Thetis--The Deep Sky Saga--Book Two

by Greg Boose

  Eight huge shadows grow below him at the base of a mountain range; as he floats in a wide circle, he sees that the shadows are sharp and triangular, changing positions as he glides overhead. He’s over the pyramids he saw in the telescope. And that means he’s near the symbol carved in the mountainside.

  • • •

  Jonah circles the pyramids for another few seconds before descending again; this time far more slowly and with less panic. His feet point downward, and his arms shoot out at his sides, and as he lowers himself closer and closer to the ground, electricity seems to zip through his body. He feels invincible, like he’s part machine, a spacecraft with thrusters and brakes.

  When he’s just fifty feet above the reddish-orange ground, the beings below shout and gather, pointing with sticks and tools. Jonah can start to make out their upturned faces, which are humanoid with four horizontal eyes, and each has two horns stretching from scalp to chin, encircling a bright gray face that glows in the sunlight. When Jonah’s feet finally touch the ground, he lowers his arms to his sides and rotates amongst thousands of them. He’s more than three feet taller than the largest being, towering over them like a lone tree in a field of wild grasses.

  “Hello,” Jonah offers in a voice that sounds static and almost demonic, much like the alien voices that have infiltrated his mind telling him to eat the seeds.

  In perfect unison, the thousands of beings shout “Hello!” back to him in perfect English, but Jonah sees that their gray lips keep moving as if they are still talking, and their horns pulse with different colors. They’re not speaking in English, they’re not greeting him back, but it’s what he hears in his mind.

  “I am Zion,” Jonah finds himself saying as he takes a step forward with his palms up, showing he means no harm. He then slowly walks through the herd of beings, allowing them to safely shuffle out of his way as he moves through. A sense of calm envelops Jonah, and every step is taken with confidence, as if he knows exactly what he’s doing here and knows exactly where he’s going. The pyramids loom like giants in front of him, far taller than those he’s read about on Earth. And as he walks between them, he sees the enormous symbol dug into the mountain beyond: the “C” with three circles inside.

  Jonah turns his head to look at a pyramid on his left, and he can see thousands of symbols carved into its rocky sides, many of which are the same ones from Achilles and Thetis, while others are new and difficult to make out. He walks toward the pyramid and right through a door cut into its base. Shouts of “Hello!” follow him as he ducks inside. But when he walks through the doorway, he’s somehow transported onto the mountainside, right into the middle of the symbol of the “C” with the three circles inside. He looks up into the sky and loses his breath: A constellation of stars forms the exact same “C” shape overhead. And inside this massive, packed constellation are three objects that Jonah instantly knows as the planet Thetis, and its moons Achilles and Peleus.

  There’s a flash of light behind Jonah’s eyes, and he falls to his knees. It feels like his brain physically expands against his skull. The alien voices return to his ears: Destroy them!

  Through the pain, Jonah squints up at the constellation and then down in the valley where the gray beings calmly wander back and forth as if Jonah hadn’t just descended from the sky.

  The voices in his head continues: Destroy them, so you will not be destroyed. Destroy them, so we will not be destroyed. Together, we are Zion. You are Zion.

  Jonah tastes the verve seed in his mouth, feels it scraping along his teeth. Without thinking, he bites off another piece and his chest swells with newfound energy. His mind begins to focus despite the symbols crashing inside it, and when he blinks, he’s transported into a room with three slanted walls and one small window that’s waist-high. He gets down on his knees and looks out the window, realizing he’s inside the tip of one of the pyramids.

  Frightened, he crawls away from the window and stands up. Carvings line the walls, showing a series of scenes lined up like the panels of a comic book. A tall human-like figure walks through a jungle in one box, and in the next the figure stands on a raft floating in the sea while creatures attack from below. The next panel shows the figure sliding down a slanted wall. In the next, the figure stands in a circle. Jonah recognizes these scenes; they are pictures of what he went through on Achilles. Panel after panel, Jonah sees himself running on a reef, wrestling with another figure, jumping over the fire in Tunick’s cave. He battles the snouts and pushes Everett into the portal and stands at the bottom of the canyon, watching the spacecraft lift off.

  Jonah twists around to look at the wall behind him, his breath echoing in the room, and he sees images of himself on Thetis: lying in a bed, finding Paul in a cave while surrounded by the mimics, running in the village, standing over Everett in the broken sphere, looking up into the telescope, running through the geyser field.

  The third wall stands dark and blank, smooth like silk. But a second later, a thin band of white light breaks through the stone, shooting bits of rock into Jonah’s chest. The light moves left and right, carving a new picture with Jonah in it: He descends from the sky in a spacecraft. Another image appears with Jonah standing over the gray beings as they raise their hands to him in worship. More and more images explode out of the wall, showing Jonah in a cage, sliding down a tunnel, running over the surface of a sea. And then Jonah sees a picture of a large circle—it almost looks like Earth, is it Earth?—cut in half and exploding. As soon as the circle explodes, Jonah feels a sick feeling in his gut and falls to his knees. It is Earth. Or, it was.

  But then the exploding image of the Earth moves in reverse, the pieces of the planet coming back together until it’s whole again and slowly rotating. The image quickly disappears, replaced by an image of Jonah standing in a slender room with his long arms stretched out wide at his sides, touching small symbols on opposite walls at the same time. Thick arrows point to his stretched arms, glowing brighter than anything else on the wall, forcing him to close his eyes. And when he reopens them, he stands before one of the yellow alien ghosts. The creature charges at Jonah, sandwiching him between its left and right bodies, squeezing him until his ears pop and his bones crunch. The two heads begin to speak rapidly in his ears, but he can’t make out what they say, and he focuses so hard on trying to hear them, that he begins to cry and begs them to speak up. To slow down. To let him go and just say what they want to say.

  Jonah’s cheeks squeeze together, and he hears Vespa saying his name, her voice mixing with the aliens’. He blinks and suddenly finds her holding his face in her hands, her lips opening and closing silently, panic in her eyes. He shifts his gaze to Brooklyn sitting against the wall with her head resting on her knees and Kip staring at him with cold eyes. And then there’s Paul pointing his finger over Jonah’s shoulder, barking orders at someone he can’t see. In a daze, Jonah pulls his head away from Vespa and twists around to see the Module Eight kids standing silently in front of the hole with their heads down. Dr. Z buzzes around them, laughing.

  Jonah continues to hear the whispers of the aliens in his ears, coming from somewhere directly overhead. He looks up and raises his hands and says, “Just tell me. Just tell me what you want.”

  The whispers get louder and he can almost understand what they say, but then Vespa grabs one of his wrists and twists him back around, breaking him from his concentration. In anger, he wrests his arm away. And before he can stop himself, he shoves Vespa with all his strength. She flies backward into the wall and then crumples to the floor. Jonah doesn’t feel any guilt as he watches Paul kneel down next to her; all he cares about is finishing his vision and hearing what the alien ghosts want from him. He moves the seed between his molars and crunches down, sending a bolt of lightning through his body as the seed completely disintegrates.

  Jonah opens his arms and feels his muscles pulse with the newfound strength. His skin tightens. His neck thickens. He feels taller, wider, more focused. He fe
els like he could punch a hole right through the stone walls surrounding him. Paul shouts and then shoves Jonah in the shoulders, but he doesn’t even move. Next, he punches him in the gut. Jonah feels nothing but a tap. When Paul hits him in the face, Jonah simply laughs at him. He spits a huge gob of liquid over his shoulder and then punches back, hitting the Fourth Year square in the jaw. Paul falls flat on his back and writhes in pain.

  The doctor appears in his face, her yellow smile widening as she stares into his eyes. “You become their God and you destroy them,” she whispers. She reaches her hand into his pocket and takes the remaining two verve seeds. She takes a huge bite, the crunch echoing even in his skull. And then, in a monotone voice that sends a shiver down his spine, she says, “Follow us or we keep your fingers.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course, of course,” Jonah hears himself say. He looks up at the ceiling and mumbles, “Tell me, tell me, tell me.”

  Jonah swivels on his heels, and in unison, the Module Eight kids raise their heads and smile, the tallest boy with the burnt long hair smiling the biggest. The youngest girl steps forward and says, “We will show you now. We will show you how to get there.”

  One by one, the Module Eight kids duck back through the hole in the bottom of the wall. Someone yanks on his shoulders, but he simply shrugs them off. He follows the last of the kids through the hole just as a new surge of verve blasts through his veins. He’s never felt so much energy; he sprints to the nearest wall and runs up its side until flipping himself over, landing in a crouch.

  One by one, the Module Eight kids try the same move, running up the stone wall and flipping over. Some land on their faces while others complete the acrobatic move with ease. The last kid to try it, the tall boy, runs past Jonah in a blur, holding his left arm out straight and hitting Jonah in the back of the head before running farther up the wall than anyone, flipping down to the ground with grace and ease.

  “Good, good,” Jonah says. His skin buzzes with excitement while his brain continues to battle itself and the verve. He stretches his neck from side to side and walks out of the tunnel, the sun hitting his face, giving him even more energy. The Module Eights surround Jonah on all sides, absorbing him in their tight huddle, and when Jonah takes his first steps, they walk in perfect unison. Dr. Z emerges and marches past them, walking into the forest spread out before them.

  “Jonah!”

  He turns to see Vespa dragging a semi-conscious Brooklyn behind her by her collar. Paul then appears, holding his red cheek with his hand.

  The Module Eights huddle around Jonah even tighter, not allowing him to move toward his friends. A young boy with dry blood on his shirt takes a few steps away from the huddle and points at Vespa.

  “Leave us, or we will kill you. He is ours now.”

  “If you motherfuckers don’t get away from him right now,” Paul says, “I’m going to rip your arms off and shove them up your asses. And don’t think I don’t remember you, kid. I beat the shit out of you at the black rock. That blood on your shirt is from me.”

  The boy says nothing and rejoins the huddle. Jonah has a moment of clarity and wants to reach an arm out for his friends; he needs them to come along, to take care of him once the verve wears off. In fact, he needs them to help him now, before it wears off in case he is about to do anything terrible. But the children around him are too close and too strong; he can’t even lift his arms.

  As Vespa heaves Brooklyn onto her shoulders, Paul charges ahead and asks, “Firstie? What did you see in there? What did you learn? Can we stop all this now?”

  Jonah opens his mouth to tell Paul about the planet he just visited and its gray people and the “C” symbol both carved into the side of the mountain and showing up majestically in the stars above the planet, how he was sent there to either help or destroy them—he’s still not sure—but a strong wave of verve sweeps over his body, closing his throat and clogging his ears. Shards of purple and blue lights appear on his chest, and they lift off into the air and swirl above him like leaves caught in the wind. He shakes his head and they’re gone, but a second later, his mind loses focus again and the lights reappear, twisting off into the sky until fading into nothing. White rays of light emerge from his chest, shooting forward and around a tree, disappearing into the forest. He remembers this from Achilles; he knows he’s supposed to follow the light.

  “Jonah?” Vespa tries. “Listen to me. We have Brooklyn now, so let’s just go. You don’t need to be with these people. Let’s figure out a way to get all the medicine for you and her and then we’ll—”

  A blue laser blasts over Jonah’s head, crashing into a twisted gray trunk of a nearby tree, sending a swarm of white bugs in every direction. Jonah and the Module Eights turn their heads in unison, and there, on the peak of a nearby hill, stands Mirker with a smoking LZR-rifle in his arm. The man takes aim at Jonah and fires again, hitting the boy with the bloodstain instead, blowing a hole right through his chest. When the boy falls to the ground, the other kids simply close up the gap, further protecting Jonah in the middle. They start to slowly move toward the trees.

  “What are you doing? Run!” Vespa shouts.

  Mirker fires again, missing the group by inches, sending a cloud of debris into the air. Jonah’s head buzzes, and the white light reappears on his chest, speeding off into the forest.

  Mirker shoots another kid in the huddle and the boy spins away in a bloody mess. There are only nine of them left; they’re getting picked off too easily, incapable of putting up a fight. They have just one mission, Jonah thinks, and that’s to protect him. But they’re not doing a good enough job. With fewer kids around him, Jonah is able to raise his arms and push through the huddle and then he’s running. He follows the white arrow rising out of his chest, looking over his shoulder only to see the Module Eights jog after him like a flock of sheep. And there, up on the hill, behind Mirker and raising a large rock over her head, is Dr. Z. She slams it down on his shoulders, sending the man to his knees and his rifle bouncing along the rocks. Preventing him from waiting to see if Dr. Z will finish what she’s started, another arrow of light shoots out from Jonah’s chest, directing him left and then right and down a hill. Vespa’s voice fades into the background, overtaken by a nearby geyser.

  Jonah keeps following the arrows, the Module Eights right on his heels, until he gets to a cliff. Waterfalls appear on both sides of him, descending the mountainside to land in small pools that quickly cascade into more waterfalls that fall to another level, and it goes on like this for a thousand feet, one waterfall crashing into another waterfall until joining a large, raging river running across the valley far below with alien birds circling above it. Halfway down the mountain, Jonah sees the pig-faced creatures from the day before jumping in the pools and going over the side.

  The cadet turns to face the fast-approaching huddle of Module Eights, waiting for the verve to send another arrow of light, but none come. He clears his mind and closes his eyes, willing the light to appear, but when he opens his eyes, he only finds that the kids have come closer.

  “Where do we go now?” Jonah asks through the fog overtaking his brain. He doesn’t know if he’s directing the question to the sky or to the kids before him, or if he’s asking a race of alien ghosts who might be circling around him.

  The small girl with a space between her teeth breaks from the group and walks right past him. She enters the pool of water on his left without pausing, walking in up to her shoulders. The current sweeps her forward, to the lip of the falls where she rotates once before going over the edge.

  Jonah watches the girl fall headfirst to the next level, splashing into a lima bean–shaped pool that churns with greasy suds. She floats to the surface on her stomach and Jonah thinks she’s dead, but she flips over onto her back just before going over the edge of the next waterfall. After that, she’s out of sight.

  “Is that what you want?” Jonah turns to asks the others. They’re just ten feet away, dead eyes fixe
d on him. The tall boy pushes forward and bumps Jonah with his chest, shoving him toward the water.

  “Don’t do that,” Jonah warns him.

  The boy bumps him again, causing Jonah to take another step back. Another few inches and he’ll be in the water. As Jonah begins to panic, neon green lights rise from his shoulders and arms, blurring into the humid air. He clenches his fists and rolls his neck, encouraging the verve to take over every muscle. In a few seconds, his arms feel like steel beams, his legs like tree trunks. The tall boy goes for the final push to send the cadet into the water, but Jonah reaches up and snatches the boy’s thick wrist. He yanks down and the boy doubles over, then Jonah sends his knee rocketing into his chest.

  The sound of the boy’s sternum breaking is sickening; the bone plate cracks so loudly that Jonah can hear it over the dozens of waterfalls crashing below. Normally, Jonah would back away after delivering a blow like this, allowing the person to recover or retreat, second guessing his role in yet another fight. But the verve surges through him; anger blends with adrenaline, and before Jonah has a moment to think, he finds his fist landing squarely on the boy’s jaw. The boy stumbles forward with blood spurting from his mouth, then he tips forward, plunging into the water like a rock.

  Jonah realizes he can’t control the verve like he did on Achilles; instead of his compassion breaking through and saving the boy, he flexes his arms at his sides and lets out a wild roar. He wheels around to pick his next victim from the huddle of kids but standing next to them is Dr. Z. Blood stains her arms and hands, her shoulders heave. She licks her lips in anticipation.

  “Enter the exit,” she says, pointing to the water behind Jonah. “And then you will exit the entrance. We will be waiting for you. Door four, Zion. Door four.”