by S E Anderson
Neither of them answered, looking instead at each other. Blayde pointed past her feet to the gorge below.
“I think we'd better find out,” she replied, her voice high and eager. She pointed to a metal cage along the side of the cavern; a mineshaft elevator.
I didn't realize I would have cell phone reception so far down, but the cavern echoed the chime of a text notification. I pulled my phone out gingerly, surprised to see the first text I had received from Matt in days.
“He says ‘the inspector's a fake,’” I said, surprised that he had found out so quickly, “and to ‘get away from her now.’ His words, not mine.”
“We'd better pick up the pace, then,” Blayde said, marching to the elevator. How she walked so effortlessly across the grating in stilettos, I would never know. “Zander?”
“On it,” he replied, slamming the door shut. His sister tossed him the tiny laser pointer. He caught it and hacked the door we had just come through. The laser was somehow hot enough to weld the fixings together.
“Oy, you, get over here!” Blayde ordered, waving me over to the elevator. I raced to her side, my mind stuck on the pinky-sized laser.
I wanted one so badly.
Zander caught up with me, closing the elevator door behind us. I clutched the metal bars as it lurched down. The three of us said nothing as the cavern filled with the sound of the metal winch lowering us to the floor of the chasm. I felt sick to my stomach, closing my eyes to avoid thinking about the fall over New York, lungs choking as the thin air failed to feed them …
The elevator lurched to a standstill and I rushed outside, glad to have my feet on solid ground. I slapped the headlamp and illuminated the chasm walls. Zander found an extra light and hit the switch, allowing pale yellow light to replace the darkness. The air was stale and bitter, smelling like salt and sweat and rusted metal, a thick odor that turned my stomach. I glanced at Zander for an indication of what we were looking for. My eyes fell on a large metal structure jutting from the dirt, its curved shell so foreign, yet familiar too. It looked exactly how I imagined a flying saucer should look, exactly how I knew it would look.
“Oh, shit.” Zander scanned the craft up and down in awe, scratching the back of his head. “Are you seeing this?”
“I should laugh at you, you know,” Blayde said, punching him on the shoulder.
“What's this?” I sputtered, shocked, staring at the machine in awe. What it was doing here, and how had it gotten itself stuck under my office, I had no idea.
“That, Sally,” Blayde said, putting an arm around my shoulder and waving at the ship, “is a Killian ship.”
“What?”
“Yup. The very same Killian ship that you two were supposed to be looking for, and, Zander, please tell me where you found it?”
He shuffled awkwardly, frowning. “Right under my …”
“Right under your feet, that’s right.” She shook her head. “Remind me to put you through a refresher course when we get back on the road. You're not going to be much of an asset if you suck.”
I wasn't listening to her anymore. I was too taken in by the ship, too amazed by the one thing I did not expect to find in the cavern under my office.
After all these weeks, it had been under our feet the whole time. A spaceship. An actual spaceship.
“And I think I’ve found the Killians.” Blayde indicated to a large metal pen with her chin. The light was poor above the large strips of chicken wire covering a small inset in the chasm, but it was enough to see the shadows of oddly-shaped figures enclosed.
Blayde retrieved her laser pointer from Zander, and holding it gently in her hand, she approached the cage. With delicate precision, she worked the lock, springing it within seconds. It fell to the floor, and she ripped the rusty metal chain from the fence, tossing it on the ground with the padlock. She said nothing; she simply walked into the pen without a word to either of us.
She wasn’t inside the pen long before walking out, her face tinted a vivid, nauseous green. Blayde had seen more horrors than I could even begin to imagine, yet whatever she saw in there was worse. She looked disgusted, as if she would do anything to burn the world to the ground.
“It's worse than I imagined,” she whispered, clutching the fence for support. Her fingers dug into the metal so tightly they turned red. “We can’t wait, Zander. We have to act now.”
“What is it?” I asked, stepping forward.
Blayde extended a hand, stopping me from going any closer. She shook her head, her lips set in a tight line. “Don’t.”
“Why not?” I replied. “I’ve come this far. I want to know the price I’ve been paying for my job and for the promise of clean energy.”
Blayde hesitated and, for the first time since I met her gave me a nervous look. Her brows furrowed and she chewed the inside of her cheek. Even so, she stepped aside saying nothing, though her eyes softened.
“Thank you,” I said and ducked my head as I stepped into the enclosure.
The first thing to hit me was the stench. It was as if a barge of rotting fish had been left in the sun. It filled my nostrils and reached for my stomach, the acid inside churning. The cage smelled like decay, like death.
As my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, large brown eyes met mine. They were foggy and covered with mucus, belonging to beings so utterly different from me and in so much pain it was a wonder they were still alive.
I had seen living Killians. I had been on their ship and knew what they were meant to look like. These beings were a poor excuse for what could only be called majesty in comparison. They were cramped so close together it was hard to tell one from another. They were withered. They were drained.
They were barely breathing. Their short, pained breaths seemed dry and cracked. They didn't even try for the door. How could they? They looked ready to die, like they should have died years ago, decades ago, maybe even centuries past, yet something was forcing them to stay alive.
A hand lifted. Three long fingers, a shade of greenish gray, waved then fell, too weak to ask for help.
I hadn't noticed I was running until I stumbled, falling to my knees in the soft sand at the foot of the ship, emptying the contents of my stomach on the ground in front of me. I felt drunk and dizzy, my mind reeling with revulsion. I felt an urge to storm Grisham's office and light everything on fire. My mind was overwhelmed with shock and pain, begging for an escape.
Grisham was a monster.
I pushed myself up, holding back the tears and the second wave of nausea. Grisham was the real alien; he didn’t fit into this world—any world. What Grisham had done, was doing, was incomprehensible. Zander and Blayde may have been alien, but they had humanity and empathy. Grisham was just a fraud.
I knew there were men and women on this planet capable of that kind of horror, people who exploited the lives of others in inhumane ways that I could not imagine. But this was tangible; the horror was in front of me.
Blayde was right—we had to act now.
Her eyes were red, but there were no tears. Zander’s face was like stone. He avoided looking at the aliens, eyeing me instead and assessing my reaction just as I was assessing his.
“What …” I stammered. “What are we going to do?”
“That was recon,” Blayde replied. “Now, we go for the head and deliver it to the Alliance, though we can't let them know about our involvement. First, we’ll get the victims to safety. We need them out of the way before we can deal with Grisham.”
“We're going to jump them away.” It was Zander's turn to speak, allowing his sister to study the alien captives. “We're getting them out of here. Off the planet. As far as we can go. We got here right in time.”
“In time?” I croaked. “They’re dying, Zander.”
“Dying, but not dead,” said Blayde, snapping her attention back to us. “Sally, this is what we do; we save the day. We—”
A shot exploded through the cavern. Blayde clutched her chest as red seeped th
rough. “Oh, shit, not this again.”
There was another shot, tearing through her stomach like putty. She fell to her knees, a bored look on her face as she toppled over, face forward on the dusty floor.
It was as if a mute button had been pressed because the third shot never even registered. Zander dropped to the ground as the front of his head exploded outwards, leaving him silent and unmoving beside his sister, the red of his blood and the pink of his brains spurting outward into the dirt.
I think I screamed. I could hear no sound, but I felt the breath leave my lungs and burn my throat. The only sensation I was truly aware of was terror. I dashed to Zander's side, tears soaking my face as I ran my hands over his cool skin. My fingers trembled as I searched for a pulse, finding nothing, but getting stickier as they touched more than just skin. Blood stained my skin. Strong arms tore me from him. They dragged me away as I kicked and screamed. My voice echoed off the walls of the cavern. Wide eyes watched the scene from the enclosure, watching me succumb to wracking sobs, staring as their hopes of freedom died on the dirty floor.
I didn’t see my attackers. One strong blow against my skull and darkness enveloped me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The World is Awful and Everything Sucks
A high-pitched whistle filled the air.
It sounded awful. Whoever it was, they couldn't carry a tune.
Back and forth the notes went, rising and falling and rising again, highs and lows and a sputtering cough. The shrill tones hurt my ears, and a persistent ringing filled my head. I let my eyes open slowly, peeling the lids apart one at a time. The world was fuzzy, but I didn't need to see to figure out that I was completely trapped. My hands were bound together behind my back, and my ankles strapped to the chair legs.
As my vision cleared, I saw Grisham parked in front of me, his bulbous face blotched with rage. It was as if I was seeing him clearly for the first time in my life.
It was the face of a monster.
I finally realized where I was—his office. The light from the large bay window poured in, bathing the room in a warmth so bright and comforting, and so completely inappropriate for the situation. The light was too pure to touch anything in here.
“Wakey, wakey, Ms. Webber.” He grinned, but I wasn't in the mood to reciprocate.
My friends were dead. On his orders, yet he didn't seem in the slightest bit phased.
Well, fuck him.
I wouldn't give him the pleasure of assigning me to the same fate. I bit my tongue and held back the slew of profanity I wanted to fling at him. And then I saw him—Matt.
He sat at the desk watching wide-eyed. He looked as shocked as I felt. Thousands of possible explanations for why he could be here ran through my head, but none of them stuck.
Had he been here when they brought me up? In the wrong place at the wrong time? Grisham had been grooming him as his successor. Was he only now being brought in on the secret?
Or had he been in on it from the beginning?
I shuddered. He couldn't have been. Matt was kind and sweet. His jealous streak didn’t make him evil. But he was Grisham's protégé and trusted him to the ends of the earth.
“Awake at last,” Grisham said. My eyes snapped back to his. “We've been waiting quite a while, you know? Young Matt and I got bored of playing twenty questions.”
I said nothing. I thought of Blayde, not her ripped up corpse, but when she was alive and fuming. I forced my face into one of her trademark sneers.
Everyone in the room is out to kill me, but I have a secret weapon that will destroy Grisham and everything he’s ever loved or cared for. I am a star about to go supernova. And I will burn him to the ground.
I knew none of it was true. But Zander had been right, the thought was like fuel. I glared at Grisham with a fury that could have set entire galaxies on fire.
“Aw, come on, now, don't be like that,” Grisham continued. “We all want the same thing here.”
“The same thing?” I spat. “You murdered my friends, and you killed an innocent woman who had nothing to do with this. You've been exploiting living, breathing people for your own gain. How could you think I would ever want the same thing as a … as a monster like you!”
Grisham sighed, leaning back into the seat of his scooter. He looked bored. He looked pissed.
“We both want the truth, Ms. Webber. And I want answers—now.”
“Then I guess you're going to have to learn to live with the disappointment,” I replied, drawing my scowl as wide as I could, “because there is no way in heaven or hell that I'm going to tell you anything.”
“Come on, Sally, you want answers too, don’t you?” Grisham chuckled. “It's not like I'm unreasonable. We're going to have a nice conversation and then both of us can leave with more answers than we started out with. Sound fair?”
“What makes you think I'd make any kind of deal with you?”
“You want answers,” Grisham replied, “and I'm willing to give them to you. And promise that you'll get out of this.”
“Out of the door? Not at the end of a gun barrel?”
“That's entirely up to you and how cooperative you are.”
“Hold on,” Matt interjected, breaking out of whatever trance he was in. “You never said anything about hurting her. I thought you just wanted to talk?”
“That is what I want,” said Grisham. A raw smile stretched across his face, yet it didn’t reached his eyes. “I want what’s best for us. All of us. The trio at the top.”
“Huh?” I dropped the Blayde sneer and stared at him.
What the hell was going on here?
“In any case, Sally, you probably have a good idea of what I am,” Grisham said, “but it doesn't change who I am. You know me. You've worked with me for months. I am honest to a fault.”
I snorted. “I'm pretty sure what I saw downstairs was never brought up.”
“Ms. Webber, I have a deal for you,” he continued, ignoring me, “and before you answer, you should know that I have a fantastic language chip installed. It translates more than just words. In simple terms, you can't lie to me.”
What a load of bull.
I didn't have a single viable reason to believe a word he said. Not a single reason to cooperate with him and his absurd ideas. But it was completely within his power to kill me as soon as he no longer needed me—so, useful I would be.
Well, to a point.
“Let's get started, shall we?” said Grisham. “Are you human?”
“Excuse me?” Matt sputtered, but his boss stuck out his hand to keep him at bay and shut him up in one smooth motion.
Relief washed over me. At least Matt wasn't aware of any of that; although, that was about to change.
“Yes,” I replied.
“And your friends?”
“Blayde wasn't.” There, testing the waters. Not a lie, but it was a truth his chip could handle, if the so-called chip even existed.
“And—”
“My turn,” I snapped, unflinching. “Why are you here? What are you doing, and how does this plant work?”
“You're going to owe me a lot of answers for this one.” He shrugged. “The simple answer is money, as it always is. I was in a bit of a pickle back on Hydra, owed a lot of gold to the wrong people. I skipped town and practically stumbled upon this little gem of a ship while on a salvage run. I settled down here, telling myself I'd leave once the fuss blew over, but the ship was more than I anticipated. I thought to myself, why the hell not? I like it here, better make the most of it, help the Earthlings out. The air's a little thick for my liking. Clearing it up would be better for my lungs, you know? Well, I'm getting off track, but—”
“What in the world are you going on about?” Matt sputtered. “What is this shit? You've lost it, you've—”
“Don't interrupt,” said Grisham. “Take a seat and shut up. We'll get to you in a minute. Anyway, I got some equipment together and salvaged the ship, only to discover it was Killi
an. They’re quite docile beings, you know; you met a few of them downstairs. In any case, they have this deep empathic BS going on between each other and their spaceship. In an emergency, the ship can feed off the crew's life force to power the life support and keep them and the distress signal going. No one was going to miss them. They’ve been down there for a few thousand years at least, so I hooked their backup generator to a grid and voila. So long as I keep them fed, they stay alive. They fuel their ship, which fuels the plant, and there you have it—the cleanest energy in the universe.”
“What the fuck?” Matt muttered under his breath. “What the absolute fuck?”
“We could report you to the Alliance,” I pointed out, knowing full well that I didn't have the first clue how to get in touch with them. “You just told me your entire freaking plan.”
“But you wouldn't.” My former boss—I really doubted I still had my job at this point—gave me a knowing look. “You don't want to be on the Alliance's radar, not if you're connected to the Siblings.” He said the last word with distaste. “And I told you everything because I am absolutely certain that you will be with me by the end of this.”
“Are you kidding me?” I spat. “You killed my friends. Why on earth would I want anything to do with you?”
“Because it will be the most incredible thing you will ever do,” he proclaimed. “I have always liked you and Matt. You both have much more potential than any other humans I have met. But when you stole my key card. Ah, Sally, that was sly. You're driven, I will give you that. I can see your potential, and you—yes, you—you're destined for great things. Of course, I have no idea what those things will be. I want both of you to join me in building my empire. In making Grisham Corp a household name. What do you say?”
“What if I refuse?” The man was insane if he thought any of this was going to work on me.
On us, I hoped. I thought I knew Matt well enough to know he wasn't going to fall for this shit.
“Well, then there's someplace else you can be useful,” Grisham said with a sinister grin. “Killians aren't the only things that can be hooked into the mainframe. How do you feel about helping your planet become just the slightest bit greener, Sally?”