by Sean Platt
She waited, watching the door. And then right on time, it happened.
The door opened. The room filled with Titans and Reptars. It wasn’t a large room, but it hadn’t been meant as a prison cell and hence had comfortable space for twenty or thirty. She didn’t count the troops swarming in (from the outside or from inside her mind), but there were that many at least. Perhaps a dozen muscular, powder-white beings with weapons raised and another dozen unarmed black beings viciously purring.
The humans, save Meyer, retreated into corners. All eyes turned to Melanie, while hers turned to the dark-haired woman entering at the rear.
“What did you do?” Divinity demanded.
She was stalking toward Melanie, but Meyer responded.
“I smothered the fire.”
Divinity threw Meyer a look like he was something found on her heel.
“What is he talking about?” she said to Melanie.
But again Melanie said nothing, and Meyer walked toward the pair. Reptars purred and Titans pointed their weapons, but none stopped him as he closed the distance to stand directly in front of Divinity.
“Your virus needed fuel to spread,” Meyer told her. “It needed thoughts and memories to tear through so it could leap from one mind to the next. I took the fuel. It did its job then shut down when it ran out of memories to burn — just like it did when the first copy of me loosed the same virus on the Internet in Heaven’s Veil.”
“How did you …?”
Meyer didn’t have to cut Divinity off. She simply stopped talking.
“I emptied the Ark.”
“You—?”
“Once I understood how to do it, the need was obvious. I can see pieces of your history, stretching back through your previous visits. Each time, you’ve used the Ark to judge us. But you don’t understand it. You can’t look into it before it’s opened or touch it once closed. When the Mullah hid it from you last time, you needed humans to seek it out. You needed human hands to move it from Sinai to Ember Flats. There’s always been a human key bearer who opens it because you can’t. Don’t you remember? You gave Piper that ability yourself. Both of you.”
Piper was looking from Meyer to the Astral women, her eyes flicking intermittently to Melanie. She knew now. If there was ever a chance of concealing Melanie’s identity, her cover was blown. Piper’s eyes found Melanie’s. They’d met once before, when Piper’s mind wasn’t quite coherent, a long time ago.
“You corrupted your own collective so you could corrupt ours. But even when it all shut down and I could no longer reach my family, I could still reach the Nexus. And I could still reach the Ark.”
Melanie straightened as Divinity, now understanding, looked away from Meyer and came toward her.
“You told him. You showed him the way.”
Melanie kept her face neutral. In truth, she’d told Meyer a lot more than that — but the Founders’ message she’d uncovered during the blackout was for Eternity and the hybrid to hear, not for Divinity and the lower classes.
“You told him how it worked. You told him that judgment emptied an opened Ark.” She sneered. “You burned the bridge between our collective and theirs, so the virus couldn’t cross it.”
“And with your collective offline …” Meyer added, shrugging. “I guess you were in no position to hear the Ark’s contents as they escaped. Or to judge us accordingly.”
Divinity’s small brown eyes flicked toward Meyer, then back to Melanie. Her jaw hardened.
“You’ll pay for this.”
“It’s over,” Melanie said. “Let it go.”
This was the wrong thing to say. Divinity snapped like a twig, fury descending in a wave.
“Let it go? Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You’ve interrupted the cycle before it could finish! The virus only affected us! And now the collective is gone. The soldiers have nothing to command them. We’ve lost everything that makes us, us! And this is your answer? It’s over?”
An inarticulate snarl of rage escaped her, Divinity’s face twisting into something gnarled and ugly. She jabbed a finger at a Reptar to one side. Then, betraying the depth of the collective’s wound, she addressed it as an individual rather than part of a hive — a thing with its own mind and will.
“You! Take her!”
The Reptar didn’t hesitate. It swiveled its big black head from Divinity to Melanie, then prowled forward with its jaws agape, a spark churning deep in its gut. Unmoving, Melanie didn’t see compulsion in the Reptar. Instead she saw anger: a solo being obeying a command because it wanted to, because it was afraid and happy for an excuse to punish someone.
Melanie was still holding her mental grip, waiting. But as the Reptar’s breath touched her skin, she let that grip go. Her mind’s eye saw a hand press the big red button. The cool blue grid she’d seen inside her head began to flicker as she did. Nodes began to reignite, one by one.
The Reptar stopped, one clawed foot forward and slightly off the ground. A light seemed to brighten behind its eyes — a subtle shift that wasn’t precisely visible, but that changed it nonetheless. And when that happened, Melanie thought she saw fear draining from the beast. Anger followed. And then the Reptar was again just another soldier in the hive.
Its outstretched limb lowered to the floor, claws clacking on the hard surface. Then the Reptar lay down at Melanie’s feet like a dog.
Divinity’s eyes weren’t on the Reptar. She was frozen, feeling the renewed power just as the beast had — same as the Titans and other Reptars throughout the room. She blinked open-mouthed at Melanie, her expression that of someone receiving a much needed drug. Shocked but not unpleased, as if she’d been mollified against her will. Melanie could still see the woman desperate for fury. But within Divinity, rage was losing a battle to relief.
She waited. She watched the change happen.
And as she watched and waited, Melanie felt the collective energy fill her as well. It was like standing alone and afraid in a dark room, then seeing friends pull cords above their heads, showing themselves to have been there all along. But even as she watched the hive mind come back online, she held part of herself back. She didn’t want to give herself fully. The collective was part of her and always would be. But it would only be part — rather than whole — from here on out.
“The collective,” Divinity said. “It’s still alive. It wasn’t destroyed after all.”
Melanie nodded, feeling the reboot she’d just allowed. “Authority over the collective must go through Eternity. Something you failed to consider.”
“But …” Divinity trailed off. Melanie — more through an infant sense of intuition than hearing the other woman’s thoughts — imagined what she’d meant to say: But there is no authority in a collective. No one being has authority the others don’t have.
It had once been true. But it wasn’t so anymore.
Divinity looked around the room, not really surveying her surroundings so much as inspecting her renewed internal space. Melanie could almost imagine Divinity within her, investigating the fresh collective the way a human might inspect a new home.
“It’s not the same as it was,” Divinity said, eyes unfocused as she explored. “I still feel like …” She gestured vaguely, mostly at her own body. Like ME, Melanie imagined her finishing.
“I do, too.” I being the operative word, just like Me — both first-person pronouns they’d have to get used to using, whether spoken by the lips of a preferred body or merely whispered within the collective mind.
Divinity’s face changed again. Melanie watched it without any warning. This was something happening within the woman but not the collective. The second edge to their new double-edged sword.
Her eyes darkened. Her lips firmed, her jaw gone rigid. Her brow wrinkled, eyebrows drawing down. A thousand emotions — now an integral part of them all — screamed across the surrogate’s face. But Melanie was still learning her own emotions, so only the largest and most obvious registered.
; She saw Divinity’s fear.
She saw anger.
And she saw them shoved aside, acceptance definitely not a part of the mix, as Divinity pushed one of the Titans hard in the chest. Divinity’s surrogate was small so the Titan barely swayed. But a second later Divinity was showing Melanie what she’d managed to grab in the otherwise botched exchange.
The Titan’s weapon, now aimed squarely at Melanie’s chest.
CHAPTER 72
“If the others won’t stop you, I will,” she said.
“There’s nothing to stop. It’s done. The virus finished then leaked away. How things are now is how they will remain.”
“With us half-human.”
“We’re just changed. This is our next step.”
“Bullshit.” She used the crude word the way a human would, practically spitting it from between her lips. It was as if she was trying to make a point, to show how far down the wrong path they’d gone.
Divinity raised the weapon higher.
“You should have let it finish. You should have stayed out and let it happen. The virus would have restored our collective to normal instead of this …” She looked down at her body, her face disgusted. “This in-between. I don’t know what I am now.”
“You’re you.”
“I shouldn’t be me. I should be us.”
“Then leave your surrogate. Shed it, and return to your given body. “
Divinity’s mouth moved. Melanie, though she couldn’t hear the thoughts the other woman kept hidden, could imagine what she must be thinking. They were addicts. No matter how much they desired an alternative, they’d hold tight to the status quo.
“Maybe I should force you to shed yours.” The weapon’s barrel trembled, still centered on Melanie’s chest.
Melanie said nothing. She wanted to say something a brave human might say, such as Go ahead. She wouldn’t die. As long as the collective existed, she couldn’t die. But the body would. And somehow, right now, that mattered.
When Melanie didn’t reply, Divinity went on.
“You’ve ruined the experiment.”
“It was ruined anyway. Destroying their minds would have changed nothing.”
“It would have erased the humanity from our collective. It would have restored us to normal.”
“And it would have sent them into extinction.”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because we need them.”
“How do we need them?”
Melanie wasn’t sure how to answer. She looked at Meyer, remembering what she’d told him. Even if human interference — or at least hybrid interference — had been needed to nudge her species forward, that work was already done. They didn’t need each other anymore, not really. But the solution that would have killed humankind off would also have restored the collective to the way it was when they’d arrived on Earth. Humanity survived in the same fell swoop as the Founders’ plan had come to fruition within Melanie’s race. They were as intertwined as the two collectives had become, even if one thing hadn’t precisely caused the other.
The situation had become what it was, and “how it was” was good. Maybe they didn’t need humanity, but spitting on them after deeds were done felt like a poor way to respect the Founders’ wishes.
And besides. Deep down — in a place that was definitely more Melanie than Eternity, more solo than collective — she couldn’t shake the feeling that the two species weren’t finished with each other yet.
Melanie watched Divinity’s finger tighten on the weapon’s trigger. Her whole hand was shaking. Melanie could feel the other’s anger from the inside but knew that if she left it alone, the feeling would pass. There was a balancing act they’d all need to learn in their new form, and this was only the beginning. You could feel anger without acting. You could disagree without fighting. You could suppress intense moments, deferring to what was best for the future, once you got the hang of the new way of being.
But Divinity was losing that battle, wanting to lash out though it would change nothing. And Melanie, as she watched the weapon’s barrel, could barely keep from a creeping sense that she suspected was panic. She couldn’t truly die, and didn’t want to die all the same. It’s what had made her go along with Meyer and Carl rather than letting Carl snap her neck. Kin to the instinctual sense of preservation that had caused Carl, in the end, to trade his life for hers.
Because in the end, he’d seemed to understand that Eternity’s surrogate had to live. That was more important to the long term, and justified the loss of his own life in the short term.
She had to stand firm. They were half individuals and half collective now, and an individual stood up for what best served them all — both individual and collective.
If I die, I die, Melanie thought. Eternity would live on, as the same dispassionate being it was before this all began.
And as she watched Divinity stare her down, Melanie heard the thought picked up as the collective heard it, reverberating like an echo.
If I die, I die.
If I die,
I die.
Divinity’s jaw shifted, her glare intensifying as the echo rolled behind her eyes.
She pivoted on the spot and leveled the weapon at the group of humans against the wall.
“Maybe that’s true,” she said, answering the Melanie’s mental refrain. “But if they die, they die forever.”
CHAPTER 73
Divinity’s arms shook. Her legs had lost their bones, now uncertain and wanting to wobble. Something was wrong with her surrogate. Had to be. It was breaking down. It was falling apart, soon to drop inexplicably into pieces.
She heard the bold, simultaneously infuriating echo as the room repeated Eternity’s mental words, trying them on, turning them over and over to see how they worked.
If I die, I die.
But now even Eternity’s mind — the body that controlled it still in her peripheral vision lest she get the idea to launch a sacrificial attack — had gone quiet.
Divinity watched the four humans through her fogging vision, feeling the hammer of her surrogate’s heart, the failure of her surrogate’s sense of reason and logic. She was sweating. Her eyes wouldn’t focus — or perhaps the misalignment was happening at the cognitive level, allowing her to observe but not truly see. Either way, she felt herself coming undone, barely able to stand.
This was the opposite of what was supposed to happen. Without interference, Canned Heat should have wiped both sides clean. The humans would have collapsed drooling. The collective would have returned to its proper state — a state in which the entity that led an entire ship wouldn’t be reduced to a quivering, emotional mass of flesh and bone.
She could kill them. Right here and now. She wouldn’t need the collective’s permission — and, in an ironic twist, what Eternity had done to the hive would make it impossible for the other minds to stop her. Eternity was content with individuality and emotion? Fine. Divinity would show her just what individuality and emotion allowed that a saner configuration never would have.
She looked at Piper Dempsey, the key bearer.
She looked at Clara, who’d started it all.
She looked at the man beside Clara, the pair in a semi-embrace. The other felt like a Lightborn, just like her. Two troublemakers for the price of one.
And finally her eyes settled on the group’s remaining member — an unremarkable man she’d never seen before.
She could start with him. He’d mean the least, but seeing him die would flood the others with satisfying fear. All the emotion they could handle, if that’s what they wanted. The more the merrier, Divinity thought as her own emotions gripped her.
“You don’t need to do this.”
Divinity’s eyes flicked to Meyer. She’d almost forgotten him. He no longer felt human to her, though he was at least half one. But she could feel his fear, too. It was strange — something Divinity hadn’t felt before. He was plenty afraid. But the fear was for the others, not for h
imself. It didn’t make sense.
“We’re in orbit,” Meyer went on. “Your ships can’t be seen from the surface. I can tell just from looking inside that there are no more Astrals on the ground. Humans on the planet’s surface have already forgotten. Permanently this time.”
“We couldn’t make you forget.” Without meaning to, Divinity had shifted the barrel toward Clara. She locked eyes with her now: Clara, who was the reason they’d never been able to effect a Forgetting.
“This time,” Meyer said, “we chose it ourselves.”
“Lies.”
“We have our own collective. It’s not the same as yours, but it’s present just the same. Most people don’t even know it’s there, though it always has been. It’s where we get our intuition. Where we see things from a higher perspective. But if you look at it like humanity has, you’ll see why this was our only choice. It’s too late to go back. The old world is gone. The memories of two alternate pasts were tearing us apart. When the Ark opened and the past twenty years of memories flooded out — all there were, since the last time it was opened — it’s not entirely accurate that you judged us. This time, we judged ourselves.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Divinity, her eyes still locked on Clara’s.
“We’re smarter than you think,” Meyer said. “And we understood, as a whole, that there’s no way to move on with one foot stuck in the past.”
Divinity’s eyes flicked from Clara to the others. To Meyer. To Eternity beside her, still unmoving. Even to the Titans and Reptars.
“Nobody won, but nobody lost, either. It’s a stalemate.” Meyer paused for a moment, then took a small step forward. Divinity shot him a glance but allowed it to happen. There were maybe twelve feet between the weapon and Clara, but just as many between Divinity and Meyer. If he tried for her weapon, she’d have time to shoot Clara, then Meyer. He might not die, seeing as the King was forever a part of their collective. But Clara would. Plus maybe Piper and the other two.
“Anyone down there has already let all of this go,” Meyer said. “Even the Lightborn have let it go. Even what remained of the Mullah. There are no keepers of a portal this time. No keepers of an Ark. You can’t return to control us, but we don’t control you. I could reach the Nexus, but I can’t reach you from inside any more than you can reach me. You’re something else now. Individuals with a shared mind. You can think as a group and make choices on your own. Maybe it’s worth exploring. The best of both worlds.”
