by David Beers
Michael's skin touched the creature's. His eyes widened and his nostrils flared as he sucked in air, shocked by the pain in his palm.
A thousand tiny needles stabbed into it.
12
Present Day
Will could only see a bit out of his periphery, though not enough to matter. He couldn't look up, down, nor any other direction. His body felt like a piece of heavy machinery, the keys lost and no wheels to roll the thing. He didn't know how long he had sat like this because there was no way for him to tell time. He could see out of the criss-crossing bars in front, but besides two guards facing him about thirty feet away, he saw nothing else. The guards spoke sometimes, but too low for him to hear.
The alien didn't seem interested in what they said.
In fact, she didn't seem interested in anything that happened here at all. To her, this was a side-show. Will was beginning to see that she considered this fun, whatever she planned on doing with the people here. However, the majority of her planning, nearly all of it, involved something else.
Will could see glimpses of what she did. When she checked in with him, checked in with his surroundings, he could momentarily see her side of the connection. Will looked at a world he didn't understand growing over the world he once knew.
Harrowing.
Those white strands covered everything; no paths existed to walk that didn’t involve them. And from them….
Will didn't know for sure; he couldn't, but he thought they were….
Children.
They lived in bubbles, bubbles that grew larger and larger the closer they got to the hole in the woods, and inside them—from the brief views Will saw—they looked like she did.
She was growing crops. Crops of creatures just like her.
He saw other things too, colors floating through the air, and the alien, her, cruising around like Superwoman, but none of it mattered more than what was on the ground. Her army grew there. The end of humanity started with them. Right on the ground, just a few miles from the cage Will sat in, and he couldn’t say a word to anyone about it. He could only sit here, staring forward, and ruminate.
Marks didn't care about any of it; he only cared about whatever private mission he had created for himself, a mission involving this alien. Everything to end the human race would happen right under Marks' nose—and he didn't care in the slightest. As long as he got what he wanted.
Knox was different, Will thought, but Knox wasn't in charge. He hadn't been in to speak with Will, and Will didn't blame him. Knox knew that something had changed, and to speak with Will now would be to speak with something else. Something Other.
Will heard a noise to his left, snapping him out of his thoughts on Knox. He tried to look, using the same muscle memory that he had used his entire life, but nothing happened. He only stared straight ahead. His eyes blinked once, an automatic response that the creature holding him seemed willing to let happen.
The noise grew and Will realized he was hearing footsteps, that someone else was coming into the room.
Kenneth Marks walked in front of the cage. Will briefly caught his face as he approached, and then stared at the man's knees.
He didn't say anything for a few seconds, as silent on the outside as Will was inside.
"Are you here?" Marks said. Will didn't need to look at him to know he was smiling. This fuck risked Will's life—shit, more than risked, Will was going to die at the end of this, without any doubt—to stand before this alien, this infection. Of course he would be happy. Thrilled. Marks had arrived at Disney World, where every second was more fun than the one before.
Will felt Morena hear the words. They traveled to his mind and somewhere miles away connected with hers as well. Will had been left alone, dormant like a computer turned off for years on end, but he knew once she heard Marks' voice that she would return. That she would pause, for a few moments, everything else she was doing while she met him.
Will relaxed as the infection filled his mind.
* * *
Kenneth Marks looked at him for a moment before beginning to walk; Will sat rigidly in the cage, like a monk meditating, his back straight and his arms resting at his side.
He called the thing Will because he had no other word to call it yet, but he knew Will wasn't in the cage. The creature Kenneth Marks was risking everything for had finally arrived, and was just a few feet away. Even the way she sat struck Kenneth Marks as unique; it took training to sit so still, years for those monks to be able to hold the muscles in such a taxing position. Yet, she did it with Will's body as naturally as Kenneth Mark's breathed.
He walked over, his shoes clicking softly on the floor. Will didn't look up as he took his place in front of the cage.
"Are you here?" Kenneth Marks said.
Will's eyes were glazed, vacant, and Kenneth Marks wondered if any part of Will remained. If he hadn't been completely lost out there in Grayson. It didn't matter one way or the other, for all intents and purposes Will was done with this life—whether or not it already happened or occurred a few days hence, what difference did it make?
Consciousness dawned across Will's face, all at once, like someone flipping a light on. He looked up slowly, finding Kenneth Marks' eyes. Kenneth Marks smiled, but Will didn’t. His face was still slack, like a dead person lying in a coffin. Slowly, deliberately, Will placed one hand on the floor and pushed himself up with his legs. He walked across the cage and stood in front of Kenneth Marks.
Consciousness resided inside the body, but not the same type that Will possessed before Kenneth Marks sent him back into Grayson. This consciousness was older; he could tell by simply looking into its eyes. This consciousness had moved across time and space, had lived longer than perhaps the entirety of the human species.
Kenneth Marks let his smile fade. He would hold no facade here.
"Are you Kenneth Marks?" the creature behind the bars asked. The voice sounded like Will's, but the similarities began and ended there. The cadence, the word choice, all of it felt significantly off.
"Yes." He had waited for this moment, perhaps his whole life, and now he stood before the only creature that held any measure nearing the intellect he did. His mind knew what to say, knew how to direct the conversation, had planned out every minute detail and variation—yet he still paused, for only a second, to take in what he was about to do. "What are you?"
The thing's head turned slightly, robotically, as if it didn't quite understand the question.
"You're not like the rest," she said.
"Neither are you."
She didn't move again, instead stood there staring at him with her head tilted. "You were okay with him dying, with …" she paused for a second, "Will dying."
She wasn't talking to him and Kenneth Marks knew it. She spoke to herself, assessing something in this situation.
"He hates you," she said again, Will's voice oddly detached, without emotion running through it. "And you, you hate everything."
Kenneth Marks' own eyes squinted then. Nothing in her last two sentences came up in any of the permutations his mind ran; the alien's words were completely new, completely different from his entire thought process surrounding this conversation.
That's because she's not from here, he thought. His mind was already cataloguing the sentences, their meanings, and adding it to the formulas dictating which way the conversation would lead, but still—he hadn't seen it, hadn't known it was coming.
"I don't hate," he said. "I hold disdain."
"Disdain…" she whispered, savoring the word like a mouthful of ice-cream. Her head straightened as the word passed from her lips, so that Will's body stood upright in front of him.
"What are you?" he asked again.
"I'm the beginning," she said.
"Of what?"
"Earth's change. I came here to tell you that, so that you could let the rest of your species know. It is your choice, your species' choice, whether you all die or live."
Kenneth Mar
ks thought this path might occur, and his brain clicked onto the well worn track he made during his planning.
"We can kill you," he said. "We can kill all of that growth sprouting up outside. The only reason we haven't is because of me. Because I wanted to see you before I killed you."
A sick smile spread across Will's face; it moved slowly, his teeth revealing themselves like white pebbles in some rotten body, not touching his eyes or the rest of his face at all. "I appreciate your kindness," Will's lips said, though the words and the smile were born from something not of this world. "Now that you've met me, perhaps you will be so gracious to go ahead and kill me?"
"I'm not sure that's necessary," Kenneth Marks said.
"I can assure you that if you don't kill me, the world as you know it will change. Already it's changing in ways that you don't know. You should kill me or tell your people that change is here."
"I want to learn from you."
A deep, raspy chuckle rose from Will's throat, sounding like sandpaper rubbing against concrete. It resembled a death rattle more than a laugh, but Will's hitching chest showed what it really was, or what it was meant to be.
"And what would you learn from me, Kenneth Marks?"
"How to become you."
The slow, raspy laugh stopped and the smile vanished. Seconds passed with the two only staring at each other, and Kenneth Marks held a very strange thought—one that he never cared about before, though it had come him to over the years. She was judging him. Right now, somehow assessing him based on what he just told her.
"You can never be me. You can never be anything like me. What is your saying? We're not cut from the same cloth."
He thought this would happen. Hoped it would, because this was going to allow him to both keep his cake looking pretty, and dig in face first to the tasty treat. He still had other people to think about, of course. Rigley, for one. He still had fun to consider—and this creature just gave him the opportunity to go play.
"I think you might see differently if I'm forced to kill what you brought with you. If I'm forced to wipe out whatever it is you've set loose out there."
"Threats, Kenneth Marks. Threats. I've told you to kill me now, to kill all of us if that is your prerogative. In the end, you'll see the truth. It might just take you a little more time."
He nodded. "When I see you again, we'll talk more."
"This is the only time I tell you this: prepare your people for change and they may live. If not, your species dies."
* * *
Kenneth Marks walked past Knox and Rigley. He didn't look at either of them, didn't look at Jenna either, but when he spoke it was to her.
"Get the President on the line."
He sat down in one of the chairs around Knox's makeshift desk. He crossed one leg over the other and stared straight forward.
"What did it say?" Rigley asked.
She was bugging him. Past bugging him. He wanted her dead, and he would probably kill her if it wasn't for what the creature now forced him to do. Although force might be the wrong word. He wanted to steer the conversation in a certain way—and despite the brief detour at the beginning, it went as he wished. Rigley would get her sentencing and then Kenneth Marks would have his knowledge.
The thing in the other room, she would bend when she saw the power he wielded. It didn't matter if there were others much higher than he on this planet, presidents and dictators. He was in charge now. He controlled whether she lived or died, whether her creations lived or died. He had been holding back until that conversation, wanting to see if his hand would be forced or if she would come along easily.
Things were about to get fun.
He felt his phone vibrating in his pocket; he reached in, pulled it out and put it to his ear.
"Hello, Mr. President," he said, his voice jolly but his face still.
"Good news, Marks. That's what I need to hear."
Kenneth Marks looked out the open flaps of the tent he sat under. The sun had fallen below the horizon and the moon was making its appearance again. It had been forty-nine hours and some change since Kenneth Marks slept, and looking at Rigley, he thought it was nearly the same for her. Knox was different than Rigley of course, his body had been trained to rely on less sleep, and so it showed less on him.
"Sir," Kenneth Marks spoke louder, wanting Rigley to hear him. "We have possession of an envoy from the alien."
"What the hell does that mean? Didn't you send an envoy to it?"
"We did, and it sent one back."
"Jesus Christ, Marks, you make me want to kill you. Do you know that? Tell me what the hell is going on down there."
"I appreciate your candor," Marks said. "It is time that we use presidential pass-codes. This creature… is not reasonable."
A sigh came across the phone.
"You realize what you're saying, don't you?"
Kenneth Marks realized every word that left his mouth, realized the furthest reaching possibilities of what he said. Even the pause from a second ago had been purposeful. This man's idiocy bugged him almost as much as Rigley's new found curiosity.
"Yes, sir. However, fire will not work against this creature. It thrives on it. We've seen what happens when we send men at it. There is a growth down here, sir, one that is replicating faster and further from its source. It'll cover the state soon."
He waited a few seconds, the President silent.
"I know," the President said finally. "I read what the hell comes across my desk. I just don't know how the fuck we cover this up. I mean, you're talking about a neutron bomb, is that right?"
Kenneth Marks finally smiled, so glad to hear the President say the word. The neutron bomb; perhaps the greatest killing machine humans ever devised. Radiation, and only radiation, cast down from the heavens, flowing through brick and wood alike without even a second's pause. Falling down, raining its death upon whatever it touched. And a half life of days. In a month, the state would be clean again. In a month, everyone could go back home and be none the wiser.
"Sir, that's the beautiful part. We only need to cover for thirty days. At the end of the thirty days, the radiation is cleared out."
"I'll call you back," the President said and Kenneth Marks heard the line drop.
"Good bye, sir," he said before placing the phone back into his pocket. He looked out the tent’s flap for a few more seconds. He saw the growth he told the President about, could see a direct line to it, all the tents in front of this one purposefully placed to reveal how close it was moving. It looked beautiful in the night light. Peaceful.
"Bring me the bag, please. The bag with the piece of growth in it," Kenneth Marks said to whoever was listening. "Has anyone thought of a name for it? I'm not fond of calling it the growth."
"White cake," Knox said.
"White cake?"
"Like yellow cake. Whatever this is, it's as bad as anything nuclear."
Kenneth Marks shrugged. "Sounds good. Someone bring me the cake, then."
He didn't look up as the person approached, only took the bag handed to him. He had seen it through satellite images, seen it with the moon shining down upon it, but until now, he hadn’t seen it up close. The creature sitting in the cage created this. He had seen Sherman up close, but it was a different material than this. Sherman was a sponge, but these things were tiny wires. They looked hard, stronger than Sherman. Nothing like cake, except for icing perhaps—the purity of its white nearly startling.
"What's this?" he asked as he turned the bag over. A tiny orange bubble grew up from the wires.
"It appeared today, but we've been somewhat busy so I haven't looked into it," Knox said.
Kenneth Marks spread the bag out a bit more, so that the nonporous material flattened across the orange object. The bubble didn't move at all, but poked upward into the bag. It was hard, like glass or plastic.
He looked at it, wondering what it could be. He took in all the sensory data around him, even bringing the bag to his nose to smell
its odor. Nothing he did though opened up any paths in his mind. This was something new, completely new, like the creature in the cage. The creature would have to tell him what it was, because although he could see the orange color inside….
Click.
His mind found the track it wanted.
The color. Different than the creature's, but similar too. It wasn't opaque; Kenneth Marks could see through it just as he saw through the green surrounding the alien. Was it… one like her? Another one? And if so, were they growing out there in that field of white, growing like corn crops, populating everything that the cake spread over?
Possible.
Probable, even. And did that change things? If he held one of this thing's children, did that give him leverage? Or could it hurt him in some way, hurt what he was trying to do?
The majority of people on Earth, indeed the vast majority, would have jumped to a conclusion based on instinct. Kenneth Marks' mind traveled down multiple paths at once, but with one guiding factor underlying each path like asphalt under cars: his wants came first.
The paths led him to a certainty; this changed nothing. Not yet. He would still act as he had planned, and this might actually help his cause. Because if this orange capsule was actually one of her own, then he would kill them all. He would wipe out an entire species, just as she threatened to do with him.
They were similar, even if she didn't realize it yet. He saw it clearly and it was his job to make her see it, because when she did, the truth would be like staring into the sun, so bright it could blind.
His phone began vibrating again and Kenneth Marks brought it to his ear.
"Yes, sir?"
"You're sure about this. You're sure this is the only option we have?"
"I may have just found out something new that increases our need to use your pass-codes. It appears that this alien is multiplying, actually creating young." He let the words hang over the airwaves, wanting them to soak into the President's brain like marinade into a steak.