Ascent

by Morgan Rice

  “We’re coming!” she yelled. “Hold on!”

  The fighting there at the barricade was still intense. Of the bikers, the only one Luna could see was Cub, and she just had to hope that was because the others were hidden in the middle of the fight or had managed to escape. He was fighting alongside a knot of the survivors, and Luna used her spray gun to get closer to them, bringing down the controlled a few at a time.

  “It’s working,” Ignatius yelled as he kept spraying the controlled. “We’re actually winning this!”

  To Luna’s surprise, it looked as though he was right. More and more of the controlled were falling, and as they got up again, they joined in the fight. The vapor bombs were changing whole sections of the crowd back, so that it seemed that they might have the numbers now. Luna pushed her way forward, heading for Cub, changing the controlled as she went.

  “Almost there,” she called out, pushing her way next to him with Bobby’s help. Cub was cut and bruised, blood spattering him from the fight. Luna saw controlled closing in on him, and sprayed them as quickly as she could. They stopped and fell.

  She kept spraying as the controlled kept coming. There were fewer and fewer of them now, the last of the ones nearby staggering in, then collapsing.

  They’d done it. They’d actually won a battle against the controlled.

  “We won,” Luna said, grabbing hold of Cub and dancing around him. She hugged him tight, and might have done more than that, but then she caught sight of his expression. “What is it? What happened?”

  “The others… they charged out into the controlled. I think… I think they’re gone.”

  Luna hugged him again, but this time it was about comfort, not celebration.

  “Oh, Cub, I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m the last one left, and soon…”

  And soon, he would be controlled, the same way Luna would be. The same way all the people they’d turned back would, eventually. Their only hope was to find a cure.

  “We’ll get to the laboratory,” Luna said. “We’ll find a way.”

  “We’ll have to do it fast,” Cub said.

  Luna nodded. How long would it be now before they lost themselves again? She didn’t know, and not knowing made it even worse than it was. She stared out into the distance, thinking about the laboratory that was out there, and the hope it held for all of them. If they could find the substance they needed, locate something that was just different enough from Ignatius’s vapor, and maybe, just maybe, they had a hope.

  “We still won today,” she said.

  Then Luna saw the dots in the sky, far away in the distance, and knew that the fight wasn’t over.

  “We need to get out of here,” she said. “Now.”

  She ran for the school bus they’d taken, with Cub and Bobby hurrying along beside her. Some of the Survivors and the people they’d changed back followed, running with them, probably hoping that Luna knew what she was doing.

  They piled into the bus. Barnaby followed with some of the smallest children. Luna grabbed the wheel and managed to start it, the engine roaring into life while around them, others grabbed bikes or just ran. She got ready to leave, hoping she remembered enough about driving to be able to do it without crashing this time.

  She saw Ignatius running for the bus, the chemist stumbling and getting tangled in his spray gun as he went.

  “We need to go,” Cub said.

  Luna shook her head. “We need him. He saved me, he saved you, and he’s our best chance for saving everyone.”

  Cub grimaced and then went to the door, holding out a hand, grabbing Ignatius as he came close and pulling him inside.

  Luna set off driving, their armored school bus rumbling forward as the alien ships came into sight in the rearview mirror. She clung to the wheel with all her strength as she powered forward, and behind her, she saw the flicker of energy from the sky to the ground, the rising cloud of flame and smoke as shot after shot hit the Survivors’ base. The roar of it filled the air, the heat rising up in a wall of fire that seemed to fill the world.

  Luna kept driving. Their only hope now was to get to the laboratory.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ro felt… well, he felt everything. Happiness and sadness, joy and pain, fear, definitely fear at the thought that at any moment, the Hive might realize that he was disconnected, a rebel, no longer of the Purest but impure. Impure Ro.

  Mostly, though, he felt guilt. There was guilt at having betrayed the Hive, although that was a reflex thing, not as strong as Ro might have imagined it would be, more fear than guilt. There was guilt at not feeling more guilt at his betrayal, and at every emotion he did feel.

  The real washes of guilt, though, were reserved for the things Ro had done and helped to do. He had helped to attack worlds. He had helped to steal from them and transform their species, slaughtering what they did not change. Once, the fact that it had been for the good of the Hive had seemed like a sufficient excuse for all of it. Now, it didn’t seem like even the beginnings of a justification.

  He had helped to attack the Earth. He had helped to torment Chloe.

  “Why her?” he asked himself. “Why does she matter more than all the rest?”

  He knew the answer to that: because it had been her mind that had freed him, and her mind he had connected to so completely. He had been connected to all the other minds of the Hive in a general sense, had gone through the minds of hundreds, if not thousands, of creatures subjected to research, but it felt as though Chloe was a part of him now, some facet of her emotions swimming through him to wake up his own.

  “I have to save her,” he said, but that wasn’t enough. He had to try to save all of them. He had to be the traitor to his people in his actions that he already was just in his existence. He had to find a way…

  The boy, Kevin. Ro had seen what a weapon he was for the Hive. He could take the boy away from it. But for that, he would need Chloe.

  He just hoped that he wasn’t too late in getting to her.

  He hurried through the flesh factories, disgust at all that was happening there rippling through him with every step. How could he have ever felt that this was right, or good, or even necessary? A part of him wanted to free every creature there, but a stronger part needed to get to Chloe, needed to help her.

  He heard her screaming ahead and ran for the laboratory where he and the others had been getting ready to work on her, ignoring the need for propriety, or how seldom those of the Purest ever actually ran.

  When he arrived, Purest Jir was standing over her, a bloody laser scalpel in its hand and a fluid metal leg nearby.

  “I thought we agreed to wait for the results of the serum!” Ro demanded with more force than he would normally have said anything.

  “Purest Ro, are you well?” Purest Jir asked. It gestured to where Chloe still hung in the air. “The serum is continuing to work on the girl, but I thought that one foot would not make a difference.”

  “You thought wrong!” Ro shouted.

  “Purest Ro, you seem unwell. You seem almost to be exhibiting… traitorous thoughts. I shall summon assistance, and—”

  Ro quickly scanned the laboratory’s tables of instruments and tools, looking for something he could use. When his vision fell on a stunning rod usually used to subdue beasts for delicate work where their thrashing from pain would be inconvenient, he grabbed for it.

  “What are you doing?” Purest Jir demanded. “I am a fellow member of the Purest, I am—”

  “I’ve realized recently that you’re someone I don’t actually like very much,” Ro said, before jabbing the rod into Purest Jir’s flesh. It crackled, and his former colleague collapsed into insensibility.

  “Are you all right?” Ro asked Chloe. “Did he hurt you?”

  “What’s going on?” Chloe demanded. “Is this some kind of trick? Wait… I didn’t get anything from your translator. I can understand you?”

  Ro quickly examined her. It seemed that Purest Jir had made an
initial incision in her leg, but that was easy enough to seal with one of the devices the Hive had stolen from a species that valued healing above all else.

  “It may be an effect of the connection that we made, or the serum that I gave you, or both,” Ro said. “Wait a moment.”

  He picked up an auto injector, administering it to Chloe and wincing with her as she reacted to the pain.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “This will stop the progress of the serum inside you. It cannot undo any effects it has already had, and I do not know what those will be, but it will stop further changes.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Chloe demanded. “Is this some strange kind of test?”

  “Wait, let me get you down from there,” Ro said. He adjusted the gravity trap and let Chloe settle to what Ro considered to be the floor. She immediately ran over to the bench, grabbing an object with multiple points and prongs, holding it up in front of her as a weapon.

  “Stay back,” Chloe warned. “You were the one who injected me before!”

  “I was,” Ro agreed, and more guilt rose in him. “I am so sorry for what I have done.”

  Before, it would have seemed like an empty word, but now, Ro could see the point of it, and the meaning behind it: he was, literally, filled with sorrow at the thought that he had hurt Chloe.

  “I was a part of the Hive,” he explained, “and then… then I connected with your mind. I felt the emotions there, and I saw all that the Hive had cut itself off from. We pushed back emotions so that we would lose rage and violence and anger, but we lost love, and guilt, and compassion. I feel all of them again. I feel… so much.”

  Chloe looked over at him, and Ro guessed that there would be some kind of angry outburst from her. He had seen into her mind after all, and he knew the anger that lay there, and the reasons for it. Someone who had controlled her like this, who had treated her like this, would get no mercy.

  Instead, she reached out to touch his arm.

  “It’s hard, isn’t it, feeling too much?” she said.

  Ro nodded, then looked down at the unconscious form of Purest Jir. “But it is so much better than the alternative.” He looked over at the shock stick. “I do not know how long one of the Purest will be unconscious,” he said. “We should go.”

  “We could kill it,” Chloe said.

  “No,” Ro said, and his shock at it must have come through that. “No. To kill is… the thought of it feels wrong.”

  Chloe looked at him, then gave Purest Jir a kick. “I’m owed at least that much.” She looked down at the symbiont on her arm. “Can you get this off me?”

  “Not quickly,” Ro said. “Possibly not safely. We need to go.”

  Chloe nodded and swapped her randomly grabbed piece of medical equipment for the shock stick.

  “All right,” she said, “but I still don’t trust you. You stay where I can see you.”

  “Yes,” Ro said.

  He led the way from the laboratory, out into the flesh factories. He saw Chloe pale at the sight of the things going on there.

  “We need to release them,” she said.

  “Some of them will be driven mad by the pain,” Ro said. “They will be dangerous, and when Jir wakes up, the whole Hive will be seeking us.”

  “I don’t care,” Chloe snapped back. “If you can really feel things, then you can imagine what it’s like for them.”

  “Pain,” Ro said, “fear, helplessness.” He hung his head. Chloe was right. He went to the first of the rooms, where creatures were being transformed in vats of viscous liquid. He reached for the controls, working them slowly, then changed his mind and stepped forward, tipping the vats over so that they tumbled out. They started to groan as Ro ripped them free of the devices holding them in place.

  “Free the others,” Ro said, when he was sure they could understand him. “This is your best chance. You need to free the next ones, and the next.”

  He could only hope that whatever conditioning they’d had to obey the Purest would help get the message across. Ro went across to another room, freeing another creature, then another.

  “There are enough now that they will continue this on their own,” Ro said.

  “Will it be enough to stop the Hive?” Chloe demanded.

  “I’m not sure that anything is enough to stop the Hive,” Ro said. “Even now, they have used the boy you came with to attack another world.”

  “Kevin,” Chloe said. “We have to save Kevin!”

  “You know that he’s at the heart of one of the spires?” Ro said. “And he is fully a part of the Hive now. To pull him out would take—”

  “Exactly what it took with you,” Chloe pointed out.

  Ro couldn’t argue with that. More to the point, he knew there was no point in arguing with her. He’d seen enough of Chloe’s mind to know that she wouldn’t leave without Kevin. Maybe grabbing Kevin was even a good thing. If the Hive needed him so much, then they could slow down the things it wanted to do. They could start to fight back.

  “All right,” Ro said. He grabbed the mental connection devices. “We will need these.”

  He led the way out through the city, on the long walk to the spire where the Hive told him that Kevin was. It was strange, being able to see it, yet not being a part of it. The crowds of creatures there parted, as they would for any of the Purest. It made Ro feel like a fraud and an imposter, but also grateful that they might be able to get to Kevin before the Hive rose to strike back at them.

  “This way,” he said, leading Chloe into the spire. “If anyone asks…”

  He didn’t have enough practice in lying to come up with a good suggestion.

  “If anyone asks, it’s important for the experiments that you connect me to Kevin,” Chloe said, “and it might be bad for Kevin if you don’t. They won’t care enough about me to do it otherwise.”

  Ro nodded. He would never have been able to come up with all of that at once, but now that he heard it, he knew that the others would believe it. They would never consider the possibility that one of their own might lie.

  He headed up through the building with Chloe until he reached the control space where Kevin stood with Purest Lux and a number of servitor creatures. Purest Lux turned to him as he arrived.

  “What is this, Purest Ro?” Purest Lux demanded. “Why is the human female here?”

  “Our work has demonstrated a potential problem, Purest Lux,” Ro said, feeling fear as he did so. How did humans control these emotions? What would happen if Purest Lux worked out what was happening? What if their lie didn’t work?

  “What problem? Can it not wait, when we are in the middle of destroying an enemy?”

  “I do not believe it can,” Ro said. “Analysis of the girl has shown a potential instability in Kevin that must be normalized to prevent damage to him. We must connect their thoughts, and use her to stabilize him.”

  “Are you certain?” Purest Lux asked.

  “Yes, Purest Lux,” Ro said.

  The pause after those words felt like the longest of Ro’s life. It felt as though his lie would be discovered at any minute, and the servitor creatures would descend on them.

  “Very well,” Purest Lux said. “Do so at once.”

  “Kevin,” Ro said, “permit me to place the devices on you.”

  He took out the mental connectors, letting their tentacles stick into place on Kevin’s skull. He did the same with Chloe, remembering not to ask. He joined the connection too, partly to shield Purest Lux from it, and partly because he had experience of breaking free of the Hive’s grasp.

  Remember what it was to be human, he told Kevin, mind to mind. Remember the emotions. Remember what you felt.

  What is this? Kevin replied. Feelings are—

  Feelings are important! Chloe sent across to him. They make you human. They make you Kevin.

  Ro pulled mentally at the connections between Kevin and the Hive, stretching them, weakening them. I know that you can feel, Kevin. I know that you want to. F
ight what we did to you. Remember why you came here.

  Please, Kevin, Chloe put in. Please. I know the real Kevin is in there somewhere. The Kevin I know. The Kevin I… love.

  Ro could feel the waves of emotion that came with that, stronger than anything he could have produced. He could feel them washing over the connections that bound Kevin to the Hive, feel them starting to transform things.

  He felt the moment when those connections snapped, and heard Kevin gasp, back in the real world.

  “Is everything all right?” Purest Lux asked.

  Purest Ro had to make up his own lie this time. “I believe the experience of correcting the problem has been quite strenuous for Kevin,” he said. “With your permission, I would like to take him to a medical bay to run tests.”

  “Very well,” Purest Lux said. “Return to your experiments on the human female when you are done. I am told that Purest Jir was planning some most intriguing alterations to it.”

  “Yes, Purest Lux,” Ro said. He put his hands on the backs of Kevin and Chloe, guiding them in the direction of the door and walking as fast as he dared. If they could just get out of there, they would be fine, but it would only take one moment in which Purest Lux wondered too much about Purest Jir’s experiments, and realized through the Hive that he was unconscious, one moment where Purest Jir recovered, and—

  As if wishing for the moment had brought it, Ro heard the blare of Purest Jir’s mind through the Hive, yelling loud enough for all to hear in a space where such things shouldn’t have applied.

  Help, Purest Ro is a traitor! It attacked me and stole the girl! Do not trust it, or anything that it says!

  Ro looked around, seeing the servitor creatures shifting in their seats, clearly not knowing how to react to the news. Purest Lux stood there, apparently trying to work out the precise implications of everything that Purest Jir had just sent. For a moment, just a moment, the control room door was still clear, and there was only one thing to do.