Oblivion: The Complete Series (Books 1-9)

by Joshua James

  Suddenly something hit Sydal’s kids’ bedroom door from the inside. From the sound, it hit it hard. It was accompanied by a shriek that made his ears ring. That also spurred another noise.

  Matthew?

  Sydal heard his son’s cries coming from his and Maria’s bedroom. The sound of whatever was in the kids’ room must’ve scared him. That was it. The decision was made for the detective.

  Without wasting a moment, Sydal hurried over to his and Maria’s bedroom, expecting to see his frightened children inside. One of them must’ve been hurt; he took a deep breath to try and prepare himself for it. Emergency services were already brought up and ready to be dialed in his HUD.

  “Maria?” Sydal was surprised when his bedroom door slid open and there, huddled in the far corner, was his wife, covered in blood, tears in her eyes, clutching Matthew in her arms. She was in such a state of shock, she didn’t even seem to notice her husband’s arrival.

  “What the hell is going on here? Are you all right?” Sydal’s mind was like a hurricane. There was so much going on, he had a hard time putting together what was happening and what had already happened. He stepped over a blood-covered knife from the kitchen and knelt down in front of his wife.

  “It’s not her. I don’t know what but it’s not, our baby, it’s not, what did I do?” Maria was in a state of complete panic and mania. She mumbled incoherently as she maintained a death grip on their son.

  “It’s okay, honey. Just, give me Matthew. Is he hurt?” Sydal first tried to gently get his son out of his clearly traumatized wife’s clutches, but her grip was like iron. So he had to pry her fingers open one by one, then her arms, before finally getting Matthew free.

  Scared out of his mind, Matthew was sobbing. Sydal hurried over to the bed and put his eight-year-old son on top of it. Quickly but thoroughly, he checked his whole body for a cut, scratch, bruise, anything. Matthew was fine, at least physically.

  “What happened, Maria? Where’s Rebecca?” Sydal sat Matthew down on the bed against the headboard.

  “I…I don’t know,” answered Maria. She had a thousand-mile stare straight at the opposite wall.

  “What do you mean you don’t…” Sydal took a second to calm down. “Okay. Whose blood is this?” He knelt back down in front of his wife, making sure to kick the knife further away.

  “What?” Maria snapped out of it and looked into her husband’s eyes. “Rowan? Rowan, thank God you’re here!” She hugged Sydal, who politely patted her on the back. Her shirt was soaked with blood.

  “Whose blood is this? What happened?”

  “I, uh…” Maria tried to get her head right to explain to her husband. All the while, Sydal checked her body for injuries. It didn’t take long for him to find several deep slashes and cuts on her torso and arms. They looked a lot like the injury he’d suffered on his chest.

  “Where’s Rebecca?” repeated Sydal.

  “She’s in the kids’ room. But it’s not her…I, she, you’re not going to believe me, but I had to do what I had to do. I had to protect our son from her.” Again, Maria wasn’t making much sense. At least, she wouldn’t have if Sydal had never had the run-in with Fredrich Bausman back at Aitken Basin.

  If what she’s saying is true…no, I can’t believe that.

  Sydal paused for a moment, and tried to rationalize what was happening in his mind. He was sure that his wife hadn’t been who she said she was for a couple of weeks now. But it wasn’t her that was setting off his cop senses; it was their daughter. How, though? And could she really be one of those things, his only daughter?

  “Wait here. When I get back, I need you to tell me exactly what happened.” Sydal stood up and left his bedroom. He needed to get supplies to clean up and patch his wife’s wounds, or she might bleed out. Plus, he needed a moment to mentally digest what was happening.

  Maria Sydal was a strong woman, mentally and physically. She was a veteran, a soldier. So for her to be in the state that Sydal found her in, something terrible must have happened. As much as he didn’t want to believe it, Rowan had to consider that his darling daughter—no, something pretending to be her—was in the kids’ bedroom, fighting to get out and murder them all. What was he going to do? Could he put down something wearing Rebecca’s face, if necessary? And wasn’t it his responsibility to do so?

  Sydal grabbed a medical kit, a wet towel and a dry one. Then he hurried back in the direction of their bedroom. His shoes slid across the blood on the floor, and then out from under him. He fell hard, bracing the impact with one elbow.

  His elbow screaming at him, Sydal entered the bedroom and quickly got to work on Maria. He warned her that it was going to hurt as he first used the wet towel to wipe the blood off and away from his wife’s wounds. Once they were cleaned up some, he dried them off and wiped off any excess gore with the dry towel.

  “I know it’s hard. But I need you to tell me exactly what happened here, Maria. I need you to. Please.” Sydal opened the medical kit and took out a stim shot. He was about to administer it, but Maria waved him off.

  “No drugs. I have to…I want to think straight.” Maria was a little calmer. She started to make sense again. Instead of looking at her wounds and the work her husband was doing to treat them, she looked and smiled at Matthew, who was still terrified, silently crying on the bed.

  “You sure? This is gonna hurt,” warned Sydal, who’d also somehow managed to get hold of himself. He had to. Whatever happened to Rebecca, he had a duty to protect his wife and son.

  Maria nodded.

  “So what happened?” asked Sydal as he took out the flesh fuser. He started with the wounds on his wife’s arm. She squealed a bit in pain as the device got to work, cauterizing her injuries. It smelled like burnt hair and seared meat.

  “I, uh…we were getting ready to sit down and eat dinner. I was going to wait for you, but hadn’t heard a thing for hours. Tried to call you, but the call wasn’t going through for whatever reason. Where were you, by the way?” asked Maria, suddenly very cognizant of what was going on.

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later, but right now—”

  “Rebecca. Yeah, I know,” Maria continued. “I had the kids wash their hands and set the table as I finished cooking some pasta. Was gonna make spaghetti and…then we heard the sirens.”

  “The sirens?”

  “Yeah, the...you didn’t hear them? They were loud as hell.”

  No, I didn’t hear the sirens. I was fighting for my life underneath the surface of this here moon.

  Sydal shook his head.

  “Anyway, I heard the sirens. Then I noticed, was it when I was putting the pasta in the, you know, the bowl we use, the serving bowl, that Rebecca wasn’t at the table.” Maria’s eyes darted around at nothing in particular as she tried to remember exactly what had happened so she could tell her husband.

  “Where was she?”

  “She was, I found her in her room. She was standing at the window just staring at, I honestly don’t know. I kept calling her name, telling her it was time to eat, but she didn’t budge. She just stood there as the siren blared. Then, as soon as it stopped, I don’t know, it was like a switch was flipped or something, because she snapped out of it. When she turned and looked at me, I knew it wasn’t her. Her eyes—God, Rowan, her eyes…” Maria got upset as she told Sydal what happened, and she remembered seeing that twisted version of the sweet little girl she’d given birth to, raised, and loved more than anything in the whole world. Her and her brother.

  “They were black and shiny? Like lava rock?” Sydal hated hearing it, but he knew where his wife was going.

  “Yes! Like obsidian! How’d you know?”

  “That’s not our daughter.” Sydal finished with the wounds on his wife’s arms. He was about to move on to the wounds to her torso, but stopped before he did. “You sure you don’t want the stim? This is gonna hurt a lot more than your arms. Plus, we got to get the hell out of this apartment.”

  “Yes,
I’m sure. I can take it.”

  “I know you can. Anyway, you were saying, you saw her eyes and then what?” Sydal did genuinely want to know what had happened, but mostly he needed to distract his wife from the pain to come as he took the flesh fuser to her stomach.

  “I uh, okay, so it wasn’t just her eyes. I don’t know how to explain it, but her arm, it changed. It got longer, and it was covered in, I don’t know, spikes or blades or something. I know it sounds crazy but her little body, oh God, her little body, it— Ow!” Maria jumped as she felt the electrical arc from the flesh fuser hit a literal nerve.

  “Told you. You sure?”

  “Fine! Give me the damn shot!” Maria gave in. She looked at her husband. Now out of the shock from what had happened to her, she saw just how bad a shape he was in himself. “Maybe you need one too.”

  “Oh, believe me, I’ll take one, but first I’m gonna finish with you. What happened?” Without warning, Sydal stabbed his wife in her thigh with the stim injection pen. “What happened next?”

  Maria took a moment to let the warm wave of pain killers rush over her. Then, with her pain muted, she continued. “Her body it warped and twisted, changed into different things. Then she ran at me.” She grabbed her husband by his arm. “I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I was scared, but that was still our little girl. Then she started cutting me. I didn’t feel it at first, though I knew what was happening. Instead I tried to grab her, hug her, you know? Restrain her, but I couldn’t. So you understand I had to protect Matthew. So I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife, just for protection. I didn’t want to use it. You have to believe me, I didn’t!”

  “I know you didn’t. I know.” Sydal continued trying to treat his wife when he noticed a wound he hadn’t seen before in his initial look-over. She had a puncture wound, a deep one, in her side that was pumping out really dark, almost black blood. The whole world went silent.

  From the location of the wound—between the ribs below Maria’s breast—and the color of the blood, Sydal knew his wife had suffered a lacerated liver. He wasn’t a doctor, so of course he didn’t know for sure, but he’d seen murder victims who took bullets or knives to their livers. Bile mixed with their blood, turning it almost black. Seeing as they were victims, none of them survived.

  “What? What is it?” Maria noticed the change on her husband’s face.

  Sydal forced a smile and cleaned up the newly-discovered wound. Then he went about sealing it, knowing that that wouldn’t be enough to save her.

  “Nothing. Just, nothing at all. You did what you had to do, baby. You saved our son.” Sydal concentrated on sealing the liver lac as he talked.

  Maria was silent for a moment. Then she pushed her husband away. At first he looked at her, confused, but when she did it again, he knew that she knew what was happening to her.

  “Now it’s your turn. You have to protect him, for the both of us.”

  “No, we’ll protect him. You’re gonna be—"

  “Fine?” Maria smiled. “No, we both know I’m not.”

  Tears started to stream down Sydal’s cheeks. He tried to stop them, he tried to be strong for his wife and son; but at that point, he physically couldn’t. So they flowed.

  “Shhhh,” Maria put one soft hand on the side of her husband’s cheek. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. I’m sorry I couldn’t, sorry about Rebecca. Really, I am. I couldn’t save her.”

  “No, it wasn’t your fault. She was—"

  “Shhhh. Can you...” Maria pointed weakly over at Matthew.

  Sydal picked his son up off the bed and put him in his dying mother’s lap. That was it. The detective’s whole world had just shattered in a matter of twenty-four hours or so. What was he going to do? He was so lost in his own grief and thoughts he didn’t hear the last words between his wife and their son.

  “God, I love you, Matthew. I need you to always remember that, okay? And be good for your father. He’s gonna need your help, my little man,” Maria managed to hold off going into full sobbing, but tears ran down her cheeks as well.

  “I can, I’m calling emergency services. Maybe they can save you. I just need you to stay awake!” Sydal went into a panic himself. He was about to order his HUD to call help when Maria leaned forward and kissed him. It was the last thing she ever did. Her body, bereft of life, stayed leaned forward, hair hanging down, covering her face.

  “I…” Sydal’s lip quivered as he felt the last spark of life leave his wife’s body. He stood up, wiping his nose and eyes. Then he picked up Matthew and left his and his wife’s bedroom.

  Almost catatonic, Sydal slowly walked into the kitchen and put his son down on the counter. He turned off the stove, then calmly grabbed a couple of backpacks, filling them with water bottles and food.

  “Daddy, are we leaving?” asked Matthew.

  “Yeah, champ, we’re going on a trip.”

  “A trip? Are mommy and Rebecca coming?”

  Sydal stopped for a moment. Then he answered. “No, this is a boy’s trip. Us guys only, okay?” He jumped when he heard a bang at the kid’s bedroom door. Bracing himself with both hands on the counter, he lowered his head and cursed under his breath.

  “Daddy?”

  “C’mon, Matthew. We need to go.”

  Four

  Saviors And Debts

  “Why are you telling me this right now? Didn’t you hear what I told you? We need to go to Europa, as fast as we possibly can.” Ben walked alongside the floating stasis pod his father had been put into as soon as Engano’s fighter docked on the AIC Veruvian, a dreadnought among the fleet that had assaulted the Shapeless’ flagship.

  “You asked how I was still alive.” Engano walked with Ben on the other side of Lee Saito’s stasis pod. She’d just told him how she’d used the cover of the first wave of attacks on the Shapeless to slip away and get a warning to the rest of the AIC spread out across the various united colonies that made up her government. “I did my job. They needed to know that their capital had fallen and that a new threat, much worse than the fascist UEF, was out there and could be coming to their planets next.”

  “I know, I was just, I don’t know, I was expecting a short little explanation, not a long drawn-out tale.”

  “Excuse me for being thorough. Anyway, thought you might’ve liked to hear it, if nothing else to get your mind off of his father here and what you went through. Speaking of, this one is going to need a little explaining. I don’t think the captain of this dreadnought is going to appreciate having someone who was infected by these things on board, let alone one he’d been fighting for years.”

  “Fighting and losing to,” pointed out Ben.

  “My point exactly. I can only protect the two of you so much.”

  “I understand. I’ll explain it to the captain myself.”

  Ben and Engano were silent for a moment. They really didn’t know each other very well, making their interactions somewhat awkward. Add to that the fact that each was withholding information from the other, and things felt weird.

  “How did you find me?” asked Ben, after taking a second to think about it. How did Engano find him? Escaping the bombing of the bunker and gathering this fleet, attacking the Shapeless flagship, those were one thing. But what other reason would there have been for her to risk her own safety, stopping and looking inside, if she didn’t know he was there?

  “Bugged you. Bugged the lot of you, actually,” Engano casually confirmed.

  “What? When?”

  “When we fed you in the bunker. Slipped tracking nanites into your water. I know where all of you have been since then. Been keeping a close eye, as a matter of fact.”

  Ben put aside his outrage at being unwittingly bugged, and focused on the latter part of what Engano had just told him. If she’d been keeping an eye on everyone, suffice it to say, she would know where his friends were and if they were still alive. “Where are the others?” he asked.

  “Oh, you mean your friends who desert
ed you?”

  “That’s not—”

  Engano waved his objection away. “Kidding, of course. They’re on Europa.”

  Kidding? Ben couldn’t decide if he should be outraged or impressed that she still had a sense of humor in all this. He decided to just let it go. “Europa? As in—”

  “The moon in the Earth system, yes,” she said. “And some of the most contested dirt in the galaxy. And”—she paused—“other things.”

  Ben shook his head. He was pleased that they’d done as he asked and left him behind. If they hadn’t, chances were they all would have been in worse shape. Plus they needed to get to and destroy the remaining planet-killer, hiding there under the bodies, wreckage, and black soil. “And they’re all okay?”

  “They’re still breathing.” The volume of Engano’s voice lowered drastically. “As far as I can tell. But you might want to keep anything past that to yourself. Some here might not be thrilled to hear about plans to destroy their secret weapon.”

  Ben stopped. “How do you—”

  Again, Engano waved away his words. “Save it.”

  Ben was happy to hear that his friends had not only made it off Vassar-1 alive, but they were continuing the fight. Any one of them could have easily peeled off and run for the comforts of home, and no one would have blamed them, not after what they’d been through.

  His happiness came to an end when they reached the Veruvian’s briefing room, full of AIC officers.

  Decidedly in hostile territory, Ben knew he needed to choose his words wisely. From the looks on the AIC officers’ faces, they knew who he was, and knew very well who was in the stasis pod floating in front of him and Engano. That was especially true for a sixty-something-year-old man with remarkably good hair, a gray beard bisected by a scar on his cheek, and striking piercing blue eyes. Clearly in charge, he had that aura about him. Ben knew who he was looking at.