by Alex Mersey
He didn’t have many memories of Mr Henderson, hadn’t known him well or for very long, but he was a good man. A solid man. He’d given Chris and Williams a ride to Little Falls. His wife, June, had cared for Williams, invited them into her home. He had a wife and daughter who’d grieve him, a baby granddaughter who’d never know him.
Chris knew loss. He’d buried his mother a couple of weeks ago after a short battle with cancer. He still ached for her, but at least he’d had those last months with her to say goodbye and come to grips with the loss. This was different. A man had just been erased in the blink of an eye. Gone. No body to bury. As if he’d never existed.
The Silver gave them no time to collect their wits. He turned that beckoning finger on another victim, Todd, and said in that toneless voice, “You will please come with me.”
Todd went white in the face.
“Take me.” His father pushed in front of him. “I’ll go with you.”
“This is a selection process,” the Silver said. “Volunteers are not required.”
The man stood his ground firmly, protecting Todd at his back. “No, not my son.”
“You are the boy’s father?”
The man nodded, spoke with desperation. “Yes, yes I am. I’ll go anywhere with you, do anything you want. Take me in his place.”
“We will consider this new information,” the Silver said. “Now you are please required to step aside and allow your son to come with me.”
“Dad, no,” Todd whined from behind.
Doc Nate stepped forward to address the Silver. “You have studied our language,” he said, speaking so calmly, Chris didn’t know how he did it. “You know something of human nature, is that right?”
The Silver turned those button eyes on him, tilted his head as if contemplating the question. He didn’t answer, though, just looked.
“If you want us to cooperate, you must at least tell us something. Where will you take him? What will you do with him?”
The Silver took his time processing Doc Nate’s words, then shifted his gaze back to Todd’s father. “If the boy proves useful, he will walk out free. Anyone who refuses to cooperate will be ended. You are please required to step aside and allow your son to come with me.”
With Mr Henderson on everyone’s mind, Todd’s father turned to whisper in in his ear, then wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Not a hug, but to move him forward, encouraging him to go with the Silver. Todd had no choice. He went, dragging his feet, glancing back every other step, fear written all over his white-washed face.
Chris felt sick to his stomach as he watched the Silver melt open a doorway in the fence and hand Todd over to one of the waiting Silvers. For all Todd’s faults, he didn’t wish this on the guy. He didn’t wish this on his worst enemy.
The Silver wasn’t done. He selected two further men, vaguely familiar faces Chris had seen around town but never spoken to. They went without a fuss. Maybe it was the promise of walking out free. More likely it was the pile of ashes they had to walk around.
- 14 -
Sean
Something was wrong. Sean woke up with a crick in his neck, but that wasn’t it. He’d slept downstairs on the sofa to keep an eye on Williams—the fog of restless sleep cleared and the obvious mistake in the room glared at him. The armchair across from him was empty.
He swung his feet to the floor. “Williams!”
Had someone moved him? Had he wandered off during the night?
“Good,” a baritone rumbled from his left. “You’re up.”
“Williams?” Sean’s gaze jerked toward the kitchen doorway. The man stood there, slugging from a bottle of water, looking none the worse for his ordeal. “You’re back?”
Williams came forward. “I never went anywhere.”
“You know what I mean.” Sean bent over to drag his boots closer, frowned up at the man. “Do you know what I mean?”
Williams looked at him thoughtfully, then nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“And now? You feeling okay?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Glad to hear it.” Sean pulled on a boot and worked the lace, his eyes never leaving Williams. “I have some bad news.”
“I was fully aware the whole time,” Williams said. “Everyone’s missing. Chris is gone.”
Sean’s fingers stilled. “You were fully aware?”
“I heard everything.”
“But you couldn’t move or speak?”
Williams ran a hand over his smooth skull. “I think I could have, if I’d wanted to.”
“You didn’t want to?”
“Do you mind if we leave the psychoanalysis for later?” Williams said, moving toward the entrance hall. “My priority now is retrieving Chris.”
“We spent hours on the road yesterday, looked everywhere.” Sean pulled on his other boot as he spoke. “We’re not giving up, of course, but you should know where we’re at.”
“Maybe you just need a new perspective,” Williams called over his shoulder, not sounding too concerned. Then again, the man rarely showed his feelings either way.
“We need a lot of things,” Sean muttered. Including a couple of miracles. “Williams!” he barked before the man disappeared around the corner. “Give me a goddamn minute. This is important. We should try to understand the state you were in before we go out there. You crippled our team. If it happens again, if it happens to someone else, if we find any of the missing people and they’re in that coma state, it would help if we knew how to reach them, how to pull them back.”
Williams turned, cocked his head. “You have one minute.”
“Okay.” Sean stood, scrubbed his jaw. “So what was going on inside your head while you were in that coma?”
“It wasn’t a coma,” Williams said. “I was awake, fully conscious.”
“You said you think you could have moved if you wanted to?”
“Maybe, I can’t say for sure. It didn’t feel like I was paralyzed.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
Williams shrugged. “I was waiting.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know, McAllister. That’s the best way to describe it. I was waiting. I saw, I heard, I understood what was going on around me. But it was like watching a movie. No, not even that. I felt no interest at all, didn’t care about the ending.”
Sean blew out a breath of frustration. “Why the hell are you being so cagey about this?”
Williams’ fisted a hand at his side. “I’m not hiding anything, McAllister. I can’t tell you what I don’t know. This morning, yes, sure, I feel vulnerable, I feel like an idiot, I feel like I should have kicked my own butt and done something.”
“Do you think you were waiting for someone to give you a command?”
Williams just looked at him.
“Right, you don’t know.” Sean moved them on. “How did you pull yourself out of it?”
“I didn’t. I must have dozed off at some point, and when I woke up this morning, I was back to normal.”
“Well, that’s something at least. Either the effect wears off over time, or it’s broken by sleep. Our conscious mind rests and the subconscious takes over when we’re asleep. So whatever the Silver shot you with, maybe it only targets the conscious mind.”
“Your minute is up,” Williams said. “I’m going to find Chris.”
“We’re all going,” Sean said quickly. “Let me fetch Beth and load up the truck with supplies.” That way, they could stay on the road for as long as it took.
“You do that.” Williams turned to walk off. “Meet me on the road. I’ll be heading south out of town.”
“You’re not much of a team player, are you?” muttered Sean.
The only response he got was Williams slamming the front door behind him as he left the house.
Sean had woken Cassie at 2am to take over the watch, so he assumed she was out patrolling. He was surprised, however, to find Beth and Jackson in the clinic. The bli
nds were drawn open and he noted the streaks of pink in the early morning sky. He hadn’t overslept, but it seemed everyone else had arisen with the dawn. Except for Beth. She looked like she hadn’t slept at all, despite Sean deliberately leaving her and Jackson out of the watch duty roster last night. Her eyes were sunken. She rested a hip against the wall, arms folded, mouth pulled tight as she watched him enter.
He didn’t ask if she was okay. She wasn’t. He glanced over to where Jackson leant over the Silver they’d strapped to the hospital bed. If the alien hadn’t been dead before, he definitely was now. Jackson had a scalpel in hand and had already sliced and peeled back large areas of the milky white skin.
Curious, Sean walked closer, momentarily pushing Williams and the search aside. “You’re performing an autopsy on the Silver?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“He calls it the Beast of Byron,” Beth said dryly.
Sean didn’t quite see the connection. “As in Lord Byron, the poet?”
“His daughter Ada, actually.” Jackson straightened to look at Sean. “She was something of a poet, too, as well as a brilliant mathematician. Ever heard of Charles Babbage?”
Sean peered into the exposed cavity of the skull. “Should I have?”
Beth groaned. “Do us all a favor, Jackson, and stick to the highlights this time around.” She pushed away from the wall. “Babbage built an adding machine.”
“It was more like the first version of a computer,” Jackson said. Using the scalpel, he scraped at a spongy mass just behind the eyes.
Sean’s eyes widened when he saw the kill bullet lodged in the milky white mass. “That’s the brain?”
“And this is part of the brain, too, I suspect.” Jackson dug digger with the tip of the scalpel to reveal a small metallic disc buried inside the sponge.
The disc was rectangular, about an inch thick. Solid and metallic, resembling the obsidian material their ships, and the gate at the fort, were constructed from. This disc wasn’t smooth, though. Sean squinted at the patterned surface as Jackson poked to reveal more.
“It looks like some type of circuitry,” Jackson said. “If circuit boards were solid metal and could stop bullets.”
He pointed and Sean saw what he meant. The nose of the bullet had squashed against the disc without penetrating at all.
“I’m not sure if the comparison works in alien technology, but think of it as a bio drive.” Jackson shot Beth a look. “As I was saying about Ada, she helped Babbage work on his Analytical Engine and she as good as predicted that such a machine might one day be used to manipulate language, create art and music, etc. She wrote the first computer program long before the first computer was ever built.”
“Wrap it up,” Beth said.
“Ada’s mother focused her studies on science and mathematics. Her love of poetry and the written word came from her father, Lord Byron. That perfect union of logic and artistic creativity enabled Ada to envision what beauty could be created from a machine.” He prodded the metallic disc in the spongy mass with the scalpel. “This bio drive doesn’t just control the brain. I think the relationship with the Silver’s organic matter is more symbiotic than controlling. Silvers are both machine and biological. The perfect union of robotic and organic.”
“So,” said Beth, “basically a cyborg.”
“A cyborg would be part machine and part human—or alien in this case, I guess,” Jackson said. “The only part of the Silver that’s not biological is this bio drive. It’s like…” he paused, shrugged. “Like a micro-computer that enhances the Silver, tech and organic fused together to function in harmony. Take their skin, for example, it changes properties to form a temporary protective shield. And the weapon that mutates out from the hand. It could be this bio drive that reprograms their bodies on the fly.”
“That sounds like a feasible theory,” Sean admitted. “But I hope to God this, um…let’s call it an onboard computer, can’t rejuvenate or repair the body.”
A spark lit Jackson’s eyes. “Like reanimation?”
Beth folded her arms and glared at him. “That would be a bad thing.”
“Not necessarily,” Jackson said. “If I’m right about the computer and the organic brain being totally co-dependent, then the Silver is dead. But the computer isn’t damaged and should still be fully functional. I’m sure a team of scientists or doctors could do something with that.”
“And how exactly does this help me find my sister?”
“I said I had something important to show you,” Jackson said. “I never said it would help us find the others.”
“We may have better luck with that today,” Sean said, pulling his eyes off the Silver. “Williams is awake and fully recovered.”
Beth’s nose wrinkled. “How?”
“Where is he?” asked Jackson.
“He fell asleep and woke up back to his normal self. That’s as much as I know.” Sean glanced at Jackson. “He’s already out there, putting his Quantico training to good use. We’ll take the truck and meet him on the road south out of town.”
“Did you tell him about Chris?” said Beth.
“I didn’t have to,” Sean said. “He was fully aware of everything happening around him the whole time.”
“But he couldn’t interact with us?” she asked. “Move or talk?”
Sean sighed. “He seems to think he could have, if he wanted.”
“He didn’t want to?”
“I’d guess it’s more complicated than that and he’s not saying much,” Sean said. “If you’re able to pry anything useful out of him, you can tell me all about it.”
He sent Jackson off to fetch bottled water and protein bars, fruit, anything they could eat on the go. Beth loaded their rifles and extra ammo into the truck while Sean filled the tank from their store of siphoned gas. He’d just tossed aside the last emptied gallon canister when Cassie came jogging up to them.
“Everything okay?” he called out, instantly alert.
“Quiet night,” she said, slowing to a halt, her gaze skittering over their preparations. “I see Williams is up and about.”
“You spoke to him?”
“Some, he wasn’t in a chatty mood.”
“We’re headed out again,” Sean told her. “With Williams’ help, we may be able to find some tracks today.”
She looked like she might say something, but bit her lip instead.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, I just feel…” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I feel. Give me an enemy to fight and I’m good to go, but this, this disappearing, it’s different.”
“Cassie.” He reached for her, softening at the vulnerability she’d finally allowed to show. “It’s okay to be scared. I sure as hell am.”
Her prickly spines came out and she jerked out of his touch. “I’m not scared, McAllister, I just wish I had a target to aim at.”
He dropped his hand, looked into her beautiful brown eyes, and there it was, the tug of attraction stirring trouble. He liked Cassie, he liked her a whole damn lot. The fire, the ice, even the storm that came with it. But he was done with chasing and trying to break through her walls.
He backed up a step. “I’ll see what I can do about finding you that target.”
Oblivious to the undercurrents, Beth yelled for Jackson to hurry it up and climbed behind the wheel. She closed the door and hung her head out the rolled down window. “Cassie, you coming?”
Cassie shook her head and turned to go. “I’ll keep an eye on things here.”
Making his way around the truck, Sean’s gaze swept the hazy blue sky. Clear, and not just the weather. One battlecruiser on the ground, one dead Silver strapped to a bed in Doc Nate’s clinic, but where were all the others? He’d watched the Base Ship materialize over New York City from a swirl of cloud and molten mercury, then it was gone, and where was it now? He understood what Cassie meant. He’d survived two direct Silvers attacks and dreaded a third, but this was somehow worse…
the losses still kept coming, but there was no enemy to shoot at.
Sean had no problem admitting he was scared.
Not for his life, but for the people he’d yet to lose.
He’d lost so much already.
Colleagues. Friends. Old lovers. Acquaintances. The strangers with familiar faces who’d lived alongside him in Manhattan.
He prayed each and every day his parents were alive, that their cruise ship had found safe harbor, that their ashes weren’t drifting on the tide, that they hadn’t gone to a watery grave. He’d probably never know and he’d probably never see them again. Even if they were alive, they were lost to him.
And now I’ve lost an entire town.
He tried to shake the despondent mood as he slid into the passenger seat up front, but the unease for the future lingered with the ghosts of his past.
“She thinks we’re wasting our time,” Beth muttered, hands fisted on the wheel, eyes on Cassie’s back as she strolled off down the road.
“That’s not true,” Sean said, not sticking up for Cassie, but wanting to keep Beth together. She didn’t need one less person believing she’d get her sister back today. “She wants to be here in case the convoy from Colonel Ainsley arrives.”
“Her unit is gone, that’s practically her family. If she thought there was any chance of finding them, she’d be out here with us, not babysitting an empty town.”
“You don’t know Cassie.”
“And you do?”
Do I? Cassie didn’t give up much of herself, but he’d seen enough in the short time he’d known her to think maybe he did.
“She’s a solider. She’s disciplined and she plays by the book.” If she ever got around to writing up that report, Sean didn’t doubt his name would still be in it. But when it counted, she hadn’t let him and Williams walk into danger on their own.
Sean put his head back on the seat, looked forward through the windshield without really seeing the stretch of empty road and empty buildings. “She’s strong. Stubborn. She’s fiercely loyal and she doesn’t give up that easily.”
