by David Beers
She remained huddled within herself, only trying to live beneath the greatness pressing down on her.
Eventually the light faded, the heat relented, leaving her able to look around again.
No words. No more colors lighting. Only the soft, endless swirl they made as they moved across the surface.
Wait. That's what they meant by that. Wait and have patience.
18
Present Day
Marks had been inside the tent with the creature for an hour. No one else was allowed in. Not guards, not even Knox.
The General didn't care, really. He had no interest in going in there and trying to converse with whatever the hell that thing was. Marks did, and that's what truly concerned Knox. Marks sent Will in, and got back something from another world. He did use the neutron bomb, but why would he spend so much time in there talking to it? The end game was simple: defeat the enemy. Yet for the past hour, no one had worked on that objective. It seemed that Marks was waiting for the time he had to report back to the President, hoping that the creature might be able to give him something more than "It didn't work."
That's what Knox wanted to think, anyway, though he doubted it was true. Marks was plotting something else besides trying to kill the invasive species.
Knox put the binoculars to his eyes again, for what felt like the millionth time. Something changed each time he did it, though. Changed plenty—the white cake was moving, spreading out miles and miles beyond Grayson.
The bottom line, the neutron bomb did nothing, as far as anyone could tell—except perhaps make a large portion of Georgia uninhabitable for a little while. Perhaps wiped out whatever wildlife still remained.
And then Marks disappeared, leaving Knox with the Rigley woman and his assistant.
Neither of whom he wanted to speak with, at all.
"Lieutenant," he said, pulling the binoculars back down.
"Yes, sir?" The man stood behind Knox, to his right.
"Go see what Marks is doing. Don't say anything, just see if he's speaking with it."
"Yes, sir."
Knox waited, staring out at the coming dawn. The sun was on the way up, the moon on the way down, and when morning came, the world would be changed. No one could hide it after the sun rose. The President would get on television and say whatever he wanted, but other countries had satellites too, and they would see exactly the same thing Knox did sooner or later. Whatever hid this shit from aerial views right now wouldn't hold other countries back forever. They would know, and soon. The jig was nearly up, and real warfare would start. No more covert operations. No more bombs in the dark. The military would come in and wipe out everything not of this planet. He didn't know if Marks understood that yet, but Knox would tell him, and if he didn't listen, then surely the President would make him.
Marks' way of doing things was done here, and thank God for it. Marks' way had gotten a lot of people killed, and one possessed by something no one understood. Marks would change, one way or another, because Knox wouldn’t stand here and watch the whole world burn.
"Sir," the lieutenant said from behind him. "He is talking to the prisoner."
"Thank you," Knox said, turning around. He handed the binoculars to his subordinate and walked across the open tent. He paused, looking at the men and women hovering near the computer bank. They wanted to know the same thing he had: did it work? The answer stared them all in the face, just as it did Knox. "Get back to your posts. We're still at war."
He heard Yes, sirs go up around the room. The group dispersed quickly, as if realizing that they had been hypnotized by the computer screen's glow.
Time to go, Knox thought, though he didn't want to. He hated being around Marks, but being around Will—or what was left of Will—somehow felt even worse.
He left the tent, walking outside under the moonlight, purposefully not looking in the direction of the white cake. The stuff was moving fast, and while Knox didn't think he would be able to see it with his eyes alone, he didn't want to look and find himself mistaken on that front. Instead, he focused on the tent he was heading to, the tent Marks stood in talking to the thing from another planet.
The guards on either side of the opening saluted as he approached. The flaps were down, but Knox reached forward, lifting the one on the right. It was heavy, a thick thing, but necessary for such a large structure. He looked in but didn't stop moving, either. He needed to be inside, needed Marks to see that things were going to move forward now—at a different clip than what he had been dictating.
The General let the flap fall behind him. The silence in the room was thick, like the humid heat of a rainforest. Marks had been talking to the prisoner, but no more. Neither of the two bodies in front of Knox moved, or said a single word. The flap had made noise when falling back into place, but Marks didn't turn around.
"Sir," Knox said from his spot at the front of the tent.
"General Knox."
"Our strike failed."
"Did it?" Marks asked, the levity normally underlying his words stolen from him—leaving him sounding empty, a husk. Knox said nothing for a second, because he knew the man was being a smart ass. He knew as well as Knox what happened, that's why he was in here and not out there staring at the computers like the rest.
"Why have you come here?" Marks asked.
"I want permission to do as I see fit in regards to the growth."
"The white cake?" Marks said, though Knox didn’t know whether the question was directed at him or to the air surrounding them.
"Yes, sir."
Marks turned around, his movements fluid, but still as crisp as any soldier Knox had ever commanded. His face was still, there were no lines of worry, no lines of stress. Rather Marks looked serene, as if he had just come out of a mediation session. Even now, he wasn't perturbed, wasn't scared shitless about what they faced. Marks wasn’t displaying leadership, but rather insanity.
"What would you like to do? Fire doesn't work. Radiation hasn't worked. What else do you have up your sleeves, General Knox?"
"I didn't come here to negotiate."
Marks smiled. "No, you didn't. You came to try and get ahold of the situation, one you feel that I've let get disastrously out of control. Is that about right?"
"Yes, sir," Knox said, sincerely hoping the nervousness ripping through his veins wasn't visible.
"Well, go ahead, then. Get control of it, General."
Knox stared at him for a few seconds, unsure what to say, not expecting the answer he received. Finally Marks turned back around and stared at the creature inside the cage, not saying a word.
* * *
Kenneth Marks listened to the General leave. He looked at the creature in the cell, thinking not so much about what Knox said, but about what Kenneth Marks would do next. He didn't care in the slightest what Knox tried to do, or what the President wanted. They could send in the entire United Nations. It didn't matter. No one else understood what they were up against. No one else had any idea what this thing needed to see, what would bring it to reason.
Kenneth Marks didn't know yet either, but he was learning, and fast.
He couldn't deny, standing with his back to the alien, that he was vexed. He wanted the neutron bomb to work, wanted her offspring to wither underneath the radiation. She could fly, though the white strands couldn't, and so she could have escaped the falling death. He still had other options, but they put her at more danger than Marks wanted. Bend her to his will, but don't break her. Kenneth Marks knew he would never get another chance at this, that no other creature would travel in his lifetime—none with the power to raise him up.
Destiny.
Kenneth Marks knew all about destiny, because he could see into the future; he could follow the roads of inputs until their definite end. All inputs, all the time. Everyone had a destiny, and he stood in the presence of his. He only had to figure out the right inputs. For so long in his life he had picked the inputs out of the air as easily as one would a piece of
fruit in a grocery store. The inputs were always clear, always right there for him to see, and yet now, that ability escaped him. He was missing something, and when he got right down to it, that was what vexed him.
Not the failed neutron bomb.
Not the creature refusing to speak besides that awful laugh.
Not Knox questioning his plans.
Not Rigley going off target.
Not the President being an idiot.
He couldn't figure out the right input, yet it was all around him. It wasn't hiding; he just wasn't recognizing it.
Kenneth Marks focused on the figure standing in the cage. All of the same attributes of Will, except Will wasn't there. The laughter still echoed across the room, the only noise the thing was willing to make. Kenneth Marks tried speaking to it when he came in, but realized quickly it was a fool's errand.
"You're going to see," he whispered. "Even if you don't now. Because I know what you are, more than anyone else on Earth. You're a mother, aren't you? The rest of this, the theatrics, the laughter, it's all just show. You came like any other migrating species, trying to make a home. Yet you brought children. I'll show you, then, since you refuse to see now. They'll all die. One by one, or all at once—it makes no difference to me. And in the end, it'll be you and I, and then you'll know I belong because I defeated you."
* * *
Will heard Marks even if the creature with him didn’t.
Morena. He knew her name now. The time that he spent in silence let him explore some, though he didn't get too much further than her name. Otherworldly, without a doubt. What exactly she wanted, he didn't know—too many things were going on with her to truly understand anything. She seemed capable of thought that encompassed everything, beyond just space, but actual time.
Will watched, but only out of fascination. Like a high school student watching some math PhD figuring out formulas on a whiteboard. Beautiful, but utterly useless to the student.
Marks, though. Will understood him. They dropped a neutron bomb, but not for any reasons that the President might think. Safety of population. Time available after to march in. Lack of structural damage. None of that mattered in the slightest to Marks. He did it because he wanted to kill the thing's… colonization. Will didn't know any other way to think about the growth. Morena, the white strands, all of it trying to spread across the planet in a colonization effort. Marks wanted to harm that, but not to stop the creature, nor the advancement.
He wanted….
And Christ, Will thought he understood the man's insanity before, but it went deeper than any hole ever dug on Earth.
He wanted to scare it into… taking him as an apprentice?
Will would have laughed if he had the ability—a real one, not the effort the alien attempted. The idea was absurd, ridiculous on a level that no out of control dictator could ever truly consider. This thing possessing him, it held no regard for anything of this world. It was as cold as the space it descended from. She held no interest in Marks, didn't have any desire to teach someone from this place—and teach him what? How to fly? How to have color float around him? The whole goddamn thing felt like some childhood dream, like putting a cape on your back and running around the house as if you were Superman.
Will’s mind filled with those two thoughts: Morena and Marks. The third was how to end this. He never thought he would end up a prisoner, some POW in an unknown war. He wanted to watch Marks suffer, but was slowly coming to realize that he might want freedom—through death or actual life, it didn't matter—more than seeing Marks’ ending. Will no longer had any doubt that his end would come, and most likely before all of this was over. He didn't know if anyone could defeat the creature holding sway over his body.
He wanted a way out.
He didn't want to sit inside here any more, in this mental cage, having this creature use his vocal chords to mock someone that didn't even know how far out of his depth he had gone. Will had no control, though—no ability to end his life. He should have used the pill Knox gave him, rather than being caught up in the creature's majesty.
Morena had wanted to see Marks, and it couldn't just be to sit in a cage, laughing. She must have another reason, and maybe when she moved on it… just maybe he would find his release?
Will had only time, nothing else. Time to sit and think on his death.
That girl had been in a similar situation, hadn't she? Thera? Yes, he thought so—she had sat a prisoner in her own mind, with this creature, Morena, controlling her as it controlled him now. He wondered what she thought at her end? Wondered if she wanted blessed escape as badly as he did? Or did she want to live? Did she still think about the rest of her life left to live, and fear the darkness that surely would come?
* * *
Will had no way to tell time, but the moon still shone when Rigley walked in. She moved under the tent's drape the same as everyone else, but… something was different. Everyone else, the guards as well as Marks and Knox, came with a weight attached to them. Like they dragged a massive anchor hanging from their necks.
Rigley walked as if her feet moved across clouds instead of the pavement that they set this operation on. She still looked like Rigley, her hair cut the same way, but changes underlay that as well. The way her face looked, the way her eyes danced, all of it a different person than the one Will left when he went into Grayson. So different that for a brief second, Will wondered if something hadn't also possessed her as it had him.
She came in, moving quickly, her feet making no noise on the asphalt. No one followed; she was alone.
Rigley stopped a foot from the cage, and Jesus, she was smiling. Not a sad smile, but a manic one. Something closer to Marks' smile than anything Will ever saw her wear before.
Questions roared through his mind, but his body stood still.
"Will?" she said. "Are you there?"
He didn't try to answer, didn't try to force any of his questions. All of that was pointless. She was talking to a mannequin.
"I didn't come here for you, if you're listening. I came for the thing that brought you here. I just wanted you to know, you were right about Marks. I finally see that. He doesn't control me anymore, Will. I'm free and it feels better than anything I've ever known."
Will thought a lot about freedom, thought about it constantly, and when she said the word, he thought she might have traded one master for another. It was the way her words sounded, like a cult member preaching about the holy qualities of their leader—a light in their eyes and passion in their speech, yet underlying it all the inherent stream of crazy. He didn't know who this new master was, what now permeated her head the way Marks once had, but this still wasn't the Rigley he once knew.
And who had he known?
Had the woman ever been driven by anything from inside her, or had it always been different external stimuli prodding her along like a cow?
He saw her, standing before him, her eyebrows raised expectantly, hopefully even.
And are you any different? Are any of us? he thought. And he had that luxury now, to think such existential bullshit, because he was in this cage without a choice whether to piss himself or not. Rigley didn't have that luxury; she lived outside, and had to deal with the pressures that outside brought with it.
And this person before him was the result of all that pressure. A smiling, manic face, and a glee in her eyes that said she had something to do, something she believed in wholeheartedly. Will didn’t trust any of it.
"Are you there?" she said. "Not Will, but the other. The creature we chased in Grayson."
Will's mouth stopped what he thought would go on forever, the laughter barking out from his throat. No words replaced the barking laugh. No other movement stirred in his body. Only silence spread across the room.
"Maybe you are," Rigley said. "I think you can hear me, even if you're not going to reply." She swallowed, and the smile dipped away, leaving her face looking grave—though not like it had been in the hotel room. Serious, not fe
arful. "I'm coming to you. I want to help you. The man that keeps showing up here, Marks, I don't know what he wants, but I know it's not right. I know it's not in your best interest, or ours. I want to help you… live here peacefully."
If Will could have laughed he would have, for the second time tonight.
He had thought Marks lost his mind, and now, he knew without doubt that Rigley lost hers as well. Both of them could search from here to the end of the universe, and they would never find that elusive thing called reason and logic. Perhaps they threw it out of their heads willingly, or maybe something stole it, but either way, they had no fucking clue where their minds were.
He looked at her face, so solemn, so honest—like a child telling her parents she loved them. She was completely serious. She wanted to help the thing that now locked Will down like gold bars in a safe. She wanted to help it live on Earth? Peacefully? The goddamn Pilgrims and Indians couldn't get along; what the hell did she think she would actually be able to do?
Rigley said nothing else. She nodded, to herself or to Morena, Will didn't know. She looked on for another second and then turned around, walking back to the tent's entrance. Will watched her go, wondering how much he contributed to the madness now breeding all around him.
* * *
Rigley looked east, to Grayson.
She stood just outside of the tent where Will was held captive. The flap had closed behind her and guards stood to either side, neither of them moving. The sun would peek over the horizon in the next hour and Rigley understood she wouldn't get a better chance than this. Marks had finally laid down, and she thought Knox had as well. People were still awake, of course, but none of them held any authority over Rigley.
She was alone.
Rigley had to leave now, before the sun rose. When it finally came up, things would start happening afresh, and eyes would fall on Rigley again. For the past day, maybe a little more, she was looked at as ancillary equipment, but the chance existed that Marks would throw her back into the fray. And even if he didn't, he wasn't letting her out of his sight. She did something in there when she pressed that button, because she could feel his eyes resting on her like a cobra staring at a rodent. He expected something from her, not from the push of the button, and she hadn't given it to him.