“We’re nearly there,” Wini says, as though sensing my growing impatience. As intriguing as being led through a subterranean base built by non-humans is, I’m far more interested in Jacob, and once I have him, deciding how to handle what comes next.
I’d be lying if the idea of fleeing this place with the people I care about wasn’t tempting.
But what about the rest? All those people?
And Isabella.
Has she been here long enough to be displayed on that wall?
And what about the kids still under Sheba’s protection? Will I have to give them up for Jacob?
Could I really do that?
Would any of them forgive me if I did?
“Forgiveness is a human concept,” Young says as he exits the tunnel.
“Does the lion ask forgiveness for killing a zebra?” Godin asks. His white body glows orange in the light from the chamber he’s just entered.
Wini fake-smiles back at me as she walks into the light at the end of the tunnel. It looks more like a grimace and does a better job representing how I feel than the Other, who has just revealed how screwed I really am. “Does the vine feel remorse for the tree it chokes the life out of as it reaches for the sun?”
Shit.
Damn it.
How did I not realize?
How did I not feel it?
While I’ve been distracted by my grand tour, the atrocities carried out on humanity, and the possibility of cutting a deal, the Other has been slipping past the nanites’ defenses.
The Other is in my head.
“Yes…” Wini says, her grimace-smile twisting into something monstrous. The thought is finished by a voice in my head that is as unfamiliar as it is vile.
…I am.
47
As a child I was something of a chess addict. I played and dominated my friends whenever possible. My parents and grandfather didn’t stand a chance, either. When I finally convinced them to pay a hundred-dollar entrance fee for a statewide tournament, I waltzed into the American Legion hall with all the swagger of a rock star. I wore a smile throughout the first ten minutes of my first match, chasing my opponent across the board, knocking out pieces with ruthless tactics.
By the time I realized I was being played, it was too late. Every move I made had been planned by the kid across from me. He wasn’t out to collect pieces, or even gloat. He was solely focused on one thing: the win. And he achieved it three moves later.
I never did play chess again, but applied the stinging lesson of that day to the rest of my life.
Until now.
Yes, the voice says inside my head, experiencing the memory at the forefront of my thoughts along with me. You understand.
The oblong space beyond the last tunnel is striped across the ceiling with what looks like those orange salt crystal lamps you can buy at the mall, but smooth and flush with the flawless curved ceiling and walls leading to a polished floor.
Wini, Godin, and Young part and usher me into the room with their hands, welcoming the guest of honor to a ball of horrors. Several more crystals rise from the floor, gently pulsing with orange light. On one hand, it all looks natural, but it’s all too clean and symmetrical for that.
This is tech, I think. Some kind of computer.
Beyond your comprehension, the voice in my head says.
“Can you not do that?” I ask. “It’s unnerving.”
“You would...” Young says.
“...prefer I speak…” Godin adds.
“...through your friends?” Wini finishes.
“I would prefer you stay out of my head,” I say.
“Ahh,” Wini continues. “But your head contains what I desire.”
For a moment, I think he’s talking about knowledge, about what I learned from Lindo, or the other kids’ location. But that’s not it at all. “You want the nanites.”
“The boy was never meant to carry them for so long,” Young says. “He was an experiment that exceeded expectations, as did the…nanites.”
“But you can’t just take them,” I realize and say. “Because they’re bonded to me.”
This is why I’m not lying on a table, having my head cut open. I need to send the nanites out. I need to give them to the Other. That’s why it wants to deal. But that’s not the only reason. It’s hearing my thoughts. The big ones. On the surface. But it’s not in my core. My soul. If it could, I’d be restrained. And while it can speak inside my head, it’s not close to wresting control.
“We can give to each other,” Jacob says, stepping out from around one of the ten-foot-tall orange crystals. Like the others, he’s undressed and exposed. My anger flares, but I breathe through it, reminding myself that the Other is using basic tactics to get under my skin. Jacob looks unharmed—physically—and that’s at least something.
“You can even finish the job that brought you to me.” The new voice belongs to a young girl. She steps out from behind another crystal, as naked as the rest of them. An incision across her midsection has been sealed, but it’s surrounded by a purple bruise. The rest of her appears unharmed, including her face, which I recognize from photos.
“Isabella.” She doesn’t react to the name. “Let them go.”
“In time,” Jacob says. His bug eyes twitch. He’s still in there, fighting. The Other’s telepathy seems more powerful here, boosted by proximity. Were we hundreds of miles away, the boy’s strong will could probably break free. But here, this close to the Other, only the nanites seem capable of preventing total loss of control.
“What about the other children?”
“Keep them,” Wini says.
Those two words reveal just how desperate the Other is. It has been pursuing and collecting its creations for thousands of years, sometimes with explosive results. They’re not insignificant to it. That it wants the nanites more means I have some leverage.
Speak it, the Other says in my head. Even it knows it doesn’t have full access to my thoughts. But it senses I have more to ask.
“Show yourself,” I say.
“Impossible,” Young says.
“I don’t make deals with a devil I can’t look in the eyes.”
“You would not…understand.” Godin sounds almost sad when he speaks.
Does it mean I won’t be able to comprehend its true form? Or that I will morally object to its appearance?
“Then no deal.”
Jacob stands in front of me. “What do you think will happen? Do you think you will leave this place? That your friends will survive? That I have no need for them? Your torture will be long and excruciating, experienced by yourself and those you love most. I will give them their minds back so that they know every agony experienced is a result of your stubborn spirit.”
“And you will never have the nanites,” I say, sounding far more confident than I feel.
“The process that created the nanites in your body is already being recreated,” Isabella says.
That might be true, but it’s missing what was probably an essential ingredient—Lindo. How long did it work to create those nanites only to lose them in transit? But the answer to that question doesn’t matter. Denying the Other access to the nanites means not only subjecting my friends to torture, but all the people and hybrids it will take to find another nanite host like Lindo. I can’t begin to understand how these things work, but I think the relationship between Lindo and the nanites were integral to their development. And since people really are one of a kind…
But if I give the nanites to the Other, what will be the result? How powerful will the cryptoterrestrial become? It already has access to people’s minds. What will it do when it has free access to all of human technology? Wipe us out? Enslave us all? Turn us into something not recognizable as human? The Other’s endgame, beyond survival, is a mystery.
Before I can decide which is the lesser of two evils, Jacob laughs. “Your vexation amuses me.”
“Nice to know you have a sense of humor,” I lie.
The more human this thing acts, the more I hate it, and that will just cloud my judgment. I’ll take my alien overlords inhuman, thank you very much.
“It is less of a joke,” Wini says, “and more of an irony. Some of your species would call it a cosmic aligning of fate. Some would call it coincidence.”
Young puts his hand on my shoulder like we’re pals. “I call it an opportunity.”
“For both of us,” Godin adds.
“We will both get what we want,” Jacob says. “We will part ways equally satisfied.”
I don’t believe it. The Other has nothing left to offer me. “You’re going to kill yourself?”
Jacob grins. “I’m going to give you a gift. And I’m going to let you leave this place with all that I have offered you already.”
I don’t know if it’s tweaking my mind, but I actually believe it.
“Are you going to let everyone go?” I ask. “Head to the stars where you’d like everyone to believe you came from?”
“Sarcasm is the defense of the simple-minded,” Isabella says, her big, brown, earnest eyes staring up at me. “You are better than that. You are more than that.”
I wait in silence. All I’ve got is more sarcasm.
But then I have a question. “What do you mean, more than that?”
“What do you know about your parents?”
Jack and shit, I think, but don’t say so, mostly because it already knows what Wini knows—my parents died young and beyond their names and mixed heritages, I don’t know anything.
“Your grandfather was conceived here,” Godin says. “He was one of thousands to carry genetic alterations. Your father was born with them. As were you.”
I take a step back, subconsciously looking for a seat as my legs grow weak. I stop when I bump into the wall of Grays behind me.
Wini smiles at me, and she’s getting better at it. “This is not your first visit.”
“You were brought here,” Young says, “while still in your mother. You were tested, but while you appeared to be a carrier of the genes, they were not active in your body.”
“What genes?” I ask.
“Inconsequential,” Isabella says. “There are millions of genes important to my…”
“You were returned,” Jacob says. “Allowed to live your life. Allowed to breed.”
“Don’t,” I say. It’s all I can manage before falling to my knees. “Please.”
“As I understand it,” Wini says. “…you learned of the child’s existence the day before your wife was killed in an accident that left her body mangled beyond recognition, all signs of previous injury or operations eradicated.”
“I’ll kill you,” I growl.
“How unfortunate for you. That must have stung.” Wini’s voice is cold and very unlike her. “Proof of the child. That is what you held in the envelope.”
I can feel it, digging in my head, looking for confirmation of something.
“You know the truth now,” Jacob says. “You are a father. You have a son.”
My insides cramp up as I hear what is unsaid in the words that are said.
Are a father.
Have a son.
“Here is my bargain.” Isabella takes my chin in her hands, squeezing my cheeks hard. She lifts my head up to look in my eyes. “The nanites, for your son.”
48
Emotion clogs my thoughts, making it hard to contemplate a response.
My son is alive.
My five-year-old son is alive.
Focus.
Think!
What do you know, in your core?
My son—what else!
I’m not human. Not fully.
Like Jacob and Isabella, I am, to some degree, a hybrid. That’s why the nanites didn’t kill me. Whatever change the Other made to my grandfather filtered down to me, and while the genes they were looking for remain dormant, there’s still enough of me that’s like Lindo. I think. I’m guessing.
“Where is he?” I croak. “Where’s my son?”
“Not here,” Wini says. “But that can be arranged if it must be.”
“No,” I say, realizing this could all be a bluff. But it doesn’t matter. My course is set. My resolve is set. “You stay away from him. Just…where is he?”
Young grins. “Not yet. Not until you relinquish the—”
I push myself to my feet. “Tell me how.”
Godin approaches the nearest of the tall crystals. Places his hand on its smooth surface. “Just ask them to leave you. I will receive them, just as you did.”
“And then you’ll just let us leave? You’ll tell me where to find my son?”
“Yes,” Wini says. The Other has clearly chosen her because I trust her with my life, and vice versa. It probably thinks the answer will sound less like a lie coming from her. But it’s an unnecessary effort. I believe it already.
I take one last look around, searching for disapproval in the eyes of my mind-controlled friends. Finding none, I look back at the Grays, watching me with sentinel eyes, all of them controlled by the Other.
The crystal glows brighter at my approach and I feel that same tug inside me. I have a sense that the nanites want to be a part of the crystal, which I’ve surmised is some kind of advanced computer system, spread out through the facility.
But it’s not just a computer.
It’s a control center. For the UFOs. For the Grays. For all the people under the Other’s thumb. While its transmission of the Other’s will is powerful enough to influence people hundreds of miles away, perhaps even on the far side of the globe, it’s most powerful in this place, like a point-blank shotgun.
I reach out, hand hovering just six inches from the crystal’s surface. My skin tingles. Orange flecks of light twinkle at my fingertips.
I had pictured the nanites as a black, almost sinister entity inside me, like a demonic spirit granting me inhuman powers. But they’re luminous, made of the same stuff that powers—if I’m right—the Other’s intellect.
“My son, and my friends,” I say.
Wini, Young, Godin, Jacob, and Isabella all nod with frantic energy. “Yes,” they all say. Desperate. Hungry. As much as I desire my son’s safe return, the Other craves what I have even more.
And that is its weakness laid bare.
Because I will never give it what it wants.
I will never betray my friends’ trust, or my own moral code.
I will never allow humanity to be enslaved.
Wini grips my outstretched hand, the Other detecting the shift in my emotional state. “What are you doing?”
“The only thing I can do,” I say, and then I smile at Wini, who now looks confused.
Turning inward, I address the nanites inside me, anxious to leave. Not because they’re drawn by the Other’s presence, but out of a craving for vengeance. While they are no longer part of Lindo, I think he is still a part of them. Over the past days I have felt a kind of consciousness emanating from them. But I don’t think it’s the nanites themselves, just the parts of Lindo’s personality still residing in them. Whether that’s a kind of technological residue, or if their eighty-plus years together actually changed the nanites is anyone’s guess.
And I don’t think the Other’s situation is too dissimilar. Had Lindo understood how to send his consciousness along with the nanites, he might now be as alive as the Others, except possessing my body…which I suspect is what the Other really wants.
“You’re not alive,” I say, “are you?”
Wini’s face turns up in a sneer, the kind she makes when America’s Next Top Model doesn’t go the way she thought it should. “How long has it been? Since your species died out? Five thousand years? Ten thousand years? Longer? Was it with the last ice age, or with the dinosaurs?”
Wini’s grip tightens, but it’s not enough to hurt me. The Other is still limited by her body. “Your son will die.”
“I don’t think so.” I press my hand against the crystal. Its warm surface send
s a tingling up my arm.
“Your friends will die,” Wini says.
Young and Godin wrap their hands around Jacob’s and Isabella’s necks.
“Not today,” I say, and then I address the nanites tasked to the job at hand. “Kill it. Kill it now!”
My hand turns red hot and a swirling energy flows from my head, down my arm, out my fingertips, and into the crystal. My vision tunnels and fades to black. I feel my equilibrium shift backward as my hearing turns to a kind of rushing wind. And then, the effect fades, leaving me feeling a bit exhausted—and hopeful.
My assassins have been set loose.
But the Other hasn’t been stopped, and it has an army of its own assassins.
Godin drops Isabella to the floor and takes a swing at my head that nearly connects. I duck to the side, but it’s a momentary solve. Young is approaching from behind, and Wini’s nails are now drawing blood on my arm.
Worse, she looks like she’s about to bite my neck.
“The world will burn!” Wini shouts, snarling. “All because—”
“Now!” I shout, though the vocalization isn’t required. The nanites I slipped into Wini’s mind, when I held her up and told her that there was nothing on this planet, in the stars, or living beneath our feet that would stop me from saving her, have been waiting for the signal to free her from the Other’s influence.
She shouts in pain, gripping the sides of her head and collapsing to the floor. Breaking the Other’s connection to a mind is far more traumatic than easing its way out. I remember the pain she’s feeling now, but also know she’ll be fighting at my side in just a moment.
Godin takes another swing. He’s probably a competent fighter, but under the Other’s control, he lacks agility and the fighting instincts of a man who hasn’t had his consciousness locked inside a computer system for who knows how long.
The slap of Young’s feet betrays him as he approaches. I duck to the side as he swings, overextending himself. Needing to slow the man, but having no desire to injure him, I kick out, striking behind his knee. The joint folds and he topples to the ground, tripping up Godin as he charges again.
“Took you god damn long enough,” Wini says, pushing herself up. “Before you get distracted by all this…” she motions to her very naked body, “what do you want to do about them?” She points behind me.
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