Alone

by Scott Sigler

  I flick my wrist left and then right. Bishop does the same. Our bracelets glow with the promise of death.

  We reach the ship in minutes. It’s twisted and broken. It will clearly never fly again, but it’s mostly in one piece. Thin smoke curls up from a dozen tiny tears and cracks. The nose cone is badly dented.

  Bishop waves at Borjigin to get his attention, then points to the ground. A hatch opens on the back of the giant’s head. There is a long ladder running down the giant’s spine, but Borjigin ignores it—with agility I would have never expected from him, he balance-walks along the giant’s shoulder and down its arm toward us. He jumps into the scoop, then waves at someone still inside the chest.

  “Put us down!”

  A whir of machinery, the hiss of hydraulics.

  The scoop hits the ground. We scramble out onto the street.

  The lumpy black ship seems much bigger up close. Eight to ten people would fit inside it comfortably.

  Bishop runs to the nose cone, looks through a crack.

  “I think there’s someone moving in there!”

  Borjigin sprints to the side of the ship, finds a door just behind the cockpit. The door is badly bent and refuses to open enough for him to enter. Bishop and I join in—the three of us yank and yank until the door pops opens with a shriek of complaining metal.

  I scramble into the ship’s shadows, Bishop at my heels. Sunlight filters through cracks in the hull, lighting up beams of swirling smoke.

  A black form falls out of the pilot’s seat.

  It’s a Grownup, gnarled and thin, wearing the metal frame and clear mask that lets its kind breathe on Omeyocan. I can’t make out the face through all this smoke.

  I aim my bracelet. Bishop does the same.

  The Grownup is trembling, coughing so hard its thin body shudders. Its skinny legs are twisted, misshapen and limp.

  It lifts its head.

  A sunbeam finds its way through the cracked hull to light up the Grownup’s visor and the face behind it. Two bulbous red eyes look at me, eyes that whirl with a soft, red glow.

  “Little Savage,” it says between violent coughs. “Do be a…be a sweetie, and…don’t kill me a second time.”

  It’s Brewer. I can’t believe it.

  I lower my arm. “What are you doing here?”

  He raises a trembling coal-black arm, points a bone-thin finger behind Bishop and me.

  “Beware the Cherished who bears gifts,” he says. “Or who gifts bears with chairs that itch.”

  Bishop and I both turn and look deeper into the ruined lumpy ship. Through the swirling sunbeam smoke, I see a long shape, thick straps holding it tight against gray foam padding.

  I recognize the shape.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.

  Bishop looks from the shape to me, then back to the shape again.

  “What is it?”

  I saw something like it up on top of the Observatory, only that one was broken up into a hundred pieces. This one? This one is new. This one is whole.

  “It’s an antenna,” I say. “Brewer brought us an antenna.”

  I’m in the hospital. Kenzie Smith and I stand next to a closed white coffin. Inside it, Brewer.

  “He’s in bad shape,” Kenzie says. “His left side took the brunt of it—broken tibia, fibula broken in three places, fractured femur, broken hip bone. A couple of cracked ribs for good measure, although I’ve never seen ribs like his before. Whatever they did to make Grownups live for so long changed their bodies immensely.”

  Brewer passed out as soon as we tried to move him. I’ll never forget his scream of pain. Bishop used his signal flags to call for vehicles and medical help.

  Nevins, Peura and Harman rushed to the crash site almost as fast as Kenzie did. Once Brewer was safely away, they crawled into the lumpy ship, excited beyond any level of self-control. They oohed and aahed over the antenna, squealed with delight at finally understanding where a few of their mystery parts were supposed to go. Some bits broke in the crash, but the boys are confident that between the new and the old they now have enough working pieces to make a functioning antenna.

  “How long until he’s out of there?” I ask Kenzie.

  “Depends on if you want him on his feet or in a wheelchair. That hip will take weeks in the med-chamber, if I can heal him at all. His bones are so brittle.”

  “I don’t care if he can walk, as long as he can talk.”

  He risked his life to deliver the antenna. Why? Can he tell us why the Xolotl came to Omeyocan? Can he tell us why the alien ships are here?

  “There’s something else,” Kenzie says. “He’s dying.”

  “Of course he’s dying, he’s a thousand godsdamned years old.”

  She shakes her head. “He’s got small-cell carcinoma. It’s metastasized.”

  Kenzie stares at me for a moment, all solemn, waiting for a response.

  I shrug. “I don’t know what that means.”

  She waves her hand over the top of the white pedestal next to the coffin. An image sparkles to life: the outline of a thin man, legs together, hands at his sides. The image is white. His chest is dotted with spots of deep green. There are spots of green all over him, including his head.

  “He has lung cancer,” she says. “And it has spread to his lymph nodes, his liver, his bones…his brain. He must be in excruciating pain.”

  I look at the white coffin, as if I can suddenly see through it to the gnarled, ancient man inside. I think back to when I first spoke to him, up on the Xolotl.

  “Lung cancer,” I say. “Would that make you cough?”

  “At his stage, yes. A lot.”

  “So cure him. The coffins can fix that, right?”

  Kenzie shakes her head. “Med-chambers can do a lot, but many conditions are beyond the technology.”

  Zubiri’s arm. Delilah’s leg. Some things can’t be healed.

  “How long until he dies?”

  Kenzie thinks this over for a moment, runs a hand through her hair.

  “Based on what I know, what I see, he should have been dead a year ago. I honestly don’t know how he’s still alive. He can’t have more than a few weeks left. A few days, probably.”

  If he dies before he can tell us why he came…

  “Fix what you can as fast as you can,” I say. “Then wake him up.”

  I turn to leave.

  “Wait,” Kenzie says. “I need to talk to you about Spingate. She’s extremely upset.”

  My jaw tightens. “She’s a murderer. Her feelings are not important to me right now.”

  “You won’t let her see her own child. It’s killing her.”

  “Which means the baby is safe,” I say.

  Kenzie rubs her eyes. “Theresa wouldn’t hurt little Kevin.”

  “And I wouldn’t have thought she could hurt Bello, either.”

  This is taking a toll on Kenzie, draining her. She looks at me with an expression I’ve become all too familiar with—she wants this to make sense. She wants answers.

  Answers that I don’t have.

  “Theresa is the sweetest person I know,” Kenzie said. “How could she have done that to Bello?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Kenzie glances at the lines of coffins. She shivers.

  “What’s happening to us, Em? When is this going to stop?”

  I’ve never seen her this distraught.

  “I have no idea,” I say. “I’m doing the best I can.”

  She forces a smile. “I know. But please, reconsider not letting Spin see her baby. All right?”

  I think of Bello, hanging by her wrists, and Spingate, holding the bloody rod. Was that really a one-time thing, or could it happen again?

  “I’ll think about it,” I say.

  Kenzie looks off, nods, then goes back to work on the pedestal display next to Brewer’s coffin.

  We’re atop the Observatory.

  Dawn sets the sky aglow.

  Brewer sits
in a wheelchair, blanket over his legs, staring out at Omeyocan’s endless expanse. A strong breeze sweeps clouds of vine ash across the city, makes Gaston’s black locks flutter, pulls a few tickling strands of hair free from my braid.

  Gaston, Bishop, Aramovsky, Kenzie Smith and I are here with Brewer. Kenzie insisted on coming so she could keep an eye on her patient. I brought Aramovsky because he knows religion, which I suspect is at the root of everything we face. And because I think he may have stopped me from killing Spingate. I was that lost in my rage. I’m not about to set him free, but I think he’s earned some time out of his cell.

  Gaston won’t look anyone in the eye. He’s deeply ashamed of Spingate’s hateful act. I think he feels responsible, somehow, as if it’s his fault he let her out of his sight.

  I stare at Brewer, try to sort through my feelings. He’s horrifying to behold; gnarled, wrinkled and spindly, the embodiment of the evil that’s been done to us. But he is also the person who protected us, spent centuries keeping us from being erased. Without him, we might never have awoken at all, let alone escaped the Xolotl.

  Looking at him now, though, in person, not over some pedestal connection, I finally see the real B. Brewer—an ancient, broken man staring out at the lost dream of his life.

  Bishop carried the wheelchair up the spiral staircase with Brewer still in it. Bishop moved as gently as he could, but with each step Brewer let out a little whimper. A broken hip must be an awful thing. We asked Brewer several times if he wanted to stop. He didn’t.

  Because more than anything else, he wanted to see the planet that had been promised to him so long ago.

  His eyes are bigger than ours, rounder. They stick out slightly from his head, almost touching the clear mask that covers his face. Combined with the fleshy folds that hang where his nose and mouth should be, the Grownups look hideous.

  “I waited twelve centuries for this view,” he says. “Give or take a century.”

  His voice is soft, muffled by the mask. The mask filters out the poisons from Omeyocan’s air. Poisons for him. We’re different—we were created to live here.

  “Or take,” he says. “Take a flake and cake a rake.”

  I glance at Bishop. He’s pulling slightly at his lower lip, staring at Brewer, a worried look on his face. I understand how he feels. Up on the Xolotl, I wondered if Brewer was crazy. Now I’m sure of it. Since Kenzie let Brewer out of the hospital coffin, the man has been babbling, repeating words, making nonsensical rhymes.

  On the slab above and behind us, we hear Nevins, Peura and Harman installing the new antenna. The irony digs at me—we tried desperately to fix the antenna so Bello could talk to the Xolotl, and now that she’s dead the Xolotl has sent us an antenna.

  If Spingate had waited just one more day, Bello would still be alive.

  Soon, Peura tells me, we’ll be able to talk to the Xolotl. I’m hoping for that, yes, but for much more—if we can reach the Goblin or the Dragon, maybe we can communicate with those aliens before it is too late.

  Maybe I can make peace instead of war.

  Until the boys get the antenna working, though, this crazy, ancient man is our only connection to the bigger picture.

  “So dirty,” Brewer says. “Dirty dirty gurty city.”

  Was Uchmal supposed to be his paradise? He endured centuries of pain to reach this place.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I say. “Most of the buildings are fine. Only the vines burned.”

  Huge craters dotting the city contradict my words.

  “Grungy mungy,” Brewer says.

  I glance to the sky. It’s an involuntary tic now—whenever I’m outside I look up, wondering when the next attack will come.

  Before we brought Brewer up here, Gaston told me both the Goblin and the Dragon had passed below the horizon, out of sight of our radio telescope. We don’t know where those ships are. They might be landing troops on the far side of the planet for all we know. But if they do that, those troops will have to march or fly thousands of miles to reach us. Bishop says that’s not strategically sound. He thinks they’ll land closer, if not in the city itself—which means we’ll soon see those ships again.

  “Brewer,” I say, “you asked us to bring you up here. Now we need you to focus and answer some questions. Can you do that?”

  “Do not speak to me as if I am the child, girl. Respect your elders who are also the same age as you but not really. Ask and ye shall receive bereave conceive.”

  I take a breath, steady myself. So many questions. That we might finally get answers nearly overwhelms me. I’ll focus on the most important questions first.

  “Why did you bring the antenna?”

  “Because you asked me to.”

  I glance at Kenzie.

  “You mean Matilda asked you to,” she says softly to Brewer. “Yes?”

  Brewer coughs. “Potato, tomahto, vibrato.”

  He’s working with Matilda now? The ship she used to escape Omeyocan is the same one he came down in, so that much adds up.

  I step to the right side of Brewer’s wheelchair, squat down on my heels.

  “You kept Matilda and the others from overwriting us. You were her enemy. Why are you working with her now?”

  He looks down at me. His red eyes seem strange…kind of unfocused, clouded.

  “I know why you want that girl, Matilda, but we could be the last humans in existence,” he says. “We must keep the children alive. We must help them against the aliens. I remember how to fly—I’ll take the spare antenna down to them.”

  He’s looking right at me, but he thinks I’m her. Does he not know where he is?

  The last humans in existence. Just mad babbling? He’s crazy, but the way he said it doesn’t feel like mad babbling. In all this time, I’ve never really thought about where other people might be—it’s just been us.

  We can’t be the only ones. Can we?

  “Brewer, you already flew down to Omeyocan,” I say. I gesture to the horizon. “Just look.”

  He stares at me for a few seconds, then gazes out over the jungle.

  “Beautiful,” he says. “Did you know I waited twelve centuries for this view?”

  I stand, huddle with Kenzie, Bishop, Gaston and Aramovsky.

  “Damn, Smith,” Gaston says. “Could you have drugged this loser up any more?”

  “Be quiet,” Kenzie snaps. The wind whips at her brown hair. “You don’t know a damn thing about medicine, Gaston. I don’t think this behavior is from the painkillers. Not all of it, anyway. I think Brewer is senile.”

  Senile. I know that can happen to old people, and Brewer is over a thousand years old. Whatever was done to make him live this long, his body and his brain are finally wearing out.

  I again squat by his side. I don’t want to touch him, but I take his hand anyway. My skin crawls, as if I’m picking up a fist-sized centipede. His grip is weak. His gnarled skin is cold.

  He squeezes my hand, gives it a little reassuring shake.

  “It’s all right, Matilda, I’ll go,” he says. “With what happened last time, they’ll kill you as soon as they see you. They’ll kill any Cherished on sight. Except me, maybe. I’m the only one Little Savage might spare.”

  Brewer thinks he’s talking to Matilda, but he’s right—I do want to kill her. If I’d done that when I first had the chance, O’Malley would still be alive.

  Frustration bubbles up within me. This isn’t fair, godsdammit. Bello wouldn’t talk and now she’s dead. Brewer came down and now he’s senile?

  Aramovsky leans close to me, whispers.

  “If he thinks you’re Matilda, pretend to be Matilda. Get as much information as you can.”

  Aramovsky’s voice: so calm, so steady. It’s actually kind of soothing.

  Pretend to be Matilda. I’ll give it a try.

  “Brewer, tell me what the antenna will do for them again?”

  “The children are under siege,” he says. “If we can reach them, we can help the w
helps with orbital observation.”

  He waves his free hand like he’s dismissing some annoying comment.

  “Yes-yes-yes in a dress, I know I destroyed the antenna in the first place, but you had that coming. Now isn’t the time for quibbles or nibbles. If humanity is to survive, this must be done.”

  He sabotaged the original antenna? Why? Another mystery to solve, but one for later.

  “Eyes in the sky,” Bishop says, excited by this concept. “If we face ground troops, knowing where they are is critical.”

  This time it’s Gaston who whispers to me.

  “Find out why the Xolotl won’t fight. If Matilda wants to keep you alive, the best way is to destroy those trying to kill you. Why doesn’t she engage?”

  This would be so much easier if Brewer knew where he was, perhaps when he was. I think of a way to phrase the question.

  “We should just destroy those other ships,” I say. “Don’t you agree?”

  The ancient creature laughs—a harsh, wet cough cuts the laugh short. Bits of gray paste splatter against the inside of his visor.

  Brewer’s head lolls back. His eyes scrunch tight. Painkillers or not, he’s clearly fighting against horrific agony.

  He takes a moment to gather himself, then answers.

  “Destroy them with what? The six decrepit Macanas Vick that Tick Tick wastes his time with?”

  Macanas…Vick Tick Tick…he’s talking nonsense.

  “Macanas,” Aramovsky says, almost shouting the word. He’s wide-eyed, immersed in a flashfire moment. “Those are…I know those. They’re fighter craft, interceptors, made for space combat.”

  The name means nothing to me, but Brewer nods.

  “I monitored the fighter battle between those two mother ships,” he says. “Our Macanas are completely outclassed, if they work at all. Destroy those other ships, you say. Somehow, Matilda, you still don’t appreciate what that last battle did to the Xolotl. I mean, it only happened two centuries ago, so maybe you haven’t had time to process it.”

  I again glance to the sky, feel that imaginary clock ticking down. Something drew those ships here. That same something must have drawn us.

  I ask the most important question there is