"That's right," Shawn said, cutting Ness off.
"I'm Daniel." He gestured to the man beside him, who was taller yet, with thick lips, heavily hooded eyes, and tanned, wind-chapped cheeks. "This is Larsen. Roan tells us you've had a run-in with some unusual visitors."
Ness was far from eager to speak in front of strangers, but his enthusiasm overwhelmed him. "Did you see them, too?"
"We have confirmed their existence," Larsen said grudgingly, as if each word cost him ten dollars.
"Roan tells us you came here with thoughts of dealing with them." Daniel rubbed his hands together. "We'd like to hear your plan."
Ness flushed, his tongue thickening.
"Well," Shawn said. "You dudes make bombs here, right? Nukes?"
The two men glanced at each other. Larsen smiled in disgust. "Hanford's participation in the active production of weapons-grade plutonium ceased in 1987."
"Then what the hell do you do here?"
"At this reactor?" Daniel frowned, stirring his beard with his index finger. "We generate power. The rest of the site is—was—largely dedicated to the cleanup of radioactive materials produced during the plutonium era."
"Was that your big plan?" Larsen said.
"Well." Shawn glanced back at Roan. "Look, I just heard about you all on the History Channel."
"I'm sorry for wasting your time, sirs," Roan said. She turned to the man with the machine gun. "Back to their cell."
"Wait," Ness said. "Do you still have radioactive material here?"
The two men burst out laughing. Even Roan cracked a smile.
"How many tons?" Larsen said.
"Liquid, solid, or in between?" Daniel said.
Larsen's face returned to its humorless plane. "Why?"
"To me, they look like sea creatures," Ness said. "Crabs or octopuses or something. Something that's very sensitive to radiation."
"How interesting." Bemusement danced behind Daniel's glasses. "You're suggesting we become terrorists."
Ness nodded. Shawn swore. The plant rumbled like the laughter of a long-dead god.
16
Tristan woke to orangeness. Her hands were dim and orange. The walls were soft and orange. Orange light traced a square a few feet above her head. She sat up, blood rushing from her head, and stood. The ceiling hung just above her. She pushed her palms against it. The spongy surface didn't budge. She was trapped inside a box.
The air was damp, cool. She stepped toward the wall. Soft fabric rustled around her pelvis. She was nude except an off-white diaper strapped around her waist. Sickness rose in her gut. The curdling, hollowing sickness of violation. They had taken her here in her sleep.
There was just enough light to see that the box was empty, but she shuffled from corner to corner regardless. Her neck itched. Her fingers brushed cool metal.
She jumped back, stumbling into the spongy orange wall. It was lightly damp. She pulled away, slapping at her moist shoulder, but there was no escaping the orange beneath her bare feet. The liquid the wall left on her shoulder was thicker than water, salival. She had nothing to wipe her hands on except her diaper.
The thing on her neck was a finger-sized metal tube. She tugged it and fingers of pain reached into her spine. She gasped and sat down on the floor. Beneath her thighs, the surface felt like skin left too long in the water.
She was alone. Alden was gone.
She called out, but her voice died within the spongy walls. She struck them with her fist and her fist stopped without pain. Her knuckle prints faded from the porous, sweating surface.
Tristan stayed on her feet until they grew sore, then rested on the slimy floor. Sometimes she thought she felt it moving beneath her and she'd jerk into a low crouch, but it was too dark to see. She managed to nap. When she could no longer hold it, she peed into her diaper, which absorbed thirstily. She slept again.
Greenish light sliced into the box. The lid peeled away and tentacles burst over the lip, coiling, grasping. One slid around her thigh and tightened, its skin as damp and firm as the walls. Two wide eyes appeared above the rim. A beak clacked. She shrieked and pulled from the tentacle. Others joined it, squeezing the breath from her ribs, and hauled her into the green light.
A row of tall orange boxes lined three of the walls. She hung above the broad and empty floor, tentacles gripping her limbs. In the edge of her vision, a small tube flashed green. Metal scraped the metal port in her neck. She gagged. Her limbs went limp, half-numbed. The creature laid her on a table and rolled her through an empty hall. She could barely blink at the recessed lights glaring from the ceiling. The thing swung her into another room and receded from her sight. Metal instruments shined in the fringe of her vision. A door whooshed closed.
She couldn't turn her head. It was just as damp in here as in her box. A cool that verged on cold. Across the room, something was breathing. The door swished. A second alien loomed above her, face masked in an agile plastic. It rolled her on her side. Another woman lay on a table across the room, her deep brown skin bare except for the white fabric around her pelvis. A short canister glinted from the woman's neck. She breathed steadily. Something warm flooded into Tristan's blood. She choked. A machine whirred, stopped, whirred. The being's feet thumped the ground. It walked to a counter, picked up a metal canister shaped like a headless soap dispenser, and jabbed it with a blunt syringe.
The alien returned to Tristan's side. Its tentacles pressed her into the table. A second burst of fluid entered her neck. Tristan gasped, tears pooling against her nose.
The thing walked to the door, exited. She was left in the low hum of machines and the woman's even breathing. After a few minutes, Tristan's muscles de-numbed enough to shiver.
"Hi."
The woman's eyes were open. Tristan's tongue felt as thick as a foot. She shook her head a fraction of an inch.
"They don't mind if we talk," the woman said. "My name's Cindy."
"Tristan," she slurred.
"It's all right, Tristan. They haven't killed any of us yet."
"It gave me a shot."
Cindy nodded, face somber. "That seems to be what these things do best."
"Have you been here long?"
"I'm not sure. Haven't seen a window yet, let alone a clock."
"I'm looking for my brother," Tristan said. "His name's Alden."
"Lot of people here," Cindy said.
"He's thirteen. Blond hair. Green eyes. Skinny. About 5' 4"."
The woman shook her head. "I haven't seen any kids here."
Tristan fought to sit up, but she could barely stir her arm. "Where did they pick you up?"
"L.A."
"I was taken in San Francisco. They must be stealing people from all over."
Cindy's eyes became mineshafts of pity. "I'm sure you'll find him, Tristan."
Her throat was too tight to answer. The door swooshed. One of the beings tugged the diaper from her waist, tentacles slipping down her thighs. The thing carried her to a side room with bare walls and a drain. Lukewarm water blasted her skin. A machine groaned, blowing most of the moisture from her. The thing re-diapered her and returned her to the fleshy box. The ceiling self-sealed with a slurp, enclosing her in the orange dim.
Movement slowly returned to her limbs, but she had nowhere to go. She turned Cindy's words over and over. She hadn't seen any kids. Were they keeping them separate? The woman had been taken from Los Angeles. How far had the aliens roamed? Was there more than one place like this? Why were they here? Why were they being kept alive?
She had no sense of time. Two urinations passed before she was taken from the box again. The creature doped her, brought her back to the lab, where the alien in the mask gave her another injection from one of the metal canisters. It set down the syringe and squirted a sack of water into her mouth. Tristan gagged—it was lightly salty and as cool as the room—but then drank readily. It was the first water she'd had orally since arriving. The thing fitted a catheter to the port in her neck and left
the room.
"Come here often?" Cindy said.
Tristan shrugged her shoulders, scooting her numb body a quarter of an inch at a time to face the other woman. "You're back."
"One of these days they may even ask me first."
Tristan laughed through her tingling lips. "Is there a way out?"
"They brought us in, didn't they? Most ins double as outs."
"Have you seen anyone get brought in?"
Cindy shook her head, hair flattening against the hard, smooth table. "How'd you get caught?"
"I was in San Francisco," Tristan said. "We were going to sail to Hawaii. We'd just shoved off when the ship appeared. We went back. Tried to run. My friends..."
"You were sailing to Hawaii? You got a boat?"
"After I stole it from some dead rich guy."
Cindy laughed. "To think I just moved to Santa Monica. Should have stolen a palace in Malibu. Those people would never buzz an alien through the gates."
"They'd have loaded them right into the squad cars," Tristan said. "How did they take you?"
"They just busted in the door. Scooped out the whole block like an avocado."
The door swished open. Cindy went quiet. Tristan was cleaned and returned to the orange box. She pressed her hands to the ceiling. The lid slurped, attempting to seal, but green light seeped through the open gap. Her hands sunk into the spongy pad. Her drug-weakened arms shook. She lowered them and the gap closed, locking her back in the gloom.
She felt sorry for herself through one more cycle of imprisonment, injections, cleanings, and the return to the box. Then she practiced kung fu. The box was humid and she sweated freely. The floor squicked beneath her shifting feet. The action centered her mind, cleaning it as thoroughly as the scouring showers washed her waste from her legs. Her stomach burbled, but she was able to practice for what felt like hours on end; her injections must have included nutrients. They wanted her healthy.
Yet the next time she saw Cindy, the woman had a cough.
"What do you do while they've got you in the orange?" Tristan asked.
"The orange?"
"Your box. Your cell."
Cindy frowned at the ceiling. "I dream."
"You just sleep?"
"I dream when I'm awake, too. There aren't any sounds in there besides your own belly. After a while, you stop feeling the damp. I lie there and I dream of how it used to be. My husband. He was sweet. We fought too much. I didn't understand how sweet he was. You married?"
"I was proposed to," Tristan said.
"Well? Yes or no, damn it?"
"I said no."
"You regret it?"
"I never had time," Tristan laughed. "He tried to kidnap me as soon as I said no. I brained him with a bottle."
Cindy laughed, then went quiet. "You serious?"
"Well, there was a reason I turned him down."
Cindy gazed at the ceiling.
"But it isn't just my man," she said without prompting. Machines hummed quietly from the walls. "It's all of it. I miss watching movies. On the couch and in the theater. I should have snuck in more food; they wouldn't have done anything to me. A whole industry of people just want to make you happy for a couple hours. I miss making dinners. Turn a knob and the stove's hot. The ocean, too. I lived in Los Angeles my whole life, you know how often I went to the beach? Five times. Five! I could have driven there every damn day."
Tristan laughed. "I grew up in Redding. We were the same way about the mountains."
"I'll tell you something. They ever let us out of here, I'm going to live on the beach. Build myself a sand castle. Hire a couple of seals to keep out the trouble."
Tristan grinned. The meds had made her pleasantly woozy and warm. They cleaned her and brought her back to the box. She forgot to try to keep the lid open.
She continued to practice her fighting. The yielding walls made a perfect punching surface. Her knuckles snapped into the sponge with wet smacks. But how could you block a tentacle? The bone-breaks Alden had taught her, would they work on the chitinous limbs of the invaders? She laid down on the clammy ground and visualized fighting the aliens, how their arms might slither free, how she'd gouge her fingers into their froggy eyes.
Tristan's next visit to the lab, Cindy tried to say hello and coughed instead, curling into a shuddering ball. When she finished, she drew her hand away and stared. Crimson gleamed from her palm.
"Aren't you immune?" Tristan said.
"Yeah. I am." Cindy wiped her hand on the table and squeezed her eyes shut. "They gave us this shit in the first place, right? What if it was on purpose?"
"On purpose?"
"You think they got us here for our health? What d'you think is in those needles, Tristan?" Cindy rocked to the side, rolling her drug-addled legs off the table. She limped to the door, feet dragging, and pounded it with a clumsy fist. "You motherfuckers! You open this door!"
The being that cleaned them emerged while Cindy's hand was halfway to the door. Its eyes bugged, cartoonishly angry. It slathered her in a mess of tentacles and dragged her to the floor.
"Tristan!" Cindy's hand jutted from the net of gray, worming limbs. "Help!"
Tristan rolled to her side. Her legs worked. The creature extended a pincer and plucked a syringe from the counter.
Tristan let herself go limp. "I can't move!"
"Help me!"
Cindy thrashed her neck, yanking the port on her neck away from the needle. The alien bore down hard, many-jointed limbs flexing. Cindy rasped for air, coughing blood. The needle flashed. Cindy went still. The creature laid her on her slab and wheeled her from the room.
Back in her box, Tristan stared at the orange lid. The thought Cindy had impregnated in her head was impossible to unthink. Over the span of a few months, two impossible events had taken place: first viral apocalypse, then alien invasion. It was impossible the two things weren't connected. The only thing that was hard to believe was that Tristan hadn't put the two together sooner.
They'd brought the disease, but they hadn't finished the job. A small fraction of the populace had proven immune. Even if the Panhandler had taken 99.9% of the world, that would leave 7 million humans to gum up the aliens' landing. Here in this facility, the enemy was searching for a new strain, the variation that would knock the survivors as dead as the rest.
On her next treatment cycle, Tristan was alone in the lab. The masked creature plunged the syringe into the canister. Body-hot bile bubbled in Tristan's throat. The alien swung the needle toward her neck. She tried to scream, but could only groan. The fluid burned in her veins.
The masked alien left. As she waited for the one that cleaned her to arrive, she practiced one of Alden's exercises, tensing every one of her muscles as she breathed out, then relaxing them all as she breathed in. It was a chi exercise, meant to build awareness and strength of breath, but it was also designed to teach pinpoint muscular control. By the time the second alien arrived, she had worked the feeling back into most of her body. By the time it returned her to the orange, she had the strength to keep the lid from slurping closed.
She braced the fleshy top open with both palms, waiting until the clatter of the alien's feet receded and the door whooshed closed. Then she slid one of her hands into the gap of green light. The lid kneaded her hand like a blind mouth, fighting to reseal itself. She wedged her other hand beside her first. Inch by inch, she forced them past the damp mouth into the lighter air beyond. She stood on her tip-toes until her arms were through to the elbow, then clamped herself to the side, dug her toes into the porous surface of the wall, and squirmed. Forcing her head through the gap was the worst: the damp, slick sponge tongued her brow, her nose, her mouth, brackish and cold. Her shoulders popped free. She wriggled her torso out into the green-lit room. Gravity expelled the rest of her from the box with a flatulent sigh. She fell.
She tucked her right arm above her head, letting it meet the ground, and rolled like Alden had taught her, distributing the impact along her
body. The room was silent. She approached the door and it whispered open.
The hallway was empty. She didn't know the way out, but she guessed the labs would be closer to the center of the facility than the holding pens would be. She headed the opposite way from the lab, her bare feet gripping the slick floor. The hallway was too high to be human. She jogged past several closed doors. Like the others, they were knobless, but she'd never seen one open unless it was approached directly. Her heart raced. She was shoeless and nearly naked, but she could deal with that once she got outside. She glanced around for a weapon—a club, anything—but the hallway was barren.
The corridor terminated in another door. She glanced back down the silent hall and stepped forward.
Beyond the doorway, a wide window showed a cloudless night. Tristan held her breath. A few seating-slings and pedestals stood around the room. A desk of sorts. It might have been a lobby, but Tristan saw no sign of aliens. She stepped inside. The door whisked closed behind her.
She glanced around for exit signs, then almost laughed out loud. Her mirth dried up as she scanned the walls. There were no signs of any doors at all. Were they somehow hidden? She ran up to the exterior wall, tracing it with her fingers. It was smooth and cold and damp.
A light bloomed in the window. At first she thought it was a jet, but it was awfully low. A motorcycle? An alien car? She shrank behind one of the pedestals and waited for it to pass. The light expanded, brightening. A school of gray fish floated past the window.
She stumbled forward. The fish darted away from her movement, tails stirring bubbles in the water. She slumped to the ground, palms squealing on the window. There was no way out. She would die here. Wherever Alden was, he would too.
They found her a few minutes later. She gave no resistance as they dragged her back to the orange.
17
"It's not like that, Shawn," Ness said. "They invaded us. Tried to wipe us out. It's not like we have some global army to fight back with."
Shawn snorted. "Yeah, but that doesn't make us terrorists."
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Page 49