Defenders

by Will McIntosh

  The next time someone comes, ask them when you’ll be informed where we’re going.

  Oliver couldn’t help laughing. “You mean you don’t know?” He waved in what he guessed was the direction of the submarine’s bridge. “Pluck it out of someone’s mind.”

  I don’t have to pluck. Your minds are all laid out in front of me. No one on this vessel knows.

  “No one knows where we’re going?” It seemed an absurd notion, though it also made sense. If no one on board knew where they were going, or why, a Luyten who happened to be flying nearby—within their eight-or-so-mile telepathic zone—wouldn’t be able to find out, either. The mission must be important. “How are they navigating if they don’t know where we’re going?”

  They’re given a set of coordinates corresponding to a point in the ocean, and when they reach it, they’re given another.

  “So where are we?”

  Oliver jolted back in his chair as one of Five’s mouths opened, revealing a bobbing, twitching hole ringed with teeth that resembled the spines on cacti. Smacking, hissing air and background sounds like water draining came from the hole, the sounds so unearthly and repulsive that at first Oliver didn’t register that they were approximating words.

  “Find out where we’re going,” Five said aloud.

  The ubiquitous hum of the sub’s engine was the only sound in the room as Oliver composed himself. Ultimately it didn’t matter whether the Luyten communicated telepathically or using spoken words, but it was still profoundly disturbing to hear the thing speak.

  “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” Oliver said.

  “Unlike you.” Somehow the creature managed to inject a note of irony, and perhaps contempt, into the awkwardly formed words.

  Oliver slid out of the chair, went right up to the nearly invisible net of carbon fiber that separated them. “Don’t assume you know my mind just because you can read my thoughts. We may not be as simple as you think.”

  “Yes, humanity is the pinnacle of evolution. The chosen ones, the purpose for the existence of the entire universe. How could I forget?” Aware that Oliver was having trouble understanding his strangely formed words, Five simultaneously broadcast his words directly into Oliver’s mind, giving him the uneasy sensation of hearing the words with an indescribable overlap. “I know your mind better than you.”

  Oliver grunted, folded his arms across his chest. “Right.”

  “You’re uneasy. You’re afraid I might try to prove my claim.”

  It was pointless to disagree. Oliver had quickly learned how absurd it was to deny what you were thinking or feeling to something who knew precisely what you were thinking and feeling.

  “You love your wife now—”

  “Shut up. I don’t want to hear about Vanessa. Just leave it.”

  Five waited patiently through Oliver’s outburst, then continued. “After her affair, her denials, the angry divorce… now you love her. Before, when you claimed to love her, you also despised her.”

  Oliver turned, went to the door, and thumped on it with the flat of his palm. “Hey, come on. Unlock this door. I’m not the POW.”

  “There’s an irony you’re not aware of, in your newfound feelings for your wife. Should I share it with you?”

  Oliver turned to face Five, who was running the fine cilia that served Luyten as fingers across the stump of the limb he’d lost. “No. Thanks for the offer, but, no.”

  “It’s something you’d be interested to hear.”

  When Oliver didn’t answer, Five continued. “All right, then why don’t I move on? What else can I tell you, to demonstrate you’re as simple to read as I think you are? How about your deepest sexual cravings? Some of these you would never admit to yourself. For example, you’d like to be tied up, gagged with your own dirty sock, and spanked by a woman twenty years older than you.”

  Oliver couldn’t care less about his repressed sexual desires. They were what they were; he couldn’t control them, only whether he acted on them. But Oliver knew Five was only playing with him now. It had already dropped the bait it knew Oliver couldn’t resist.

  Five grew quiet, waiting for the question it already knew was coming.

  “Fine. What’s the irony I’m not aware of?”

  All of Five’s eyes fixed on Oliver. “The irony is, your instinct to love her is right, because she never had sex with Dr. Paul.”

  As the words registered, Oliver’s vision darkened around the edges, as if he were going to pass out. In some ways, he wished he would. “You told me she had. You gave me specific details.”

  “I lied.”

  An icy numbness crept through him. He’d destroyed his marriage on the word of an alien bent on wiping out the human race. He’d taken Five’s word as unassailable proof, because Five could reach right in and pluck the truth out of Vanessa’s thoughts. Only he’d forgotten Five had abilities beyond reading minds. The ability to lie, for instance.

  He’d told Vanessa he knew she was lying, said her unwillingness to admit the affair bothered him more than the infidelity itself. The floor, which was nothing but steel under a thin layer of beige carpeting, lurched beneath him, either because the sub was adjusting course or his knees were wobbling.

  “Why would you lie? I didn’t even ask you about Vanessa—you volunteered the information.”

  “I did it to serve as a reminder.”

  “A reminder of what?”

  “That I might be lying to you at any time.”

  It dawned on Oliver that he had no way to contact Vanessa, and had no idea when he would, because he didn’t know where he was going, or why. When he did finally contact Vanessa, would an apology make any difference? He’d trusted the word of a Luyten over hers.

  This was going to torture him. In all probability that was Five’s intention in telling him now. Or maybe he was lying now, simply to distract Oliver at a crucial juncture.

  “Maybe,” Five said.

  2

  Kai Zhou

  June 29, 2029 (nine months earlier). Washington, D.C.

  Kai knew better than to look up at the old man behind the counter to see if he was watching. That was a dead giveaway. Instead, Kai tracked him through the reflection in the refrigerated display case, which was no longer cold, because it was illegal to waste energy to keep drinks chilled. Not that anyone had the energy to spare on such a luxury anyway.

  The old guy had an underbite that made him look vaguely apish; what gray hair he had was combed straight back in thin lines. He was watching Kai, frowning, suspicious. Kai knew he looked like a hungry kid who had no one taking care of him, but he couldn’t help it; he couldn’t find it in him to relax the scowl, to smile. This was also one time Kai’s size was probably a liability. Mom used to say he looked sixteen, not thirteen.

  A wave of pain washed over him at the thought of his mom. Right now he didn’t even feel thirteen—he felt more like eight. He wanted his mommy, wanted her to rock him while he pressed his face against her long, soft hair. That’s all most kids wanted since the invasion began. There were no tough kids left, only scared kids. And desperate kids, like him.

  The door to the convenience store creaked open; a chubby woman with a tattoo on her shoulder stepped in and went to the counter. Kai seized the opportunity, snaring three fat pieces of jerky and stuffing them under his jacket, pinning them under his left arm.

  He rose, spent a moment looking at the drinks in the nearly empty case, most of them homemade, the corporate logos printed on the bottles partially covered with white handwritten labels. Hurrying was another dead giveaway.

  He paused again on his way to the door, watched a news feed playing on the TV above the front counter for a moment.

  It was war footage of half a dozen Luyten storming a power plant. You almost never saw so many in one place, in the open. They were guerrilla fighters; they lost some of their advantage when they clustered, so when they attacked in force it usually meant they’d identified a poorly defended tar
get.

  Kai was repulsed by the sight of them—giant starfish, faceless, silent. Two were flying in their weird formfitting six- and seven-pointed craft, while the rest were on the ground, galloping on three or four of their limbs, staying behind vehicles and trees for cover, their free arms firing lightning bursts from the skintight battle gear that looked like ornate brass embroidery. A couple of human soldiers were peppering them with machine gun fire, but the Luyten always had a second’s warning, always knew which way the soldiers were going to point the weapons. If the soldiers had larger weapons—flamethrowers or tanks—they’d have a chance. Then again, if they had larger weapons the Luyten would have known, and wouldn’t have attacked in the first place.

  When he couldn’t stand to watch anymore, Kai headed toward the door.

  The old guy moved from behind the counter with surprising speed, beating Kai to the door, brandishing a stun gun.

  “I didn’t see it, but I know you’ve got something.” He waved the gun. “Open your jacket.”

  Kai wanted to tell the man he had no right to search him just because he looked filthy and tired, but it was pointless to argue. He reached into his coat and pulled out the jerky.

  The chubby woman with the rose tattoo tsked, shook her head. She’d moved over to watch.

  “I’m a good kid. It’s just, my parents were killed when Richmond got overrun, and I don’t have anywhere to go.” In a shrill, childish whine he added, “I’m so hungry.”

  The old guy plucked the jerky from Kai’s outstretched hand. “I don’t doubt what you’re saying. Times are hard.” He gestured toward the road with his chin. “Check with Refugee Services, see if they can give you some food.”

  “Refugee Services is closed. It’s been closed since I got here. Please, let me have one?”

  The man shook his head brusquely. “I can’t hand out food to everyone who’s hungry. I got almost nothing to sell as it is.” He gestured toward the door.

  Kai looked out into the dark, frigid, rainy night. The rain ticked against the storefront window. It was turning to sleet. He turned back. “Can I at least stay in here to keep warm? I won’t take anything, I promise.”

  The man looked pained. “I’m trying to run a store. It ain’t easy, you know. I let you stay, what about the next kid who wants to stay? Pretty soon I’ll have to close for good like the rest of them.”

  Reluctantly, Kai pushed the door open, tucked his chin against the cold. Empty hands buried in his jacket pockets, he hurried down the street, weaving to find a path through the piles of trash, much of it electronics that didn’t work or took too much energy to operate. In the street vehicles whooshed silently past, but only occasionally, nothing like traffic had been before the invasion began.

  He wasn’t sure where to go. He turned left at the end of the block to get off the main artery, passed mostly dark apartment buildings, eyeing the occasional warm yellow lights inside windows covered with security mesh. Kai longed to be in one of those apartments, in a warm bed, but none sported the green sash that indicated refugees were welcome. They were all full, or, more likely, the families inside were ignoring President Wood’s plea to open their homes to people fleeing the Luyten.

  The problem was, there were a lot more refugees now. Before Richmond fell, refugees had poured into the city as the starfish seized more and more of the outlying areas, and Kai and his family had done what they could to help them, like they were supposed to. Kai had shared his clothes with the refugees who were his age, brought them along to hang out with him and his friends. He could still remember how proud his mom was, how she smiled whenever he did something nice for one of the scared, shrunken kids who came down the road pulling a suitcase. Now that Kai was a refugee, there were too many for that sort of kindness. Washington was packed with refugees.

  It was so hard, getting used to each thing that was taken away. First, communication, when the Luyten took their satellites out. No way to speak to Grandma, or to Pauly, who’d been his best friend until last year. Then, as the Luyten choked off the routes between cities, no toothpaste, no food that arrived at the table ready to eat. Then the Luyten gained control of most of the solar and wind farms, the coal and nuclear plants, and there wasn’t enough power to heat the house, or the water, or to run his handheld.

  Now he had no warm bed, no food to eat at all.

  He was heading away from the makeshift shanty camp where he’d stayed the past three nights. The camp was too far to reach in the cold and dark; he’d walked too far, trying to find food.

  His toes were already numb, his shoes soaked from puddles he couldn’t see.

  He wished he had someone with him. Anyone. If he could pick one person who was still alive, it wouldn’t be one of the cool friends he’d started hanging out with in the past year; it would be Pauly, who he’d known forever. Scrawny, goofy Pauly, whom Kai had pretty much dropped, for no good reason. Mom had been disappointed in Kai when he ditched Pauly. She’d told him you don’t throw away friends.

  What he wouldn’t give to have Pauly beside him. Kai wondered where Pauly was, what he was doing.

  There was an old brick and concrete building ahead, three separate dark, open bays of what must have once been an auto body shop, or a fire station. The building must have been fifty years old. It had been a long time since things were built out of red brick.

  The first bay was nothing but a concrete floor, providing shelter from the rain but little relief from the cold, gusty wind. There was a door sitting slightly ajar, up three concrete steps along the wall. Even if it was a tiny toilet room, it would be warmer, at least.

  The door squealed when Kai nudged it open. The room stank of cigarettes. A woman was curled up in one corner of what had once been an office. She was partially covered by a corner of the wall-to-wall carpet, which she’d peeled up from the floor. In the faint light, Kai took in her swollen face, matted hair, her bulging, empty eyes, wide open and unblinking. He swung the door closed with a cry of disgust.

  Skin prickling, he scurried down the steps and out of the bay, back into the biting rain.

  There were two more bays. Kai didn’t like the thought of being so close to a dead body, but he was shivering uncontrollably from the cold. He couldn’t keep going. What were the odds he’d find another abandoned building?

  There was a door in the second bay, but it led to a bathroom, not an office. The third and final bay had no inner doors at all, so Kai returned to the second, gathered up what scraps of paper he could find, along with a small cardboard box, and returned to the bathroom.

  The room smelled dank, with an undertone of dried urine. Still shivering, Kai pulled a half-used roll of toilet paper off the dispenser and used it to dab his wet clothes. It wasn’t much help.

  The room was too small for Kai to stretch out, so he curled his legs in, used a wadded-up juice carton as a pillow, and piled the trash over his legs as best he could. It felt strange, not to have Kabuki say good night. He missed Kabuki almost as much as he missed Pauly, though not nearly as much as he missed his mom. He knew Kabuki wasn’t real, was nothing but a bunch of chips in his handheld designed to say pleasant things and follow directions, but he’d been a part of Kai’s life for as long as he could remember.

  Kai was freezing. He couldn’t stop shaking; his hissing breath echoed off the half-tiled walls.

  An image flashed, of the woman in the next bay. She must have frozen to death, maybe last night. And she had a carpet.

  There was a draft whistling through the space where Kai had left the door open a crack. It would be warmer if he closed it, but he would lose the sliver of gray light. He didn’t want to be in the pitch dark.

  It had all happened so fast. It didn’t seem long ago that he’d watched the first newscast of Luyten dropping from the sky. He remembered he’d been surprised when the schools were closed the next day. Only a week ago he’d been in his warm bed in Richmond. His mother had tucked him in, told him not to worry about Dad, who was with his brigade l
ess than forty miles away between Richmond and the Luyten surge. A day later he was on a bus roaring down Interstate 95 packed with kids and old people.

  There was no point in crying, but he couldn’t help it.

  The sound of his own crying made him feel worse. What was he going to do? Why wouldn’t anyone tell him what to do, where to go?

  Did you smell?

  Kai cried out, jolted upright. He hadn’t thought the words, they’d just come, raking through his head in a voice like steel fingernails on glass, the pronunciations all off in a strange and unsettling way.

  She’s smoke. Lighter.

  Kai clamped his palms over his ears. His soaked pants were suddenly warm; he was vaguely aware he’d wet himself.

  Build fire.

  It felt like there was something crawling around in his head. Kai sat frozen, trembling, praying it wouldn’t happen again.

  Or you die.

  Kai howled in terror. He didn’t understand what was happening to him.

  Happening to you. Kai. Freezing.

  His teeth were chattering; his whole body was shaking from the cold, from fear. The voice went on, about the cold, about Kai dying, about fire. There was enough trash around to burn, but he had nothing to start a fire with.

  She’s smoker. Lighter.

  A lighter was what he needed.

  You dead this morning. Do you Kai?

  The voice had asked him something. Kai was afraid that if he didn’t answer, the voice might get angry, might do something to him. Drive him crazy, pull him down into whatever dark, awful place it came from. Something about the voice was so terribly wrong, so profoundly off. It was as if the words were jagged, scraping the inside of his head.

  You do?

  “No, I don’t want to be dead,” Kai said aloud, the volume of his own voice in the tight space making him flinch.

  She smoked. Lighter.

  Maybe he was already crazy. This was just what it was like, wasn’t it? Voices in your head?

  Lighter. Her pocket.