“That’s what Satan wanted, too.” Tank’s jaw jutted forward. “He was a beautiful angel, designed to serve God, but he wanted to rise above his station and be equal with God.”
“So you think it’s wrong for a guy to be ambitious?” Brenda asked.
“Not necessarily. But it’s wrong for a man to be proud. Every time I get to feelin’ that I’m more special than somebody else, God lets me know that I’d be nothin’ without the gifts and grace He’s given me. I’m just a man, the professor’s just a man—”
The professor raised a brow. “So my years of education count for nothing?”
I closed my eyes as their words flowed over me. A vein in my temple had begun to throb, so I pressed my fingertips to the spot in a futile attempt to massage the tightness away. I did not want to hear the voices again, and even hearing about The Gate felt like opening a door to the intruders.
“Excuse me.” I closed my laptop and stood, then moved toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Before leaving, I turned to the others. “I have a headache, so I’m going to lie down where it’s quiet.”
At any other time, the professor would have made a crack about my inexhaustible energy, but my comment left him—left all of them—speechless. They didn’t want a repeat performance with EMTs and flashing lights, either.
They looked at me, their eyes shining with concern, and then they let me go.
I rode aboard a dream ship that pulled up to a dock and regurgitated passengers onto shore. I walked across the sand and into a large room that seemed to be some sort of auditorium. I could see silhouetted heads and shoulders and hear sibilant whispers in the darkness.
I lifted my gaze and saw a lighted stage at the far end of the room. A woman in a flowing white tunic stood on the stage, and she lifted a woven basket and set it on a tree stump. Then I heard the sound of a baby’s cry. The crowd buzzed, but since no one seemed inclined to intercede for the child, I moved down the aisle, my gaze fixed on the basket.
Three steps led up to the stage. I mounted them slowly, wondering if someone would come rushing out from backstage to apprehend me for trespassing. The woman watched me, her eyes like large liquid pools, but she did nothing to impede my progress.
Finally I reached the basket, where the baby’s cries had softened to a low mewling.
A gauzy fabric covered the opening, so I pulled it away and gazed on a baby with a misshaped head. Or not exactly misshaped—the head was fluid, the skull moving beneath the skin, rearranging the mouth, nose, and eyes, of which there were three. The eyes positioned themselves into a straight line, then the lips smacked while the eyes shifted again, one eye moving to the center of the forehead. The infantile mouth curled in a smile, and the eyes—now blue—slowly blinked at me.
The baby was me. I knew it as surely as I knew my name.
I staggered backward, my body caught in a paralysis of horror. The woman looked at me and smiled. “She is not settled yet. Her father alone has the right to say what she will become.”
At the mention of the child’s father, I sensed a presence and heard the deep, rattling breath of a dark creature. Compelled to turn, I looked for the source of the sound and saw horns, yellow eyes with dark slashes for pupils, and brilliant tiger teeth . . . and then I screamed.
I woke and clutched at my blanket, then listened to the soft sounds of Brenda’s breathing until my heart rate decreased and my palms stopped perspiring. Then I closed my eyes and prayed that I would not dream again.
CHAPTER
4
After a restless night, I found Tank and Daniel at the kitchen bar the next morning, both of them slurping down bowls of Lucky Charms and focused on their phones.
“Take that,” Tank said, dropping his spoon so he could work the phone with both hands. “You’re sunk, kid!”
“Morning,” I mumbled, then I moved to the fridge and took out a bottle of orange juice.
I grimaced as a shrill, undulating siren pierced the quiet of the kitchen, and I nearly dropped the orange juice when a robotic voice called, “MEGADEATH APPROACHING, CAPTAIN. DEFEND YOUR BATTLESHIP.”
While Tank grinned, Daniel’s fingers flew over his phone. “What are you guys doing?” I shouted, holding my free hand over my ears as horns and sirens continued to wail.
“Saved!” Daniel grinned at Tank as the kitchen went silent again.
Tank looked up at me. “It’s Battleship Megadeath,” he said. “Daniel’s really into the game. He’s playing eighty-seven other players right now—some of them in other countries.”
“I hope the other players don’t wake up their mates,” I said, jerking my thumb toward the bedrooms where Brenda and the professor still slept. “I’ve never heard anything like that.”
“The siren only goes off if your battleship is sinking. Oh . . . gotta take care of this . . . there.” Tank grinned again, then swept up a spoonful of Lucky Charms. “It’s addictive. If your ship is hit, the siren goes off until you either save your ship or it goes under.”
“For my sake, then, I hope neither of you loses any ships. My ears can’t take it.”
“Play,” Daniel said, looking at me.
“Daniel, I don’t know—”
“You’ll find an invite in your e-mail,” Tank said. He tilted his head toward Daniel. “Come on, humor the kid. You might enjoy it.”
“Maybe.”
I went to the pantry next, and stared at the shelves—a cereal variety pack, a box of cheese crackers, two bags of potato chips, four boxes of brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts, and a canister of beef jerky. Clearly, one of the men had done the grocery shopping.
I pulled a package of Pop-Tarts from the box, then ripped it open and took a bite. One stool remained vacant at the kitchen bar, but as I walked toward it, the dining room table caught my eye. The orb was still in the center, but someone had covered it with a dishtowel.
I lowered my Pop-Tarts and peered at the towel. “What’s up with this?” I asked the guys. “Who covered it?”
“Guilty.” Tank raised his hand. “Did it last night. Daniel kept sayin’ that the thing was watchin’ him.”
“Really, Daniel?” I leaned on the counter to look him in the eye. “Do you know that for certain, or did it just feel like it was watching you?”
Daniel looked up from his phone, met my gaze . . . and shrugged.
Sighing, I walked to the table, then pulled the dishtowel away from the orb. Nothing happened, but the orb looked different. Yesterday it had been a shiny silver color; now it was gold. Why hadn’t I thought to record its color when I was making notes?
“Hey, guys.” I gestured to the orb when they turned around. “Notice anything different?”
Tank nodded. “It’s gold.”
Daniel nodded, too. “Bigger.”
I lifted a brow, then reached for the professor’s bag. A quick wrap with the tape measure proved Daniel’s point: the orb was now fourteen and one-half inches, so the thing had expanded . . . unless I measured incorrectly yesterday.
I picked up the orb and turned it in my hand, searching for the scratch. I spun it from east to west, then from north to south, but the scratch had disappeared.
I sank to one of the dining room tables and propped my chin in my hand. Unless my eyes were deceiving me, the orb had healed itself. And if Daniel was correct—and he often was—the thing had some kind of consciousness. It was aware of us.
Dear Journal:
Living things share seven characteristics—let’s see if I can remember all of them:
Living things are composed of cells.
Living things have different levels of organization.
Living things use energy.
Living things respond to their environment.
Living things grow.
Living things reproduce.
Living things adapt to their environment.
Of those seven characteristics, so far I have seen the orb expand (and contract), respond to its environment (perhaps), and ap
pear to heal itself . . . which must have used energy.
So is this thing alive?
“Whacha doin’?” Brenda asked, glancing at my journal. “You workin’ already?”
“Just making notes.” I jerked my head toward the orb. “Notice anything different?”
Brenda glanced at it, then her eyes widened. “Have we struck gold?”
“It’s not actual gold,” I said, “but it did change color.”
“Why?”
“I’ve no idea.”
We both looked toward the front door when the professor came in—apparently he’d been up and out long before us. He strode into the dining room and dropped the morning paper on the table.
I glanced at the front page headline, then looked at him. “Something special in there?”
“Couple of things,” the professor said, crossing his arms. “First, the police are investigating the disappearance of Dr. Tom Mathis and Nick Warner, which must have been the name of the nephew. Neither man has been seen in days, but they found a trace of Mathis’s DNA at Ponce de Leon High School. So they’ve tied the damage at his lab to the mess at the school, and now they’re saying he met with foul play.”
Brenda and I looked at each other. We were all pretty sure about what had happened to Nick Warner, but we certainly weren’t going to call the paper with news about the killer fungus that may or may not have been created by The Gate and/or cooperative aliens. As for Tom Mathis, we’d been with him when his body exploded into a cloud of green powder. No way we were sharing that news with anyone.
“Do you”—I caught the professor’s gaze—“think we should go to the police? If they’re looking for bodies, they’re not going to find anything.”
“I don’t know.” He scratched his chin. “I doubt they’d believe us.”
“If my dog was carrying that killer fungus, I’d want to know,” Tank said, turning to join in the conversation. “If they’ve unleashed another batch of that stuff, people could be dying right now.”
“I don’t think they will release it anytime soon,” the professor said. “Call it a hunch, but I think they were simply testing that fungus. After the birds and fish, Nick Warner, Andi, and Dr. Mathis stepped into the role of human guinea pigs, so the researchers now have verified results of their experiment.” He shook his head. “If they launch that fungus again, I believe it’ll be on a global scale. Not much sense in tipping your hand before your first major attack.”
I folded the newspaper, about to draw the professor’s attention to the orb, but he took the paper from me. “Don’t throw this away,” he said. “Mathis is having a memorial service today. Maybe we should go.”
Brenda lifted her head. “I don’t do funerals, especially for people I barely knew.”
“A memorial service isn’t the same thing,” I pointed out. “There’s no body.”
“I’ll go,” Tank said. “Mathis was a nice man before the fungus got ahold of him. I think we should all go.”
The professor smiled. “Mathis’s likability is a moot point. Statistics indicate that killers often visit the funerals or graves of their victims just to revel in the experience. I don’t know if we’ll see members of The Gate at that memorial service, but surely time spent honoring a fellow scientist is time well spent.”
“Whatever,” Tank said, grinning at me. “What time do we leave?”
“Eleven.” The professor glanced at his watch. “Which gives all of you just enough time to get ready.”
I took three steps toward the bedroom I was sharing with Brenda, but even though I’d been forewarned, I wasn’t ready for what came next: “MEGADEATH APPROACHING, CAPTAIN. DEFEND YOUR BATTLESHIP.”
As horns and sirens blared from Daniel’s phone, I looked at Brenda, who had spilled her coffee and looked as though someone had nearly run her over. “Come on,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the noise. “I’ll explain everything while we’re getting ready.”
Dear Journal:
Thomas Mathis, as it turned out, was neither religious nor prepared for death, so the funeral director is holding Mathis’s memorial service in the cemetery where his daughter insisted on purchasing a plot.
I overheard all the pertinent details while washing my hands in the ladies’ room. “I kept telling that man that I wanted a place where I could sit and grieve for Daddy,” a voice called from the first of the two stalls. “He said, ‘But we don’t have a body!’ and I said, ‘Well, pretend we do!’ It’s bad enough that we don’t know why Daddy’s DNA was all over that school, but I won’t have people thinking I was too cheap to buy my dad a proper headstone.”
I glanced at the red-eyed older woman who stood by the paper towels, then gave her a sympathetic smile. Poor thing—I hope she wasn’t Dr. Mathis’s mother.
I left the restroom and followed a series of discreet signs to an open plot surrounded by about two dozen people. A fiberboard casket sat on some kind of mechanism, and a spray of roses—probably from the distraught daughter—lay on the coffin.
I found myself wishing I could step up and tell the mourners the truth about the marine biologist’s fate:
Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. Most of you are wondering what happened to Dr. Mathis, and I hope you’ll be pleased to know he is no longer suffering. His mind was abducted by some sort of collective consciousness and his body was taken over by a green fungus that eventually caused him to explode at the high school. He is now at rest and his soul is wherever souls go under these circumstances, so maybe we should give the roses to someone who needs them and put the casket back in storage.
The touch of a hand on my shoulder startled me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Whoa.” Coming alongside me, Brenda gave me a quizzical look. “You okay? You’re not usually wired this tight.”
“I’m fine.” I stuck my journal in my purse, then crossed my arms. “You?”
“I was going to ask you somethin’, but I don’t want to put ideas in your head.”
“Okay. What did you want to ask?”
“Just look around,” Brenda said, her gaze drifting over the crowd. “As the dude talks, tell me if you see anyone who looks familiar.”
I scanned the people at the graveside. “Do I know this person?”
“Not gonna say anything else. Just take your time and tell me if you spot anyone we’ve seen before.”
I sighed, then transferred my gaze to the funeral director as he moved to the head of the casket. He welcomed the guests, then read Mathis’s newspaper obituary. As he rambled on, I studied the guests—Mathis’s daughter stood next to the open grave, supported by a group of older women. A few middle-aged couples stood behind them. No children anywhere, as far as I could see, but it was a school day. A group of twenty-somethings stood in a knot behind the funeral director, and I recognized some of them from the aquarium where Mathis had worked. Were they the familiar faces Brenda was referring to? Shifting my gaze, I saw a handful of other adults, probably friends or neighbors, and Sridhar—
I blinked. Between two bald men I saw a guy who looked like Sridhar Rajput, the young man we had met at the Institute for Advanced Psychic Studies, one of many enterprises reportedly sponsored and/or managed by The Gate. Sridhar had been one of the Institute’s star pupils, specializing in lucid dreaming and dream telepathy. He had wanted out of the program, so we tried to help him escape, but he’d vanished from Brenda’s apartment in the middle of the night.
What was he doing here?
I turned to Brenda and caught her eye, then mouthed the name: Sridhar?
Her eyes widened, then she smiled and nodded.
I turned to make contact with our friend, but I could no longer see him. Was he trying to make his way to us?
“And now,” the funeral director said, “let us observe a moment of silent meditation in honor of the deceased.”
I lowered my head and closed my eyes, not willing to see any other oddities in the crowd. Silence wrapped around us, a heavy quiet ma
rred only by the quiet swishing of cars moving on the road several yards away. A bird warbled in one of the wide oak trees, and the wind gently ruffled a ribbon dangling from the roses on the casket.
Then the sound of horns and sirens blasted the gathering. “MEGADEATH APPROACHING, CAPTAIN. DEFEND YOUR BATTLESHIP.”
As the sirens wailed and horns blared, Tank, Brenda, and I fumbled for our phones. Brenda dumped her purse, then knelt to sort through all the things that had fallen into the grass. Tank pulled his phone from his pocket and was frantically punching buttons; I took my phone from the special pocket inside my purse and slid my finger over the screen again and again, vainly searching for the Battleship Megadeath icon. I had accepted Daniel’s invitation and downloaded the game right before leaving the house, and though I didn’t even know I had a battleship, apparently it was in danger—
From the corner of my eye, I saw the professor pull his phone from his jacket pocket, then tap the screen a few times. The sirens stilled, and the professor folded his hands, his gaze intent on the funeral director.
The noise hadn’t come from my phone—or Tank’s, or Brenda’s. The professor—really?—had been the one with the endangered battleship.
My knees went weak as adrenaline stopped spurting through my bloodstream. Kneeling in the grass with a package of cigarettes, her bright orange Life Hammer, can of shark spray, and about a dozen scattered mosquito towelettes, Brenda had begun to mutter under her breath, but I knew she wouldn’t say anything to Daniel. We should have muted our phones, and none of us did. Not even the professor.
The funeral director, after he’d stopped glaring at us, resumed the service. When he finally folded his hands and thanked us for coming, I slipped past Brenda and threaded my way through the dispersing crowd. I kept my head down, not wanting to make eye contact with mourners who might be peeved about the interruption, and ran headlong into a chest that did not yield to my charging advance.
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