by Morgan Rice
She tried to think about the signs that there had been from Bear and then from Trey: they’d seemed sleepier, hadn’t said as much, hadn’t really responded to questions with more than a grunt or two. They’d seemed to shuffle about, not really in control of themselves, or perhaps just losing control of themselves.
“Will I know when it happens?” Luna asked herself. Last time she had. She’d known that she was slipping away, and had even been able to fight it, if only for a second or two. Maybe this time would be the same. Maybe she would be able to feel it coming and get to the antidote in time.
“Assuming we have an antidote by then,” Luna said to Bobby. He pushed against her reassuringly.
She went over to the space where Ignatius and Barnaby were working, neither one quite anyone’s idea of a normal scientist, yet the two together looking as though they were making good progress. Barnaby was looking through a microscope at something, while Ignatius seemed to be giving his vaccine to a line of different members of the Survivors.
“This should protect you against all chance of being converted,” he said as he passed a vial of it to a man who didn’t look certain about it at all. “Drink it all.”
Ignatius looked over at Luna.
“Ah, there you are. I was getting worried. It’s just about time for your next boost of the vaccine.”
“Is it helping?” Luna asked. “Is it slowing any of it down?”
“I believe so,” Ignatius said. “It’s hard to say for sure, and I suspect some of it may just be that some people are more susceptible to relapsing than others. Still…”
He held up another vial of the substance, and Luna took it with a grimace. It tasted awful as she drank it. Still, it left her feeling a little more certain that she was in control of herself, a little more able to focus. That was the important thing.
“We’ll need to make more soon,” Ignatius said. “I have administered it to most of the Survivors, but you and the bikers still need more, and we should have some ready to use on more of the controlled.”
“And you can just make more?” Luna asked.
“It isn’t that hard now that I know the correct formula for it, and I think they have everything I’ll need here. You can help me if you like.”
Luna was going to say no, but she realized that it would sound pretty ungrateful, relying on a substance to survive that she wasn’t prepared to help cook up. Besides, Ignatius had been pretty helpful so far. It also seemed like a good idea to know how to make the thing that could potentially save her life.
“Can I help?” Luna asked.
“So long as you watch carefully and do what I say,” Ignatius replied.
Luna started to help, fetching ingredients from the Survivors’ limited stores and helping to mix them, boil them, and separate them. It reminded her a little of being in science lab at school, only with a partner who was the only one who knew how the experiment they were doing worked. Bobby sat at the side the whole time, watching on as if he might be able to learn how to do it.
“Do you have a centrifuge?” Ignatius asked Barnaby, who looked up from his microscope and nodded.
“We managed to take a bunch of lab equipment from one of the colleges. I figured it might come in useful.”
Ignatius showed Luna how to use it to separate samples, and got to work on what looked like another batch of the sedative he’d used on Trey.
“Is that for the next person who turns?” Luna asked.
“Maybe,” Ignatius said. “Barnaby pointed out that if we made some dart guns, we might have a way to bring down the controlled from a distance. For a kid, he’s pretty smart.”
Luna wasn’t sure if he meant that as a compliment or a reminder of how young Barnaby still was.
“Leon has a couple of the others building dart guns out of whatever we can scavenge,” Barnaby said. He still didn’t look up from his microscope.
“What’s so interesting there?” Luna asked, going over to him with Bobby. “You’ve been looking at the same thing since I got here.”
“It’s a sample of Cub’s blood,” Barnaby said. He looked up, looking thoughtful. “Actually, yes… Luna, can I take a sample of your blood too?”
“I… guess so,” Luna said. Barnaby came up with a needle that seemed far too big. “Um… what exactly do you need this for?”
“To compare to Cub’s blood, so I can see if I’m right about what I’m thinking,” he explained.
Luna managed to hold still while Barnaby took a sample of her blood, taking a drop of it and placing it on a slide to examine.
“You needed a needle that size for one drop?” Luna said.
“Well, it means that I have a blood sample to do more work with,” Barnaby said, then shrugged. “Why? Afraid of needles?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Luna said, running her hand through Bobby’s hair. That wasn’t true. She was afraid of all kinds of things. It was just that a lot of the big things, like losing everyone she cared about, or something really bad happening to everything around her, had already kind of… happened. Compared to that, the small things didn’t seem so important.
Barnaby smiled and then moved over to the microscope, staring down it. “Interesting, the resurgence isn’t quite as quick in this sample. Maybe there’s something about you that puts you closer to the right chemical composition.”
“What are you talking about, Barnaby?” Luna asked.
“I think I know why the vaccine hasn’t worked completely to free people from being controlled by the aliens,” he said. “Looking at the samples, their ‘vapor’ is actually a cloud of tiny robots, so small they can’t be seen.”
“Nanobots,” Ignatius said, looking up from the formula he was concocting with an interested expression.
“I had thought it would be a disease, but this makes more sense, because it tells us some of why the aliens are able to control people.”
“Does it tell us how to get rid of them?” Luna asked, her hand tightening for a moment in Bobby’s fur.
“From our bodies or from the world?” Barnaby asked, and then shook his head. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“Knowing the problem doesn’t give you an answer,” Ignatius agreed. “But you said that looking at the sample told you why the vaccine wasn’t working perfectly on people who were already infected with them.”
Barnaby nodded at that.
“When you look closely at the blood samples from Cub and Luna, they have some of the nanobots, and the vaccine compound locks together with them, making them harmless. They’re not a perfect fit though.”
“Because they weren’t designed for this,” Luna guessed. “It’s a side effect, not something Ignatius’s vapor was originally designed to do.”
She saw Ignatius nod. “That makes sense.”
“Does that mean that we can improve it?” Luna asked, not daring to hope. “Could we make it a better fit to get rid of them altogether?”
She saw Barnaby take a breath and knew that the answer wasn’t going to be a simple yes.
“In theory, we could,” Barnaby said. “In theory, it might even be possible to communicate with the nanites using the right kind of signal and disrupt them once they’re linked with. Both options seem to require the same kind of material.”
“What material?” Luna asked. She glanced down at Bobby, as much for reassurance as anything. The dog sat there wagging his tail.
“That’s the problem,” Barnaby said. “I don’t know.”
Luna looked across to Ignatius. “What about you? Didn’t you design chemical compounds?”
The chemist shrugged. “I did, and given enough time, I might be able to improve the fit with the nanobots, but we’d be talking months of work, even if I succeeded.”
Months, not days. Luna understood what he was saying: that by the time he came up with any kind of answer, it would be too late for Luna and the other bikers, maybe too late for what was left of Earth.
“There has to be so
mething,” Luna insisted.
Ignatius seemed unconvinced by that. “Life doesn’t work like that. No one said it was fair. No one said that doing the right thing meant that you got to win.”
“So why are you trying to do the right thing?” Luna demanded. “If you really believe that, why did you come and try to save people with that vapor gun you made? Why take the risk?”
Ignatius was quiet for a long time.
“There are materials labs in UCLA,” he said. “Some of them test samples from around the world, others create new substances. Our best hope of finding something in time would be to look for something that already exists.”
He still said it like he didn’t believe that there was any real hope, but just the fact that he was willing to make that much effort made Luna think a little better of him. She looked over to Barnaby.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Would we be able to identify what we needed if we found it?”
“Maybe,” Barnaby said. “We have the blood samples, so if we find anything close, we can try it on them.”
“So all we need to do is go there, look for what we need, and maybe we can stop me from turning back into one of… them?”
Hope built up inside Luna, just a small spark, but she wanted it to be true.
“I don’t think it will be that simple,” Barnaby said. “You’ve seen what it can be like in the city.”
Luna had seen it. She’d seen the blockades and the controlled. She guessed that Leon wouldn’t like the idea of putting his people at risk just on the hope of finding something.
“We’ll do it, though, won’t we?” she asked. She was worried by the thought that they might not, and that she would be left sitting there, waiting to change back into one of the controlled. “We have to.”
“I think it’s our best chance,” Barnaby said. “We have the vaccine, but so many people are already controlled. It won’t help them.”
“It won’t help me,” Luna said.
“No,” Barnaby agreed. “We need to do it. We just need to persuade Leon.”
“Cub and the others will want to go,” Luna said. “But for this… I think we’ll need help.”
Barnaby nodded his agreement. “I’ll talk to Leon, and we have weapons that can help now.”
Luna thought about the dart guns and the vapor gun Ignatius had built.
“We still need more,” she said.
“We have some real guns, and some knives and swords,” Barnaby said. “They can stop the controlled.”
“Kill them?” Luna said. “These are people. They can’t feel anything, but they’re still in there. We have to be able to get them back.”
It seemed as though there were two choices right then; two ways the world might turn out. They had the vaccine now, so the people who hadn’t already been controlled could stay that way forever. The only question was what happened with the controlled.
The best option, the one Luna was really hoping for, was that they would find a way to free the controlled permanently, taking away the aliens’ power over the world and releasing everyone to fight back. If they managed that, then there might be enough of them to win. There had to be a reason the aliens had used this way of invading, rather than just attacking outright. Maybe they feared that humanity might have some way to damage them?
The other option was a war between the people who were controlled and the ones who weren’t. It would be a war that the aliens won whatever happened, because there would be so few humans left to fight them. Worse, it would be a war where Luna, Cub, and the others would be on the wrong side in just a few days. It couldn’t happen. They had to—
Bells and sirens sounded around the caves that housed the Survivors. Luna ran out, Bobby loping along beside her, to find Leon out in the canyon that protected them, giving orders.
“Hannah, Eddie, on the far side! You three, get into the rocks there! I want everyone who can hold a weapon out here now!”
“What’s happening?” Luna asked, stepping into Leon’s path. “Leon, what’s going on?”
“The aliens are attacking,” Leon said.
“How many?” Luna asked. Just the look on Leon’s face gave her a bad feeling about this.
“Come look,” Leon said.
He led the way up through some of the rocks to one of the lookout points. From there, Luna could see the mass of figures below, moving together in synchronization, heading for the hideout. Trey was in amongst them, and Luna knew then that they’d made a mistake letting the biker go. He’d been able to show the aliens where they were, and after that, it had only been a matter of time.
It seemed that they would get a chance to test out their new weaponry sooner than Luna had expected. The controlled were coming for them, and if the Survivors didn’t stop them, it didn’t matter if they’d been vaccinated. The aliens would simply kill every single person there.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kevin watched the battle for the planet below unfold with the same interest he might have had in a new video game. It seemed almost the same, with bright flashes of light as blasts of energy struck, and the rapid dance of spacecraft in deadly combat. He tried to consider what he felt about the fact that there were people killing and dying out there in the blackness around the planet, but it felt like a foolish question. Why should he feel anything, when he was one of the Hive?
He considered the Ilarian fighting ships, which moved and turned with the speed of a school of silver fish, weapons picking Hive craft out of space with the deadliness of razors. Each took out more than its share of Hive fighter craft as they moved closer to the world, bursting five or six at a time into fields of debris that seemed to create a dust storm in a place without air to carry it. They darted in and away, harrying the Hive’s ships, but not all of them made it. With each pass, fewer and fewer of the silver ships made it.
“Why are they standing and fighting?” Kevin asked. “They could run.”
“You already know the answer to that,” Purest Lux pointed out.
Kevin blinked. Of course he did. He’d been the one to tell Purest Lux that they were sacrificing their lives to try to save others of their kind. It seemed hard to remember why though, and harder still to believe that any creature could really think and feel like that. The good of the Hive was one thing, but trying to save weak creatures that had no use?
“The way they’re darting in and out is costing us ships,” Purest Lux said.
“They’re trying to draw our ships away,” Kevin guessed. “They want to strike at the larger ships.”
“That is part of it,” Purest Lux agreed. “You seem to have a feel for this, Kevin. Perhaps we have a role for you in this assault. Come.”
Purest Lux led the way to a chair, with the now familiar connections that would allow interface with the world ship’s systems. It seemed so much less elegant than the pure, organic connection to the Hive that filled Kevin’s mind.
As soon as Kevin sat, though, he had to admit that the connection was amazing. It was as though his mind could flit from ship to ship, seeing from the cameras and the sensors, giving orders to the systems, sitting in the pilot’s seat in every sense except the physical.
The battle raged around him now, in missile streaks and energy bursts. Kevin sent a ship left, then right, into a roll that lined it up with one of the enemy ships. He fired, and the ship was already moving away, sweeping in an arc that was hard to match.
“They’re not standing and fighting,” Kevin said, knowing that Purest Lux would hear.
“Make them,” Purest Lux said.
Kevin knew what he meant. Shifting his attention to the other ships, he picked out the spots where vessels were trying to leave the surface and break free. He sent the smaller vessels after them sharp and direct, not caring about the numbers that were destroyed on such an obvious course. There were pilot creatures in the vessels, but they would only be grateful to fall for the Hive.
The ships grew closer, and Kevin saw one of the fleein
g vessels move into the crosshairs of one of the craft his consciousness flitted between. He watched it there, a fat and easy target, and considered that once, he would have thought that what he was about to do was evil beyond measuring. He couldn’t think why now; it was for the good of the Hive, not against it.
Without hesitating, Kevin fired.
Energy lanced through the darkness of space, ripping through the hull of one of the fleeing ships. At first, nothing happened, because the Hive’s hunter ship was small, and the escape craft was large enough to take a wound like that; a whale bitten only once by a shark.
Then, taking their cue from the first shot, a dozen others fired on the ship, shattering it into pieces that spread as they broke from the hull, the creatures within spinning into space. Perhaps some were protected by suits, but soon there would be nothing to rescue them. They would drift, and they would die.
It occurred to Kevin that he knew exactly what it felt like to know that you were going to die, but not to know how long it would be. Was that… empathy? No. He would have to feel something for that. This was just knowledge, memory… that was all it was.
At the back of his mind, Kevin could almost hear something shouting at him, yelling that this was wrong, that there was more than just the Hive. He turned to it, trying to understand the curiosity of it. He felt as though he almost had it…
The connection to the ship cut in a blaze of light as the defenders’ ships swept in, destroying the Hive’s first wave of fighters. They were fast, and it wasn’t just how quickly they could cross the distance there, or turn. Each ship seemed to react with a speed that Kevin couldn’t match, taking bewildering twists and turns that made it hard to even begin thinking about the move they were making before they were away into the next one.
“They’re too fast,” Kevin said, the strain of trying to keep up with them pushing at the edges of his brain, feeling as though it might sheer in half from the effort.