The Parabiont Invasion Book 3

by Y. J. Gendron

  “Yes, Kalxin, I know.”

  The lined face of the ex-veterinarian turned a shade darker. “Very well.”

  He glanced at those left standing. There was a deep sadness in the stare, and although he didn’t a say word, his whole demeanor spoke volumes. He, too, was trapped.

  His eyes settled on Beatrice.

  Her breath caught.

  He knew.

  He knew that she was conscious. That she was free of Tebayi’s control.

  But how?

  The glance between them lasted but milliseconds, but she had the distinct impression that a connexion had nonetheless been made. Kalxin had done something to her. After the confrontation with Tebayi, she had been comatose for almost two days. Somehow, he had found the way to make her resistant to the incapacitator.

  What else has he done to me? Has it always been part of the plan? To have me become a weapon against Tebayi?

  The more she thought about it, the more it became obvious. Kalxin had planned for this. Tebayi was a threat that needed to be stopped. Maybe he feared that his fellow Amilaki wouldn’t be able to stop her, that they were too weakened by the division in their midst and by the ongoing struggle to survive. Whatever the reason he had decided to act.

  She understood, now, that he was playing a game.

  A most dangerous one.

  He was working with Tebayi, coerced in some way to do her bidding. But he’d found a way to hide a weapon in plain sight; that even if she managed to rule the Amilaki and make all of them subservient to her will, someone would stand up.

  Someone with something in her brain.

  Damn.

  Kalxin turned his head and the flood of thoughts in her head subsided.

  And she realized that his message was clear: it was up to her now. He had done all he could to help her.

  She let out a low breath, angling it so that it pushed aside the strand of hair in front of her left eye. The maneuver failed and she did it again, keeping resolutely still at the same time. The rebellious lock of hair slid away from her iris, revealing what Kalxin what doing.

  He was plugging Tebayi in the interface.

  That was how her brain interpreted the strange sight before her.

  She tried to understand what was going on. Kalxin had pulled out a sleek webbing of lighted tendrils from a compact case and was affixing it to Tebayi’s head. The one called Vokug was standing alongside, helping him out. Scar Man, hovering behind them, kept a watchful eye on the proceedings. Beatrice guessed that if Kalxin merely entertained the idea of doing something foolhardy, he would be neutralized at once, maybe even permanently. The sullen look on Scar Man’s grim visage was a warning in itself.

  Kalxin joined the bundle of glowing tendrils to the ubiquitous oblong-shaped object the Amilaki used all the time. This one, however, was different. The device had ten faces, each one a separate display screen. Columns after columns of data rolled over the faces, the characteristic Amilaki alphabet of swirls and dots coming and going in an uninterrupted flow. Kalxin peered at the data for a full minute before nodding, apparently satisfied.

  “Is all well?” Tebayi asked, making Kalxin jump.

  He nodded with a nervous shake of the head, then made his way to the main interface. With haste, he proceeded in unplugging all the extraneous tech with quick pulls and tugs. One by one, the human components of the Disruptor were rendered useless, cast aside without concern.

  Beatrice understood that most of those systems had been put up to aid Graves’ technicians have a sense of what Eklan’s programming was all about. The code was all but unfathomable to humans, and although it had been deemed to complex and time-consuming to try to teach the language to human coders, it had been agreed that an activity log had to be kept, available for all to consult. Eklan himself wrote the log entries, doing his best to make it, as he once said to Noah, human-palatable; though apparently, it wasn’t easy to transcribe advanced Amilaki theories into sentences that made sense in english.

  Kalxin pulled one last connexion out from the main panel of the interface and took a step backward. Satisfied that all the superfluous hardware was out of the way, he went back to Tebayi’s side.

  He checked the webbing over her head one last time. Super-thin tendrils, the width of a human hair, dangled from the left side of the device.

  Tebayi nodded at him then turned to those, like Vokug, who stared back with anticipation. Her followers looked on with attentiveness, clearly enthralled by what was going on, and what was about to take place.

  And she wasn’t about to disappoint them.

  “This is for Ukun. This is for us. This is for all those who believe in our right to exist. In our obligation to prevail and in the validity of our cause.”

  She gave a short nod to Kalxin.

  “This is the beginning of the new reign, long overdue. A reign when the Amilaki, at last, accomplish their true destiny.”

  The tendrils burrowed themselves in the soft tissue behind her ear, inside the lump that marked her as a Parabiont. There was a brightening of the webbing and a shudder crossed her body.

  Her head fell to her chest.

  Kalxin removed the device from her cranium and set it aside.

  “It is done.”

  “Indeed it is.” A voice answered, sounding strangely incorporeal.

  Beatrice’s blood turned cold at once.

  Because the voice had come, impossibly, from above her.

  From the stack of Amilaki tech.

  19 Living Nightmare

  Paige stepped out of her room to a scene straight out of a horror movie. Two soldiers stood like mannequins in the hallway, their faces frozen in expressions of sudden bewilderment, as if a jokester had pulled their pants down. She crossed between them, careful to not bump an arm or step on a toe, and made her way to De Rozan’s room. The curtain was pulled tight so she swiped it aside with one quick flick of the wrist. Inside, Nurse Allston stared back with vacant eyes. She, like the others, was paralyzed, another victim of the attack.

  Because, Paige thought with conviction, this was an attack.

  “Corporal!” Kyle said, turning to her. “It’s good to see you!”

  Paige couldn’t help but agree with the young soldier.

  “You said it, Private!”

  De Rozan propped himself up in the bed, lifting his left arm away from the blanket. Paige saw the IV line dangle from the post. It was the same setup as the one in her room. She came closer to the bed.

  “Wow, you weren’t kidding along. Your nose is something to behold!”

  The private’s entire face turned red. “How are you feeling?” Paige asked, checking the empty bag on the post.

  “Good, though I’m a tad woozy.”

  “It’ll pass.”

  He shot a glance at the IV in his arm then turned his head away. “I’m ready, Corporal. You can pull it out.”

  It was Paige’s turn to nod. “Very well. On three.”

  She gripped the needle sticking out from his arm. “One.”

  De Rozan stiffened.

  “Huh, remind me. What comes after one?”

  “What?” the Private asked, dumbfounded.

  Paige pulled the needle out with a sudden move.

  Kyle’s eyes bugged out in surprise. “Two,” he muttered between clenched teeth.

  Paige stared at his arm. There was just the one drop of blood but the IV was definitely removed. “You’re good,” she said with another grin.

  “No. You are,” Kyle said, removing the adhesive bandage from his arm.

  Paige indicated the plastic container in the corner. “Your clothes must be in that box. Mine where anyway. Get dressed. I’ll wait for you in the common area.”

  Paige’s back-to-business tone wasn’t lost on the Private. “Yes, Corporal.”

  She gave him one final nod then exited the room. The common area was just fifty feet away and she hurried over to it, her footsteps sounding loud in the relative quietness of the hall. Though s
he had recuperated her clothes, she missed having her weapon at hand. She guessed it must have been stored in the armory, along with the rest of the equipment. The steel shed was outside the plant and as far as she knew, only Graves and Garcia had the necessary keys.

  It was eerily quiet in the hallway, save for the hum of the heating system as the warm air travelled through the ducts. Around her, only a handful of soldiers stood about, each with the same helpless expression. Cornel Williams’ features were obscured by the blanket he was holding up, his arms struck in an odd pose and locked midway in movement. She walked over to him and tried to lower his left hand. It was stiff and wiry, refusing to budge. Even the fingers wouldn’t flex as she tried to extirpate the blanket away.

  “No use?” Kyle asked as he ran up to her.

  She turned to him.

  He was still as pale as a ghost and his nose stuck out like a sore thumb but some of the redness in his cheeks had returned and his eyes were focused and clear. Like her’s, his uniform was clean and pressed.

  “No. Even their muscles are all bunched up.”

  The Private looked around the room then said, “What are we to do?”

  Paige indicated with her chin the end of the corridor, where the rest of the plant waited to be explored. “We need to find the cause of this.” Her mouth settled into a thin line. “And we need weapons.”

  “I’m with you, Corporal.”

  They left Cornell behind and proceeded up the corridor. The plant’s layout was familiar to them and they quickly moved through the maze of hallways, stopping here and there when they encountered more of their static comrades. Soon, they reached the limit of the common area and came upon the intersection that led to the off-limits section of the plant.

  To the area where all the activity took place.

  To where the Cube was.

  “We still don’t have weapons,” Kyle said, eyeing the final hallway that led to the heart of the complex.

  “Yeah,” Paige agreed.

  “Maybe we could go back and search again. Maybe we missed something.”

  They had kept an eye out each time they came upon another soldier. But either the unit was unarmed when the attack took place, or more likely, had been disarmed afterward.

  “What bugs me,” Paige said with a shake of the head. “Is that we couldn’t even wrestle a blanket out of Cornell’s grip.”

  Kyle’s stare mirrored her own confusion.

  “Then, how the hell were our guys disarmed?” She said, her voice laced with apprehension.

  A blaze of light lit up the hallway. Like a super blood moon on a cloudless night, Paige saw the outline of the Cube for the first time. A wedge of cold sank between her shoulder blades. More stock-still soldiers stood around the open doorway.

  The one that led inside the Cube.

  But what was even more striking was the abundance of illumination twirling inside the room.

  A light that radiated with intensity.

  She shot a glance at Kyle. He, too, had seen it and by the stunned expression on his face, it was clear he’d never seen anything like it.

  “What is that?”

  “I don’t know,” Paige said, still taken aback by the flare-up. “But let’s go find out.”

  They eased forward, leaving the relative safety of the corridor for the gloomy interior of the volume. Paige was surprised by the emptiness of the hall they found themselves in. Aside from the Cube, the rest of the space was empty, save for deserted racking systems and oversized steel cabinets with warning stickers that dated back at least 20 years. Walking side-to-side, they followed the lozenge of light that indicated the Cube’s entrance. Already, the men and women rooted to the spot could be seen in sharper detail, their faces bathed by the otherworldly radiance. De Rozan walked by a few soldiers he knew well, his shoulders slumping as the scale of the attack became clear. His teammates were all here, but they might as well be absent. Josh, Chris, Leo, the names popped into his mind one after the other, along with snippets of memories of his interactions with them. Be it a beer passed along after a well-deserved break, a good laugh or even a tragic loss, those around him deserved a better fate than the one they were subjected to.

  They should have, at least, the opportunity to do something about it, and not be relegated to the side lines, powerless bystanders against a force they couldn’t understand, yet alone fight.

  Blood boiling, he followed Paige closely behind as she weaved her way towards the open doorway. Thirty feet out, they found a place along the Cube’s wall and hunkered in the shadows, making sure their contours didn’t fall in the crescent of light. Paige raised her right hand and put a knee down to the floor. De Rozan found position alongside and shot her a glance .

  “Do you hear that?” She said in a hushed voice.

  He turned his head sideways, trying to pick up what she was hearing. There was a subdued whimpering, a cry repeated every few seconds.

  A sound he’d heard before.

  “Yes.”

  He watched as Paige moved away from the wall and disappeared into the inky darkness, where the light couldn’t reach. A moment later, he saw two rapid flashes of light lit up the dark. Keeping his head down, he moved out at once.

  “This way, Kyle.”

  The flashes broke the gloom and he saw Paige’s silhouette. She was kneeling on the ground, a low mass to her side.

  He took a fews steps forward then felt her outstretched hand on his arm. The darkness was so complete that he could barely make out her outline, event though they were almost knocking heads.

  The whimper he heard found his ears once more. Paige pulled out a tiny torch LED keyring flashlight from her pocket and aimed it at the ground. Two sharp-looking brown eyes stared up amidst a mass of fur.

  “It’s Foxy,” Paige said, as if to convince herself.

  The Sheltie was lying prone on the floor, immobile. There was a wrapping of thick gauze around her midriff, contrasting sharply with the sable colored fur. De Rozan gently petted her, shaking his head in commiseration.

  “It seems we weren’t the only ones hurt,” he said, with a glance at Paige’s shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Paige said, jaw flexing.

  Kyle could hear the outrage behind the curt response; an indignation he, too, shared. At once, Paige planted a kiss to Foxy’s head. “Just hang on Foxy.”

  The dog let out a low whimper.

  “Let’s go, Kyle,” Paige said with a low hiss. “We have to stop this.”

  “I’m with you.”

  And on those words, the two soldiers left the shadows behind and stepped out into the light.

  20 Taken

  Beatrice stared at the stack with incomprehension. Had she really heard Tebayi’s voice? She swiveled her head a fraction of a degree. There was so much she didn’t understand about the Amilaki, but even if her knowledge was limited, it was obvious from Asalak’s shocked stare that what Tebayi had done was unprecedented.

  Kalxin made his way closer to the bank of monitors, perusing the displays with a deep frown on is face. A dozen of Tebayi’s followers began removing the soldiers from where they stood. Working in teams, they grabbed the arms and legs of the incapacitated and proceeded in clearing the Cube of their presence.

  Beatrice watched as Graves was picked up without ceremony and carried out of the Cube. The Amilaki were working with quiet efficiently, a solid reminder that they were in complete control of the situation. As the minutes went by, she found it increasingly difficult to keep still.

  Her instinct was to try and do something.

  Anything to stop what was going on.

  But what could she do?

  Noah was carried away, then Garcia. The doorway out of the Cube beckoned her. She had no idea where the soldiers were being taken, though, it couldn’t be that far away since the Amilaki teams came back rather quickly.

  The soldiers were assuredly being locked up somewhere.

  But where? The common area? No. That area was too open
, too expansive to be easily guarded. The electrical building? No. That zone was too critical to lock people in.

  At once, a thought popped into her head.

  The steel containers.

  They were away from the main building, completely outside, and easy to guard. You could cram in an entire unit in those 40 feet long steel boxes. 24 men and women would have to share a limited amount of air but if you drilled holes in the panels and gave them water, you could keep them alive for a significant length of time.

  If that was your goal in the first place.

  And, for once, Beatrice wasn’t sure that was the case.

  There were just a handful of containers behind the plant. One, the armory, was already packed with gear. She doubted Tebayi’s people had time to clear it out for their use.

  That left two others. One was used to store food, blankets and other ‘non-critical’ supplies. Again, she thought it unlikely they would have had enough time to empty it.

  That left the last one.

  The one she didn’t know about.

  Nobody had told her what it contained. It might well have been empty, a relic from the plant’s past. Maybe, like for the others, it had once been used to house hazardous materials like oil or paint.

  But she didn’t know for sure.

  And when she toured the place with Graves, he had omitted mentioning it.

  It might be nothing, or it might be everything.

  She had no way to know.

  She heard footsteps approach and knew it was her turn to be carried out. Trying to stay absolutely still while her heart hammered in her chest, she forced herself in becoming limp.

  But it wasn’t easy when your muscles were already bunched up, ready to bolt. She drilled herself to go numb. At once, the distorted profile of Scar Man danced in her vision. His eyes were devoid of empathy as he roughly grabbed her wrists and lifted her cleanly off the floor. Her feet scraped the floor for a few seconds as he pulled her away before a second pair of hands gripped her ankles. She risked a glance as she was lifted out, desperately searching for any sign of Asalak. As Scar Man turned to cross over to the doorway, she saw Kalxin stare back at her.