Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology

by Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler

  But the cloak itself is the freakiest part. Lacy networks of veins are visible throughout it, and they all connect to the torso, the scythe limb, and the legs. It’s not clothing. It’s a layer of skin, like a bat wing, wrapped around the Intruder and hooding his face.

  His? I see no male genitalia, but this thing is alien enough that I’m not ready to suggest that means it’s female either.

  Kurtzman speaks first.

  “Michel, how hard would it be to fake that?”

  “Not very hard. If the whole thing was computer animated and hacked into the camera feed, the infrared and ultraviolet elements would simply be another part of the model. It’s the work of a real artist, though.”

  “Okay, good,” says Kurtzman, blowing out a sigh of relief. “I’m going to choose to believe that this is a brilliant computer animation modeled by someone with an outstanding attention to anatomical detail.”

  “What would motivate that?” Lee asks. “Where is the payoff?”

  “I’m going to let you figure that out, because I refuse to believe that an alien teleported into this office.”

  The brain trust begins yammering in jargon again.

  It’s esoteric jargon, but the gist of things is that somebody is looking at a different set of payoffs than we are, and without more information we have no way to deduce motivations. Lee has graphs that prove this. But even without this information nobody is seriously considering taking the Intruder’s message about the afterlife at face value, and nobody seems willing to believe that the Intruder is an alien, or an angel, or anything other than a very complicated hoax.

  Somebody needs to take the not-a-hoax angle. It’s hard to think with all the noise, and technically I’m being paid to pay attention, not close my eyes and concentrate, but I close my eyes anyway.

  If I were responsible for shepherding human souls into the afterlife, and I could teleport anywhere in the world, I’d go talk to the pope, or maybe the president. I’d offer evidence, and be as helpful as I could. Of course, appearing in those halls of power would be like begging to get shot. So I’d do what heads of state do, and find a way to make an appointment.

  The Intruder is definitely not acting like I would. Maybe it can’t teleport just anywhere. Maybe teleporting is difficult, dangerous, or expensive. Maybe the Intruder’s brain is so different from mine that I can’t figure out how it thinks. Except that line of thought is the same as giving up, so I’ll throw that out, and keep assuming that if I knew more I could understand its motives.

  I can spot a lie from somebody I know, but the Intruder is, frankly, alien. I can’t tell if it’s lying. Or at least I can’t trust myself to spot the lie the easy way. But if I think this through, if I assume that the Intruder is a rational creature, then the way it delivered its message just reeks of subterfuge.

  So if I assume that it’s rational, I’m now assuming it’s dishonest. If it’s dishonest, what is it hiding? What does the lying accomplish?

  If we believe the Intruder, then it will cost our company a lot of money, and it’ll keep human lifespans from getting longer. From that perspective it’s a lot like killing people. The Intruder is asking us to kill people. That’s something I’ve got some experience with. Every day I remind myself that I might need to kill people who are trying to kill my people.

  When I roll out of bed tomorrow morning and remind myself that I might have to kill someone, I should also consider where to aim if a one-armed, scythe-handed alien teleported into the room and tried to kill my boss.

  That’s actually something I can work on.

  “Hey, Michel,” I say, snapping out of my chair. “May I review the infrared again?”

  “I’m busy trying to reverse-engineer the auto-tune effect on the voice, Mr. Cole.”

  “I’ll do it,” says Wollreich. “The play button is this one, right?”

  Michel sighs in exasperation and fiddles with his kit. “There.”

  I look up at the screen, and there is the infrared image of the Intruder, the eerie vein pattern wrapped around it, with other green patches showing the limbs and the head. The intensity varies, steadily pulsing in some places, gradually shifting around in others. Human forms do the same thing in infrared, only without the vein-riddled cloak.

  Like a human, the Intruder’s head stays fairly bright. The distribution of heat is a little different, but it still looks like a head.

  Then, just before the Intruder vanishes, a bulbous shape near its second elbow brightens and then fades quickly to black.

  “That spot there!” I say, pointing. “What was that?”

  Michel rewinds and pauses. “The cold patch?”

  “Yeah. It was hot a few frames back.”

  Michel rewinds further. “Oh. So it is.”

  “I’ve never seen that happen before in infrared. Usually when something cools off you can see the heat migrating to surrounding tissues.”

  “Obviously,” says Kurtzman, “the heat went into hyperspace where we can’t see it. Now can you please go stand guard in your corner? Or maybe outside. You’re making me nervous.”

  “Mo, I’ve got this,” I say, stepping back into my corner. “Go put some coffee into Barry.”

  Mo nods, and he and Barry slip out.

  Despite his sarcasm, Kurtzman made a good point. The elbow hot spot dumped heat someplace, and then the Intruder disappeared. “Hyperspace” is as good an answer as any. More importantly, I have the answer I was looking for. The Intruder’s head emits steadily the same way a human head does. If I shoot the way I’ve practiced, a double-tap to the center of mass, and then a single shot to the head, that should work.

  Michel has begun lecturing Kurtzman and Lee on what can and cannot be hacked in the camera and the transmitter, and what kind of supporting hardware would be required in the various scenarios. It’s interesting, and I can actually follow most of it, but what I should be doing is a threat assessment regarding a teleporting alien. Just in case.

  Not that anyone else in here is likely to think that’s a good use of my time. The brain trust still thinks this is a hoax of some sort, and I suspect I’ve only got a few minutes before they come back around to grilling—

  “Mr. Cole,” says Michel. “Where did you acquire your spy gear?”

  Okay, then. Less time than I thought.

  “Handbrains & Hi-Def, it’s an electronics boutique uptown. Mostly they sell smartphones and surround-sound systems, but the owner is ex-CIA, and he’s a friend of mine. He sells custom equipment like this out of his apartment upstairs.”

  “And you just happened to have this equipment on you on Monday?”

  “No. I bought it thirteen months ago when I started feeling uneasy about the fact that this office was unmonitored. Then I felt guilty for buying it, so I told Mo to carry it. Then Mr. Wollreich lied to us about why he pushed the panic button, and I had Barry distract Mr. Wollreich while Mo planted the camera in the corner.”

  “Thirteen months? You’ve been planning to bug my office for over a year?” Wollreich is turning red.

  Oh. If I had that bug for a year I can see how the hacking story would start to look good.

  This is difficult to explain, but it’s not the first time I’ve had this kind of conversation.

  It’s never pleasant.

  “I plan a lot of things, sir. Every morning I get out of bed and I plan to shoot someone. I don’t know who that someone is, but in my mind’s eye they’re trying to assault you, or perhaps shove you into a van. My life revolves around planning to do things I would really rather not have to do, but which I will do, without hesitation, to keep you safe. I carry a loaded weapon, as does every member of my team. I’m fifteen pounds lighter than I look because some of my upper-body bulk is a twelve-hundred-dollar undershirt that will allow me to intercept a bullet on your behalf and still come in to work the following week. So yes, I planned to bug your office, but I didn’t plant the bug until it seemed important.”

  Wollreich stares at me, and
I stare back.

  Lee speaks first, and she sounds shaken. “You have a gun in here? In this office?”

  I don’t look away from Wollreich when I answer her. “I do, Dr. Lee. I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable.”

  And then it occurs to me that as a game theorist, she’s been doing a threat assessment, same as me, only with math, and the numbers are telling her that the biggest threat in the room right now is me.

  I look away from Wollreich, losing that staring contest on purpose. I slump my shoulders just a little bit, a trick a bouncer friend showed me for those times when you want to look less dangerous than you really are. I pull a chair away from the wall and sit down. Everybody is looking at me nervously.

  “Yes, you can explain the video by pinning it on me and Mo, but there’s no good reason for us to have done that, and that still doesn’t account for what your CEO saw.” I look up at Wollreich.

  He’s still red-faced. Angry about the bug, and probably angry at his colleagues for not believing he saw what he said he saw. He might have started doubting it himself.

  “Cole,” he says. “Humor them and wait outside, please.”

  I nod, and slip through the door. Wollreich clears his throat, a sure sign that he’s about to start in on somebody, but the soundproof door shuts and I miss the show.

  Wollreich knows my team and I didn’t do this, doesn’t he? I’m not out here because he doesn’t trust me, though that trust did take a beating when I bugged the office. No, I’m out here because I look dangerous, even slouching, and Wollreich needs his geniuses to relax.

  I understand. Armed people make everybody nervous. Hell, even the Intruder was careful not to be there when Mo and I arrived. It timed the whole speech perfectly. Smart.

  How smart, though? Can it predict our behavior? Has it been observing us, and learning about us? If so, it must know that Wollreich’s team won’t just shut the project down. It might even know that they’d blame me and my team, and shoo us out of the office to the far side of the soundproof doors. . . .

  Both cups are poisoned.

  I draw my pistol and turn for the office door.

  “Everybody, my position.”

  It doesn’t matter what the brain trust decides. What matters is that they gather where they can be separated from their security. And if I’m wrong? I hope I am wrong, really.

  I fumble the number on the keypad and get an angry beep. That’s something I should have practiced more.

  “Roger. All call to forty. Hang in there, boss.” Right in my ear.

  I fumble the number again, adding a forty right in the middle. I definitely should have practiced this more.

  On my third attempt the door unlocks with a click. Weapon up, I throw the door open to the sound of screaming.

  There is a shadow in the middle of the room, a shadow swinging a scythe.

  The Intruder is ready for me, lunging. That scythe is swinging my way, and I have no doubts at all regarding its lethality. But unlike that damned keypad this is something I’ve trained myself to do. I focus on the center of mass, and squeeze off my first shot.

  The Intruder staggers at the impact, lunge interrupted. My pistol returns to position, the recoil compensated for by rehearsed reflex.

  I squeeze off the second shot just as the scythe swings into view, missing my face by inches. The round strikes the elbow joint, which explodes in light and sound, like a flash-bang grenade, but made out of purple and bells.

  It’s not blinding or deafening, but as I squeeze off my third shot, the headshot, I realize that my target is not where it was supposed to be. The Intruder has tucked and crumpled into a dark heap, and my third shot spalls into the bulletproof glass of the window.

  I step into the room, sweeping for threats. Wollreich is crouched behind the end of his desk, the opposite end from where the panic button is concealed. Michel is under a chair in the corner. Kurtzman, Lee, and the two biologist types are all sprawled unmoving and bloody on the floor.

  “Cole! What—”

  Wollreich is cut off by a burst of static noise, and by more screaming as the room starts to fill with shadows.

  I dive toward Wollreich and feel a tug at the collar of my suit. The shadows resolve into two more Intruders, scythes swinging.

  My Glock 30 has a ten-round magazine. Seven of those rounds remain. I double-tap the nearest Intruder, and then put a third round through its pale face. It drops. I hip-check Wollreich to the ground as I spin toward the second, only to find a third much closer, the one whose scythe must have grazed my suit collar.

  Double-tap, and one to the face. That one’s down too.

  Taking nothing but headshots is a trick for video game junkies. That’s not what I’ve trained for, but the last Intruder’s pale, dinner-plate-size face is an easier target than its shadow-shrouded center of mass, and I only have one round left.

  I focus on that face as the Intruder rushes me, and then I fire. Its head rocks back, those weird arm and leg joints splay out almost spiderlike, and then it drops motionless.

  I eject the empty magazine and reload. Reflex. I step around the table. Wollreich and Michel are fine, but the other four are slashed up and lie completely still. They look cold, like they’ve been dead for hours under the fresh blood. Those scythes must do more than just cut.

  “My God, Cole . . . How did you know?”

  “Strong hunch, but I didn’t know anything. I was ready for you to fire me for barging in.”

  There is another burst of static. It’s coming from the shuddering lump of darkness that is the original Intruder. That’s right, I missed its head. But I did hit something important, because it hasn’t teleported out of here.

  I step over to it and put my foot on the scythe blade.

  “Who are you and what do you want?”

  There’s more static, and then it clears and we’re back to an auto-tuned Christopher Lee.

  “We are the Angels of Death. We shepherd you to—”

  “Oh, shut up!” says Wollreich. “You’re no shepherd! You murdered four people!”

  I still don’t have a read on this thing, but I’m pretty sure it’s lying.

  “Talk,” I say, gesturing with my pistol.

  It hisses with static, and then speaks.

  “We number in the millions. Your deaths sustain us. Our population has grown with yours, alongside yours. If you stop dying, we starve. If we cannot pick up fallen fruit, we will have to shake the tree.”

  It’s telling the truth. I’m sure of it. Maybe there’s more to my gift than the ability to read facial cues.

  “You’re done shaking trees. We know you’re out there,” Wollreich says.

  “You know nothing. We can strike anywhere, at any time. We can see you, from our side. There will be a brief, bloody war, and then we will shepherd the rest of you more carefully. This will not be the first time we have culled in order to feed.”

  “Except this time you tried to negotiate,” I say. “There are a lot of us, and we’re smarter and tougher than we’ve ever been. You tried diplomacy and subterfuge because war is expensive.”

  I should know. I was in Afghanistan, fighting an actual land war in Asia. I smile.

  Failalo shouts into my headset. “Cole! Intruders in the data center! They look like Death, sir.”

  I can hear gunshots in the background. Gunshots and screaming. “Grab your stuff and stay with me, gentlemen,” I say to Wollreich and Michel. “We’re not done.”

  This war is going to be more expensive than the one in Asia, but I think this time I may actually get to save the world.

  SIXTH OF THE DUSK

  BRANDON SANDERSON

  Death hunted beneath the waves. Dusk saw it approach, an enormous blackness within the deep blue, a shadowed form as wide as six narrowboats tied together. Dusk’s hands tensed on his paddle, his heartbeat racing as he immediately sought out Kokerlii.

  Fortunately, the colorful bird sat in his customary place on the prow of the boat, id
ly biting at one clawed foot raised to his beak. Kokerlii lowered his foot and puffed out his feathers, as if completely unmindful of the danger beneath.

  Dusk held his breath. He always did, when unfortunate enough to run across one of these things in the open ocean. He did not know what they looked like beneath those waves. He hoped to never find out.

  The shadow drew closer, almost to the boat now. A school of slimfish passing nearby jumped into the air in a silvery wave, spooked by the shadow’s approach. The terrified fish showered back to the water with a sound like rain. The shadow did not deviate. The slimfish were too small a meal to interest it.

  A boat’s occupants, however . . .

  It passed directly underneath. Sak chirped quietly from Dusk’s shoulder; the second bird seemed to have some sense of the danger. Creatures like the shadow did not hunt by smell or sight, but by sensing the minds of prey. Dusk glanced at Kokerlii again, his only protection against a danger that could swallow his ship whole. He had never clipped Kokerlii’s wings, but at times like this he understood why many sailors preferred Aviar that could not fly away.

  The boat rocked softly; the jumping slimfish stilled. Waves lapped against the sides of the vessel. Had the shadow stopped? Hesitated? Did it sense them? Kokerlii’s protective aura had always been enough before, but . . .

  The shadow slowly vanished. It had turned to swim downward, Dusk realized. In moments, he could make out nothing through the waters. He hesitated, then forced himself to get out his new mask. It was a modern device he had acquired only two supply trips back: a glass faceplate with leather at the sides. He placed it on the water’s surface and leaned down, looking into the depths. They became as clear to him as an undisturbed lagoon.

  Nothing. Just that endless deep. Fool man, he thought, tucking away the mask and getting out his paddle. Didn’t you just think to yourself that you never wanted to see one of those?