The Parabiont Invasion Book 3

by Y. J. Gendron

  He jammed the cable in the entrails of the thing.

  There was a blast of light.

  He was flung five feet into the air and came to rest at the base of the brick wall. The world sank into darkness but he realized with a jolt that it was because of his helmet. He removed it and let it fall to the ground. The helmet had a large crack that went straight up through the middle, splitting it into two halves.

  Wow, that could have been my head.

  He stared at the trilobite. Thick ribbons of acrid smoke billowed up into the cool air. The hull was scorched, fused together into an indistinct mass.

  Now I know how to kill them.

  He go to his feet. Staring into the gloom, he scanned the area for additional movement. Seeing nothing, he pushed forward, leaving the trilobite behind. The thing was dead but it lived in his mind.

  What the hell was it?

  The thing was a nightmarish variation of what used be to be a real, biological, organism. But if Tebayi was behind it, and she most probably was, she had adapted the design for her own purpose, instilling the thing with its own set of directives. He shuddered. There might be more of them out there. Possibly a lot more.

  Something caught his eye up ahead. There was broken glass on the ground and a low mass, inert and prone, laying flat amid the shards.

  His blood turned to ice.

  No!

  A strong sense of doom weighted down each of his step as the identity of the person revealed itself. He knelt down alongside the Corporal. Paige’s features were rigid but they weren’t drawn or overly distressed. She appeared to be sleeping but Noah feared otherwise. Fighting back tears, he put two fingers to the front of her neck, near the carotid artery. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, focusing all his attention on the task at hand. Seconds went by. There was nothing. No pulse. No heartbeat.

  Paige was gone.

  He let his hand drop away. Staring at her, he shook his head at the uselessness of her death. She didn’t have to die, not like this. A deep indignation flared up from his gut, clawing out from the primitive recesses of his psyche. The burning sensation of wanting immediate revenge flowed into each of his cells, flooding his mind with hatred.

  Paige had died because of one specific Amilaki.

  And as long as he shall lived, he vowed to make her pay for it.

  Asalak stopped dead.

  Ahead, in the hallway bathed in bursts of light, Eklan walked, his figure carving a path through the radiance. He was steadily inching forward among the twitching machines, holding Beatrice as if she was made of porcelain. He seemed impervious to the blasts, navigating around the dangers with nary an hesitation or a stumble. Soon, he reached the junction that led to the Cube and vanished, the army of drones whirring in confusion as if unsure on what to do next.

  But Asalak knew it was just momentary relapse. That they would regroup.

  It took only two seconds. Like a bad dream coming to life, he saw them veer his way, their targeting system locking on to him. With a shrill sound they raced down the hallway, their spindly legs barely touching the floor.

  “We’ve got to move, Sergeant,” he called.

  Garcia, who had his head turned away, nodded. Thrusting his right arm outward, he pointed back to the exit, to the one they’d used earlier.

  “Go back!” He shouted to his unit. “Now!”

  There was a mad dash as the soldiers spun around and hurried back from where they’d come. Chris Moffatt, who was leading the way, stopped at once when he noticed something dropping from the ceiling. With disbelief, he realized it was some kind of bio-mechanical thing, about three-feet long, sporting a domed hull that looked like armor. He saw the thing’s dorsal plating shift aside, opening up like a miniature ICBM silo. Thinking that must surely be bad, he fired a string of rounds at it. The high-velocity bullets hit the bug-thing at almost point blank range. There was a spattering of impact noises and a shower of sparks.

  A deep silence followed. He stared out at the aberration.

  It moved.

  “Shit!” He cried, his voice wired with alarm.

  The thing darted forward.

  He fired again.

  This time, the insectoid drone veered out of the way with prescience, the bullets burying themselves in the walls.

  A needle-like dart sprung out of its carapace followed a millisecond later by a sharp hissing sound.

  Moffatt felt something lodge itself in his neck. Dumbfounded, he plucked out the dart from his skin and stared at it with incomprehension. At once, he felt his insides tumble. There was a sudden and all-powerful supernova in his head. The flash of light obliterated all thoughts and all sensations. Then came a profound nothingness and an impossible-to-ignore calling.

  A female voice erupted inside his head.

  Jose Garcia, trailing behind his men as they rushed toward the exit, heard the blasts ricochet down the corridor. Ahead, he saw the heads of five soldiers jerk backwards, with sudden jets of crimson splashing against the grayness of the walls. More shots rang out, followed by shocked cries of surprise.

  A bullet whizzed over his head.

  Wit shocked disbelief, he saw Chris Moffatt calmly walk forward, a weird bug-like thing shadowing each of his steps. Garcia’s heart rattled in his chest. The approaching soldier was his friend, a man he had known for years. Yet Moffatt was pointing a gun at him, the barrel aimed straight at his head.

  Garcia went rigid. Moffatt’s stare was a terrible sight to behold. It was empty and cold, devoid of hope, of light, of humanity.

  The Sergeant’s instincts kicked in.

  He fired.

  There was a stupefied look on Moffatt’s face. He managed to stay upright despite the bloody hole in his cheek, then his eyes glazed over and he slowly fell backward, lifeless.

  The insectoid thing that had latched unto the unfortunate Private now turned to Garcia.

  The Sergeant flinched. An arm fell in front of his eyes. He heard a thud followed by a sharp intake of breath. The arm retreated as quickly as it appeared and he could see again. There was a voice, right behind him. “Stay down!”

  Asalak pushed his way past him and made a beeline for the drone. Another hissing sound erupted, then another. Garcia watched in horror as Asalak was repeatedly struck by the pointed missiles, the fist-size darts burying themselves in his upper torso.

  The Amilaki refused to cower or hide as the darts penetrated his chest, clawing forward even as the missile’s effects began to slow him down. With bewilderment, Garcia watched him pick some of the darts away, letting them fall down to the ground. Another volley exploded out of the horrid creature. Again, the darts vanished into Asalak’s body. Garcia saw him sway unsteadily, the legs trembling with effort as he fought to stay upright, his momentum all but gone.

  But Asalak wasn’t done.

  Not yet.

  With one smooth motion, he bent down and inserted his hand inside the drone’s dorsal opening. The thing stopped moving.

  Asalak pulled a cable-like tendril from the bowels of the monstrosity.

  Then he did something that Garcia would remember for the rest of his life.

  He jammed the wire pulsating with energy directly behind his ear.

  Asalak’s body jerked with a violent and involuntary spasm, and, with a soft sigh, he gave one final shudder and collapsed, his body crashing to the floor with a sudden and brusque smack.

  Garcia climbed to his feet and went over to him.

  The Amilaki’s eyes were tightly closed. Absentmindedly, Garcia counted fourteen darts in his chest, neck and head. He shivered, repulsed by the sight of the barbed flechettes embedded in the man. He removed his glove and checked Asalak’s pulse.

  Nothing.

  He sat down, shocked by the event. Around him, his men lay unmoving, dead.

  They were all gone, victims of a war that took place as much inside one’s head as on a real battlefield.

  Yet, the men, his friends, had been killed with bullets.

/>   Bullets made by Man.

  Deflated by the loss, he stared out at nothing.

  The Amilaki had died protecting him.

  What had gone through his mind as the darts found his chest? What was he thinking that called him to sacrifice his life in such a way?

  Garcia didn’t know.

  He had never really known him.

  It was such a complicated thing to wrap one’s head around. The Amilaki had saved him, but he didn’t know why. Questions still burned in his mind. Questions with no answers. Like why Asalak had taken over Bennett Wynter’s body in the first place…

  Would he, himself, had done the same to insure Humanity’s survival?

  Garcia didn’t know.

  And he was too torn up to dwell upon it.

  A last blob of light floated out of the busted drone and up the translucent tendril still attached to Asalak’s head. Garcia watched it with wonder as it vanished inside the Amilaki’s body. But the wonders didn’t stop there. With incredulity, he watched as the tendril turned dark and slowly disintegrated into dust. A few seconds later, only the hardened shell of the drone remained, the innards melting away into sludge.

  There was only, now, the soft whirr of the air circulation vents in the hallway, coming down from the broken acoustic ceiling tile.

  Garcia realized with a start that he needed to get a move on. The battle wasn’t over.

  He glanced one last time at the mass of bug-like machines laying inert in the hallway. In a heartbeat their artificial life had been terminated.

  Garcia had no idea how they’d been killed.

  But, as he straightened up and began walking toward the Cube, he had an idea on who might be behind the miracle.

  “Thank you, Asalak,” he murmured.

  And even if it was only his imagination, an answer popped in his head. “You’re welcome, Sergeant.”

  29 Tebayi

  Tebayi was pleased.

  Asalak was gone. Dead. Victim of his own misguided attempt to stop her. And even though he had managed to disable the drones, she, herself, was unaffected. His sphere of influence had been as she predicted it: feeble.

  The loss of the drones was just a minor setback in the grand scheme of things. They weren’t a necessary element of the solution.

  Because she had found a way to deal with Humanity.

  They were so unconnected anyway. Each being doing its thing with no consideration for the others. Human minds were not only trapped inside bodies with limited lifespans, they were also condemned to think for themselves.

  It was a tragedy, really. Humans lived in billions of individual silos. They touched and bumped against each other, but never truly connected; their voices lost to the Cosmos.

  And how could it be otherwise?

  Their whole livelihood was a chaotic mess that barely rose above what their ancient ancestors endured… after they’d learned how to walk upright. Their so-called civilization was a mirage, drawn up to give them hope where none existed.

  It was time for it to end.

  And she would be the catalyst for the change.

  She would give them a true purpose. She would give them one voice to listen to.

  And they would do as she say.

  They would have no choice in the matter. It was too late, now, for that anyway. Humanity had had its chance… and blew it. It was time for it to bow to a new master.

  That’s what humans feared most: supreme and all-powerful beings.

  It was laughable and pitiful at the same time. She had distilled the innumerable literature on the subject. It was quite clear that Humanity was scared.

  It feared.

  Everything.

  It feared imaginary creatures. It feared non-existing deities. It even feared death.

  But that was understandable in a sense. Once a human’s life ended, in its individual silo, its intellect was lost forever.

  It wasn’t added to the collective. It wasn’t added to a Coalescence.

  It was gone.

  Obliterated from the Cosmos.

  It was easy for her to strike fear in their minds. She simply had to show them what was coming, what scared them the most.

  And the Snyl were perfect in that regard.

  The insectoid species was one you couldn’t reason with, talk to or even beg to for your life. They were supremely evolved in such a way that they regarded all other species as superfluous, destined to be erased. Nothing else mattered. They had no codes of any kind; be it ethic or honor. Those intellectual discourses were wholly unfathomable to them, as alien as their own appearance.

  In a way, she admired them. Eradicate other species. That was their way, the only way. There were no distractions, no debates. There was one order, one vision, which all Snyl followed.

  And that was it. The way to stop them.

  Be of one mind.

  And so, she had taken it upon herself to be that mind. It would be a fight between her and between the Snyl.

  One army versus another.

  An army of humans versus an army of bugs.

  She would fling the humans on the battlefield. She would throw all of them, the seven billion of them, at the Snyl. And once the dust cleared and the ashes of the dead obscured the sky, she would rise from the destruction and be the one voice for all the Cosmos.

  “Pathetic.”

  Eklan’s voice resonated inside her mind.

  She zipped back into the Cube to erase the nuisance for good. The main interface was now too poor a receptacle for her accumulated knowledge, so she stored most of it away, out to the so-called tamper-proof computers of Army Intelligence. She snickered at the oxymoron for a solitary yoctosecond then focused her attention back to the distraction.

  Eklan was standing in front of the console, holding the human female in his arms.

  “Oh, you brought me a gift. So nice of you,” Tebayi said, her voice overpowering everything else in the room.

  “You have to stop this, Tebayi.” Eklan said, with earnestness. “It goes against what the Amilaki have always championed, what we strive to be.”

  “Is that so?” Tebayi snickered. “On the contrary my dear yet misguided genius, I am the culmination of our culture, the summit of our evolution.” There was a heartless laugh. “Besides, I’m the only one that can assure our survival.”

  Eklan’s mouth twisted. “But at what cost?”

  Again, the voice dripped with sarcasm. “You mean the human cost? It is unfortunate… but unavoidable. It is their destiny to be extinguished. If not by the Snyl, then by their own hands.”

  “We don’t know that. You don’t know that.”

  “Oh, yes I do. I have seen it in their historical records, in the constant wars, in the devastation. It is a species without hope, without possibilities for redemption.”

  “Others think otherwise.”

  Tebayi’s laugh sent a dagger of cold down Eklan’s spine. It was supremely confident and condescending at the same time, oozing with arrogance.

  “If you are thinking of Asalak, let me assure you that his last thoughts weren’t about Humanity.”

  Eklan stiffened.

  “Oh, you didn’t know?” There was a snicker. “How tragic.”

  Eklan’s mind reeled. How could he have not known? Since his awakening inside Asher Sullon’s body, Asalak had been at his sides, a constant presence. He had educated him about Ukun, their home world; but also of Earth, their new one. He had stimulated his mind with countless puzzles designed to expand his view of the Universe. He had mentored him on the complex social interactions with humans, even if he, himself, struggled with its intricacies. He had been selfless with his teachings, even when events forced leadership upon him. Asalak was a man of devotion, of faith, enlighten by what lay beyond the physicality of the Universe.

  That was what struck him the most about his mentor. His faith. His unshakable belief in the human spirit; that without it, they wouldn’t stand a chance against the Snyl.

  Asalak had
given his life so that Humanity could live on.

  It was up to him, now, to make sure he didn’t die in vain.

  “His faith in Humanity was a strength, not a weakness,” Eklan said, glancing at Beatrice.

  “His faith was as misled as your own.” Tebayi’s voice said, cold and heartless. “I can see the disparity within you, Eklan. The fragility of your core, the vulnerability of your human brain. You need to step out of the shell. You need to leave behind Asalak’s inadequate views and embrace the ones that will make you attain immortality. For it is possible, Eklan. You can evolve beyond the use of biological envelopes and achieve a superior level of existence. You simply need to let go of what Asalak, Kalxin and the others have instructed you to do. They were Elders, already obsolete even before we fell out of the stars and were forced to crawl in the muck of this forsaken world.”

  Tebayi paused to let her words sink in then resumed in a much more conspiratorial tone. “It doesn’t need to be your fate, Eklan. You can change it, right now. I can change it. Think about it…”

  Beatrice opened her eyes. For a moment, she was unsure of where she was and what was going on. Eklan’s gaze found her own’s and everything came back into the here and now.

  “…Together, we could reconstruct this world in our image. We could make it a haven for our kind. And once the Snyl are vanquished, we could explore the Universe as we please.” Tebayi let her words float in the silence. “Leave this existence behind, Eklan. Join me.”

  Beatrice’s stare darkened with each of Tebayi’s words. She looked up to Eklan.

  “No,” she whispered.

  His eyes quivered. She realized with a start that it wasn’t Eklan’s stare anymore.

  It was Asher’s.