The Exodus Towers: The Dire Earth Cycle: Two

by Jason M. Hough

  … He destroyed it….

  He’d gone on a mission to one of the old, pre-Elevator space stations. Emergency repair work in a time when half the world had died or gone mad. And then the station had been destroyed. An explosion, a freak accident. No survivors.

  … He destroyed it….

  Why? Why not tell the world, Father?

  Tania could think of only one reason why her father would destroy the first evidence of alien intelligence: guilt. He and Neil had sat on the information for decades, judging by when the Platz operations began to expand into the Northern Territory. They’d profited immensely. They’d hidden the greatest discovery in history from all of mankind.

  … He destroyed it….

  “What are you thinking, dear girl?” Zane asked, his voice a whisper full of gravel.

  She squeezed her eyes closed to wring out the last of her tears. The mental hurdle cleared her mind. I’m thinking what I’d say to Neil, and my father, if they were still here. She decided Zane didn’t need to know that, after all he’d been through. “Six events,” she said. “This ship approaching is the fifth. Which means …”

  Zane gripped her shoulder, then patted it. “One to go.”

  “One to go,” she agreed. Her dreams of late were of skies filled with thousands of Builder shells, encircling the Earth like Jupiter’s rings, arriving yearly, then monthly. Daily. Hourly. Long after she’d died of old age they kept coming, until they blotted out the sun.

  One to go, she thought. At least this will all be over soon. A year from now, give or take.

  “You won’t,” Zane said, then paused. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? About Neil, I mean.”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Tania said honestly.

  Cappagh, Ireland

  Date imprecise

  “GO NOW!”

  His second shout broke through Ana’s daze so completely that he could see the transformation occur. In the time it took to blink her eyes, Ana hardened. A level of concentration, of intent, absent an instant before, flared into her eyes and the set of her jaw. She took one glance down, pivoted, and leapt down to a ledge a meter below her. Then again to another.

  Skyler followed, grinding his teeth with each ache and complaint his body threw at him, unable to match Ana’s pace. Below, he saw her reach the point of the sloped column base where she could half-run, half-fall the rest of the way, and then she pulled to a halt, suddenly unsure where to focus her wrath. The shifting red shapes reacted to her presence, fanning out again, darting with dizzying speed across her field of view.

  The one prone red smear had still not moved since Vanessa fired into it. The object that had snatched up Vanessa, at least the one Skyler guessed had done so—they all looked the same to him—moved differently than the others. Erratic, as if broken or maimed.

  Skyler reached the slope and bounded down the incline. He yanked his ice axe from its belt loop and hefted it in his right hand, making a straight line toward the object that had struck Vanessa. In the corner of his eye he saw Ana glance toward him and begin to move his way.

  The red object loomed in front of Skyler, still dancing about in impossible, abrupt movements. Suddenly it was right in front of him. He roared and swung down.

  Skyler’s axe hit the shape with no result at first, as if he’d hit nothing but air. Then a resistance slowed the axe blade, and he felt as if he’d just swung down on a giant pillow. At the point his blade stopped and should have rebounded, Skyler saw the red-hued morass curl and conform around him. With an alien pop, the field surrounded and then consumed him, just as the dome had done when he entered.

  Just before becoming enveloped, Skyler saw the red shape bulge and something dart out. He saw enough to register Vanessa tumbling away before he was inside.

  And then he understood. These were pockets of time, or, rather, fields identical to the dome itself, only much smaller and on a different clock.

  A subhuman stood scant centimeters away. Blood trailed from the corner of its mouth, and it held a patch of Vanessa’s shirtsleeve in one clenched, black-coated fist. And though his former opponent had just dived aside, the creature already had turned itself toward Skyler, coiled, and swung.

  Unfortunately for the creature, it had aimed its attack based on Skyler’s speed before he’d entered the faster-moving pocket. Skyler entered to see the fist, black to the wrist, swing wide past his head. The being’s upper arm smacked against Skyler’s head with no real force behind it.

  Their eyes were inches apart. Skyler smelled the foul stench on its breath, saw the individual capillaries in its bloodshot eyes.

  Movement behind it caught Skyler’s attention. Vanessa, or so he assumed, for the red blob that surrounded him made everything beyond murky. She bounded toward the creature’s back in slow motion, constrained by the slower time scale just outside the red pocket that seemed to cling to the subhuman.

  “Deaaaattthhhh,” the creature hissed, whipping Skyler’s attention back.

  “You first.” He swung up with his axe, intending to spike the sub’s abdomen. But it bounded back in the same instant. The head of the axe sailed upward, slicing the creature’s chin open in a spray of blood.

  The being howled. It swiped one hand in reflexive counterattack while Skyler’s arm still extended upward from his swing. The black-coated fist caught him in the side just above the waist, a solid blow that drove Skyler to one knee.

  Blood dripping from its chin, the subhuman reeled back and lifted its other arm to swing down on Skyler’s head.

  Then Vanessa’s form pressed into the border of the red aura and she popped through. She came in low, barreled into the back of the creature’s legs, and lifted upward all in one motion. The surprised subhuman vaulted into the air and flipped completely over, landing face-first in the churned earth.

  Twenty years of jujitsu, Skyler had time to think.

  Vanessa wasted no time. She spun and jumped simultaneously, twisting in midair. She landed on the creature’s back with both knees and Skyler heard the air rush from the subhuman’s lungs just before Vanessa gripped its head with both hands and twisted savagely.

  The animal went limp.

  “Thanks,” Skyler croaked.

  “You okay?” Vanessa asked.

  “Where’s Ana?”

  She shook her head, didn’t know.

  “Where’s your gun?”

  Vanessa shook her head again, standing up. “Dropped it somewhere.”

  The ground beneath their feet rumbled. Around them vague shapes moved around the dome floor. Some slow, some at what felt more like real time. All were too obscure to make out from within their own time-shifted pocket. Skyler glanced down at his axe, stood, and hefted it. He looked at Vanessa.

  She had no axe, but when she saw him ready his she seemed to suddenly understand the situation they were in. She reached to her calf and unholstered a hunting knife. The carbon-coated blade took on the color of blood inside the red field.

  “Find Ana,” Skyler said, “and find that Builder object. Then we go.”

  “Agreed.” Then, “Hey. Move with your axe held out before you. Use their speed against them.”

  He nodded.

  Again the floor of the dome trembled. A crack shot across the ground just centimeters from Skyler’s feet. He leapt back on instinct as the fracture widened. It went on, the gap as wide as a hand, then almost a full meter in places. Rock and clumps of soil tumbled in.

  Skyler felt a pressure against his back and realized too late that he’d come to the edge of the red pocket, which seemed …

  “The red blob,” Skyler blurted. “It’s attached to them somehow.”

  It seemed patently obvious when he said it, but up until that moment he’d hoped that perhaps it would move with him as he went after the others. No such luck.

  Vanessa looked down at the creature by her feet, then back at him. He had enough time to see her grin before he popped through the shifting edge of the red space and back into the �
��normal” time frame of the dome.

  His mind scrambled again, but the effect was starting to become something he could manage now, like a pilot learning to handle the press of g-forces. He hunkered, forcing himself to stop and focus on everything and nothing until the neurons in his brain started to fire in synchronicity again.

  Ana was nowhere to be seen. All about him the reddish smears of time flowed between the chunks of upthrust earth and rock. He saw one misjudge its path and drop into a crevice formed in the last jolt the dome experienced. There were some purple auras among the red now, moving at a speed closer to reality. In a few places, blue-hued shapes were just starting to lift out of their craters, implying that the color and rate of time’s passage were linked. He filed that and swung his attention to the red fields again. A few were close by, and from what he knew of being inside the accelerated pocket, the world outside was not much more clear than shadows and hazy forms. If he stayed far enough away, they’d miss him. That explained, he thought, their erratic movement. They were searching, and as far as he could tell none were moving outside the dome and the aura towers that encircled it.

  He heard movement behind and spun about too late. A red was speeding past diagonally to him, and when it came within a few meters the shape’s lead tendrils seemed to flow down invisible channels that led straight to Skyler.

  Unaware he’d been doing so, he found he held the axe in front of him as Vanessa had suggested. The red blob hit him, enveloped him, forcing his mind to snap once again between two clocks. He shuddered and put all his thought into holding on to the axe as the creature within the ruby cavity slammed into him.

  The tactic did not work.

  For all Skyler’s effort, the subhuman’s accelerated viewpoint gave it plenty of time to see his outstretched weapon and shift its position just enough to avoid impaling itself. The sub hit him shoulder to shoulder, a glancing impact that sent them both into a spin. The creature couldn’t handle its own momentum and continued past, its body twisting over in midair as it fell away.

  Skyler lost his grip on the axe and spun in place, his right leg twisting painfully beneath him. Before he could fall himself the creature moved far enough away that it took its red aura with it, and Skyler found himself thrust back into the slower reality of the dome one more time.

  “Stop fucking doing that!” he shouted as he landed painfully on his right knee. He forced himself up in time to see the pocket of red racing toward him again.

  And to his left, another came.

  Skyler had no time to even look for his axe. He did the only thing he could think of and dove forward into a tucked roll. He felt the painful yet gratifying smack of kneecaps against his back as the charging creature toppled over him, moving too fast within its own frame of reference to stop itself.

  Entry into another red aura made Skyler feel more and more like he’d gulped down a bottle of Darwin’s worst cider and then twirled in circles for half a goddamn century. He fought to concentrate, felt a momentary panic that he’d truly lost track of time. Struggling to his feet, Skyler took an unsteady step toward his enemy if only just to stay within its portable time field. The sub flailed on the ground near him and sprang to its feet just as Skyler approached.

  Skyler swung, missed badly. The creature lashed out with a splay of ragged, black-clad fingers and clipped him across the chest.

  Something moved to his left and Skyler glanced just in time to see another red shape merging with his. This creature stood smaller than the first, using all fours to run. When it came inside, the two subhumans grunted at each other and fanned out slightly. Sensing the flanking tactic, Skyler stepped back as well, intent to keep both in front of him somehow. He toyed with the idea of running but knew he’d only step outside their time frame and appear as a comically slow jogger from their point of view. They could stroll after him and lick their lips before pouncing.

  Terror gripped his heart and squeezed when a third red shape began to push inside the boundary, and Skyler had all but resigned himself to death when he saw—

  —her.

  Ana.

  Ana, with a submachine gun that barked thunder and spat fire.

  Ana, with two severed black hands tied to her belt, still dripping blood.

  Ana, screaming. An incoherent war cry that Skyler felt sure would have given the subhumans pause had they lived to hear it. Her bullets ripped across the chest of the first and the face of the second. Both toppled to the ground before they could even turn to face her.

  Ana.

  Skyler couldn’t take his eyes off the two dismembered hands hanging from her belt. His mouth opened, the question forming and dying, self-evident.

  A third creature ventured into the dome within the dome and she shot it, too: a burst that took the being in its heart and sent it toppling backward. The gun clicked, empty.

  Then a fourth enemy raced in. In one smooth motion, Ana flipped the gun around in her hands and clubbed the creature so hard in the face that teeth, maybe bone, maybe both, sprayed out.

  Lovely Ana. Blood-spattered and full of rage and the best thing Skyler had ever seen.

  “Holy shit,” Skyler managed to say.

  “Are you just going to sit there?” she shot back between a quick gasp for air. “Get a pair of hands, they—”

  The fifth subhuman to enter blindsided her. It came in fast and low, galloping on hands and feet, and plowed hard into Ana’s lower back. She shrieked and went down hard, her face smacking into the ground without the benefit of raised hands to break her fall.

  Her attacker rolled past, got up, and turned to finish its work.

  “Hey!” Skyler shouted at it. “Over here!”

  Ana hadn’t moved. The creature decided she was no threat and turned to Skyler. He had no weapon other than a small utility knife in his back pocket, too hard to fish out and deploy. Vanessa’s spent rifle lay in the dirt off to Skyler’s left where Ana had dropped it. He stepped toward it and the subhuman matched his motion plus a half step forward, closing the gap. It reared up to walk on just its legs now.

  “Right,” Skyler said, and moved in with clenched fists. He jabbed first with his left then threw a haymaker with his right that caught the being on its ear. It staggered, recovered, stepped in, and shoved unexpectedly with both hands, pushing Skyler back a few steps. He almost fell, one foot brushing the edge of a deep gash in the ground.

  Nowhere to retreat, he realized.

  Ana still lay prone.

  The creature howled and came at him again. Skyler saw movement behind it and knew what to do. Oldest trick in the book.

  He dropped to his knees and turned.

  Vanessa, racing through the edge of the red space and up behind the creature, leapt and kicked with both legs. She hit it perfectly, right between the shoulder blades. With a yelp of surprise and primal understanding the subhuman toppled over Skyler and into the freshly formed ravine behind him. It fell four meters before smashing against the bottom of the cleft, one leg splayed out at an impossible angle. The sub cried out once in pain and then went still.

  “Is that all of them?” he asked. He was breathing hard, blood pounding in his ears, the mother of all headaches looming like a storm on the horizon.

  “Not even close,” Vanessa said. She wiped sweat from her brow and took in the space around them, her breath catching in her throat at the sight of Ana’s limp body.

  Skyler was already moving. “Cover me.”

  “Sure.”

  He slid to his knees at Ana’s side and felt for a pulse. He had to press hard on her neck to filter out his own pounding blood and the near-constant vibration of the dome itself, and as he did, Ana groaned slightly. Ever so slightly, but it was enough.

  “Skyler,” Vanessa said, sounding suddenly far away.

  He glanced up. Vanessa stood a few meters off to his side, crouched down and back on her heels. She stared through narrow eyes and Skyler followed the gaze.

  The reddish time field associated with the
hands Ana had on her belt had faded to almost nothing, dissipating even as Skyler watched until it was gone.

  Then he stood as well and took a step back from Ana. Around them loomed the reddish-hued pockets of death of a half-dozen subhumans. As they converged their auras merged like droplets of blood coalescing.

  The creature in the middle of the line of enemies was enormous. A head taller than even Samantha and half again as wide. A wall of corded muscle, scars, and filth, all pulled forward by a wide grin of violent ecstasy.

  Skyler glanced around. He had no weapon at all, and Ana to protect as much as himself. He looked for anything. A rock, a stick, anything at all, and saw nothing save for the earth at his feet and the edge of the dome itself a few meters away.

  The creatures surged forward.

  One leapt high, its wild gaze on Ana.

  Vanessa screamed, a sub racing at her low.

  The monster pack leader roared with bloodlust.

  Skyler …

  The edge of the dome, meters away.

  Skyler turned and ran.

  He burst through the edge of the dome and fell into the mud beyond, his mind feeling like so much shredded cheese.

  Rain spattered against his face and he let it. He stayed in the mud for a few long minutes and let the water run into his mouth, until he could no longer taste blood.

  When his brain seemed to figure out what time meant again, he sat up, pushed himself to his feet, wiped his hands, and took off his climbing harness. He laid the gear on the ground very deliberately.

  Then he turned toward the path that led to the farmhouse.

  “Right, then,” he muttered. “Enough is enough.”

  Skyler ran as fast as his legs would carry him, which wasn’t especially fast at first, but he gained momentum with each step.

  At the farmhouse he called out for Pablo, but the man was not around. No matter, Skyler decided, and set to work.

  “You motherfuckers want to play with time?” he said to the walls as he dressed a scrape on his arm. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”