by David Beers
Rigley. Michael knew her name because Briten did. He searched Briten's memories, rifling through them as fast as he could. Briten knew he was doing it, but he couldn't do anything about it.
She's government. She thinks she's helping Morena.
Clearly fucked up, though—that was Michael's overall assessment.
"Say hi?" Briten said.
The woman nodded, her stringy hair shaking around her face.
"Have you talked to the other two in there, the ones that came with you?"
Briten stood up from the couch, five feet from her. "No. Why?"
"The boy. He kept saying something about the grays. Over and over. I think something might be wrong with him."
Grays? Bryan said that? Michael knew she was talking about Bryan—who else could it be? But why would he mention the grays, or the Ether at all?
"Leave," Briten said, clearly his thoughts about the woman even harsher than Michael's. He stood looking at her, waiting for her to get out of the living room.
"Grays. She just kept saying it. Gray, gray, gray," the woman repeated the word, though stepping back, trying to get her message across before she was shut out completely.
Briten didn't respond, only stared—surely his red eyes beaming almost through the woman.
She finally left and Briten lay back down on the couch, completely ignoring what she said and trying to find sleep again.
Michael let reality fade away and the library fade in. He still lay staring up at the ceiling, though with no book in his hand. He waited a while before actively thinking, until Briten was surely asleep. He didn't want any chance of Briten intercepting his thoughts.
Grays? She said it over and over, not even making sense at the end. If something was wrong with Bryan, Michael certainly would have announced it another way—though his hair also wasn't falling out in huge clumps.
She couldn't be … No. No way. That woman was fucking crazy, and here helping Morena. No way had Bryan tried to send a message through her.
Gray, gray, gray, she said, her voice fast and low, as if …
She wasn't speaking to Briten at all. Like a child, trying to whisper something into someone's ear before the teacher turned around.
Was Bryan communicating? And if so, was he telling Michael to go back to the Ether? Michael didn't even know if it was possible. He hadn't thought about it nor tried since leaving that place. More, everything over there was dangerous. If he went, if it was possible, and Bryan didn't show up? If this woman was just insane? If Briten woke up and saw Michael had left, could he lock him out? Take control completely of Michael's body and leave him over there to be eaten alive?
The questions knew no bounds. Endless to the point of ridiculousness.
But the most important one was—what if Rigley did just deliver a message from Bryan? What if he wanted to meet Michael in the Ether?
He couldn't even see out of his own eyes right now if he wanted to. Briten had them closed and if the library faded away, Michael would be faced with darkness.
Is that what you want? To sit here forever? At least if you get lost over there, you might die. Here? You wait and watch—except when you can't even do that. So why not try? Maybe you can come back unscathed. Maybe Bryan's there.
In the end, that's what decided it. The maybes. Maybes hadn't existed in his life for a long time, just the certainty of waking up, going to school, then work, then home to Wren and the smell of alcohol.
So Michael embraced the maybes.
Michael opened his eyes. Not Briten, but Michael, actually controlling his body.
And yet, this body wasn't truly his own. He saw his body lying down, still sleeping—Briten in control of it. Black and white just like the rest of the world. Michael looked down at the couch and saw what had once been him still there.
An avalanche fell, without warning, no rumble, just pure ice and snow ripping down Michael's consciousness at a rate that he couldn't possibly escape.
He was gray.
His whole body no longer the color when he came here first, and not even the black and white tones of the body on the couch. He was a gray, as see-through as all the weird white eyed creatures he saw before. He was still himself, still had the same hair on his arms and wore the same shoes, but his chemical makeup? No. He was becoming one of them.
He swallowed, looking up, his hands shaking.
You're here. You have to get back before Briten wakes up. You don't know what any of this means. You need to find Bryan and at least check to see if he sent that message.
He turned his hands into fists, trying to slow down the trembling. He looked around, understanding his surroundings. Living room, just as before. Bryan and Wren were in one of the back bedrooms.
Okay, okay. Go, fast.
He turned and rushed through the house, turning corners until he found the hallway. He cleared two doors, seeing nothing that he wanted in them, and quickly left. Finally, he found his father and friend at the end. He stepped through the door without bothering to open it, and saw both Wren and Bryan.
Bryan lay on the bed, his eyes closed. Wren stood at the window, staring out. Neither spoke, and Michael didn't have time to wonder if this was real time or some frozen image. He needed to try to bring them over.
He didn't move any further into the room. Instead, he shouted.
"Bryan!"
Wren jerked around, adrenaline racing through his legs and arms.
His son's voice didn't register at first, only a loud bark coming from behind him.
Except, he saw nothing. Just a closed door and a room empty except for Bryan. The voice had been real, though. No doubt about it; Wren still felt the tingle in his arms and legs, his heart pumping double time in his chest.
Michael had screamed.
Michael shouting Bryan's name.
He looked to the bed, but Bryan hadn't moved at all. He lay still, eyes closed, legs curled beneath him.
"Bryan," Wren said.
Nothing, no movement.
"Bryan!" he said louder, not a shout, but anyone in the room—asleep or not—would hear it.
Stillness.
He went to the bed and shook the boy; his body only tossed with Wren's movement, showing no muscle beneath it, and not waking either. Wren reached for Bryan’s eyelids, fear already deep in his belly, knowing—even if he didn't want to—what he would see. The same thing that he saw with Michael.
Nothing but white eyes staring back at him.
"Dad."
Not a shout, but a whisper, and right in Wren's ear. His son's voice, though he knew if he turned around, he would see nothing.
He felt his eyelids shutting, like a hand pulling them down gently, and then Wren saw blackness for a few moments.
Wren's body dropped to the floor; Michael was scared that might happen. He didn't know a whole lot about his father's health, but he knew that falls probably weren't good for the long term given what Wren currently looked like.
His body fell like a scarecrow lined with potatoes instead of straw, nothing to hold it up.
Yet Wren stood next to Michael, on his left. Bryan sat on the bed, the colored part of him mixing through the gray of reality that lay on the bed.
Both were in color, and both could see straight through Michael.
"My eyes, are they white?" Michael asked, wanting to know if everything about him resembled the grays.
"Yes," Bryan said, his voice low. "I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do." He kept his eyes cast down to the floor, avoiding Michael's gaze.
Wren hadn't even glanced down at his body, the one now a gray heap on the floor. He only stared at his son, and as Michael turned to look at him, he saw tears in his father's eyes.
Wren didn't reach out to touch Michael.
He stood there, looking like an old, weak man.
But he was still there. Not on a reclining chair somewhere. No bottle of vodka in his hand, and even if his eyes were wet with tears, they weren't glazed with alcohol.
/> Michael didn't have time, for any of this. He didn't know what was happening to his body, didn't know how long he could stay here, didn't know when Briten would wake up. He thought his father dead hours ago, almost watched it happen, and shrieked with the pain of a thousand cancers as he tried to save him. Now Wren was here, crying as he looked at what once was a normal kid, but now resembled a shade.
Wren wasn't dead, though Michael might have been and just didn't know it. Maybe he would never have another chance to look at his father. Perhaps….
But none of it mattered. Dead or alive, Michael wanted to do something that he couldn't remember wanting to do since his mother died.
Michael reached for his father, taking him first by the shoulders, and then folding his arms around him—seeing through each part of himself as he moved. The last time they touched, Wren had initiated it, but now Michael hugged his father.
25
Present Day
Junior was necessary, and Morena had to let him be.
Junior laid waste to the west. He razed one city to the ground and was on his way to another. He would be what Briten couldn't and Morena wouldn't. He brought death to anything that opposed her rule, and regardless what Chilras might have thought—or any other Bynum—they lived in this reality now, not that of the past.
Something else weighed on her, something that she could allow in now that Junior was leading.
Briten was dying.
It took her time to understand that; perhaps her Knowledge did the heavy lifting, weak as it was. None of it mattered though, because the fact remained that Briten would die, and soon. All this way they came, through so much, and now something inside him was eating him alive. Something he didn't recognize and something Morena didn't understand.
If Junior took care of this planet, Morena could focus on Briten.
She could try and save him. She had to. She lost him once, and would she allow that to happen again? No. Not unless The Makers themselves showed up and commanded it, and even then, she would still try.
Her Knowledge, that's where she had to go first. What her mother always told her she should develop, and what she always cast aside. Now she had to rely on it to save her husband, and Makers, what would her mother say if she saw it all now?
She probably wouldn't say anything, only feel sadness … and a knowing too, that Morena never listened, and learned everything on her own. So now she would learn this … and Briten might be the cost of such a lesson.
"No," she said. "Fuck no."
The boy in the back room had taught her that word, and it fit perfectly.
Briten was asleep; Morena understood the needs of his current body, needing more sleep than either his people or hers could ever imagine. Good. Let him rest and let her find a solution.
She walked out of the house and onto the strands, feeling their delight as their mother crossed over them. They didn't move or desperately try to reach up and touch her. No, they were just happy to be around her. Morena kept walking, further and further out, wanting to lose sight of the house, to lose sight of anything even resembling humanity.
Finally, she saw only white around her in all directions. No humans shooting ice at her children, no crazy woman with hair falling out of her head, no buildings that took from the planet while giving nothing in return.
Morena lay down and let her aura go, completely free, giving it no direction. She closed her eyes, not focusing on where it went or what it did.
She knew the path to Knowledge, barely traveled, but still there. The Vars from before wore the path down with their continued usage of it. They relied on Knowledge to help direct their species, and Morena rejected it. Morena went with her strengths—always her own willpower.
She needed to save Briten, and in that need, she finally went to her Knowledge.
She sees colors.
Perhaps that's why she never liked this place, because of the colors.
They're everywhere, like the auras that are her species. Only there's no order here, and these aren't auras. They're colors, and in those colors, the future supposedly lies.
Her mother, Helos, could see into the colors the way someone could see to the bottom of a clear pool. Things might look blurry the further down one looked, but they still understood what they were looking at.
Morena always looked into a muddy lake—only much worse than that.
The colors swirled together, mixing and matching, moving at paces too fast for Morena to glimpse any one shade or hue.
Stay calm, her mother always said. Calm is what allows the colors to separate, to reveal themselves. Your frustration, anger, turmoil—they cause the confusion you see.
And her mother was right.
Chilras would never have described Morena as calm, though.
She watches them, passing by her, moving all around. How can she slow them down? How can she focus on any single one for longer than a moment?
Morena closes her eyes, blocking out the incessant madness around her. She just needs to find one color, just a single one, and focus only on that. If she can do that, and understand what that one color has to say, then maybe she can find another. Just one. To start with.
She feels anger rising up in her, the same anger she always feels when she shows up here. She isn't able to do this, never has been able—though Vars before her lived in here nearly as well as they lived in reality. Her, though? Morena is different, and that will enrage her if she lets it. The only place in her life she ever felt inadequate is here, in her Knowledge.
Try again, she thinks. This isn't about you. It's about Briten. Try for him.
She takes a deep breath, steadying herself, and then opens her eyes.
A color, in the distance, catches her eye. It's not moving, not mixing with the rest, but floats in one place, almost as if it is staring at her.
White. Pure.
And Morena knows immediately what she's seeing. Never in life has she had such a clear understanding inside her Knowledge. She has never been able to get past the multitude of swirling colors, and only when her Knowledge decided to give her something, did it work as it was meant.
She looks at her mother.
Somehow, though she doesn't understand it, her mother is in that white color. What does it mean? The white isn't even her mother's aura—it's much different than her original color.
It is her, though.
Not dead. Whatever else Morena sees in here, whatever else her Knowledge might grant her about that white color, this means her mother lives. Somehow, though dead millions of years, Helos is alive.
26
Present Day
"Houston now?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what of the troops that met him down there? What were they able to do?" Trone asked.
"They're all dead."
"The ice?"
"Ineffective," Knox said.
Trone laughed at that. Ineffective might have been a bit of an understatement. Just maybe. This wasn't the first time Trone had been briefed on Houston, just the first time by Knox, and he wanted Knox to say aloud that he failed. The troops that went down there died like ants doused in lighter fluid and then given a lit match. The alien ripped away the ice they shot from their guns as easily as tornadoes rip away houses.
He wanted to hear Knox say it, because Trone understood how he felt about Marks. Hate probably summed it up accurately. Evil was another word that could be thrown in Knox's thought process. Trone understood it all—Marks was unholy in the purest sense. Marks would do whatever he could to further his own aims, and Trone believed those aims to be insane—just as Knox did.
The difference between the two of them, Knox and himself? Trone was a politician, and you used whatever you could to move forward. You couldn't always command, sometimes you must use other methods, and never before had the world needed a politician in charge as much as it did now.
"We're still making inroads into the white cake's spread, right?"
"Yes, sir," Knox
said.
Trone was tired of this bunker. He wanted to go up, to feel fresh air and see the sun. The rooms were large, but Trone still felt the thousands of pounds of dirt surrounding him. None of that stopped his phone from ringing though; and it hadn't stopped since Houston. Even now his secretary was fielding calls as he sat here talking to Knox.
He couldn't rise to the surface until the world was safe again. Many times in his life he felt glad that he never married—but perhaps no more than right now. Trone had no offspring, no significant other to worry about right now. Only himself and the nation, which was a nebulous mass, not someone he could point to.
"You recognize where we're at, right?" Trone could command whatever he wanted right now, but that wasn't the way to get this done. Knox had to be on board, because Knox was important. Not as important as Trone or Marks, but important none-the-less.
"You want to get him out?"
"Do you see any other choice? Assets from England, China, and France are on the way, but what are they going to be able to do? The creature is moving along the coastline now, destroying everything it touches. And there will be more. We know that simply from the number of pods created, and those already out in the open. What do we do when they start traveling too?"
He looked at Knox's face, trying to see if the man showed anything. He never did. Whatever went on in Knox's head, unless he wanted you to hear it, you didn't know. The man was honest, though—to a fault.
"Will is gone," Knox said.
"What?"
"The agent who worked for Marks; I let him go a few hours ago."
Trone leaned back in his chair and placed his feet up on the table in front of him. He left his arms on the chairs' rests. "Why?"
"I don't think he's infected and I think we need someone inside Grayson, especially if we're letting Marks loose."
"Inside Grayson? Isn't that the whole point, that we can't get anyone in there?"
Knox nodded, his face as revealing as a well at night. "He can try, and if anyone has the ability to do it, I think he does. I've looked into as much of his history as I can, and he's remarkable. Everywhere on Earth, if something touched down in the last twenty-five years, he's been there."