Annex

by Rich Larson

  The kitchen knives were laid out on the counter instead of stuck in the block. Whenever she tried to step out the front door, she ended up back in the kitchen, looking down at them.

  “Be nice to have it all over with, right?” Wyatt asked, smiling an innocent smile. “You can’t handle this much longer. You’re not strong enough for that.”

  Violet snatched up the butcher knife with a trembling hand. It looked like the one Wyatt had given her all those months ago, to kill her first othermother. She wanted to plunge it right into his chest.

  “Or else it goes forever and ever and ever,” Stephen said. “And ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever …”

  Violet stared at her reflected face in the flat of the blade, the ugly angles of it, the bristles on her chin. What would they do if she killed herself? Was that the way out they’d left for her? Would it shut off her brain in the real world too? Or maybe it would only start the whole thing over again.

  Either way, she wasn’t taking it. She’d always been stubborn. She was still stubborn. Violet laid the knife back on the counter and sat down. She closed her eyes.

  They kept talking, crouching down around her, breathing hot air in her ears. It wasn’t real. The aliens didn’t know Stephen Fletcher. They didn’t know Wyatt either, not really. They didn’t know her parents or her life or anything about her. They hadn’t made her own personal hell. She’d made it for them. This was just her, on a night she couldn’t sleep, with her head so full of other people’s bullshit that she wanted to take a drill to it.

  But she’d always gotten through it. Violet inhaled, exhaled. She let the voices wash past her like white noise. She focused on syllables until the words didn’t even sound like real words. She tried to slow down her heart like she’d read Tibetan monks could, make it so she was pumping blood in a slow, strong tide, so she needed only a breath a minute.

  She didn’t know anything about meditation, but slowly, slowly, she felt something shift. She felt static, even though she didn’t have a Parasite in here. Her breathing slowed down. Her hands stopped shaking. She could leave them slack instead of balled into fists. The voices were dimmer, duller.

  Cold linoleum touched her arms and she realized she was sliding through the floor. Her lids twitched but she refused to open her eyes. The smell of the kitchen cut out. The voices cut out. She breathed. Breathed. When she finally opened her eyes, it was blank white space stretching endless in all directions.

  She looked down at herself and felt relief ache her rib cage. She was herself again, or as close as she’d been to it in real life. Even her Parasite was back, sparking and wriggling. She stood up.

  “You should not be able to do that.” Her not-mom was standing in front of her, disapproving. “There is a flaw in the simulation.”

  Violet gave her a withering look. “Call the IT people,” she said, then picked a direction at random and started walking off into the void.

  There was no party when they got back to the theater. Wyatt called everyone into the auditorium—all of them cast Gloom odd looks on the way in—then got up onto the stage. Bo sat in the center of a row, expecting Gloom to sit beside him, but his new companion scuttled away toward a lamp in the corner instead. Gilly and Bree squeezed in.

  With Bree jostling his elbow and Gilly leaning over her to talk in his ear about the ship landing, it was easy to remember back to when he’d been so happy just to be alive and out of the warehouses. Back when Wyatt had been the tall boy with the scar who knew everything, who was stern but kind, who had always wanted a little brother.

  Now Wyatt was the boy who’d straddled his stomach with the knife and nearly slit his throat. Wyatt the liar. The killer. It was hard to believe they were the same person.

  “Listen up!” Wyatt shouted from the stage. “It’s time to save the world.”

  That was enough for even Saif and Alberto to stop fidgeting. All the Lost Boys leaned forward to hear what came next, intent, and Bo leaned right with them.

  “Bo came back to us,” Wyatt said. “He brought us an ally. A friend. Gloom hates the aliens same as we do.” He pointed to Gloom, who was squatting underneath one of the white solar lamps. The Lost Boys craned around to look at him. He raised one spidery hand. “And he brought us news too,” Wyatt went on. “The aliens are scared of us.”

  Fierce nods, clenched jaws. Bree gave a loud whoop and thumped Bo’s shoulder.

  “We pissed them off,” Wyatt said. “We got under their skin. We made that pod understand we’re not to be fucked with. Right?”

  “Right!” came back in a chorus, and even Bo mouthed it.

  “So now they know they need help,” Wyatt continued. “They’re going to open up a portal in the sky to bring more ships. Hundreds of ships, as big as this one.”

  The news rippled through the Lost Boys; Bo saw Elliot shudder.

  “But we’re going to stop them,” Wyatt said. “And our friend Gloom is going to send them right back through that portal. Send them home with their tails between their legs. We’re going to save the world.” His eyes were wide as he looked up and down the row. “They’re scared of us. Are we scared of them?” He swung down off the stage and stalked to the end where Jon was sitting, his elbows resting on his thick knees. “Are you scared, Jon?” he demanded.

  Jon looked him in the eye. “No,” he said, his voice full of gravel.

  Wyatt gave a sharp nod, turned to Bree. “You scared, Bree?” he asked.

  “Fuck no,” Bree snapped.

  Wyatt skipped past Bo. “You scared, Saif?”

  “No!”

  “Scared, Gills?”

  “No, never, never scared,” Gilly said proudly.

  Wyatt moved up and down the row with the same question, getting the same answer from each and every Lost Boy, and Bo could feel the adrenaline building like electric current. Like the static in his Parasite. Finally Wyatt stopped in front of him, his eyes shining.

  “You scared, Bo?” he asked quietly.

  Bo’s heart pounded. “No,” he said. And in his head he added, Not of you either, trying to think it hard enough to make it true. He stared right back into Wyatt’s hard gray eyes.

  “What’s it take to be a Lost Boy, Bo?” Wyatt asked.

  “Guts,” Bo said.

  “Guts,” Wyatt echoed with something like relish. He hopped back up on the stage, careful with his bandaged hand. “We’re Lost Boys,” he said, facing them again. “We’ve got guts. But this, this isn’t going to be like killing the othermothers. It won’t be like catching a pod. This is bigger than any of that. This is do or die.” He paused, let the words sink. “Do or die,” he repeated. “Do. Or. Die.”

  The chant caught. “Do or die,” the Lost Boys echoed. “Do. Or. Die.”

  Bo knew it was only words now. He knew Wyatt was a liar. But even so he felt an ache in his throat, felt a deep burning pride to be here, to be one of them, to be about to save the world. He chanted with them. Gloom watched from the corner, his expression unreadable. Bo didn’t care. They were going to save the world. They were going to save Violet and Lia.

  Wyatt cut the chant short at its crescendo. “Jon, Bree, El, all of you to me,” he said. He paused. “And Bo. With me. The rest of you, eat. We’re going to need all our strength, right?”

  Jenna took the under-tens out of the auditorium while the others went up to the stage. Bo made to follow, motioning for Gloom too, but Gilly stopped him with a tug on his arm. Her pointed face was serious.

  “We buried him in the park,” she said, her voice low and fierce.

  Bo frowned. “What?”

  “Quentin,” she said. “We buried Quentin in the park.”

  Bo felt a wave of hot guilt. He’d known the numbers were off. He’d known someone was missing, and not just Violet. But he hadn’t realized it was because of Quentin. Because Quentin was dead. His mind filled with the image of a limp body dangling off the pod’s hooked proboscis. He’d been trying to erase it. Jenna had lost her brother, and
there was no chance she’d get him back.

  “Wyatt said he died trying to save you,” Gilly whispered.

  A shiver ran through him. He remembered Quentin’s shaking hand holding the knife on him. But he hadn’t been bad. Only scared. Scared of Wyatt, how any sane person would have been that night. Bo didn’t reply for a minute. Jenna was waving impatiently for Gilly to follow her out of the auditorium. Wyatt was looking at him from the stage.

  Whatever Wyatt said had happened, that was what had happened.

  “Yeah,” Bo lied. “He did. He died saving me.”

  Gilly nodded solemnly, then turned and darted off. Bo’s stomach gave a guilty churn and his Parasite churned with it. He turned to the stage, where Elliot and Bree and Jon were already huddled up.

  “We have to start getting ready,” Wyatt was saying. “We need a watch on the ship and a watch on the warehouses. We need to send a forage for supplies.” His smile was back in place, gleaming in his bruised face. “And we need gasoline.”

  Violet was still doing her best to walk in a straight line when her not-mom appeared beside her in mid-stride, like she’d been there all along.

  “You are resilient,” she said, falling into step. “Minds made of only meat are usually so fragile. We will use this data to adjust the positive simulations.”

  “So that was a beta, or something?” Violet snapped. “A test run?”

  “We want to ensure the simulations are perfect,” her not-mom said. “So your species will be happy until the very end. How you think of happy.”

  “Yeah, that’s really thoughtful,” Violet said bitterly. “Is that why you came all this way? Just to make sure we’re all happy?”

  “We came because it was necessary,” her not-mom said. “That is all you need to know.”

  Violet paused. They were still in her head, but the not-mom wasn’t anything she’d conjured up herself. She was some kind of avatar being controlled by the pods outside. With a sudden curiosity, with the static in her Parasite building, Violet reached for her.

  “What are you doing?” her not-mom asked, suspicious, stepping backward.

  Violet didn’t answer. Instead, she lunged forward and plunged her hand into her not-mom’s chest. The blank white space changed in an instant, full of whirling shapes, geometric symbols, some sort of machine code, and suddenly she was aware, dimly, of another mind on the other end. A pod’s mind. She felt a wave of confusion, contempt, fear. Contempt for minds made of only flesh, and fear for a different kind of mind that had no flesh at all. Fear of the dark, but not the dark how Violet knew it.

  She looked down and found herself floating over a seething black sea. Or she thought it was a sea: When she looked around she could see it carving into dunes and dips in the distance, rising into jagged black mountains. The sky was a hazy yellow around her. Violet stared down at the seething black surface again, and realized it was motes. Billions on billions of gleaming black motes.

  The simulation flickered, and now she was out in space, looking down on the planet. Inky tendrils were spreading across it, wrapping it, embracing it. It was Gloom stretched out to cover an entire world. She saw the spiky black ships escaping the atmosphere, their burning blue engines carrying them away. As she watched the planet be covered over in shadow, she imagined the feel of Gloom’s motes scurrying over her skin and shuddered. She felt the pod’s fear, even more intense than before, and in the pod’s mind she saw that the clamps had a second purpose. While the wasters stumbled around dreaming, the bulk of their brains were processing data, churning through possibilities, trying to solve the problem the pods couldn’t solve themselves: how to stop the encroaching dark.

  Violet didn’t want to know any more. She reached out her hand and swiped it through the air, moving on instinct, not knowing why. White nothingness flowed out of her palm like paint. She waved her whole arm, washing away the doomed planet, the starry space, the drifting ships, until everything was white and void again.

  They were still in her head. She called the shots in her head.

  “You should not be able to do that,” her not-mom said, reappearing. She sounded almost panicked.

  And now Violet wanted out of her head. She wanted an exit. Her Parasite sparked.

  “If you were adrift in the ocean with no home to return to, and you found the only island in that ocean that you could make into a home, what would you do?” her not-mom asked, voice grating. “If there were animals on the island, simple apes with simple tools, what would you do?”

  Violet reached forward into the blank space and closed her hand around a doorknob. The cold metal stung her palm. She twisted.

  “If there were animals on the island, would you sail past?” her not-mom demanded. “Would you keep sailing and sailing until you were dead?”

  Violet paused. Thought about it. “No,” she said. “But when an ape bashed my head in with a rock, I’d know I had it coming.”

  She pushed the door open, carving a slice of the ship’s dark interior onto the white void, and stepped through.

  27

  Violet’s eyes flew open just as the dark blurred shape of a whirlybird descended on her. She saw the needle aiming for her neck, the one that put crying kids to sleep, and she tried to roll but found she was flat on her back and couldn’t move at all. Panic kicked up through her. Her Parasite writhed to life. The needle swooped in, and as static ran through her body she tried desperately to shift the syringe, hoping it would break the way Wyatt’s wrist had broken.

  The static surged out of her in a wave, thicker and stronger than she’d ever felt it before, and the syringe vanished but so did the rest of the whirlybird, rippling and disappearing into thin air like it had never been there at all. Violet braced herself for it to pop back, to flicker into existence the way everything else always had. Maybe she was seeing in slow motion. Maybe they’d already given her drugs. She waited, senses straining, heart thumping.

  But the whirlybird didn’t come back. Violet tried to let her muscles unclench. Let herself relax. She really had vanished it, the way Bo did, and that could only mean one thing. Her Parasite was tuned. Violet swallowed spit. Took a deep breath. She still couldn’t move, but she could twist her head enough to see she was in a small room, circular. The ceiling was a jagged mass of machinery and winking yellow lights. The air was filled with a deep hum that made her feel goose bumps on her skin.

  She realized she wasn’t being held down. She was splayed out on a soft black pad with her arms and legs spread-eagled, but only gravity was keeping them there. Gravity and whatever they’d drugged her with. She tried to move again and was relieved when she managed to wiggle her left arm back and forth. Then her right hand, then all of her toes. They were numb and tingling but not paralyzed. The back of her skull felt the same way. Hopefully it wore off fast.

  She dragged her heavy head up and looked down the length of her body. Her Parasite was still rippling in her stomach, and she could see it. There was a hole cut through her shirt, exposing her belly, and her Parasite’s dark red tendrils were pushing up at her pale skin like it was trying to escape. There were marks on top of her skin too. Small white scars in orderly rows. Tuned.

  Violet cycled through her limbs again, wriggling her hands, her feet. The numbness was wearing off everywhere except the back of her head. She couldn’t feel anything back there. Her mouth went dry. She’d been in their simulation without any black orb held to her eye. That meant they had gone straight to her brain.

  The feeling was back in her fingers and she managed to flop them to her head, jam them underneath. They brushed something cold and metallic.

  Her heart stopped. They’d clamped her. Her Parasite sensed her agitation, heaving and rippling more forcefully than usual. Clamp’s in the head, better off dead—the rhyme bounced around her ears. She could practically hear Saif’s reedy little voice repeating it. There was a flaw in the simulation, they’d said. But at any second, they might be able to drag her back to it. Back to her own
little hell, but this time with no cracks to slip through.

  Before she could worry about unplugging her brainstem and accidentally paralyzing herself, or worse, Violet closed her rubbery fingers around the clamp and pulled. She felt a distant pinch at the base of her neck, then a horrible rasping and sliding like she was yanking an impossibly long stitch. The white void flashed behind her eyes. She blinked. The clamp was moving, which was more than she’d expected. She’d always thought the whirlybirds drilled them in.

  She gritted her teeth. Braced herself. Pulled again, as hard as she could.

  The clamp came free, running a shudder all through her body. She gasped. Her vision swam for a second, then sharpened. She moved her legs. Her arms. Everything still worked. Slowly, she dragged her hand up and peered at the clamp.

  It wasn’t like the ones the wasters had. It was smaller, slimmer. Filaments nearly too thin to see trailed from the bottom of it, glistening wetly. She felt instantly sick knowing they’d gotten wet from sliding through her head. She dropped the clamp to the side and heard it clink onto the floor. She took a few deep breaths to gather herself, trying to think of her options.

  She was somewhere on the ship. She wasn’t clamped anymore, but she didn’t know how long she’d been stuck inside the illusion. Her not-mom had said something, back at the very start, and it came back to her now: Another key was nearly ready. Maybe two, she’d said. Assuming Violet’s Parasite was the maybe, that meant they were on track to open the door even if she escaped. And how was she supposed to escape? They were floating in the sky about a mile up.

  Violet braced herself, then swung upright and off the platform. A little stiff, a little clumsy. The knee she’d skinned and the elbow she’d banged up following Gloom through the tunnels both smarted. But she could walk. She took a second to stomp down on the clamp; it rewarded her with a satisfying crunch.

  She didn’t know where she was, and she didn’t know how to get off the ship, and she didn’t know how close the aliens were to opening the door—and if they managed to do that, then escape was a moot point.