by Sean Platt
Cameron laughed again.
“How long has it been since we’ve been in danger from Astrals seeking the key, Cameron?”
Cameron pretended to look at an invisible watch. “Hours?”
“They pinned us down but didn’t attack. You and Jeanine were separated from the rest of us and they chased both groups, but did they ever truly pursue us?”
Cameron wanted to give an obvious yes, possibly with an insulting eye roll. But he paused a second too long, and Charlie’s words began to tumble through his head. They’d been in danger plenty, but not from the Astrals. The only verifiable danger came from the Mullah — the radical branch of Templars who had different views on how history was supposed to unfold. The Astrals always showed, swarmed, and flashed their teeth, but they hadn’t lost anyone since Nathan Andreus’s daughter, Grace. And the aliens weren’t the ones who had ended her life.
“What Peers has been telling me makes sense,” Charlie proceeded into Cameron’s silence. “Beings came from the sky, and humanity cowered. But in the past, there’s always been evidence of societies built together, not conquest.”
“Aren’t you the one who said back in Moab that colonization came first, and annihilation followed?”
“Matter of perspective, maybe.”
“And Heaven’s Veil? Was that a matter of perspective, Charlie?”
“If you’re objective, yes. They needed to find the archive, after the Templars hid it, because what it contains is necessary for their next stage on Earth. But they’re making this up as they go too, Cameron. If they’ve always left a device behind to record what humanity did in their absence between epochs — like security camera footage to be reviewed the next day for patterns — then it makes sense that they tried to find it first thing. It was supposed to be under Vail, below the Apex pyramid. In the past, it seems to have always been left at one of the nexus points. But the Templars had a sense of humor last time. They took the Ark from where the Astrals left it and stowed it where it had famously judged humanity in the past. But the Astrals didn’t know the Templars had found it, and when they saw that the key had been removed and stored separately, back in Cottonwood, I imagine that made them nervous. So they followed us, assuming we’d lead them to it. When that didn’t work, they powered up the grid in Heaven’s Veil, turning on what Clara called the ‘spotlight.’ We put an end to that, too, by blowing up the Apex. What choice did we leave them?”
“You’re right, Charlie. Obliterating an entire city full of hundreds of thousands of people was really sensible once you look at it that way.”
“Don’t be dense,” Charlie snapped, surprising Cameron. “This is a race that’s been around for hundreds of thousands of years at least, possibly millions, or billions. Cosmologically speaking, there’s room on the timeline for a species nearly that old given the right circumstances. They seeded life throughout the galaxy, maybe many galaxies. They’ve likely had the capacity for intergalactic travel since before humanity was a gleam in evolution’s eye. We don’t know how long their natural lifespans are as individuals, but I don’t think it matters because they’re barely individuals. You’ve heard how Kindred talks about his nightmares.”
Cameron had. Kindred was Meyer Dempsey through and through, but some part of his higher mind must have held bits of his former Titan self. He sometimes had night terrors of the day he was changed, and of how petrified he felt to be cut from their collective.
“They don’t think the way we do,” Charlie said, his intensity fully returned. “It’s stupid and arrogant to attribute human thought to beings that might, for all intents and purposes, think of themselves as timeless — in a single unbroken mind, if not in body. When you’re that old, you don’t worry about whether your meal at a restaurant is five minutes late or lose your Zen when the person in front of you at the ten-items-or-less line has fifty items. So yes, Cameron. To them, destroying Heaven’s Veil might have seemed perfectly sensible. If we killed as many Astrals as they killed humans, they’d shrug it off and keep ticking. It’s possible they feel it was no big deal. And by doing it, they generated an emotional signal — from the dying but also from anyone who saw or heard about it — that would have to stream out and into their lost archive. They tried to find it through more peaceful means, but humanity kept it hidden. They need it to do their work. So in their shoes, what choice did they have?”
Cameron just stared. “So we had it coming? That’s great, Charlie. Now can you explain why ‘inferior’ races are just begging for ethnic cleansing, or why women who dress provocatively have a justifiable rape coming?”
“Stay in your shell, Cameron. Keep applying your own way of seeing the world to the Astrals. See how far it gets you. Or how much further it gets you than the past five years of running away.”
Cameron glared at the scientist. Charlie was normally comically stodgy, so stiff and divorced from the normal rules of social intelligence that he couldn’t be convincingly angry or offensive. But this was a new Charlie, and Cameron saw determination in the set of his jaw as they sat in the near-dark. For decades, Cameron had known him as his father’s straight man — someone everyone dismissed because it was only Charlie — too oblivious to know any better. But he had several PhDs and knew more, by far, than anyone else in their longtime group. Speaking with Peers — and incorporating whatever the man had told him — seemed to have finally snapped Charlie out of complacency. Cameron didn’t have to listen, but doing so now felt like deliberately burying his head in the sand. And this time, if he refused to hear Charlie, he felt somehow sure the group would split, and the division would be permanent.
“The sword in the stone, huh?”
“That’s what Peers thinks,” Charlie said, an edge still in his voice.
“So what does it mean? What comes next?”
“You know what comes next.” Charlie fixed Cameron in his hard stare. “Nobody could pull Excalibur from the stone, even as it sat there in the middle of the town square for anyone to try. Nobody but Arthur.”
“If you think it’s right,” Cameron said, “I’m willing to trust him. I’ll give him the key, and he can open it … and God help us all if the Astrals don’t like what they see we’ve done while they’ve been away.” Cameron thought of Hitler. He thought of cults led by deadly leaders. He thought of poverty, starvation, apathy, hatred. It wasn’t a pretty picture, but if Charlie was right, the Astrals had all the time in the world. They’d wait as long as humanity required to make up their minds and face the jury.
“Based on all Peers showed me, that’s not how it works,” Charlie said. “You touched the key first, inside the Cottonwood archives.”
But Cameron couldn’t go back. He wouldn’t go back. Not ever.
“You’re King Arthur in this tale,” Charlie said, “and it’s time to pull Excalibur from the stone.”
CHAPTER 11
“I’m going.”
Meyer stopped, Lila’s back to him. He thought he’d been quiet, even on the Den’s stone floors. The place was a study in opposites, stocked to the rafters with technological equipment — damn near a post-Astral version of NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain — but there were no niceties to go with all the doodads. Charlie might as well have designed the place. It was eminently practical and not at all warm. The perfect hideout for a logical pragmatist. If they weren’t planning to leave immediately, Charlie would be happy here. As might Kindred, with all the Astrals in the air.
“I hope you don’t mean what I think you do.”
Lila turned to face her father. “I suppose you’re going to ground me?”
“Maybe.” But he allowed a smile. He saw Lila almost smile back. Smiles from her father were still disarming. Time was, he barely ever smiled or laughed. But that was before he was confined for two full years, forced to confront his humanity first, his sanity and survival second.
“Dad, I’m twenty-four years old. You can’t tell me what to do.”
“I don’t think I’ve told you to do anyth
ing. All I did was walk into the room.” He looked around. “Is Christopher here?”
“He’s with Clara. She wanted to explore.”
“Did Peers say it was okay?”
Lila nodded. “They’re with Aubrey. I told him not to show Clara where they kept their enemies’ severed heads.”
“Please tell me that’s a joke.” But the smile was larger now.
“Don’t try to soften me up. I said I’m going.”
Meyer entered the small room. It probably hadn’t been intended as a bedroom, but it had become one. There were three skinny collapsible cots against the walls. Two had been pushed together. Meyer felt a curious unpleasant sensation and marveled at himself for a moment from the outside. Even after all that had happened, the idea of his adult daughter sleeping beside a man still gave his stomach a quiet punch.
“I’m just checking out the digs.” Meyer circled the room. It was so blank. Three cots, accompanying bedclothes, and nothing else. They’d been wearing their travel backpacks in Derinkuyu when the Astrals arrived, but Lila had handed hers off to Christopher once it became too unwieldy in the tight passages. He’d lost it in the exodus, and now it seemed Lila would need to share Piper’s clothes until they found another former human spot to raid.
“You were easier when you were a hardass.” Lila said it without any edge.
Meyer sat on a cot. “That was the old Meyer Dempsey.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re still the old Meyer Dempsey. We have a new one, too.”
“Original, not old,” Meyer clarified. “Now I’m the kindhearted father you’ve always deserved.”
“You still wear suits.”
“The coats are warm. I don’t wear them for fashion.”
“If you shaved that beard,” Lila said, now poking in a minuscule pile of loaned belongings, “I’d never be able to tell you apart from Kindred.”
“See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about, right there. You didn’t just recapture the caring side of your father. You got a second caring father, too.”
Lila rolled her eyes. It had become an unfunny joke. Meyer knew he’d never fully have his daughter back — not as long as Kindred was around. Everyone knew the group contained one Meyer and a copy, but Kindred had all of Meyer’s memories up to the point they’d split. It was only a semantic matter to say that Lila wasn’t his daughter, that Clara wasn’t his granddaughter, that Piper hadn’t once been his wife, and that he hadn’t lost a son — and a good friend and secret lover — to the Astrals.
“Stop it, Dad.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re going to try and convince me that I shouldn’t go to Ember Flats.”
“I haven’t said anything of the kind.”
“That’s why I said, ‘going to.’”
Meyer watched Lila for a long, quiet moment. Then: “So do you think Aubrey grew that little mustache on purpose, or has he just been missing the same spot for months?”
“I’m not going to change my mind!” Lila snapped. And in the sentence, Meyer heard all the petulance he’d grown used to through her spoiled teen years. She wasn’t coddled these days, and her words rang in his ears as almost funny.
“It’s too dangerous, Lila,” Meyer said, giving up.
“Then none of us should go.”
“Some of us need to.”
“And that ‘some’ includes you and Kindred.”
“Ember Flats has a viceroy we may need to talk to. I was a viceroy.” He corrected himself. Their memory sharing only went one way, but sometimes it was hard to disentangle himself from his doppelgänger regardless. “Well, you know what I mean. He was. I’m his other half, yada yada.”
Lila put a fist on her hip. Technically, it was true. When Meyer and Kindred could stop arguing and put themselves on the same wavelength, some trick of the collective gave them deductive and mental abilities Sherlock Holmes would envy. But really Meyer was going in addition to Lila because he was Meyer, and Meyer Dempsey didn’t stand at the back of any line.
“And Clara … hell, you know I wish she didn’t have to go. But you know how she is and the kinds of things she can see. If there are other Lightborn children there, then I guess it’s moot, but … Piper is staying,” he said, changing tacks.
“No she’s not.”
“Yes, she is.”
“I just talked to her five minutes ago, Dad. Don’t lie to me.”
“Damn. I knew I should have stealthily manipulated her first.”
Lila sat. She exhaled slowly. After a bit, Meyer sat beside her.
“Dad. Daddy,” she said, putting a hand over her father’s.
“Don’t use ‘Daddy’ on me.”
“I’m not the bratty little rich girl I used to be. The world isn’t what it was. Once upon a time, it was your job to protect me. But I have my own job to do.”
“It’ll never stop being my job to protect you.”
“Then protect me on the road. Protect me in Ember Flats. I can’t just stay here. How does that make sense? You’re going. You need Clara. Chris won’t stay, and good luck convincing Piper. So am I supposed to stay by myself? Maybe with Aubrey? How is that preferable to … ”
She wouldn’t finish the sentence, but Meyer knew what she’d almost said: How is that preferable to dying in Hell’s Corridor? It should have sounded like a rhetorical question, but it wasn’t. The world was so upside down now that death with family might be better than living alone.
“It’s a suicide mission, Lila,” he said anyway.
“Then don’t go.”
Meyer felt his face work, trying to find a way through the bind she’d put him in. But there was no escape; Lila was telling the truth that she was no longer who she’d been. None of them were. The Meyer of seven years ago would have kicked the Meyer of today right in the balls for being emotional: weak, human, vulnerable — more compassionate in a world where hardness was perhaps needed more.
“I know how you are, Dad. And I know how you are when you work with Kindred. You don’t believe it’s a suicide mission. Not for the mission as a whole, at least. I’m not stupid. I’ve heard all the same things about Ember Flats as the rest of you. And it feels like there’s nobody, anywhere, who hasn’t heard rumors of the freaks and cannibals in Hell’s Corridor. But you wouldn’t do this if you didn’t think it could succeed. You’re too logical, even now, to be content with a heroic gesture. And you wouldn’t even consider it if you didn’t think it was important. Vital, even.”
Meyer said nothing.
“Yesterday, this group was running from the Ark. It felt like Cameron had a compass that told him nothing other than when the Ark was at his back, and he always wanted to get as far away as he could. The rest of us felt the same. Charlie and Kindred complained, but we’ve been ignoring them forever. But I’ve been watching you change. All of you, one by one. Now it’s like this sense of grim duty. So tell me, father of mine: tell me how, when everyone else suddenly sees such importance in this mission that all minds have changed 180 degrees, I’m supposed to be the one stubborn holdout who refuses to believe.”
He shook his head. “We won’t all make it. Maybe through the badlands outside Ember Flats, in Peers’s outfitted bus. Maybe. But I’ve seen enough cities to never want to see one again. There’s been anarchy since Heaven’s Veil fell. They’ll see us coming. There’s no way to sneak in — not the way we’ll be hightailing and hauling ass through Hell’s Corridor with road warriors screaming behind us. Between Kindred and me, maybe we can talk our way in. Peers thinks the Astrals actually want Cameron to open the Ark, and the more Kindred and I think on this, it almost makes sense. So maybe the mission succeeds. But why risk bringing extras? You’ll be … fodder, Lila.”
“Chattel with my family over staying here alone.”
“You might have Aubrey.”
“But he can’t even shave properly, Dad. He’s been missing the same spot on his upper lip for months.”
Something inside
him ached, but Meyer laughed anyway.
“Peers says he can clear us to take most of the main roads, but it’s still over a thousand miles.”
“Oh, you didn’t mention a long car ride. My mind is totally changed.”
“It’s going to take days to get there.”
“I had fun the last time we took a road trip,” Lila said.
“When the Astrals invaded? The trip that ended with us shooting our way into a bunker then practically being smoked out before I was abducted?”
“Good times,” Lila said, leaning against her father’s side.
“If the Astrals abduct us again, you might not get your own room.”
Lila giggled.
“They’ll probably probe the shit out of us, too.”
“I’ve got Christopher for that,” Lila said.
“Dammit, Lila. Don’t ever say that sort of thing to your father.”
She laughed again, and for a moment it seemed like everything might be okay.
But they wouldn’t be, and Meyer — with Kindred’s help — already knew it.
There would be blood on the way to Ember Flats.
There would be death.
The logic said so, and the logic never lied.
CHAPTER 12
Cameron felt the repulsion of Giza the moment they all piled on to the bus for their journey. It was as if he’d been walking away from the wind for so long, he’d grown used to its subtle nudge at his back. Now he was a long way from home, turning around to retrace his steps. And even though he’d been told he needed to return, the wind’s insistent hand, shoving him away, said otherwise.
Everyone boarded the bus. No one stayed behind, as if they’d decided to take a family road trip rather than barreling into the monster’s mouth.
Cameron had to go. Peers said he was the one chosen by both key and Ark to pull the metaphorical sword from the stone. Once he looked the issue in its eye, he had to admit he’d been feeling the pull for a while. He had dreams about finding the Ark again, even though word had clearly been passed around that it was right there, smack dab in the center of Ember Flats. Until the Den and its overabundance of information, Cameron hadn’t actually seen the thing on its enormous plinth, but every traveler knew where the archive rested. Every barman in every backwoods watering hole knew where it stood. In every city they’d fought through — every burg they’d eventually fled, holding their belongings and female members close — people had known where the Astrals had taken the prize they’d finally found in Horeb’s guts. But so many other things made sense, too — like why the Astrals hounded them constantly but never truly attacked them anymore. Why the Mullah, who opposed the Astrals, did. And why Cameron increasingly sensed that running from what had happened was only delaying the inevitable.