached for her, but they were too late to stop her from flicking on both the water and the disposal. The sound of the sharp blades chopping up the phone while the water ruined anything they might salvage gave her a thrill of pleasure, deep in her chest.
She turned toward them, letting them see her fury.
“You guys fucked with the wrong family.”
Still blazing, she pushed through the agents filling her kitchen, crossed to the open door leading to Rory’s basement sanctuary, and clumped down the wooden steps. Just before the call from Quinn, a couple of guys, surveillance techs, had gone down there without her permission, and she wanted to know what they were up to.
Entering the basement, she was incensed to see one of them pick up a remote-control T-rex that was standing atop one of Rory’s notebooks in what he called his ‘Control Area’ and toss it disdainfully over his shoulder. The T-rex hit the floor with a clatter. Emily hurtled across the room like a tornado, snatching up the dinosaur as she went, and shoved her way between the two men. Waving the T-rex in the startled tech’s face, she barked, “Hey! Don’t throw the toys!”
The tech looked at her with an expression that was half-sneer, half-apology, as if he was uncertain how to respond. Before he could decide, there was an almighty crash from the kitchen above, and it wasn’t merely the sound of something being dropped or falling over, but the sound of major damage—the kind of sound you might hear if the kitchen ceiling collapsed, and the entire contents of the room above smashed through onto the floor below.
Emily and the two techs froze, looking up at the basement ceiling, as if they expected that to collapse in on them too. Then the two guys reacted, drawing guns almost in unison, one of them dashing past a bewildered Emily and up the stairs, while the other—the one that had thrown the T-rex—looked at her and held up a hand, suddenly solicitous: For your own safety, stay here.
They waited. Heard running footsteps. And then— suddenly, shockingly—the sound of gunfire. Three, four, five shots.
Emily went rigid, raising herself up on her toes, her fingers spasming out like the defensive spines on a puffer fish.
Holy shit, what was happening up there? She couldn’t believe she was hearing this. Gunshots! In her house?
She was terrified, yes, but she was also angry. How dare they? Whoever this was, how fucking dare they? Almost unconsciously, she began to walk toward the basement stairs, her steps slow, cautious, her eyes fixed on the now closed door at the top.
Maybe she should hide? Arm herself? Who would be next through that door? Friend or foe?
And then, a hard, bright, furious thought: What the fuck have you got us into here, Quinn?
After the crash and the running footsteps and the gunshots came silence. Three seconds of silence… four… She took another tentative step forward.
And then the world fell in on her.
Or rather, it fell in behind her. Another crash at her back, like a small bomb had gone off, and suddenly she was throwing herself forward as her head and shoulders were showered with splinters of wood and flecks of plaster.
Rubbing her streaming eyes, choking on dust, she clambered to her feet and turned—and in an instant, it was as though everything she had believed, everything she had relied on her entire life, was ripped unceremoniously away. Because standing in her basement, beneath a hole which even now was raining swirls of white dust down onto its shoulders, was what appeared to be a demon from Hell. Ten feet tall, maybe more, it had a face like all her worst nightmares rolled into one, and in its fearsomely taloned right fist it was clutching the still twitching body of a dead mercenary.
No, scratch that. It was holding the top half of a body. Because its poor victim, whoever he had been, had been severed, or pulled apart, or twisted off, at the waist. Blood and other weigh
tier things were now sliding and pouring out of the massive rent and splatting on the basement floor. But if the sight of this alone wasn’t bad enough, Emily now saw the demon take hold of the corpse’s dangling, exposed spine in its left hand, and with one practiced tug, rip it from the body as casually as a child might rip a Band-Aid from a wound.
She almost passed out. She almost threw up. It was only a fierce sense of self-preservation that prevented her from doing either. Her entire focus since turning around had been on the demon and its victim, but now she realized that the second tech, the one who had thrown aside the T-rex she was still clutching in her hand, was still standing over by Rory’s now dust-shrouded Control Area, much closer to the demon than she was.
His face was ghost-white—though whether through fear or simply plaster dust it was impossible to tell—and he was whimpering, cowering, like a beaten dog that didn’t want to be beaten anymore. Not that the demon was prepared to show even a shred of pity. With a lightning-quick spin, it flicked out its wrist, and the spinal column lashed toward the man, like a striking cobra made of bones, and wound tightly around his neck, garroting him.
Emily had seen enough— more than enough. This latest atrocity galvanized her to spin round and race toward the basement stairs. With every step she took, she expected to hear the clattering crack of the demon’s bone-whip, expected to feel herself lifted off her feet. As she scrambled up the stairs, she had only one thought in her mind: If I’m going to die, please God, let it be quick.
* * *
The Upgrade watches the human creature scuttling to safety with dispassion, even disgust, and considers crushing the life from it—it is a worthless thing, after all. But in the end, it is the sheer insignificance of the creature’s life that saves it; the Upgrade has more important concerns.
Looking around, it focuses on a bank of screens and other devices. Lights are blinking and flickering, and images swirl on the screens themselves. To the Upgrade this technology seems primitive, basic, and yet there is such a wide range of equipment here, all of it operative, and all of it contained within a small, domestic space, that it is suggestive of an acute intelligence, of a mind that is both enquiring and forever striving to better itself—and that the Upgrade can admire.
Turning in a slow circle, the alien scans a series of framed photographic images on the walls. Here is one of a young male human and a mature male human, both wearing identical garments, the older human with his arm around the younger one’s shoulders. Here is another image of the older human, and this time he is wearing garments and carrying a weapon, which the Upgrade knows identifies him as a warrior, a soldier.
Tramping through human offal, the Upgrade moves across to a seating area and picks up a receptacle made of a pliable synthetic material. The contents of the receptacle do not interest the Upgrade, but the label attached to it does. Scanning the human markings, it translates them as ‘ R. McKenna’. A label of identification, which may at some point prove useful.
Moving from surface to surface, the Upgrade now spies something infinitely more interesting. It knows the young human has had access to some of its species’ equipment, and even that it may have deciphered some of the readings on that equipment—certainly enough, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to affect the systems on the Upgrade’s own ship. But this document here—primitive, fashioned by hand— suggests an even greater understanding and intelligence than the Upgrade had previously given the young human credit for. Picking up the flimsy sheet of what its sensors inform it is mostly plant-based pulp and chemicals, its analyzing and translation systems identify the strange markings as a map, on which interstates and landmarks, all of which have been meticulously labeled, surround a tiny shape—a shape that the Upgrade recognizes instantly.
It is the ship. The ship that it has been searching for.
* * *
Nettles wandered down to the privacy of a small clump of trees to relieve himself. It wasn’t that he was shy, it was just that with Casey and the boy around he wanted to display a little decorum.
After zipping himself up, he stood for a moment, enjoying the coolness of the night air on his face, the gurgling of a brook close by and the soft chirrup of insects.
Then he frowned. Along with the chirruping, he could hear a weird clicking sound, as if something were purring, or growling, deep in its throat. He peered into the darkness of the trees… only to realize, when the sound came again, that it was behind him.
He whipped around, raising his weapon.
But by the time he saw the Predator dog’s gleaming eyes and the flash of its clacking mandibles, the opportunity to pull the trigger had passed.
* * *
The tread of a boot caught his attention, and Rory turned to see his father appear. Stashing his phone in a pocket, he crouched down.
“Talked to your Mom. She’s fine.”
Rory let an awkward silence grow even more awkward before he replied.
“Mom says you’re a killer.”
His father’s brow furrowed. “I’m a soldier.”
“What’s the difference?”
Nebraska seemed not to be listening. He shifted away from them. Over in the RV, Casey stood by the window. Rory could see her, and they were close enough that she could probably hear as well, but like Nebraska she acted as if she couldn’t hear a thing.
“When you like it,” his dad said. “That’s when you’re a killer.”
He looked suddenly at a loss, as if he didn’t know quite where to go from here, as if he didn’t know how to talk to his own son. He glanced up at the stars, and then pointed. “Which one do you suppose they’re from?”
“The one on the left,” Rory replied confidently. A joke. His father never really got his jokes.
This time, though, Quinn McKenna nodded. “That’s the one I was gonna say.”
Silence between them again, but now it was almost companionable. Rory shifted a little, tapping his stick on the ground. Then abruptly he said, “Sorry I never grew up. Y’know, the way you wanted.”
His father sighed and ran his hands over his face as if scrubbing it clean. “Yeah, well. Truth is… I never grew up the way I wanted either.”
Rory liked that. He watched as his father stood up and stretched his back.
“Are we gonna get killed?” he asked.
His father seemed to really think about it for a moment. Then he shook his head.
“Nope.”
“Okay.”
* * *
McKenna shifted uncomfortably. He’d never been good at communicating with Rory, but he was trying. The kid went back to drawing in the dirt, and McKenna took stock of his unit again. He spotted Nebraska standing guard. Casey remained in the RV—it occurred to him that she’d become just as much a part of the unit as any of them, for as long as she wanted to be. Of course, given that some black box spookshow division of the federal government was after them, she might not have another choice.
He was just wondering whether he could risk getting a couple of hours sleep when he saw Nebraska tense up and spin round, taking aim at the brush at the edge of the field.
“Company’s coming!” Nebraska snapped.
McKenna heard it, then—they all did. Something crashing through the brush, moving fast in the dark. Gun barrels came up, everyone taking aim… and a second later Nettles burst from the brush into the moonlight, and he wasn’t alone. On his tail, bounding and crashing, mandibles clicking, was a Predator dog.
“Son of a bitch!” Baxley shouted, taking aim.
“Whoa, whoa!” Nettles said, throwing up his hands as if to ward them off.
What the hell? McKenna thought.
But it only took another moment for him to realize the Predator dog was not chasing Nettles, but merely bounding after him like an excited puppy. A glint of metal in the dark, and they all recognized the monster—it was the one from the school. The one Nebraska had shot through the skull with a bolt gun. It seemed the big, ugly bastard had trac
ked them like some faithful mutt!
Clumping to a halt, laughing a little, Nettles said, “Jesus, Nebraska, you lobotomized the poor sumbitch.”
They all watched curiously as the thing wandered around like an obedient, if addled, puppy. It gazed at Nettles as if he was its master, then looked around and suddenly started trotting toward Rory. Remembering that the boy had been its original target, and wondering whether it might have some residue of its former duty still rattling around in its damaged brain, McKenna jumped up to intercept the beeline it was making toward his son, but even as he started to run he knew he’d never reach Rory before the alien did.
Fearful, Rory rose and grabbed a length of wood. He hurled it at the Predator dog, but the monster ducked, and the wood sailed over its head. Instead of continuing toward Rory, however, it turned… then padded away to retrieve the wood! The clicking, grunting monster rushed over to Nettles and dropped the small log at his feet.
“Well, I’ll be all go-to-hell,” Nettles said. He grinned around at them like a proud but bashful father.
* * *
While the Loonies played with their new pet, throwing sticks for it and laughing as it retrieved them, Casey went back inside the RV. After a while, satisfied that the Predator dog wasn’t about to eat his son after all, McKenna joined her, grabbing himself another beer to steady his nerves.
Blowing a lock of hair away from her face, Casey gestured toward his bottle. “Gimme a sip of that.”
She took the beer from him and gestured out the window, nodding toward Rory, who was back to drawing in the dirt, ignoring the antics of the men. “You know, a lot of experts think being on the spectrum’s not a disorder. Some think it might even be the next evolutionary step.”
“Yeah?” McKenna replied, displaying no emotion. He looked at her a moment, then said, “Goin’ down the street once? He sees this homeless guy, runs right over. ‘Hey man, what’s your name?’ Meanwhile, I’m thinkin’: Where’s the nearest edged weapon? I see a target; he sees a friend.” He gave a crooked grin, half-affectionate, half-regretful, and took a swig of his beer. “All I can do is ruin him. So, I stay away.”
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