by Morgan Rice
In that moment, she had cut at all of the Hive with the hardened knife of her emotions, yet it had been Ro who had been affected by it. Had that been because he had been the one deepest within her mind, and most vulnerable because of it? Had he merely been unfortunate to be in the way of what she had tried to do in order to break free? Or was there something about him that had been particularly susceptible? Was it some fundamental weakness inside him that had made him vulnerable to the poison of emotions?
Was there some cruel, traitorous part of him that had longed for disconnection from the Hive?
“Purest Ro, are you well?”
Ro looked up, composing himself in a hurry as he saw Purest Lux there. The Hive had no leaders, and no need for them when it operated by consensus, yet the more Ro thought about it, the more it seemed to him that often, that consensus seemed to follow the paths that Purest Lux suggested.
“Why do you ask, Purest Lux?” Ro asked, trying to buy some time in which to compose himself. Emotions were so difficult. They could not be marshalled and tidied away the way that pure, controlled thoughts could. Instead, they flew about inside him, untamable as Grava birds.
“You seem… out of balance,” Purest Lux said. It wasn’t quite a rebuke, wasn’t quite a question, wasn’t quite an accusation, but it felt far too close to all of those things for Ro’s liking. “I am having trouble sensing you within the connection of the Hive.”
“I am there,” Ro said. It was true, as far as it went. He could still feel the Hive there, on the edge of his consciousness, but that wasn’t the same thing as being a full part of it, enthralled in it in every sense.
Ro knew that he ought to explain exactly what was happening to him then. He ought to explain to Purest Lux about this sudden influx of feelings, and the sudden feeling of being disconnected from the whole. Of being an individual. He should confess to all of it, and hope that the others would have a way to wipe him clean of this contagion, reconnecting him with the Hive and purging all of this uncertainty from the interior of his being.
He didn’t, though. He just sat and waited.
“Are you sure that there is nothing wrong?” Purest Lux said. “I would like to examine you to make sure that there has been no effect on you from all the things you have been working on recently.”
Fear sprang up inside Ro. If Purest Lux saw what he was like… at the very least he would insist that Ro was changed back into what he was. At most… there might be accusations of treason, of trying to bring back forbidden things to the Hive. He might be destroyed for it, and while that should not have brought terror bubbling like flaws through rock, it did.
He couldn’t deny the request either, though, because that would only prove that he was not a true part of the Hive. What did that leave?
“Purest Ro?” Purest Lux asked.
“Yes, of course,” Purest Ro said. “Forgive me. I was distracted.”
He tried to think, as quickly as possible. He found himself thinking, not of the Hive, but of Chloe. He found himself thinking of the way she compartmentalized things and hid them even from herself just to allow herself to function. He thought of the way that she found ways to ride the emotions that filled her and still function in the world.
Slowly, Ro began to build boxes within himself. He built them strong, and filled them with the emotions that he felt, hiding those boxes deep within the depths of his mind. He built a façade that was everything he could remember being within the Hive. Then he opened the outer layers of himself to Purest Lux.
He could feel the other member of the Purest looking around inside him like sentinel soldiers hunting around on a planet’s surface for rebellious creatures or survivors. He guided the other around, and very carefully kept hidden those parts of himself that he knew would lead to his destruction.
It would not have worked if the Hive had been used to such things. If any of the Purest had turned to emotions at any point in as long as Ro could remember, perhaps Purest Lux would have known what to look for. It would not have worked if the Hive were used to its own kind lying to it.
It wasn’t, though, and although Purest Lux stared at him for the longest time, eventually, it stepped back from Ro.
“Thank you, Purest Ro. It would seem that all is well in you.”
“All is well in me,” Purest Ro agreed.
“Very well,” Purest Lux said. “We will await the results of your work with the human.”
The Purest went away, leaving Ro alone with his thoughts, and he was alone. He could reach out and touch the Hive if he wished to, but the truth was that he had no wish to. He thought about what he had just done. He thought about the lies that he had just told.
He had just betrayed the Hive.
Before, he had just been an infected thing to be cured. If he had come clean to Purest Lux about what he was, then he might have been taken and changed back to what he was. Now that he had lied about it, there was no hope for any of that. All of this would result in his destruction now.
He had become a rebel against his own kind.
He should have felt guilt about that. He should have felt shame that he was no longer part of the great construction of the Hive. Instead, the only things he felt shame and guilt about were the things that the Hive had done. He was scared about what might happen to him, yes, but he was more frightened by the thought of what the Hive was doing to the universe.
He had become a rebel in his mind, in his emotions, in his speech. Now, he suspected, it was time for him to become one in his actions too.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“This is fun!” Luna yelled as she clung to the side of the school bus’s front seat, bracing for the impact as its modified snowplow shoved another cluster of cars out of the way. She reached out with her free hand, catching hold of Bobby’s collar so the sheepdog wouldn’t tumble back along the length of the aisle.
“Maybe for you,” their driver, a fat biker who incongruously wore a bandana featuring teddy bears, muttered.
“Ignore Trey,” Cub said, beside Luna. “The bus was a great idea. Even if I do say so myself.”
Luna turned to him. “Oh no, you are not claiming the bus was your idea.”
“I saw it,” Cub said.
“I saw it too,” Luna insisted, and then caught Cub’s grin. “You—”
What she might have said next was cut off by the next impact, which sent Bobby sliding down the middle of the bus despite Luna’s attempts to hold on. The dog didn’t seem to mind, treating it almost like a game and running back up to sit beside Luna, tail wagging.
“How far is it to LA?” Luna called over to Trey.
“You asking me if we’re nearly there yet?” the driver grumbled.
“Trey,” Cub said, with a warning note.
“Maybe half an hour, an hour?” Trey said.
“Depending on… well, I guess you could call it traffic?” Luna asked. “Can’t we go any faster?”
She was only too aware of how little time they had. Although she was having fun smashing into things, every moment that passed was one step closer to the point where the aliens would take them over again, another moment in which the remaining aliens could ravage the world.
Trey shot her a look. “You want to try driving?”
Luna jumped up at once. “Can I?”
“It’s probably best if Trey keeps driving,” Cub suggested. “Given that he actually has a driver’s license. He used to actually drive a bus before he joined the club, too.”
That, Luna thought, explained a lot.
“If it’s going to be that long before we hit LA,” she said, “I’m going to check on Ignatius.”
She glanced back to where the chemist was sitting on the back seat of the bus, which was empty except for him at the moment. It seemed that the members of the Dustsides gang weren’t happy about spending too much time around him. He had gear spread out there, clinging onto it every time they hit a car, working with it in the spaces between.
“I’ll shout
to you once we get closer,” Cub said. “Maybe while you’re back there, work out what he’s doing.”
“I’ll ask,” Luna said, and made her way back through the bus with Bobby following. She went to sit on the back seat just as the bus hit something else, and Luna barely managed to put out a hand in time to catch a vial as it fell.
“Maybe this isn’t the best time to be working on anything?” she suggested to Ignatius.
The chemist shrugged. “I have to do something, and it’s not as if the bikers are going to talk to me.”
“They have a pretty good reason, given what you used to do,” Luna pointed out.
“Used to,” Ignatius said. “It wasn’t as though I had a lot of choice once I was in, and I… I’m trying to make up for it.”
Luna thought that he probably meant it, but she wondered what it would take to make up for all the lives he’d probably helped to ruin. How many people would he have to save? How much good would he have to do to balance out the bad?
“What’s so important that you’re working on it on the back seat of the bus?” Luna asked. “Are you trying to improve the vaccine?”
Ignatius shook his head. “I’d need a proper lab to even start to work on that. I’m trying to work on an idea for what to do when the next person turns back.”
When, not if, Luna noticed. It was hard to avoid the obvious question: who would it be, and when? Would it be her? Would it be Cub? That was the other thing that kept Ignatius separate from the group: he didn’t have the lingering threat of transformation hanging over him.
“What can we do?” Luna asked. “When you’re controlled, you don’t feel pain, or tiredness, or anything. It means that you’re faster and stronger than any normal person, and you don’t stop until you’ve done what the aliens tell you to do.”
“But they’re not superhuman,” Ignatius said.
“Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure that I’m not as strong now as I was when I was controlled.”
“From what you and the others have said, that’s just because the aliens block a lot of the limits that the brain imposes on the body for its own safety. They don’t actually make you stronger; they just let you use all of your strength.”
“Like a grandmother pushing a car off of a kid,” Luna said.
“Exactly. The body still responds. So what I’m working on is a sedative that will be strong enough to stun the body completely, so that we don’t have to kill someone who turns.”
“So you’re just using a lot of sedative?” Luna asked. It seemed easy enough. You just took a lot of… well, of the kinds of things Ignatius used to make, and you pumped them into the transformed people.
“It’s not that easy,” Ignatius said. “The hard part with an anesthetic is never putting someone to sleep; it’s doing it without shutting down the heart or the lungs. On someone whose body might not react in quite the same way… it’s hard.”
“It still sounds better than the alternative,” Luna said. She reached out to put a hand over his. “And it’s good that you’re trying.”
She went back up through the bus, watching as much of the landscape as was visible through the armor plates that they’d put in place. She hadn’t thought that she would be heading back toward LA so soon. She’d hoped that she would be going home by now, after the virus had dealt with the aliens. She’d hoped that she would be driving back to see her parents, and that Kevin would be coming with her, and… and that everything would just be okay.
Luna picked one of the seats at the side, curling up in it with Bobby, not wanting Cub to see any of the tears that threatened to fall at those thoughts. It put her at the heart of the bikers, but Luna didn’t mind that. For the most part, they seemed like good people, tough but actually pretty good now that she’d gotten to know them, as close with one another as Luna had been with…
Thoughts of Kevin and Chloe just made it worse.
“Ew!” Luna said as Bobby licked her face. “Yes, I know you’re still here.”
She hugged him tight, watching the landscape pass in desert shades and thinking about what it would be like if… when they finally managed to get rid of the aliens from Earth. There would still be so much to do, so many things to put right, but Luna wanted to believe that it would be better. It was a nice dream, at least.
She started to drift off, and then it was a dream, of going back to her house with Bobby, and her parents being there, and a boy who might have been Kevin or might have been Cub, because it seemed to shift every time she looked at him. Then, weirdly, the ground started to shake, and…
“Luna,” Cub said, gently shaking her shoulder.
“Wha…” Luna managed sleepily. She hadn’t realized quite how tired she was, but if she’d been sleepy enough to sleep through the bumps and crashes of the bus, she must have been pretty tired.
“We’re getting close to LA,” Cub said. “We need you to guide us to where the Survivors have made their camp.”
“Okay,” Luna said, getting up and dislodging Bobby, who had stayed beside her all this time. “Good dog.”
She went down to the front of the bus, trying to get a sense of where they were.
“That way, I think,” she said to Trey, who grunted a response.
They kept going, and Luna pointed the way to the driver, who didn’t say much in response as he drove them up into the hills, to the spot Luna remembered from the last time she had been there. They wound their way around bends and on to the spot where fallen rocks marked the entrance to the canyon where the Survivors had their home.
“I should go first,” Luna said, looking up to where the lookouts would be watching, waiting for them. “They know who I am.”
“I’ll go with you,” Cub said.
“Huh,” Trey agreed.
They got out of the bus, with Luna, Cub, and Bobby in the lead, Ignatius sticking fairly close by as if afraid of what might happen if he were left with the others, and the rest of the bikers following on behind. Trey was at the back, moving slowly.
Armed figures came down to meet them, Leon and Barnaby at their head. The Survivors’ leader and the kid who had been clever enough to be accepted at college far too young looked over at Luna in surprise.
Luna was busy looking at the guns.
“Why have you brought guns out, guys?” she asked. “You can see it’s me.”
“And we trust you, Luna,” Leon said. “But I don’t know any of the rest of them, and plenty of them are adults, and the last I heard you were heading for the middle of Sedona with a way to stop the aliens.”
“Did you do it?” Barnaby asked. “The world ship is gone. Is that because you and the others defeated them?”
Luna could hear the hope there, and she hated being the one who had to puncture that hope. As far as the Survivors knew, she, Kevin, and Chloe might have succeeded and it was only a matter of time before their efforts filtered down into the rest of the aliens.
Better to do it quick, like ripping off a Band-Aid. Of course, ripping off Band-Aids still hurt.
“It didn’t work,” she said, trying to avoid looking too closely at their expressions. She didn’t need to see their disappointment, because she could feel her own. “Chloe and Kevin sent up the vial, but they sent it back like it was nothing, like it was a joke, and then they took them.”
“But not you?” Leon said. “I mean, you weren’t with them?”
This, Luna suspected, was going to be the part that was hardest to explain. How was she supposed to tell them that she had become one of the controlled, and that she would be again? How was she supposed to get across the terror of that which filled her, and the hope that they might be able to—
A groan behind Luna cut her short. She spun to find Trey lurching forward, his movements angular and not at all human.
“No, not now,” Luna said. “Not another one.”
Trey surged forward, his arms extended to latch onto Ignatius’s throat, squeezing. The members of the Survivors with guns lifted the
m again, aiming toward the struggling pair.
“No, don’t!” Luna yelled. “Ignatius has a vaccine against being changed!”
That was enough to make them pause at least, and in that pause, Luna ran forward, hoping that there might be something that she could do to help. She kicked at Trey, hoping to distract him by drawing his attention to her, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. She tried to pry his hands away from Ignatius’s throat, but his fingers felt like steel. Luna could see Cub moving in close, a long knife in his hand, and she tried to think of something, anything, that would keep him from having to kill another member of his gang.
She saw that Ignatius was scrabbling at his pockets, trying to get to something. The chemist couldn’t reach whatever it was, his struggles getting weaker with every passing moment. Luna risked reaching into his pocket and felt her hand close around something cold and hard.
She came out with a syringe, and knew what it had to be. Without hesitating, she plunged it into Trey, pressing down the plunger and hoping that it would do everything that Ignatius thought.
For a moment or two, nothing happened, and now Luna could see Ignatius starting to go limp in Trey’s grip. When she tried pulling at his grip again, though, Luna found that grip coming loose. Trey turned toward her, took a step… and staggered. He kept coming forward, half upright, half crouched, until Luna did what seemed like the obvious thing and pushed him very gently.
Trey fell over and lay on his back, staring up white-eyed at the sky.
“It works!” Ignatius coughed, spluttering as he tried to get more breath inside him to celebrate. “My incapacitating injection works!”
“You’re welcome,” Luna said.
“What?” Ignatius asked, then frowned. “Oh, yes, of course, thank you. But without my injection…”
“You know,” Luna said, “I’m starting to get why the others don’t like you much.”
Ignatius looked crestfallen. Cub, meanwhile, stared down at Trey’s fallen form.
“What do we do with him?” he asked. “Do we… finish it?”