“What is that?” Meg leaned closer, her voice breathless with wonder.
“That is a pixie,” Vaughn said. “They’re a type of humanoid insect. And before you become too taken with them…”
The pixie paused, pulsing a few times. Half a dozen more lights suddenly appeared around the mushrooms, then sped right toward the camera.
The view changed wildly as Rose turned and ran away, shouting, “Ow! Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!” The view cut to static with occasional pops and crackles on the audio.
“Oh my God,” Meg said. “Is she okay?”
Brock’s heart gave a little tug at her concern for a complete stranger. “She’s fine. This was filmed by a Blade named Rose. She was obsessed with pixies, so Bradley decided to play a mean trick on her and take her into the field to film some.”
“Bradley?” Meg asked.
“He—they?” Vaughn shook his head. “Bradley is the replicant in charge of our base on the coast of Georgia.”
“How many bases do you have?” she asked.
“Three,” Brock said. “There’s one at Caiman Beach, the Europa base near Chicago, and the Providence base here.”
“We’re careful that the Blades never meet the bosses of the other bases so they don’t wonder why everyone in charge pretty much looks like the same set of twins,” Vaughn said.
“That’s only six replicants.” Meg turned toward Brock. “What about the other pair?”
Brock was not ready to talk to Meg about the other pair. He said, “Mal and Colm operate freelance. They go wherever we need them.”
Brock pointed to the screen, drawing Meg’s attention back to the view.
At first, all that was visible was a twilit sky. Then the camera swiveled to the side as Rose got to her feet.
“Dammit, Lee,” Rose said.
Off-screen, they heard Lee say, “Get Vaughn’s shots before their bodies vaporize. This one’s the most intact.”
“Oh wow.” Rose ran over to a dimly glowing form and focused the camera on the nearly dead pixie. “It kind of looks like what would have happened if dragonflies had evolved into people instead of primates.”
The pixie was about six inches tall, with six diaphanous wings sprouting from its back. Its carapace was iridescent.
“It’s beautiful,” Meg whispered.
“Their sting is worse than getting shocked by a stun gun,” Vaughn said. “When enough of them work together, they can knock you out. And while you’re unconscious, they eat you.”
She sat back so quickly, her chair wheeled away from the desk.
Brock caught her with his arm over her shoulders, then drew her back into place. “Relax. It’s just a video.”
“Right,” she said. “Sorry.”
As they watched, the pixie began to shimmer. The blue light that always cleaned up after dead dwellers consumed its body.
At that moment, Lee appeared on the screen. He was grinning, as always. From the looks of it, he’d grabbed Rose’s wrist and was focusing the camera on himself. His face bounced in and out of view, thankfully.
“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should never judge a dweller by its cover,” he said.
“Asshole.” It looked like Rose had managed to free herself from Lee’s grip. Hopefully, she’d keep the camera focused on the pixies.
“If you want more footage, you’d better get it fast,” Lee said.
“How’s this for footage?” Rose’s hand appeared in the camera’s view, flipping Lee off. She had aimed it right at his face.
Vaughn tapped a command and the screen froze.
Shit. Brock hadn’t quite been ready for that.
Meg’s mouth dropped open and her eyes grew even wider. Lee’s face was marred by a long mark that slashed along his left cheek from where a gorgon had killed Lee the year before. That had been an excruciating death.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the right side of his neck was covered in thickened red skin striated with white lines. The marks crept up slightly over his jaw and also ran down beneath the neck of his shirt.
Brock’s skin itched as he remembered the salamander’s blast hitting Lee in the back, just over his right shoulderblade. That death had been almost as painful as the gorgon’s.
Brock watched Meg closely to see how she reacted to the scars. She didn’t seem disgusted, but was staring intently at Lee’s neck. Her eyes started to glow faintly and she pulled her lower lip between her teeth.
Maybe she was trying not to say anything. She had to be wondering why Lee looked different than Dexter and Porter.
If she saw the scars Brock carried on his real body…
He didn’t let himself think about that. If he had anything to do with it, she’d never see his real body.
The screen went black for a moment before the Dwellers Database entry for pixies appeared. One of the small creatures took up the left side of the screen, its body outlined in a computerized grid. The right side of the screen contained text commentary, scrolling rapidly as various parts of the pixie’s body were either circled or highlighted.
Meg turned toward Brock. “That was another you?”
“One of my replicants,” Brock said. “Their separate forms are ‘Brad’ and ‘Lee’, but I call their consciousness ‘Bradley’.”
Vaughn was still staring at the monitor, as if he could actually read the text flying over the screen. “Too bad you didn’t think of the binary names before you sprouted Dexter and Porter. The others are at least a little easier to talk about.”
“I wasn’t thinking that clearly the first time I split.” Brock glared at him, even though Vaughn’s attention was still on the database.
“He looks different,” Meg said. “Lee.”
If only she knew…
“Each pair likes to have their own look,” Brock said, being purposefully obtuse. “Brad and Lee wear their hair longer and the sun has bleached it a lighter shade.”
Brock leaned away from her, running his fingertips along the place where Bradley had his scar. Brock tried not to borrow replicant bodies that often. It was strange to feel the unmarred texture of Dexter’s skin.
“The scar must make it easier to tell the replicants of that pair apart,” she said.
Brock cleared his throat. “They both have it.”
“I don’t understand,” Meg said.
He dropped his hand to his thigh, forcing himself not to make a fist. “Several years ago, Lee was killed by a gorgon.”
Meg actually gasped. “Like Medusa?”
“You really do know your mythology,” Brock said.
She shrugged. “Libraries are warm and dry. And the books gave me a place to escape to.”
Brock reached out and took her hand in his. Without really thinking about it, he lifted it to his lips and pressed a gentle kiss to her palm.
Vaughn cleared his throat, reminding Brock that he and Meg weren’t alone.
“Yeah, so if a dweller can’t talk and tell us what they want to be called, we try to name them after the mythological creatures they most resemble,” Vaughn said. “In this case, it was a venomous humanoid serpent. Lee was so busy watching its teeth and claws that he didn’t notice its tail had a sharp edge. After it managed to slash him, he discovered that the tail was coated in a paralyzing poison, effectively ‘turning him to stone’.”
“That sounds awful,” Meg said.
“The poison stopped Lee’s heart, but not before…” Vaughn’s voice trailed off.
“Before what?” Meg asked.
Not before the gorgon had started eating. Brock shook his head hard, forcing out the memory of Lee’s shared pain.
Brock started talking, hoping that Meg would leave it be, distracting her with what he’d been wanting to tell her in the first place.
“I told you that when one of a pair of replicants dies, the survivor splits so there are two of them again,” Brock said. “But they both bear the scar from the impact site of the death wound. In Lee’s case, it was the sl
ash to his face that let in the poison that killed him. The replicants often feel what each other feels—unfortunately, even in the case of death. When Brad saw that the scar had formed on his cheek, he knew that Lee was actually dying. After splitting again, both of them had the scar.”
“This still sounds like magic.” Meg shook her head. “I don’t understand how the scar travels to them.”
They didn’t understand that, either—which made it even harder to figure out how to convince her of the truth. Maybe the only way to get her to believe was to tell her everything.
He couldn’t let her go on thinking she was a monster. And the only way he could think of to help her with that was to show her a real monster.
“I feel their deaths along with them,” Brock said. “And I get the death marks, too.”
“You?” she asked.
“Perks of being the progenitor, I guess.” He forced out a laugh, but she only frowned harder. “I’m sure Vaughn will be happy to tell you all his theories about that later. For now,” Brock’s throat was tight. He coughed to loosen it up, then said, “Vaughn, could you please bring up G-405’s file?”
Vaughn swiveled his chair around and stared at Brock, his jaw a little lax. “Are you sure?”
“Meg is part of Marcus and Tessa’s pack,” Brock said. “If she’s really going to be one of us, she needs to understand what she’s getting into.”
Meg seeing Bradley’s scar and not freaking out was nice. But when she knew the truth about Brock, he doubted she would ever let him near her again.
Part of him was tempted to not tell her. He only had a few days left, anyway. He could leave it for Marcus and Tessa to explain, and maybe actually get to enjoy spending some time with Meg.
But he was the leader of the Blades of Janus. It was his job to make sure everyone was ready to face the threats that inevitably came their way.
Ignorance could be deadly when facing a dweller—especially since Meg was one of them. Some of the fairy tales had it right when it came to lethal allergies dwellers had to Earth substances. Silver and werewolves was a prime example. But there was much more misinformation than fact in the stories. In the field, that could get Meg and everyone with her killed.
Vaughn turned back toward the screens and pulled up the file. A picture of G-405 appeared in the upper-right corner of one of the side monitors. She was wearing a faded sundress, her bony hands clasped in front of her.
The hollows of her cheeks hugged teeth that her lips could no longer cover. The skin around her mouth had dried out, peeling back until she was left with a macabre grimace. A few strands of long white hair were still attached to her scalp. Her skin was a uniform gray, stretched tight over her bones so that she looked like little more than a skeleton.
Meg gasped. “What is that thing?”
“She wasn’t a ‘thing’,” Vaughn snapped.
Meg jumped, then seemed to crumble in on herself, staring intently at the blank surface of Vaughn’s desk. She folded her hands in her lap, her legs clamped together and arms tight against her sides. Brock shifted closer to her in his chair and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him.
“I’m sorry,” Vaughn said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s okay.” Meg’s voice shook a little. “I didn’t know she was your friend.”
“She lived at the ranch for months.” Vaughn glared over at Brock, his eyes glittering. “All she wanted was a place to belong. She was kind and caring.”
Brock tried to speak gently as he said, “That wasn’t all she wanted.”
“Agree to disagree.” Vaughn quickly turned back to his screens and started typing again, his fingers hitting the table’s surface with more force than usual. “G-405 was a ghoul—a relatively benign dweller. They’re necrophages, so they’re not usually a threat to the living.”
“What’s a necrophage?” Meg asked.
“Ghouls feed on the dead,” Brock said.
“That’s not so bad.”
As a werewolf, Meg had undoubtedly seen a hell of a lot worse behavior from dwellers.
Brock was suddenly glad that she’d been eating regular human food at the table earlier. If she had a meat aversion, that would mean she’d never eaten a human before. He suppressed a shudder at the thought.
“I’ve read stories about ghouls,” Meg said. “They’re a type of fairy.”
“Actually, they’re a human that’s been infected with a parasite.” If Brock walked her through this, maybe she’d understand. And if she needed proof… Well, that was right next door.
“G-405 was infected by a parasite that was put in her by an apex ghoul,” Vaughn said. “Those dwellers call themselves ‘Hive Fathers’ and ‘Hive Mothers’ depending on which gender they prefer to emulate. They go around turning people into ghouls by infecting them with little maggot-creatures.”
“Ew,” Meg said.
Brock slid his arm from around her shoulders and leaned back in his chair. If she thought that was gross, she was probably going to freak out when she learned the rest of it. He didn’t want to be touching her when she did. He didn’t want to feel her repulsion.
“That’s not the awful part,” Vaughn said. “They use the humans they infect to gain power and wealth. Once their thralls can’t pass for human anymore, the hive creature abandons them to fend for themselves. You’re a werewolf. You must be able to imagine how bad that feels.”
“She doesn’t have to imagine it,” Brock said. “She experienced it first hand when Dexter killed her pack.”
Meg opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it, pinching her lips together tightly.
“I’m so sorry, Meg,” Brock said. “If we had known you were out there—”
“Dexter would have hunted me down and killed me, too.” She glared at him, her eyes glowing gold.
“You know what the pack did to Marcus’s family,” Brock said. “If we’d let them live, they would have kept on killing people.”
“Can we just go back to the maggots,” Meg said. “And how we’re all ‘aliens’ somehow.” She made sarcastic air quotes when she said, aliens.
“We know how.” Vaughn pulled up an image of the ship on one of the side monitors. “This ship crashed here thousands of years ago. It was filled with all kinds of alien life forms—”
“That’s exactly what Brock told me,” Meg said. “But it’s still just words.”
“The hive creatures are actually made up entirely of the individual parasites that create ghouls,” Brock said. “They can somehow bond to each other to make themselves look human. Clothes and everything.”
“A person that’s made up entirely of maggots?” Meg shivered. “That’s disgusting.”
“Tell me about it.” Vaughn glanced over at Brock. “I mean… Sorry, man.”
Brock glared at him, but the damage was already done. He’d planned to tell Meg about his origins, but had hoped to gloss over the more disturbing parts.
“I don’t understand.” Meg looked back and forth between them. “Why are you sorry?”
“Because my father…” Brock cleared his throat. It was probably best to get this out there anyway. “He’s a Hive Father.”
Meg’s eyes widened and she stiffened in her seat. She didn’t leap away, though, like she had when she’d found out Brock was borrowing Dexter’s body. Apparently, she found Dexter worse than maggot-creatures.
“Eli is—” Meg said.
Brock couldn’t even let her finish her question before jumping to respond. “No, my biological father is a Hive Father. Eli is the doctor who delivered me.”
A little furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “Your family is really…complicated.”
“Aren’t all families?” Vaughn cast a strained smile at her.
“You and Eli are the only humans here, right?” Meg asked.
“Uh…” Vaughn opened and closed his mouth a few times, then finally looked away.
“Yes,” Brock said.
“I don’t understand,” Meg said. “Are you a hydra, too?”
“When we threw down with Brock’s biological father, he said that I’m a ‘curator’ after he tried to infect me and failed,” Vaughn said. “Tessa and Marcus had to kill him before we could ask him what a curator is and why it freaked him the hell out.” Vaughn turned to face them. “Let me just emphasize this. Me being a curator, whatever the hell that is, freaked out a person made up entirely of maggots.”
Brock grasped Vaughn’s shoulder briefly. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Maybe it just means you’re really smart.” Meg pointed up at the monitors. “You’re cataloging all these creatures. Isn’t that kind of something a curator would do?”
“It is kind of like forming a collection,” Brock said. “You can’t gather specimens because they vaporize when they die, but you have gathered a lot of data in an easy-to-use format.”
Vaughn snorted, but at least he was smiling again. “Interesting theory.”
“So, was your mom a ghoul, like G-405?” Meg turned back to Brock as she asked her question.
Oh, damn.
Brock swallowed hard. “My biological mother was human.”
“But she—” Meg shook her head. “The Hive Father—”
“Don’t think about it too hard,” Vaughn said. “Seriously, don’t. I’m a dude, and Eli’s story still gives me nightmares.”
Meg pressed her fingers against her temples. “It’s a lot easier to just believe in magic.”
Vaughn and Brock both let out strained laughs.
“Is that still what you think is going on?” Brock asked.
“I—” Her hand lifted toward her neck, but she quickly curled her fingers into a fist and pressed it against her lap. When she spoke again, her voice was tense. “I’ll believe what you tell me.”
“I don’t want you to just blindly listen to us,” Brock said. “I want you to think for yourself. We all do.”
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