My eyes flickered over the wounded leg. The uniform showed no sign of a bullet entry. This shape-shifter had faked its own injury to fool Araz and his camp, and had restored itself when it no longer needed the disguise.
I met the creature’s gaze. Its mimic face lit with a cruel smile. In its gaping mouth, Yov’s yellow teeth seemed as tiny as a child’s.
“How?” was all I could say.
The creature shrugged. “We don’t ask how. We don’t ask why. That’s the thing that took the most getting used to. All the questions, the doubts. We had to learn to weed through that to get at what we wanted. To use your frailty for our own purposes.”
Absently, it stroked the back of the nearest creature as it spoke.
“You and your brother taught us everything we needed to know. It was like waking up from a long, long sleep.” Its voice sounded almost wistful. “So weak, so divided. You say one thing and do another. You call yourselves a colony, yet you let petty squabbles get in the way of your objectives. You wrangle over toys and trinkets. You follow a pair of pretty eyes into the dark, even if that means certain death.”
I thought over my past six months in Survival Colony 9, the past couple weeks. The creature’s portrait of us—of me—sounded so true I felt compelled to argue. “We’re not—”
It held up a hand as if asking for patience. “And your so-called leaders! Laman made it so easy for us. He must have suspected the compound was ours. Must have realized he couldn’t hold it together once we trashed his truck. But he wouldn’t face the truth. He wasted time sending that little bitch girlfriend of yours snooping around. We had to call one of the others to kill her off before he’d listen. Before he’d”—its teeth flashed like daggers—“focus.”
It shook out Yov’s legs and rose. The creatures cowered at its feet.
“And let’s not forget the fabulous Space Boy,” it jeered. “You couldn’t have played it any better if we’d asked you to. Really, tracking our decoy right to our front door? Bravo.”
Movement rippled among the Skaldi. A form emerged from their ranks: the crawling creature, its head bowed to the ground, its arms so emaciated it could barely drag its body forward. It lifted its head long enough to stare at me with vacant eyes, then it crumbled to dust at my feet.
“Mission accomplished,” the thing that had been Yov purred. “It’s been fun, Space Boy. But the game’s over. Now it’s time to go.”
I met his eyes. They flamed red in a face that had wilted like dripping wax. I was surprised to find myself trembling, not with fear but with rage at the creature that had used my memory to attack the colony, and now was using the memory of people I’d known to mock their deaths. I wondered if Yov had always been as cruel as the one that had replaced him, if the monster that had consumed his body had inherited his soul. Was this twisted thing my real brother? Or had he ever been someone I looked up to, trusted, loved? Someone who loved me back?
Had he ever been someone like Korah, who loved her colony and her family enough to put herself in harm’s way when the Skaldi struck?
“You haven’t won,” I said. My voice came out dry and cracked, but it grew stronger with each word. “You killed my brother, you had one of your little friends kill Korah, but you couldn’t kill me. My memory is all you got.”
A spasm passed over its stolen face, distorting it again, replacing Yov’s smirk with the bulging knob of the Skaldi’s blind forehead. Then Yov’s features returned and the creature shook its head. When it spoke again its words sounded muffled and broken, as if it was losing the ability to work Yov’s tongue and teeth.
“Your—memory is all we needed,” it gasped. “Soon—there will be nothing left of you. Like there is nothing—left of them.”
Again Yov’s face buckled as if it was about to split open, and I sensed its deadly purpose coiling. I didn’t know what it was that led me to continue taunting it.
“You call us weak,” I said. “But you’re the one that’s weak. You steal people’s bodies, people’s memories. You use the strength of others to cover your weakness. You’re afraid to fight on your own.”
“No!” the voice burst from the monster’s bottomless mouth, bringing with it the same stench of rot that breathed from the ring of lesser creatures. “Skaldi know no fear. No weakness. Skaldi know only death.”
Once more the mask of Yov’s face warped as the Skaldi-self strained to break free. Its lips twitched, its rabid eyes bugged. I knew there was no time left, no point in delaying what had to happen.
Gently, I laid Keely on the ground at my feet. He slept on, lost in whatever dream or nightmare had claimed him. Slowly, wearily, I stood and planted myself over his sleeping body. Then I raised my head to face the one I’d hated for so long, not knowing who or what I hated. My fists clenched as its frame melted away under the pressure of the monster Yov had become.
“Prove it,” I said. My voice shook, and I hoped I sounded a lot braver than I felt. “Show yourself to me now.”
With a shrug, the Skaldi threw off the last shreds of Yov’s body and struck.
Its speed blinded me.
The instant it charged at me, it seemed as if a shroud settled over my eyes, and its form vanished into the darkness. The next instant, something powerful attached itself to my arms. It didn’t feel like a body, a solid shape I could grasp or define, but a force that wrapped me in shadow and flooded my senses with the icy corpse-stink of its breath. A sickening sensation of being entombed in another’s flesh washed over me, and my gut churned violently as I felt not only my body but something deep inside me being drained away. I tried to concentrate, to focus, but the more I tried, the muddier my thinking became. I seemed to be trapped at the bottom of a night-black pit, my body floundering amid the members of the two colonies the creature had consumed. I heard its mocking laugh in my head, urging me to kneel before it, to bow down as its latest sacrifice. It wanted me to give up, to surrender the parts of me it hadn’t already claimed. For a long moment I forgot who I was, forgot that I was. There was no me, only it.
As in my dream, I heard a whisper. But this time I could make out what it said.
There was only one word.
Forget.
It would have been so easy to obey. I’d lost everything I’d ever called mine—my past, my hope, my people—and I almost felt as if it was my own voice telling me to give up. Did I really want to remember, if that meant remembering nothing but loss?
But another part of me fought back. A part of me that hadn’t been drowned by the creature’s venom bubbled up from the depths, and I clung to it as the waves buffeted me in the dark. It spoke to me not in words but in images: my game of catch with Laman, the trial where I stood beside Aleka, my march through the night with Keely, my talk at the pool with Korah. I looked into her eyes as I had that night, and this time I saw the strength and love that shone within them. I focused on the light in her eyes, a frail blue flame in the surrounding darkness.
And then the darkness receded, and I returned. The flame spread outward from my chest to my arms, the tips of my fingers. My hands gripped something solid and sank in. The creature’s taunting laugh turned to a shriek of pain, and the wall of darkness fell away, the suffocating stench retreating at the same time. A new smell wafted over me, the stink of burning flesh.
I opened my eyes.
The creature lay on the ground, convulsing, howling in pain. Wisps of smoke rose from its pale flesh, and in spots the sickly gray hue had turned an angry red. It thrashed so violently I couldn’t tell for sure, but I thought the marks on its body matched the shape of my hands.
I staggered back, quaking with more than cold. But before I had time to think, to move, the Skaldi rose and lunged again.
Its force clutched me, its breath licked my face. Again I felt myself being turned inside out, exposed to its hunger, my skin raw and prickling as a newborn’s. The world around me
spun, the world inside me darkened. The name I called myself was snuffed out like a blown candle, and the only word that filled my mind was Skaldi.
But once again, when it seemed I could hold out no longer, a rush of memories flowed through my mind, and I felt a surge of air like a swimmer breaking the surface. The memories weren’t all good, but they were mine, and I rode them back to the light. Laman giving me a tour of the weapons horde. Aleka guiding me the morning of the rescue. The old woman telling me about birds. Korah again, the first time she’d spoken to me, teaching me how to set up my tent, touching my hands as she showed me the way.
My own pulse became the pulse of a flamethrower. I shoved blindly and the Skaldi reeled, fell to its clawed hands on the ground. It tried to rise, but its arms gave out under it. Its tail thrashed feebly against the dust, threads of smoke curled from its blistered flesh. My own legs felt like rubber, but I faced it, waited for its next move.
Bracing itself with one hand, the Skaldi that had been Yov lifted its body shakily from the ground and pointed a single long, clawed finger at me. The scar that should have been its face split wide. The members of its colony reared from the dust in unison, and their skin peeled back like an opened wound.
With a speed I could hardly believe, they struck.
Some collided with my back, others my chest. All clutched at me, chewed my arms with their claws, clogged my nostrils with their breath. At their touch I gagged and nearly fell into the dead hollows of their bodies. A word echoed in my mind, a different word this time.
Querry.
Que . . .
Qu . . .
Then memory resurfaced, the sensation of fire flooded me once more, and the creatures broke contact, their writhing bodies dropping to the ground, their moans escalating to a high-pitched squeal. But they didn’t stay down long. As if driven mad by their master, they flung themselves at me, strained to swallow me, to make me one of their own.
But they failed.
I did nothing. There was nothing I could do.
I stood, paralyzed by their speed, unable to resist when they clenched me in their arms. Too many came at me to catch them, grip them, fling them aside. I stood unsteadily, my head and heart pounding, dizzy and sick as if I’d gone a week without water. Memory was all that kept me on my feet, the fuel that fed an inner fire. At the creatures’ touch, my flesh grew so hot it seemed as if my bones blazed. And the ground on all sides of me piled with pale bodies that twisted and clawed at the dust.
Finally it stopped. The creatures squirmed away, and I saw that though nothing ebbed from their bloodless flesh, their naked backs bubbled with red marks as if from an iron brand.
The leader hadn’t moved from its spot. Its arm hung in the air, its body shuddered as if with heavy breaths. Its faceless face turned toward me once more, and I sensed a movement in its mind. A split second before it acted, I knew what it planned to do.
I scooped Keely’s sleeping form into my arms and ran.
I heard the creatures in pursuit. When their stench told me I couldn’t outrun them any longer, I dove to the ground, my body cocooned around Keely’s to protect him from the assault.
Just in time.
They swarmed my back, grappled with me, slashed at my throat and wrists. I lay pinned to the ground by the iron strength of their claws, the dead weight of their bodies. Their breath hissed in my ears. The sickness inside them tore at me.
But they couldn’t tear me from the child I shielded.
I knew I couldn’t throw them off if I tried. So I made no effort to. I curled myself around Keely’s frail form, and the creatures fell from me like dead skin. A force that came from somewhere other than my muscles, a force I felt as a hot coal glowing in the pit of my stomach and spreading outward like the path of a wildfire, defended me from their attack. I huddled around that flame and fought to hold on.
Time passed, but I had no way to mark its length. Sound and silence emitted the same dull roar. Memories slid and merged.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the creatures retreated. Their shrieks sliced the dark, pierced my heart. I lay shaking and weak, my stomach twisted and a foul taste in my mouth. Tears and darkness blurred my vision. I could barely see my attackers, barely keep from choking on the stench of their burned bodies. I didn’t know what would happen if they came at me again.
They didn’t, though.
Instead, a lot of things happened at once.
I heard shouts, voices. Footsteps hammered the ground so hard it shook. I lifted my head to see, but as I did, the soil collapsed beneath me. Instinctively, I clutched Keely’s body. But the fall wasn’t far, five feet at most, into the deeper darkness of underground. We landed softly not on dirt or stone but, incredibly, on human hands.
The hands lowered us carefully to the floor of the pit. Bodies brushed past me, nearly invisible in the dark but solid and alive with warmth. Fingers closed on my wrist. I tried to jerk away until I realized they were feeling for a pulse.
“Stay here,” a gruff voice commanded. I didn’t need to see her face to know it was Petra.
Her stocky body leaped over me, out of the hole. Heavy footsteps diminished as she ran. I felt another hand brush hair from my eyes, and a face I couldn’t see leaned over to press dry lips to my forehead. Then it, too, vanished into the dark above.
The sky over my head blazed with twin ribbons of flame. The Skaldi wailed, a confused chorus of screams rising above the deep cough of the flamethrowers. I shivered as I remembered those screams from the night Korah died. But I took heart in the human voices that shouted in response, not words I could distinguish but monosyllables of encouragement and resolve.
Then I heard Laman Genn’s voice, sturdy and calm above the chaos of battle.
“For the colony!” he called. “For our lost brothers and sisters! Let none escape!”
The flamethrowers unfurled into the pitchy sky, and the throats of the Skaldi howled in baffled rage and fear.
Carefully, making sure to keep track of Keely’s body, I lifted myself from the ground. Standing on tiptoes, I could just peer over the edge of the pit.
In the orange glare of their two remaining flamethrowers, the last members of Survival Colony 9 marched in a tight formation, driving the Skaldi away from the nest. Laman and Petra I couldn’t locate, and it was impossible to tell the Skaldi leader from the rest of the blind, groping things. Some lay dead, their bodies charred beyond recognition. Others wriggled frantically away from the advancing line, but the wide arc of the flamethrowers caught them and ignited them with a crackling sound. Dozens, it seemed, would die, cut off from the safety of their nest.
Still, I knew something was wrong.
I turned my eyes upward and saw in the flamethrowers’ glow many more pale bodies scaling the spire. Some had already vanished into the inky darkness at the nest’s peak. In a couple minutes of slow, painful climbing, the others would reach the top, well beyond range of the flamethrowers, and would be able to secrete themselves in their nest once more.
Laman’s words rang in my ears.
Let none escape.
And I knew what he meant. He was determined to end it tonight.
I didn’t want to leave Keely. I’d been watching him only a day, but already it seemed I’d had him with me a lifetime. And I didn’t want to go back out there. I felt weak, dizzy, sick at heart and sick at soul. All I wanted was to curl up inside my hiding place and let the others finish the job.
But I knew if I didn’t do something, the creatures would escape. And I knew I couldn’t abandon my colony, not again, not now.
I knew the time had come.
I braced my hands on the crumbling lip of the pit and vaulted into the open. As soon as I did, I realized some of the bodies at my feet weren’t Skaldi but my own people, burned by their fellow colonists to destroy the monsters that had tried to camouflage the
mselves with human forms. They’d been caught at all stages of the transformation, gray-white bodies with human faces, human bodies with gaping scars running their length. I didn’t stop to identify the dead. I ran toward the row of attackers, waving my arms, trying to make myself heard above the din of battle.
“The nest!” I shouted. “Don’t let them reach the nest!”
No one turned. They continued to march in a mechanical line toward the retreating creatures, while the main body of Skaldi crawled nearer and nearer to safety.
More decoys, I realized. Sacrifices. Driven by the silent command of their leader, the Skaldi on the ground would forfeit their lives to allow the others to escape.
And if they did, their colony would win.
“The nest!” I shouted hoarsely. “They’re getting away!”
No response came from the attackers. I stumbled with the effort to increase my speed, but I knew I was too late.
Then a hand gripped my arm and I turned to look into Laman Genn’s eyes.
“Let’s finish this now,” he said.
He raised his walkie-talkie, spoke a few quiet words. I didn’t hear the response, but he nodded as if satisfied.
“Petra’s on it,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“What is she—?”
“We’ll wait for her to report back.” Then he took my arm and, leaning heavily on a stick carved in the shape of a crutch, led me away from the noise and flames.
We stopped at the edge of the pit. To my relief, Keely’s sleeping body lay where I’d left him. Laman said nothing for a long moment, just stood looking at me with keen but weary eyes. His face in the firelight was grimier than I’d ever seen, his hair and beard like that of a man who’d emerged from a lifetime in the desert. Which, I guess, he had.
Finally he broke the silence. “Their own tunnel,” he said, indicating the pit. “Good to finally use one against them.”
I saw then that the hole where Keely lay gave way to other holes, branches beneath the surface, snaking in every direction. “That’s how they were getting around?”
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