Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by David Beers

  The rest, though. Who needed to go?

  The parents of the two with Andrew and Lane, obviously. Will was already on that. The trouble was they needed to keep this quiet, but they also had to find the infection. Quiet while searching. He wouldn't be able to micromanage this thing, that was the only conclusion he truly reached. That the men coming here would need to make the decision when to kill, and when it was necessary, they should do it as efficiently as possible.

  Will did some shoddy math, just based on what he knew and what those kids were telling him, and he thought that there would be a pretty big cleanup crew that came in when he was done. Not Bolivia's size, but one large enough to keep all the deaths from making news.

  That wasn't his job, though. His job was to kill whatever had taken over Thera Erwin.

  He looked down and saw that his hand was gripping the pill bottle so hard that the plastic was bending and his knuckles were white. He hadn't even noticed the tension building up in him. He forced his hand to release the bottle, letting it roll off his leg and onto the bed.

  Tension.

  Not noticing.

  He hadn't noticed a lot since he showed up in Grayson, not nearly enough, but the tension was new. He definitely felt that, all the way down from Rigley. Was it overloading him now, though? Was squeezing that bottle showing the same tension as Rigley?

  "You've done this before," he said, chastising himself before picking up the cellphone again.

  * * *

  Rigley Plasken sat in the back of a black car, staring out the window. When had she first started riding in the back of cars like this? But that answer was easy—almost right after Bolivia. Then, she had felt like royalty, riding around with a personal driver. Now? She just felt alone. And that's what she was, really. She had come to Georgia by herself, but even if she stayed in D.C., she would have still been alone. The cost to be the boss, that's what she once thought. It was bullshit; she knew that now, but sometimes you were so deep in the bullshit, there wasn't any way out.

  Was that where she was? Neck deep and unable to find anything to hold on to?

  Just stop it, she thought.

  This was depression talking.

  It's Bolivia tal—

  Stop!

  This had nothing to do with that place. She came here because she needed to be on the ground; she needed to understand what in the hell was happening for herself, not have it relayed over a phone. Will didn't know she was coming, and she didn't want him to. She wanted to walk in and hopefully put a little fear into him.

  Could she do that anymore? Maybe not with Will, maybe not ever with Will, but the rest of the people there? Did she still have the ability to put pressure on people just by showing up, or had that disappeared with the rest of her confidence?

  It didn't matter how many times she told herself to shut up or stop, that's what she was realizing. Her mind kept going back to that same circular track. A loop about how she wasn't good enough, how she had never been good enough, how this would fail. There were definite signs that this would fail, that everyone in the operation had moved too slow. That whatever was here, perhaps they just weren't capable of handling it. All of that might be true, but it only rested on the underlying fear, the foundation of self-hate that propped it up.

  Only a few people understood what happened in Bolivia. The President? He didn't know then and the one now certainly had no idea. Rigley received no award, no medal, no plaque. She didn't want one, though back then she thought it might have been deserved. Now? A trial at Nuremberg may have been more appropriate. Sitting right next to Goebbels and the rest of the crew.

  The fear stems from there, Rigley, from Bolivia.

  Rigley closed her eyes, wanting to focus on anything but that. Trying to feel the bumps in the road, listen to the air conditioner, anything.

  I don't have to go back there. I don't ever have to go back there. It's over.

  And it was, had been for nearly fifteen years. So why now? Why was it coming back to her mind with such force?

  Because of Grayson. Because she would have to do it again. This right now, this was a charade. Her showing up, Will calling in the cavalry, all of it because she didn't want to do it again.

  She felt her nails digging into her palms, a sharp pain jetting up her arms. She turned her hands over on her lap, glancing up at the driver first to see where his eyes were, and then back down. Blood on her palms. It leaked out quickly from her skin, pooling from tiny half moon crescents, artifacts from her nails. She looked back up to the driver, whose eyes were still on the road, and then reached over to her purse, pulling out tissue. She closed both hands around a piece, trying to blot up the blood and stymie it at the same time.

  She hadn't felt it, not until she drew blood.

  I should talk to somebody.

  The thought came to her as calmly as someone realizing their shoe was untied. No argument to be had, no judgement, just a fact.

  And what would she do? Go see an agency shrink? Like any of that would be kept confidential. The entire fucking administration would know about Grayson in just a single day. A private psychiatrist? Then the entire fucking world would know. No, none of that could happen. This was her cross to bear. She picked it up when she left her husband all those years ago; she picked it up when she went to Bolivia and decided her path in life. She couldn't throw the cross off now, not as she carried it down the street. And she certainly couldn't ask anyone to help her carry it.

  She just needed to get this all over with. When it was done, Bolivia would be only a memory of a foreign time. A time that involved another person. She just needed to get through this.

  34

  Bolivia

  Rigley tried to imagine what the suit would feel like if there weren't tiny fans blowing cool air throughout the thing. Stifling hot? Perhaps murderously hot? If the fans broke while they were down here, there was a good chance that she would die, one way or another. She hadn't thought about that when she put the gear on; she only wanted to get down to the ground and see the pink growth for herself. She wasn't going to command from up in a tower, away from all this. She needed to see what these guys were going through.

  Rigley looked down at the shoe of her suit, seeing some of the pink mess growing there.

  "Look!" She shouted inside her mask, pointing down at it. She wasn't scared, just shocked. She knew that they would need to be decontaminated before they went back inside, knew that there was no way for the alien to enter her suit.

  "Yeah," Will said. "Sometimes it finds a way to start growing on us, despite our best intentions. This shit is no joke."

  Will stood next to her, wearing his own suit. She liked him. He seemed to radiate a certain confidence, a 'seen everything' type of attitude that brought peace of mind to those around him. Will didn't do fluster, and it helped remind Rigley that she couldn't do it either. Not in front of him. Not in front of his men.

  And fluster could run amok down here in this place. Fluster could be just as rampant as the alien growth she saw all around her.

  Fifty men were on these roads, though she only saw two of them in front of her. The other forty-eight were on other streets, in other buildings, all of them doing the same thing that Rigley saw now.

  Flamethrowers blasted out fire, heat reaching such temperatures that anything in its way burned or blackened immediately. The fire worked against the growth, worked in ways that chemicals couldn't. They tried everything from anthrax to bleach, but the infestation kept growing until Rigley brought these men in with their flamethrowers. The growth couldn't handle the heat, and Rigley found some comfort in that, like the comfort she gained from Will. There were commonalities in this universe; not much that lived could fight fire naturally.

  She watched as the flames roared out from the gun-like machines the men carried, which looked like some kind of mechanical dragon. The fire didn't care where it went, only hoped that it found something to feed on once it left the dragon's mouth. There was plenty to eat out
here though; the entire fucking city was a buffet.

  The pink tendrils didn't burn like wood, being able to withstand the heat for some time as it slowly turned to ash. Instead, the tendrils died immediately. Shriveling up like paper, but the fire didn't follow along the tendrils. It burnt what it touched, but if it couldn't reach a certain piece, nothing happened.

  Two things surprised her. The growth was retreating. Not all at once, not as if it had eyes and watched the men walking down the street with their fire, but slowly, strategically—the growth was communicating. She heard reports of it from all over the city, that where the men went with fire, the growth backed away, and if there were no men with fire, it spread even faster. More firefighters were on the way. They would need to circle it and burn it from every single angle. They had thought the thing was more like a fungus, but clearly there was intelligence in it.

  Will warned her about the screams, and she thought she was prepared, especially with the earplugs. She wasn't and realized it now. The growth screamed as it burnt. It shrieked at a high pitch, something that filled her teeth as much as it did her ears. The thing was in pain, clearly, but it also seemed to be pleading. She didn't know how to explain it, and Will told her she wouldn't be able to, but it was there—in the noise. Pleading for the men to stop their torture. Pleading to be left alone. Pleading and dying.

  Rigley didn't know how the men fighting dealt with it. She thought the noise, the screaming pleas, would drive her insane. The men didn't stop though. They kept stepping forward, slowly, and with purpose. They were clearing the streets and would soon turn to clearing the building to their right.

  The entire city would need to be rebuilt, but there was money for that. The United States government would call it humanitarian aid, make anyone who survived this madness sign nondisclosure agreements, with penalties being a lot worse than a day in court. People would die, those that couldn't be trusted—the citizenry and such, but there weren’t many of them left. A story would be concocted, one that would explain the burned buildings. Life would go on, as long as she was able to kill all of this pink shit.

  35

  Present Day

  Morena was in two places at once. Really, she was barely in either of those spots, but because the bodies she inhabited rested there, at least some piece of her did too.

  She had left the Ether, leaving her two human counterparts to watch over it alone. She knew of the growing danger outside the houses, but she had to make a choice whether to stay in the Ether and face something that may or may not evolve into violence, or go where she was needed. Bryan and Thera would tell her if something happened, if those shades outside decided to breach their houses. They would shriek just like they did every time something threatened them. Only, Morena had to hope they would shriek loud enough for her to hear, because she was deep inside herself now.

  The controls to their bodies were open. Either of the two could have come out of their holes to take over, though if they did, there wasn't anywhere for them to go.

  It was natural, what Morena did, though she hadn't known it would be. She had looked into Thera's mind at what the girl knew of childbirth and saw that it was much the same for humans, though on a different scale. There was training for birth here on Earth, medicine for it, but in the end, the body knows. That's what she discovered with this, that she knew.

  No other Var had known, they couldn't. They were never in a position like she was now. They never needed to colonize another planet; they had Bynimian.

  She felt it though, at first a slight tug, like a child pulling on one's hand. She didn't understand it, not fully, not then. A tug to go inside, to go deep, to look for…something. She had been too concerned with the growing number of creatures outside those black and white walls. Concerned that she might not make it out of the Ether to ever have a chance at delivering her planet to this one.

  The body knows, though.

  The tug turned into a pull, and the pull into a shove, until there was no other choice. She fell inside herself, giving up control of the body she possessed. Giving up her ability to look outside on the Ether and plan for a possible attack. She gave up reality.

  And bless The Makers, it was so beautiful, so worth it. If she died right now, those things from the Ether marching into the house and eating her alive, she would accept it. Her people would die with her and what she saw now would end as surely as seasons, but she would accept it. Just to see this. Just to feel it. She wished other Bynums could. She wished Briten had this opportunity.

  She couldn't see the spore, or its offspring, but she felt them. All of them calling to her, wanting her with a ferocity she had never known, not even for her husband. They called to her like the Earth to its moon. They called to her in a way that said their survival depended on her, that her species’ survival depended on her union with her offspring. That's why she felt the need to come down this deep, into a darkness filled only by their voices, speaking a language that only mother and children could understand. They needed her to know about this union, needed her to understand that if she didn't complete it, they would die down there in that core. That all of this had been for nothing.

  She longed for them too, her children. She knew that they would change, that what they were now wouldn't last, and that was fine. There were stages to her children's lives. But this stage, the birth, she had to make it happen. Nothing else mattered, and had she thought she understood that before? She was a child herself then, understanding nothing. She wanted to resurrect her people, her husband, but now, want had nothing to do with it. She had to bring them back. Her purpose wasn't just as a ruler—it was the true definition of Var, mother.

  Morena stayed down there for a long time, knowing that she could probably leave, but not wanting to. Like a mother who stands outside of a birthing room, glass in between her and her baby when it is first born, she just wanted to watch them. She just wanted to hear them call to her and tell them that she would be there soon.

  It was then, perhaps for the first time, that Morena realized she would die for her people. She had thought it consciously before, that she would lay down her life—but never actually understood what that meant. Now, hearing them call to her, and knowing she had the power to bring millions to life, she saw that her life began and ended with them.

  36

  Present Day

  It was humorous, really, having this meeting in a church. What Will was about to say would be blasphemy in almost any religion. Still, the price was cheap and everyone loved an Alcoholics Anonymous story. So that's who this group of two hundred men were, recovering alcoholics, having a revival of sorts. America was a sucker for people trying to better themselves, always had been, always would be.

  The preacher did a pretty bang up job, too. A perfect amount of chairs, all laid out across the basketball gym floor. There was a little platform that the preacher told them was used for small plays from time to time. Will stood on it, looking out at the crowd before him. Men had, of course, scanned the place and made sure no one was inside the gym or church, and now stood at the doors. No one would hear this, no one but the people before him.

  And then they would go out into this town like ghosts, only escaping the ephemeral when they needed to touch someone.

  He didn't know any of these men. They were all young, like Lane and Andrew. All from a different time than him, but he imagined everyone knew his name. Everyone knew some of the things he'd done and that was enough.

  I'm going to turn them into me, he thought, looking at them, standing at a podium with a microphone linked up to it. In twenty years, they'll be you, wondering what this had all been about. Too old to understand the new technology coming out, and thinking that maybe different choices would have yielded different results. Today, I'll start them on that path.

  He saw that tattered flag again, briefly, flying weakly in the wind.

  "Most of you probably know who I am, and if you don't, that's okay. I'm not important in this. What's important
is what we've come here to do," he said into the microphone. His voice didn't boom out across the gym like a god's, but it was loud and firm, and he could see people sitting up in their chairs as he spoke. He paused for a second, wondering what some of these guys had already done. Something, of course. They'd been places. Rigley wouldn't have sent them green.

  "An infection has landed in this town. I know a lot of you have probably seen infections before. You might call them by other names, aliens, foreign entities, I don't know. It's an infection, regardless of the name, something that wishes to infiltrate and cause us harm."

  Will paused, for effect, wanting it to sink in.

  "What landed here three days ago is like nothing that has been seen before. Now, I don't mean nothing I have seen before, I mean, nothing anyone has ever seen. Its DNA structure doesn’t match up with ours, or any known entity on this planet. More, it's intelligent. Not venus fly trap type intelligent, in which cues signal certain reactions. This thing is at least as smart as us, and probably more so. I've seen it, and I'm going to be completely honest with you, it scared me. It was looking out of a girl's eyes, and it held no fear of me, saw me as something to be stepped on."

  Will clicked the button in his hand, which was wirelessly connected to a computer. The screen behind him turned blue.

  "This thing has infected two known people." Click. "Bryan Yetzer and Thera Erwin. They must be looked at as casualties of war at this point. We're not here to capture this thing, gentlemen. We're here to exterminate it the same as one would a virus. If you see either of these two people, anywhere—shoot them. The aftermath will be handled, and any repercussions will come to me."