Alien Invasion (Book 4): Annihilation

by Sean Platt

  But this? This blank return to business as usual? This didn’t.

  “Maybe. I don’t know, Heather. Why don’t you head back to your house for a bit? I need to get ready.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m meeting someone. Someone from outside the city.”

  “On behalf of the Astrals, I assume. Like a stand-in for them, since they don’t talk.”

  “Divinity says they may use me as what they call a surrogate. Them talking through me.”

  “And this makes sense to them. Using you, who turned on them.”

  Again, Meyer looked up. “That was a mistake. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “They must know. Raj told them, and they’re not stupid.”

  “They know it was a mistake. They know I understand.”

  “Enough to trust you completely?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can they trust you when you turned on them before? They must have their doubts, right?”

  Meyer looked up again. This time, his jaw seemed restless, chewing on something that wasn’t there. Shifting side to side. Annoyed and tired of the discussion.

  “You should go back to your house,” he repeated.

  “There’s no power in my house.”

  Meyer grunted, still staring at her.

  “Because of the virus you released.”

  “We need to focus on the solution, not the problem,” Meyer said.

  A hunch told Heather to move forward. She kept her usual sarcastic vampiness out of her walk, and the annoying lilt from her voice. She tried to act normal, straight. It was possible, with effort, even for Heather Hawthorne.

  Six steps closer to her ex-husband, she asked, “Why did you do it, Meyer? Right or wrong, why did you help us, if you now realize it was a mistake? Why the temporary insanity?”

  “It was just that, Heather. A lapse of judgment.”

  “But you remember it.”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “It was Lila, wasn’t it?”

  “I was weak. I forgot my responsibilities.”

  “Because you saw that your daughter hated you. Because you thought you were going to lose her.”

  “The best way to ‘lose’ anything is to keep doing the stupid things I did then.”

  Heather wasn’t buying it. Meyer sounded brainwashed.

  She paced closer.

  “What if it happened again, Meyer? What if you had to face the same thing again, and on one hand you could make your daughter keep loving you … but on the other hand, you could do your duty and she’d think you were a son of a bitch?”

  “I wouldn’t be that stupid again, Heather.”

  “Why were you stupid that time?”

  “I’m tired of answering your questions. Go. I have a visitor.”

  “A visitor. Is there a chance to redeem yourself here? To do something at your ‘meeting’ to stop being a son of a bitch in your daughter’s eyes?”

  “I’m not,” he said, an irritated look in his eyes. “You saw what happened in the dining room.”

  “Lila is happy because she thought you were dead.” Heather took another step, confidence growing. “And because the last time she saw you make a choice, you chose to be noble.”

  “She’ll respect a father who does what’s right.”

  “But what if you had to choose? Duty on one hand, her respect on the other.”

  “I won’t govern one-ninth of the planet based on the opinion of a twenty-year-old.”

  “And yet,” Heather said, pointing toward the ceiling, toward the network center where he so recently made his act of sabotage, “the last chance you had, that’s exactly what you did.”

  “Get out of here, Heather.” Now he was coming forward, his pointless business in the office concluded.

  Heather didn’t back up. “I’m not saying you should do it. I just want to know why.”

  “That’s immaterial.”

  “And I want to know why, when you were dying, the last thing you thought to say was that you loved me.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Heather.”

  “Just tell me. Tell me why you chose to do either of those things, even if you now think they were stupid and a dereliction of responsibility. Just tell me, Meyer.”

  “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

  Again, he took a step. Again, Heather refused to back away.

  “Just tell me,” she said, “and I’ll leave you alone.”

  Something seemed to war beneath Meyer’s skin. His eyes shifted. He bit his lip. He looked away then back to meet Heather’s eyes.

  Then he pushed past her and walked out.

  But at least he seemed angry, Heather thought. And that was a start.

  CHAPTER 40

  Christopher looked up to see something hobble through the police station’s door that almost made him want to laugh. But then he got one look at the thing’s face and pressed his lips shut.

  It was Raj. He looked like he’d been dragged behind a squad car for blocks then stepped on by something enormous. His face was bruised and starting to puff, tinged a black and blue that showed even through his dark coloring. Beneath his nose was a crust of blood. It seemed to still be seeping. One of his eyes was swollen half-shut. He had a severe limp, as if one leg was broken and he was insisting on walking atop it anyway. There was blood all over his uniform in the most random spots. Observing the pattern, Chris couldn’t tell whether Raj had been repeatedly stabbed or if he’d just gushed blood like a geyser to land in many small pools.

  Christopher drew to half attention, more acknowledging Raj’s pathetic presence than deferring to his authority.

  But Raj didn’t go to Christopher. Instead, he detoured once through the door, drawing looks from humans and Titans alike in the generator-lit atmosphere of bright lights and knife-edged shadows.

  Christopher followed.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Fuck off, Christopher.”

  “I’m just asking.”

  “I slipped in the shower.”

  “Was there a fight?”

  “That’s none of your concern.”

  “Who did you fight with? Was it … is Terrence still at the house?”

  Christopher tried to cover the awkward, telling fumble, but Raj spun to meet his eyes. One of Raj’s whites had a spot of blood in its corner, as if the eye itself had been punched.

  “I know about you,” he said.

  Christopher tried to play the accusation off but couldn’t quite manage. There had always been something comical about Raj’s anger and pointed fingers. He’d been given his honorary position because it was befitting the father of Heaven’s Veil’s princess, and none of the many tasks the household had given him meant a thing.

  Usually, his tirades were met with an eye roll and a silent chorus of, Oh, Raj. Nobody would ever take him seriously. But this was different.

  “I was just asking if — ”

  “No, Terrence didn’t fight me. Yes, he’s still up there. Still being watched. Not escaping. Everything he’s doing with the computers is being sandboxed. Once he claims to have a solution, I will inspect it personally. He will not be able to get you a message under my nose.”

  “Not for me,” Christopher stammered. “Why would he need to get in touch with — ”

  “Save it,” Raj snapped. “I know about your talk with my wife, on top of your fucking her. You knew they were coming. I know you’ve been with Terrence all along. You might have fooled Meyer, but you can’t fool me.” Raj’s head cocked. “Or maybe you didn’t need to fool Meyer. Maybe he was with you from the beginning.”

  “I don’t know what you’re — ”

  “Where is Jons?”

  Christopher said nothing. He felt too gobsmacked. He wasn’t sure if he was frightened or not. Raj’s threats had always amounted to nothing, dating all the way back to the bunker under Meyer’s old house. Nobody took him seriously, but now Christopher couldn’t help but fee
l a target on his back — possibly because they’d left Mary’s house not a half hour ago, and he’d thereby painted it himself.

  They may have been followed. Tracked by the mothership or shuttles despite their care at staying low and keeping the open sky eclipsed. Raj might be bringing the first drop of a flood. He’d had viceroy access for a few minutes there, before Meyer had shown up. He might have received a message directly from the Astrals, and the weapon on his belt might even have an Astral-ordered bullet inside it, meant for him.

  “Where is Jons, Christopher?” Raj repeated.

  “In his office.” Christopher didn’t point, but his gaze did.

  Raj turned and headed for the open door. When he arrived, Christopher tried to shoot Jons a warning: Treat this one differently. Something has changed. But the chief saw Raj before he saw Christopher, and where Chris had contained himself, Jons openly laughed. The big man’s cavernous chest made a booming sort of guffaw, rich and dark like a thunderhead.

  “You finally say the wrong thing to Ms. Hawthorne?”

  Christopher turned to watch Raj’s profile, sweat threatening to form on his scalp. He saw Raj scrunch his lips. He didn’t retort, or answer, issuing a demand without pause.

  “Where are they?”

  Jons’s face became serious. This was his castle, and he wasn’t used to being pushed about by skinny little assholes.

  “Who?” Jons replied.

  “Cameron Bannister’s group.”

  Jons finally noticed Christopher beside Raj. A telltale look passed between them and, it seemed, wasn’t lost on Raj. Jons, like Christopher, was probably trying to remember what he was officially supposed to know. They’d been sent to the gate, and then all hell had broken loose once the Titans started throwing uncharacteristic punches.

  “I have no idea,” Jons said.

  “No idea what I’m talking about?”

  “I know what you’re talking about. The people come into the city. Don’t puff up your chest to me, little man.”

  Christopher hoped that was right. Officially, without information they weren’t supposed to have, did they know people were supposed to be coming in? That they were dissidents? That the group was supposed to include Cameron?

  “So where are they?”

  “I told you. I have no idea.”

  “You’re the chief of police.”

  Jons stood in one heavy motion. His giant black hands clapped the desk’s surface. Satisfyingly, Raj flinched like a man afraid of being hit — probably because he so recently had been.

  “And you’re the grand poobah of the motherfucking mansion guard! So why don’t you tell me? Maybe you can let us know what happened out there. Why those Titans lost their shit. Why — ”

  Raj looked blindsided. “What happened with the Titans?”

  But Jons was on the offensive, coming around the desk now, not slowing.

  “They just let the rebels go instead of picking them up. You want to tell me that, you’ve got the viceroy’s ear? Takes one or two peacekeepers to catch anyone they want to grab in the open. Maybe a few more Titans. But this time — ” Something furrowed Jons’s brow as if he’d just recalled it. He looked at Christopher, asking an unspoken question. “And what the shit was happening to those Titans, anyway? To their skin and bodies?”

  Christopher felt himself blink in shock. He’d pushed that away, losing it in the frenzy of shuttling their wards away and fearing capture themselves. By the time he’d thought back to events in the square, he’d convinced himself that hadn’t happened — especially given how blocked their view had been from the group’s rear. He hadn’t really seen Titans seem to form scales, their eyes to change color, their hands to grow claws and their mouths to bloom needle-like teeth and begin to glow. It felt too surreal, except that now it seemed Jons had seen it too.

  “You’re saying they escaped?” Raj’s voice was thick with unbelieving accusation.

  “Of course they escaped! Where the hell have you been?”

  Raj looked caught between righteousness and supplication. Should he be angry at being excluded or timid because he was so far out of the loop that he was embarrassing himself?

  Raj looked hard at Jons, who stared just as hard back. He seemed to be weighing a decision. Finally, he reached it, grabbed Christopher by the arm, and shoved him into the room. Given Raj’s own precarious state, Christopher was amazed he’d been able to manage.

  “Christopher is a dissident,” Raj said. “You don’t have them? Arrest him. Then make him talk.”

  “What the fuck are you jawing about, Gupta?”

  “I have proof.”

  “Show me,” Jons challenged.

  Christopher could see doubt in the big man’s eyes. Doubt in himself, in the ability to hold his own farce, maybe in his ability to shuttle off another via the Underground Railroad when he’d already let two escape.

  Raj hesitated. Christopher wanted to exhale, but Raj’s eyes flicked directly at him. Jons had called his bluff. Either there wasn’t proof after all, or there was a problem with what he had.

  “Come back to the house. It’s on the CC system. On my tablet.”

  “I got more shit to do right now than going to your place for home movies. You got something to say, you bring it to me.” Jons saw the opportunity to twist the knife deeper and did. “Come to think about it, you got something to prove, why didn’t you bring this evidence bomb with you?”

  “I didn’t think of it,” Raj said, his voice turning slightly pouty.

  “Who beat you up, Gupta?” Jons demanded, moving in for the kill.

  “That’s not your concern.”

  “Was it Dempsey?”

  Raj said nothing.

  “Mmm-hmm. I heard about that. You turn on the big man then try to kill him. Somehow, someone takes pity on you instead of tossing your ass into one of my cells, and you keep running around trying to cause trouble instead of quitting while you’re miraculously ahead.” Jons nodded. “Yeah. I think in the viceroy’s shoes, I’d have kicked your ass, too.”

  “I have proof against Meyer Dempsey, too.”

  “Great,” Jons said. “So you just take that ‘proof’ against Meyer and your ‘proof’ against Chris, and you show it to Meyer. Try to convince him that he and his guard captain are a problem, because I sure as fuck don’t want to be the daddy you run to on this one.”

  Raj looked like he might want to spar but seemed to realize that quitting was his only option. He made a face, threw hard eyes at Christopher and Jons, then gave his head a disbelieving, petulant little shake.

  “You’re up to something here. And you won’t get away with it.”

  Then he left without waiting for a response.

  “Jesus,” Christopher said, “that was close.”

  “Closer than you know,” Jons said. “He ain’t gonna give up. And judging by the fact that Dempsey seems to be back on his alien throne instead of supposedly helping out like Terrence said, he might be looking for someone to blame for this clusterfuck.”

  “So what now?” Christopher asked.

  “Now,” Jons said, “we hurry.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Piper peered out Grandma Mary’s window, keeping the slit between the drapes thin. The fabric was decorated with pictures of fruit. Piper wondered at that, as she wondered at so much of the house. There wasn’t a structure in Heaven’s Veil that was more than two years old, and construction had been managed with the scraps of humanity’s manufacturing sector. Where had these old lady drapes come from? And how had Mary achieved so much old lady ambiance, right down to the house that wasn’t as new as it should be?

  But as interesting as the drapes were, it was the Apex behind them that drew Piper’s attention, pulsing like a beating heart.

  Cameron spoke from behind, making her jump.

  “Why is it doing that, do you think?”

  “It always does that. But it’s faster now.”

  “And the flash we saw?”

  P
iper shook her head.

  Cameron sighed. He moved away from the drapes and into the kitchen beyond. Mary was elsewhere in the house. Piper didn’t know where. She’d been blasé when Jons and Christopher had shown up to hide them, and she was blasé now that they’d gone. Just two more houseguests that could get the home’s entire occupancy cut to shreds. No big deal.

  Cameron sat in one of the kitchen chairs — classic old lady vintage, like everything else. Maybe a raiding party had gone to the homes that were here from before the occupation and stripped them clean. Some of those homes must have had old people.

  Piper sat opposite him, their hands up on the small table, not quite touching each other.

  “Do you trust them?” Hearing Cameron’s low voice, Piper throttled surprise. He was actually asking. Not discussing: asking. There was a difference. He was deferring to her, as one who knew more than him. When had their relationship changed? Had it been Cottonwood? After Benjamin’s death?

  “Captain Jons and Grandma Mary?”

  “Yeah.”

  Piper thought before answering. She’d trusted in the past. But this felt more certain. She wasn’t sure what was different, but something definitely was.

  The changed Apex.

  The fight among Titans.

  The grid Andreus had mentioned, projected as if beckoning for alien backup to arrive.

  The changed game, from end to end.

  “I trust them.”

  She thought Cameron might ask further — perhaps inquiring as to why she trusted them and asking her to detail evidence of their honor when they’d been so thoroughly manipulated before — but he merely sat back, eyes straying toward the window and the pulsing blue pyramid beyond.

  “How are we going to get in there?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we can’t, now.”

  “If we can’t … ”

  “I know,” she said. If they couldn’t get into the Apex, they were right back at the same old stalemate. The best guess put Thor’s Hammer below it, hidden more or less in plain sight, its activating core safely (for now) nestled in Cameron’s padded satchel. Benjamin had seemed to feel that they had to find the Hammer first and use the key to somehow turn it off, or put it to another use which, hopefully, would become apparent.