Tex circumnavigated the beacon, hoping to find a sign—some symbol or marking—to indicate which way he should proceed. But the glass was smooth and without symbols or writing. It was about thirty paces around and towered at least forty feet into the air above him. It looked as though more of it could possibly be below the shifting sands.
As beautiful as the spire was, it was a disappointment to Tex. It was no more a clue to his bearing or how he should proceed than the infinite grains of sand he was surrounded by.
Hot, tired, hungry, and defeated, Tex leaned against the shaded side of the spire and took a draw of water. The liquid was warm now, nearly hot, yet it still felt good in his parched mouth. A part of his brain worried that the water was warm. It was supposed to be chilled by a special cooling system built into the suit, but that worry was like an annoying gnat buzzing at his ear. His focus on finding the Architects overrode the concern about the warm water. I’ll puzzle over that later.
The sands shifted beneath his feet, and the ground rumbled. Great, a damned earthquake. Tex steadied himself against the spire, hoping he would not be tossed to the ground again.
The sands jostled and slid under him. Tex clung to the spire as the land across from him rose, sand flying, the ground rumbling.
See through the nearly worthless scratched helmet shield was hard, but an object appeared to be rising from the sands about twenty feet away from him. Tex didn’t dare take his hands from the spire, for fear he’d be flung wildly and buried beneath the sand.
Finally, the quaking ceased, and the sands settled.
Tex wiped madly at his helmet and wished he could take it off and kick it away like a football. Damned useless thing.
Before him was a glass pyramid no more than twenty feet tall and wide. It too was made of the same green glass as the spire. It was also cut with facets that made it glisten in the sun.
Tex gingerly stepped away from the spire and toward the pyramid. Though the pyramid was made of glass, it was solid and thick. He could not see all the way through it to the other side, nor could he see through to the interior. No darkened shapes were visible inside to indicate people or mechanisms within.
Again, no markings, etched symbols, or writing were apparent. Tex felt the pyramid’s glass through his gloves and wished he could pitch those as well so he could use his bare fingers. Without access to his onboard computer, he had no way of knowing if removing his gloves for even a few minutes would be safe, so he kept them on.
As he moved his hands along the glass toward the center of the side of the pyramid facing the spire, the glass changed. It did not open, exactly, nor did it melt or break. It simply morphed itself somehow. It was solid one moment, and the next, a small doorway appeared.
Tex peered inside the opening. It appeared to go nowhere, yet it was a door. The idea of putting himself inside the tiny vestibule gave him pause. It had not been there seconds before and led nowhere. It could easily close in on him as soon as he was inside, encasing him in the thick glass like an insect in amber.
But what other choice do I have? I cannot very well remain planted here in the sand forever. He had no way of knowing how much time had elapsed, but his oxygen supply would not last forever.
He stepped a toe over the threshold, and when nothing untoward happened, he took a full step in and then another. As he did, the sand shifted again to reveal a flight of stairs. They descended downward into utter darkness.
Tex had to muster courage to step into a glass wall that could enshroud him for eternity, but stepping into the dark unknown took an even larger leap of faith. He tried to reach out to the world around him to sense bioelectrical energy from sentient beings, but his internal radar reported nothing. For all he knew, the planet was dead and the spire and pyramid were machines continuing to operate even though the people who constructed them were long dead.
No answers were in the kilometers of sand covering the surface, though. If he was to learn anything that could help them defeat the M’Uktah, he had to go below.
Down into the deep. Back into the dark underground, a place he’d vowed that he would never go again when he left the world of the Conexus.
29
jACK
Jack stared at the cryo containers in the dark hidden cave of A.H.D.N.A. and nearly stopped breathing. He wished he had something to hold onto as Alecto’s words, “thousands of sisters,” echoed in the chambers of his mind. The memory of Alecto nearly killing Erika was as fresh as though it had happened the day before. The thought of thousands of Alectos chilled him to his core. His mouth was as dry as dirt in the summer desert.
Jack moved forward, deeper into the room filled with cryo canisters holding the embryos of what could become thousands of powerful hybrid beings. His throat hurt as he tried to swallow. His palms were sweaty as he gripped his gun more tightly.
A spot of bright light appeared ahead, and he forced himself to walk toward it. Anna walked in the aisle to the right of him, a row of white cryo canisters between them. She held her gun at the ready, too, her lips pulled into a thin line.
Jack had thought that the nightmarish parade of hybrid horrors in the outer room was the creepiest thing he would ever see.
He was wrong.
The frozen embryos were only part of the story. At the end of the rows of cryo chambers were at least half a dozen machines as large as refrigerators. Each apparatus had a white-enamel and stainless-steel oval base about three feet in diameter. Each base had a computer touchscreen affixed to the front on an extendable metal arm. Two stainless steel tubes came out of each base and snaked up to an ovoid glass container filled with viscous blue-tinted liquid.
Inside each glass ovoid was a hybrid baby. Their skin was gray. Their limbs were thinner than a human baby’s and their heads far larger. All of them had their eyes closed, but the eyes were nearly twice the size of a human eye. Like both Tex and Alecto, their noses and ears were tiny afterthoughts on their enormous heads.
Low, persistent pumping and swooshing sounds emanated from the machines.
Jack stared at the tiny beings floating peacefully in the artificial wombs. Anna stood across from him and stared as well.
Jack nearly pissed his pants when someone said, “What are you doing here?”
Commander Sturgis’s voice was shrill with anger. She walked briskly toward him with an electronic tablet in her hand. Her hair was pulled tightly into an impeccable twist at the back of her head. She wore no makeup, and her skin seemed more wrinkled and sallow than he remembered it. She had traded her navy-blue suit for a white lab coat and dark slacks.
She glared with narrowed eyes in his direction. He was sure she was going to strike him, but she approached then pushed right past him.
Alecto’s voice was a full octave higher than usual. “I am following orders, Commander.”
“I ordered you to stay away. By coming down here, you have put my entire clone operation in jeopardy.” Sturgis’s voice was pitchy. “Croft has Makers mercenary forces searching for me. You’ve likely left a bread-crumb trail leading them to me.”
Alecto’s voice was small, her eyes downcast. “I am sorry, Commander.”
“They couldn’t have followed us because none of them saw us.” Anna squeezed between two womb machines and interjected herself between Sturgis and Jack. “By the way, I’m happy to see you too, Aunt Lilly.” Her voice was firm, the sarcasm evident. Clearly, she was not afraid of her aunt the way Alecto was.
Sturgis’s anger gave way to a weak smile. She hugged Anna lightly. Anna lifted one arm from her gun to give a half-hearted hug back.
“Don’t be harsh with Alecto. You ordered her to protect me. Since I insisted on coming down here—well, what was she supposed to do then?”
Sturgis’s face became a bit less pinched. She tucked some of Anna’s stray hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry you lost your father. Robert and I had our differences, but he was my brother, and I loved him.”
Anna wiped a tear with the back of
her hand.
Sturgis lightly touched the pink scar slashed across Anna’s brow. “Lizzy gave you this?”
Anna nodded.
Sturgis’s lips pursed, and her eyes darkened.
Jack wanted to wrap Anna in a hug. He figured that wouldn’t go over well with Sturgis, so he opted for leaning closer to Anna so that he was subtly touching her.
“Mr. Wilson, it seems that you have beaten all the odds and survived a meeting with the Croft family.” Her steely eyes bore into him as if she could read his every thought.
Jack shifted uneasily. He wanted to say something clever. He wished he had the gift of snarky comebacks as Ian and Erika did. All he could get to come out of his mouth was, “Yes, ma’am.”
Sturgis’s thin lips pursed. “Sewell took it upon himself to involve you in something you should never have been a party to.”
Jack found his tongue. “I think you did that when you kidnapped us in Sedona.” Erika would be proud.
She scowled at him.
Before Sturgis had the chance to erupt, Anna said, “Jack saved my life more than once.” She took his hand in hers.
He wasn’t sure that a public display of affection in front of her psycho Aunt Lilly was the best idea, but if Anna could be bold about it, he could be too. He squeezed her hand in his.
Sturgis noticed the handholding and rolled her eyes.
“Problem?” Anna asked.
“If you want to throw your future away on a boy that’s beneath you, I won’t interfere. I’ve given up being part of trying to control what happens in my family. My work is everything to me now.”
Her intentionally demeaning dig at him should have offended Jack, but he was too busy being glad that Sturgis wasn’t going to try to off him because he was with her niece.
Sturgis’s tablet sounded an alarm. She glanced down at it. “You must excuse me. It is time to make my rounds.”
She pushed past them and stopped at the first artificial womb machine. She pulled the computer touchscreen up to a readable position then tapped the screen. A page of graphs, numbers, and other data appeared.
Anna interrupted her. “These babies are human-Conexus hybrids?”
Sturgis didn’t look up as she used the tablet to take a photo of the computer screen. “Yes.”
Alecto moved forward and entered the conversation. She asked the question that Jack wanted answered. “But why?”
Sturgis had her back to them but turned. “Years ago, I was given a mandate to create a hybrid army.”
Anna said, “We know about your orders. But now, you know that the army was supposed to be for the benefit of Croft and the Makers, not the people. You’re not going to give him what he wants, are you?”
Sturgis tittered. “Of course not. Don’t be daft.” She touched a graph on the computer screen and entered a command on the touchscreen keyboard. “I’m done with Croft. These hybrids will be used for their intended purpose.”
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
“To preserve humanity.”
Jack let out a dry laugh. “Then you better shoot ’em up with some growth stimulation hormone or something ’cause by the time they’re old enough to walk, humanity might already be history.”
Sturgis stopped typing. Her voice was soft. “I have developed technology decades ahead of what’s going on up there. But still I may be too late.”
She swiped left on the screen, and it went dark. She pushed the screen gently back down to its storage position and moved quickly to the next womb machine.
“You are not too late.” Alecto’s voice was quiet but did not quaver. “I am here. And 9 is helping too.”
Sturgis turned to them and forced a small smile that crinkled the skin around her eyes. “9 has special gifts—that is true. If he has decided to help, then perhaps there is hope.”
Sturgis’s comment ignored Alecto’s prodigious abilities. Jack felt a pang of sadness for Alecto. The poor girl wanted only to please Sturgis, but even though Sturgis had hunted Tex like an animal to be put back in its cage, she openly preferred him to Alecto. Jack could understand Alecto’s seemingly confused feelings about Tex. One minute, she seemed to want to be his sister, but at other times, the sibling rivalry was evident.
Sturgis continued her work as she spoke. “I assume you did not come all the way here for a family reunion.”
“Actually, that’s exactly what I came for,” Anna said. She fingered the pistol in the holster at her side. “Lizzy and I have unfinished business.”
Sturgis glanced up at her. “An eye for an eye? Isn’t that a bit archaic for you?”
“She killed my father. Thomas would be dead now if it weren’t for Alecto’s healing. And Croft turned my own mother against us.”
Sturgis interrupted Anna’s rant. “Why do you think your mother is against you?”
“My mom is the one who called Lizzy and let her know Dad was coming over to the penthouse. Lizzy was ready for him when he walked in.”
Sturgis gave a wry chuckle. “And you trust what Lizzy tells you?”
Anna shifted her feet. “It seemed credible. My mom is a Croft after all.”
Sturgis’s eyes were soft. “You know, I was never a fan of your mom. I thought it was a terrible idea for Robert to marry her. My mother was behind it, like some kind of medieval consolidation of royal bloodlines or something.” Sturgis’s lip curled up in a sneer. “But I’ll say this about your mom. Hannah is an honorable woman. She keeps to her word. That’s not something I can say about Lizzy. So you’ve come all this way for payback?”
Anna pointed at her damaged eye. Her voice had a steely edge Jack had never heard before. “The scars you can see are nothing compared to the ones you can’t.”
Jack rubbed Anna’s back. “This is more than a revenge mission, though. Croft had a mole at the CDC. The guy stole the Conexus antivirus and all of the work Drs. Randall and Montoya had done on synthesizing a stable antivirus.”
Jack’s statement got Sturgis’s attention. “That I did not know. We can’t allow him to get away with that.”
“No, we can’t,” Jack said.
Sturgis narrowed her eyes at him then smiled. “You’re starting to grow on me, Mr. Wilson.”
Jack was relieved that she no longer wanted him dead, but he still wished he was a few states away from her. The woman creeped him out.
Anna squeezed his hand. “We need to eliminate the Croft threat once and for all and get that antivirus back into Dr. Montoya’s hands.”
“We could use your help,” Jack said. “If I recall correctly, this place is full of blind corners, traps for the unwary. And with only three of us against a small army—”
“We need an advantage,” Anna said.
Sturgis steepled her fingers beneath her chin. “No one knows this place better than me.” She pushed the computer screen she had been working on down and away. “There are secrets to A.H.D.N.A. that only I know. I’ll give you the advantage you need to prevail.”
30
U’Vol
U’Vol ran on all fours toward the front lines of the M’Uktah assault on the Sarhi city. His heart thrummed, but his mind raced even faster. Never before had he experienced being underpowered during a hunt, and never before had scouting reports so inadequately described the situation they would find at new hunting grounds.
These Sarhi were far more advanced—and clever—than the reports revealed. At least the reports I was given. U’Vol had to allow that thought. That was an entirely new idea to him—that he, the captain of the Dra’Knar, would be kept in the dark about valuable information—but the idea bloomed in his mind like the blossom of the kiknari flower on lush Ghapta. It was, in fact, the only thing that made any sense. But why would anyone keep from me details about how adaptable these creatures are and how formidable their defensive capabilities?
And so we must adapt as well.
He contacted Tu’Rhen, commander of the pilot crew aboard the Wa’Nar. “Relay this message to the Dra
’Knar. I want armored vehicles down here now. Tell him to send the Rik’Nar down with all of the armored transport and as many Vree as he can pack into it. Report back to me at once with the estimated time of arrival. They should land at these coordinates.” The computer embedded in his brain synchronized with his krindor and merged U’Vol’s coordinates into the message he sent to Tu’Rhen.
“Yes, Captain.” Tu’Rhen blinked off.
U’Vol’s optical interface was quiet for a few minutes at least. His thighs burned, and his back ached, but he pushed the pain signals aside. He had no time for it. He ran through the empty streets of the Sarhi city. Here and there, Sarhi bodies were strewn about, bloody but lifeless, waiting for the Vree’Sho crew to catch up to the hunt. Fortunately, the temperature cooperated with them. K’Sarhi was still bathed in darkness the air was cold. The meat would not rot in warming rays of K’Sarhi’s star before it could be cleaned and dressed for transport.
He came across a few Sarhi that were ravaged but still alive. He quickly put them out of their misery. He logged a notation to chastise the Vree crew that had hunted that area. Leaving prey mortally wounded but alive was against Vree regulation—and certainly against their hunter ethics. The sloppy work made his anger rise.
His ire gave way to nagging concern, though, when he found the first body of a fallen Vree. The man was still ensconced in his krindor. U’Vol inspected the body but remained confused as to what could fell a Vree hunter still wearing his krindor. The graphene and drosh armor was impenetrable by nearly any method the engineers had ever tested. Fueled by the bioelectrical energy of the Vree wearing it, the krindor bonded to the wearer and became like a second skin, powered by the user’s bioelectric energy and operated by his brain the same way his organic body was.
U’Vol was not much for religion, but he had a strong connection to Doj’Madi as all Vree did. He said a prayer to Doj’Madi for his fallen Vree crewmember then moved on.
H.A.L.F.: ORIGINS Page 23