Something about Noah’s demeanor must have alarmed Burgess because his grip loosened. Noah’s arms fell to his side. The agent shook his head, obviously confused. His wary eyes searched Noah. “Fire? Why? Is it a signal for something?”
Noah didn’t have time for this. He turned from Burgess and began walking to his friend. [Listen] picked up all the noises around him. Cars had veered off the road. Families were stepping outside their homes, asking their neighbors if their power went out. He drowned out the noise with an effort of concentration and pivoted his attention back to Johnny.
“Johnny!” he yelled. “Turn on your truck!”
His friend, confused, took a step back. “What? It just died a second ago. It won’t start. Like, I was about to look at the engine.”
Noah quickly pulled out his phone—it was dead. “Is your phone dead too, Brawns?” Johnny checked his own phone and nodded. After closing his eyes for a moment, Noah sighed. He wasn’t sure what was happening. Had he been wrong about the date? No, that was one thing he’d always been sure of. How could he remember the worst day of his life?
Behind him, something rustled and Noah turned. Burgess stood with his dead phone in his hand, holding it out like evidence. The man had drawn his pistol, what looked like a Sig 320. He hadn’t done anything more than hold it at his side, but just the fact he’d cleared leather meant the man must have understood the implications of what was happening. “Noah, you seem to know what is going on. I am going to ask you about it like this, politely, exactly once,” said Burgess. He pulled something from behind his ear too, probably his agent com system that also had to be dead.
A faint sound whipped Noah’s head around, people nearby were screaming and pointing. Everyone looked up. A small plane in the distance had begun plummeting from the air. Noah heard Burgess breathe, “Dear God.”
Noah knew there wasn’t anything to do, no way they could help the people in planes all over the world. Instead, he took advantage of the distraction and darted forward, grabbing the pistol out of Burgess’ hand. To his credit, the well-trained agent tried to slap his hand down and retain his weapon, but Noah had been too fast, too explosive.
The Merriweather leader grew very still and watched Noah warily. “This is the Shift,” said Noah. He racked the slide of the pistol and a round extracted—the gun had been loaded. With an impersonal detachment, the youth pointed the pistol to the side and pulled the trigger. Burgess flinched, but no shot rang out, only a click.
As his boss blinked in confusion, Noah repeated what he’d just done, racking the slide, loading a new round, and pulling the trigger. After the second click, he handed the useless weapon back to Burgess. “It won’t work anymore, no guns will. Technology is basically toast now.”
From where he still stood by the truck, Johnny said, “That Shift stuff, that’s not real, right? It’s not real, right, Noah?” A tremor had entered his voice.
Noah calmed himself and focused with [Listen] again, his head down, ignoring Johnny’s questions. Uncertainties rose in his head, but he pushed them aside. Don’t lose your cool. The plan. I need to stick to the plan.
He had spent his entire life preparing for his day. As he took a breath, about to start filling Burgess in, [Listen] caught something odd in his hearing range. Something didn’t belong.
Voices with strange tones, weird inflections were relayed clearly by Noah’s supernatural hearing, and his breath stopped. He recognized the language. None of the words came from any tongue spoken on Earth, but somehow, he could understand what they were saying.
Chapter 24
“Reemeht, you know our orders. We are scouts, not a war party, or even explorers,” a high voice said. “You must give a progress report via sat-flower in a fourth-cycle. We were not given permission to feed.”
A guttural snarl replied, “Enough orders. We did what before, chase echoes of a human for local years? A speck of dust in the galaxy, a pointless endeavor. I am hungry! It has been sixth-cycles since I had any nourishment. Watch them, the humans. They are everywhere, panicked and lost, and soon there will be more disorder. I just needed this one. You can have the other, it is still alive.” A faint sound, like a covered scream sounded, and in heavily accented English, the voice said, “Move and die.”
The next soft whimper made Noah’s heart beat faster, even as he tried to locate the direction of the voices.
Another more steady voice chimed in, “The Voice’s word is absolute.”
“Devour the Voice,” the snarling voice answered. “Kahlek isn’t here. You two go, fulfill our useless task. Watching? We know how all of this works. An orb-attuned human? Pointless. Impossible. Go, try to find one human in billions for the thousandth time. I will catch up after I eat this one. If you do not have this other one, I will eat it, too.”
Noah’s head snapped up at the name. Kahlek. The Aelve who had helped the others kill Doc, Noah knew that name. A rage he had carried for two lifetimes surfaced in him, burning hotter than ever, narrowed to a needlepoint.
Listening for a while longer, he homed in on the voices, catching the sound of retreating footsteps. After they stopped speaking, he almost lost track of the direction they were coming from before [Listen] picked up a hiss, a snuffling sound, and another muffled sound of distress.
There.
With a feral growl, Noah broke into a sprint. Burgess and Johnny shouted behind him, but their words didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now.
The Shift had come early. The Aelves were here, and one of them was going to kill an innocent person—that’s what it sounded like, and that’s what they did. Not on my watch, Noah thought. He had never run so fast in his life, not even in training. His body felt full of electricity, fueled by rage for the aliens, monsters that proved once again that they must be exterminated.
[Listen] told him he was only about fifty yards away.
A thousand thoughts went through his mind. The location he ran toward seemed to be a small wooded area, to the side of a housing development near the Merriweather building. Even as he ran, Noah realized it would be smarter to get weapons and more people. The Aelves weren’t exactly pushovers. But even as that thought flashed through his mind, he heard another soft whimper and a wet cracking noise. No, even if this course of action was stupid, Noah wouldn’t stand by, wouldn’t be passive anymore.
He would never be Worm again, even if it cost him his life.
He drew his knife from its sheath, holding it in a reverse grip. Noah ran past the last house and broke through the bushes, dashing forward through the undergrowth to behold a scene of horror.
Danielle Perkins lay on her back, her clothing in disarray, as if she’d be dragged around like a piece of meat. A patch of a pale substance, like sickly clay, covered her mouth and bound her hands behind her. Her terrified eyes met Noah’s, pleading silently. A broken camera lay next to her, its pieces scatter over the grass.
Nearby, Danielle’s friend Brittany Macy lay on her back, at least Noah thought it had been her. The girl’s head had been cut off, and the corpse’s fingers spasmed even as the neck spurted blood to the grass. With the razor-sharp clarity of the moment, Noah noticed that the dead girl had been wearing purple socks and white shoes. One foot softly kicked against the forest floor.
Brittany’s head floated in midair, partially obscured by a shimmering, faint luminescence. Noah wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t been staring right at it–and if it hadn’t been blocking the view of a levitating, severed head.
As he crashed forward, the strange patch of air shifted, and Noah acted on instinct, grasping for his mother’s lullaby. As soon as his mind filled with the melody, light peeled back before his eyes, like a hidden layer. After the unnatural concealment lifted, Noah saw the hunched silhouette of a tall, pale figure. The Aelve had pallid skin and long flaky white hair, almost plant-like. Just like the Aelves Noah had seen in his first life, the creature looked almost human except for his pointed ears and grey irises. The alien turned, and hi
s clothing, or armor, seemed to be made of light blue leaves that moved sinuously, organically.
“Human!” the Aelve snarled in his language. In one narrow hand, he held Brittany’s head by the hair. A…vine of the Aelve’s armor, attached, arced up and into the alien’s other hand. At the end of the vine, a hard leaf on the end was being used like a knife to cut the dead girl’s skull open like a coconut.
Noah let his momentum carry him forward, actually picking up speed. Right before he collided with the Aelve, another knife vine detached from the alien’s blue armor and whipped forward, straight for Noah’s throat.
A spike of fear shot through his spine, but anger rose as well. Noah hated the Aelves, and his burning blood made the lullaby in his head change, morph into something different, something darker. He used a combination of his level five [Parkour], [Gymnastics], and two martial arts skills, deftly springing into the air and rolling horizontally. As the knife passed beneath where he’d just been, Noah kicked out as hard as he could, catching the Aelve in the face with the edge of his boot.
This time, unlike with the Merriweather dog at fourteen years old, he put everything he had into the strike. Noah was a lot stronger now, too.
The Aelve dropped the dead girl’s head and flew backward, slamming into a tree. Noah didn’t relent, dropping to a crouch and springing forward, moving in for the kill. As he closed, the Aelve’s vine knives flashed forward on their own, cutting through tree saplings like they weren’t even there. Noah barely dodged the first one, and tried parrying that vine with his knife after the point was past. Whatever the thing was made of felt as hard as steel. Despite being so thin, it had almost as much strength as Noah’s braced arm plus all of his momentum.
The other vine knife struck from a different direction, but Noah dropped to the ground, skidding forward on his knees, arched backward as far as he could go. A fiery line of pain erupted on his chest as the blue, leaf blade slashed over his body. Noah hissed, but popped up to his feet in one smooth motion, still moving forward, and stabbed at his pallid enemy’s heart.
His knife stopped like it’d hit concrete. The wicked sharp Spyderco, carbon steel blade felt like Noah had tried stabbing through solid iron. He was close enough to feel the alien’s breath.
The Aelve’s startled eyes narrowed, and the creature smiled, showing off sharp teeth. One of the creature’s hands shot out, and Noah barely managed to parry some of the force before the strike caught him in the shoulder and threw him back like a sack of laundry.
“That was well done, for a human,” rasped the Aelve in his own language, “but you are nothing. You cannot compare; you are food.”
The alien moved the arm that had pushed Noah back, moving it up, still extended outward. A few blue leaves lifted, and Noah realized too late that he was staring down the business end of a weapon. Light flashed, and Noah felt agony.
He’d lived in constant agony before, though, even after dying. Especially after dying.
Noah fought back, even as his skin felt like it was peeling away, and focused on his mother’s lullaby, mentally adding more bass and some percussion, turning it into his war song. His world had turned violet, but Noah resisted, and vaguely remembered a similar situation at some point in his past. This energy felt familiar somehow. He railed against it, throwing all that he was against the pain, eventually even humming his war song out loud.
As he pushed back the attack, he realized that he’d been surrounded by purple flames. The Aelve had been chuckling, but abruptly stopped. Noah gathered up all his will, and with a titanic heave, pushed outward with the energy roiling inside, swirled with the tempo of the war song he sang aloud now.
The Aelve stood still, stupefied, his eyes dilated in shock. “You are the one. You are real! The Voice—” With a hiss, the alien lowered his weapon arm and fumbled with a bag at the side of his armor. Noah could sense that the situation was dire. He was somehow not dead yet, but that might not last long. The Aelve drew something out from the bag and snarled before manipulating the new thing in his palm.
The Aelve was distracted, partially looking down. All or nothing, there would be no better time.
Noah narrowed his eyes. His body dumped massive amounts of adrenaline into his system, and his thoughts felt sharper, polished even further by his war song. Fear sang through his veins too, and he used it to feed the energy pumping through his body. He bared his teeth and flexed his knees before dodging a knife vine, then threw himself forward, hurling his knife.
With a sick thunk, Noah’s blade slammed into the Aelve’s head right through an eye socket. The murderous creature gasped, falling back and pawing his ruined face, his armor turning into a roiling mass of blue as it flared and moved like feathers.
Even as the alien fell, something in his hand, like a seed, began falling to the ground. Acting on powerful instinct, Noah dove forward, catching the pod even as it began opening, beginning to look like a flower. The object felt cold despite being organic in nature. Noah ignored the nearby thrashing Aelve, even as flashing knife vines tore apart the nearby trees, dangerously close. The knife vines were deadly, but Noah could sense that what he held in his hand was worse.
There was some sort of connection, felt right at the edge of his mind, but Noah didn’t have the luxury to explore it. Instead, he changed his war song back to the lullaby, silently pleading the seed-flower thing in his palm to close. When it finally did, he sighed in relief.
As he stood, the dead Aelve’s vine weapons had finally stilled. Noah turned and saw that where he’d been attacked by the purple flames, nothing but charred earth with a Noah-shaped shadow remained. Brittany’s corpse had been damaged, half a leg burned away. Noah was covered in mild burns, scorch marks, and blood.
Danielle’s whimpering brought Noah back to his senses. He cursed and tensed to run forward, but stopped and turned instead, cautiously approached the downed Aelve. Luckily, the knife vines stayed still and the scout stayed dead, but Noah still shuddered as he got closer. Finally, with a wet squelch, he pulled his knife from the murderous alien’s face and jogged over to Danielle. Trying to be as gentle as possible, he knelt next to the girl and began cutting through her wrist restraints with his knife.
The stuff on her wrists was stronger, so he moved to her mouth instead and was about to get the substance off. As soon as she could, Danielle thrashed and began screaming, but got less than a second of sound out before Noah clamped a hand over her mouth. “Calm down,” he muttered. He knew such a thing would be easier said than done, though.
Noah shook his head at the terrible coincidence of knowing the first Aelve victim he’d ever seen in this life. He said, “Danielle, I can help you, but we are all still in danger. You need to get ahold of yourself before I can free you and get you out of here.”
He looked into the girl’s hazel eyes, showing her the knife and hoping she would calm. When Burgess and Johnny ran through the undergrowth a moment later, they found him crouched over a squirming girl, his hand over her mouth and a knife raised in the air.
Crap, he thought as Burgess predictably pulled his pistol.
“Noah, get away from her!” The Interpol agent’s words came out calmly, evenly, but with an underlying strain.
At least Burgess isn’t yelling, Noah thought.
Meanwhile, Johnny noticed Brittany’s body on the ground. The corpse’s head had been half burned. The entire scene was awful, on a level most normal people would never witness. Johnny licked his lips and pressed them together before darting into the bushes to be sick. It was one thing to clean animals after hunting, and quite another to see a murdered person. Noah knew from experience.
“Burgess, Boss, calm down. I can explain but we are all in danger.”
“Noah!” The silver-haired man’s eyes were growing wild. “Get away from the girl!”
“Your pistol doesn’t work. Go ahead and pull the trigger.”
Johnny stumbled out of the bushes and pointed at the alien corpse on the ground. “I
s that an elf?”
“Aelve, and yes. They’re here.”
“So you were telling the truth before about all of this?” Dread filled the big teen’s voice. He’d gotten vomit on his leatherman jacket.
“Yes.”
“God I was afraid you’d say that.” Johnny looked green and kept looking up at the sky.
Noah ignored Burgess and his shaking pistol, instead looking Danielle in the eyes. “Danielle, I’m really sorry to push you like this, but we don’t have much time. Can you get it together?” The girl’s eyes were still wild, but a shadow crossed her face and her demeanor changed. Iron entered her expression, and she slowly nodded. “Good,” said Noah. He took his hand off of the girl’s mouth and helped her up. “Keep your eyes on Johnny,” he instructed her. If she saw Brittany’s corpse now, she might start screaming again. She had to be in shock—hopefully it would keep her going.
“Okay,” Danielle whispered. Noah noticed her glasses on the ground, one of the lenses had popped out. He wordlessly bent down and picked them up for her.
With Danielle on her feet and slowly tottering over, Burgess had lowered his useless weapon. The Merriweather leaders’ eyes flashed and he said, “A plane fell from the sky, Noah. There is a dead girl on the ground, you are wounded, and nothing is working. Why are planes falling from the sky, Noah? What is going on?”
His boss’s words came as a demand, not a question. Noah studied the man who he had reported to for years. He knew how Burgess’ mind worked. With all the chaos he’s confronted with right now, this must be really hard to deal with. Somehow, through his adrenaline and the rush of still being alive, Noah felt the familiar tickle of his Charisma stat.
He said, “It’s called the Shift. I didn’t cause it, I just knew it would happen, and this is why I’ve been doing all the weird stuff your Interpol buddies dropped me from Merriweather for. I couldn’t tell anyone before, not really. If I’d told you, would you have believed me before now?”
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