She stood and winced again as she put pressure on the leg. Xenos was no longer writhing on the floor. She was still.
Oh no! Erika limped back toward the small lump on the ground. She knelt and touched her neck. Xenos’ skin was cool to the touch and dry. At first Erika felt nothing. She pressed a bit harder and finally felt a faint pulse.
Dr. Randall had taken over point position and was inching his way toward the doorway again. He peeked around the corner, his gun up and ready to fire.
He stood on the pile of rubble and stopped. He gestured for her to come to him.
Erika limped over to Dr. Randall and winced with each step. Her leg burned.
“You got them,” he said. He pointed down with his gun, and there were two dead bodies in the hall.
“Doesn’t this seem almost –”
“Too easy? Yes, I was thinking the same thing. They attacked her. Why not us?”
“Exactly.”
“Unless? Maybe the humidity interferes with their wiring, so to speak. Perhaps they are unable to establish a mental interface with us when they’re impaired.”
“Maybe.” Erika hoped Dr. Randall was right, but it seemed unlikely that they’d be able to interface with Xenos yet be unable to use their mental weapon on the humans.
“You’re limping. Are you badly injured?”
“Not sure yet. I took some shrapnel in the leg. It hurts like a …” Erika shook her head and winced.
“Do you think you can make it back to Ian?”
“I don’t really see as how I have a choice, do you?”
Dr. Randall didn’t answer. He strode quickly back to the smooth plaster walls. He opened cabinets and rifled through them, all the while muttering under his breath and cursing aloud.
“Aha!” he said at last. Dr. Randall was carrying a small instrument that looked like something someone would caulk a window with. “Hop up on that table over there and show me the wound in your leg.”
Erika didn’t move. “What’s that stuff in your hand?” Nothing good had come out of this room. Erika wasn’t sure she wanted Dr. Randall to touch her with anything he’d found there.
“You’ll slow us down with that injury. You can barely walk. Now chop-chop. Up on the table.” He was using a ‘dad’ voice. It injected an authority to him that Erika had not seen in him before. Like it had been with her dad, she found she had no will to argue with him and did as he said.
“I wish I knew how to operate the overhead light,” Dr. Randall said. “I assume it’s mind controlled.”
No sooner had he said it than the light came on, nearly blinding Erika. She and Dr. Randall both shielded their eyes, unused to bright lights after their days in the dark recesses of this strange version of A.H.D.N.A.
Dr. Randall looked behind him, and Erika pulled her gun to the ready though she could not see beyond the cone of white light.
“It was Xenos,” Dr. Randall said. He told her ‘thank you’ then bent over Erika’s thigh. He peeled back the fabric of her pants and shook his head. “I thought you said it wasn’t that bad?”
“I said I didn’t know how bad it was.”
Dr. Randall used his knotted fingers to pull a piece of metal from Erika’s flesh.
Erika sucked in a deep breath and bit her lip to keep from crying out.
Dr. Randall held up the bloody shrapnel.
The sight of the bloody metal – on top of everything else – made her nearly hurl. She looked away and gagged. “Don’t show it to me.”
“Sorry,” he said and dropped the shrapnel to the floor. He put the tip of the thing that looked like a caulking gun to Erika’s thigh and pressed a lever. “I hope this is what I think it is.”
A gooey liquid squirted out in a ribbon across the wound. Erika braced herself for a burning sensation like when an open wound is cleaned with alcohol. But the goo caused no pain. In fact, it was cool and soothing.
For a few seconds.
The goo began to dry, and as it did, the rip in Erika’s flesh began to pull together, causing a painful stretching of her skin. She bit her lip and hit her fist on the stone slab to keep herself from screaming.
“Sorry. But it’s doing what I hoped it would. It’s a kind of suture glue, similar to what we have in our time. But it seems more advanced. The wound is coming together quite nicely.” Dr. Randall was bent over, his face mere inches from Erika’s thigh. His eyes lit up as he inspected the gel at work. “Intriguing.”
“Glad you’re having fun. Can we go now?”
“Oh, sorry. We have no time for scientific curiosity, do we?”
Erika chuckled softly as she gingerly hopped off the table. The pain was still there, but it had already eased considerably. “Sorry. No time for you to have a nerdfest over their tech.”
Dr. Randall shoved the suture glue into his pack. “Just in case.”
Erika clapped Dr. Randall lightly on the back. “Come on. Let’s go save a life.”
25
TEX
Tex followed the Regina away from the clones floating quietly in their purple liquid. He remained a few steps behind her as they moved swiftly through the halls of the world of the Conexus. His preternatural speed was back, allowing him to easily keep up with her. He was no longer fatigued or in pain. His limbs were strong, his mind clear. In fact, he had never felt better, not even when he had first escaped A.H.D.N.A. into the Arizona desert.
They entered a corridor that was bathed with a brighter light than any of the others. They moved toward the light at the end of the tunnel-like hall. The light was a familiar color, not the bluish-white that he had seen thus far on his journey. It was softer. Warmer. It reminded him of something he had known once.
The hall ended at a large arched doorway that opened to a huge cavern the size of a small city. The Regina stopped about ten feet into the place, and Tex stopped too. His head swiveled slowly from side to side, taking it in.
His mind raced to keep up with his senses. He knew this place. But how could I know it? I have never been here.
“But you have.”
The artificial light that filtered from above was made to replicate sunlight. It was not as bright as it had been in Aphthartos, but it was the same color. Under his feet were crumbly rocks and dirt, but here and there bricks were embedded into the ground. The rust-red dirt was the remnants of bricks he had once walked on.
And in the center of the cavernous place stood a large, stone monument to another time. It had once been ringed with red and white flowers and well-tended hedges of emerald green. Water had flowed from the center into a trough, and the sound of the tinkling water had echoed off the walls of the cave. The stones still stood though they were worn down and smooth, dry and without a hint of water.
A plaque had once adorned the fountain and had announced to all that entered that the city was Aphthartos. Remnants of the plaque still remained though the only letters left were ‘Tro.’
How? It is not possible.
The Regina’s lips were again so close to his ear that her breath was a light breeze across his cheek. “Welcome home, 9.”
The room swam around him. His legs threatened to give out beneath him. His mind raced with questions; his stomach quivered with fear.
But the Regina’s hands were on his back, his arms, his face. Her fingers lightly touched him, her lips grazed his neck, his ears, his cheeks. She whispered softly, “Be still.” She stood across from him and touched two fingers lightly to his forehead.
In an instant his mind was calm, the fluttering in his stomach gone. Images flooded him, a gentle wave of understanding.
This place in which he stood was the future of Earth. A possible future, anyway. Though mere minutes before he had struggled to understand the language spoken by the Conexus as they interfaced with the machines, he now had full command of it. He was connected through the Regina’s mind to all that they knew. All that they were.
In the time of the Conexus, Earth was no longer viable aboveground. It was
a barren world, devoid of life. The knowledge flooded his mind so quickly, it was difficult for him to keep up. A vision filled him of humans running and afraid. The sky rained fire and cities were aflame. There were creatures with sharp claws and razor teeth.
The scene changed. They were below ground, and two women were bathed in the soft glow of Aphthartos, their faces hidden. Vast arrays of huge glass cylinders were filled with a viscous, purple-tinged liquid. Floating. Peaceful. Eyes sprang open. Alive.
No more war. No disease or starvation. They knew only peace.
“You can know this too.”
“But what were those horrifying creatures? What happens to the humans in my time?”
She did not answer, and the images shifted. Gleaming glass spires. Vast pyramids made of glistening green glass. Streets of variegated pink speckled marble. Tall, strong humanoids walking wide, tree-lined pedestrian boulevards, their skin so smooth and dark that they looked like they were made of coffee-colored plastic. Two hands, each holding an egg-shaped orb. One on Earth, another on a distant planet.
Brothers and sisters.
“Yes. Ancient siblings. One devoured the other.”
His mind was pulled forward in time, and his body experienced a lurching sensation as though he had fallen several stories in an instant. Tex’s stomach pitched and he was sure that he would spill the contents of his stomach from his mouth, but the Regina put a hand on his abdomen and the sensation was gone, his stomach calmed by her touch.
They were back on Earth in his time. She showed him hospitals with beds in the halls, rooms filled with sick and dying people, their faces covered in blood-filled boils. Schools made into triage units, the streets empty and still.
A flash of color. Red and black. A streak of long, silky black hair. Claws swiping. Blood spilling from a single slice across the neck. The creature sniffs the flesh festering with blood-filled boils. It recoils and springs away.
“You plan to make them sick. To … save them?”
He was shown millions of images in an instant. A movie that would take a lifetime to view known by him instantaneously. A plan that was set in motion not long after the first successful atomic test. A conspiracy created by human men, fostered by the Conexus and meant to hide duplicity in the plan to annihilate the majority of the human population in order to save a few.
“A virus?”
She didn’t need to answer his question. He knew it to be true.
“When?”
In his mind’s eye, he saw the silver orb that had landed in Aphthartos. It was hovering over a water-soaked rice paddy; its blindingly bright light illuminated three dark-haired humans. Their eyes were wide with fright. Tex sensed their hearts race – could smell the acrid odor of their fear – as a mechanized arm swung toward their exposed bellies. A machine that looked like a gun injected a nodule into their skin.
His mind was bombarded with many such images. Injections of the virus at multiple locations and into several people at each place. All of them becoming sick from the plague perfected in their own future, brought back in time to kill them in the hopes that the deaths of many would lead to safety for a few.
He was shown another image of the orb hovering over a patch of cactus-covered desert. A familiar landscape.
Ajo. That is where Erika lives. He had been swimming in a virtual bubble of bliss as if floating along on a virtual wave of inner peace. But the bubble burst as he grasped the truth of what he was being shown. She is in danger. Erika …
“I must help her. You cannot allow Erika to die.”
A searing pain blinded him as though a white-hot poker had been stabbed into his head. Tex fell to his knees, his raspy voice a scream that echoed off the walls. The low, harmonious hum of the Conexus hive became a chattering, discordant buzz. He experienced the sensation of falling from a building several stories high, and though he knew that he was on the ground, he still experienced the fear of falling to his death from a great height.
“No. Not Erika. Not Dr. Randall or Ian.”
The hot poker twisted in his skull. It felt as though his head would be split open and all that he was or ever could be would explode out in a thousand directions, splayed on the crumbling bricks of what used to be his world.
As suddenly as the pain began, it ceased. He was curled into a ball on the ground, his hands cradling his head.
“Choose to become one with the Conexus and you will know no pain no more. There is no suffering. There is no want. You will know only me,” she said aloud.
The Regina held him in her arms, her long, thin finger tracing a line down his cheek and resting lightly on his lower lip. “Submit freely and you shall be with me always. You will know all of me.”
Tex’s mind swooned from the intoxication of being close to her. His stomach fluttered and his loins pulsated.
Yet despite her attempt to sway him from himself, his mind envisioned Erika. It was her lips that he wanted to know. Her arms that he yearned to feel wrapped about him. She was warm, her scent a mix of citrus and musky vanilla. Her odor was alive without a hint of the rot that clung to his nostrils like the scent of the Regina did.
He focused on Erika’s eyes, and in his mind it was if she was there with him. He recalled her as completely as he could. He nearly felt the heaving of her chest against his back as she held him in A.H.D.N.A., her breathing heavy from the strain of running and pulling him to safety.
“I choose death before I give up on Erika.” As soon as the words tumbled from his mouth, he was back on the stone table on which he had lain. Did I really leave? He was naked, cold and alone save for the fear that felt now like a constant companion. He trembled uncontrollably as he waited for the Regina to give him death rather than allow him one more instant to experience his unwavering desire for Erika.
26
ERIKA
Erika had detested A.H.D.N.A. in her own time, when she was taken there blindfolded and shoved into a cell. She hadn’t thought she could ever hate a place more, but A.H.D.N.A. future proved there was another level of loathing. It was even darker and devoid of hope.
Erika kept Xenos between herself and Dr. Randall. She was afraid that if she didn’t, the Infractus would simply lay down and give up. The humidity was taking its toll on her. Erika gently encouraged her to keep going as Xenos plodded along, staggering like a drunk person.
Some of the halls they wandered through were pitch black, the lights shorted out. They slogged through the water now ankle deep in places. But other halls were as dry as they had been before they turned on the waterworks.
“Why do you think it is that some places are soaked while others are dry?” Erika asked.
Dr. Randall huffed and puffed, his old lungs aching for oxygen. After a while he said, “I cannot be certain, but my best guess is that in some places the pipes long ago decayed and the conduits were taken over by rock and debris while in other places the path remains.”
“Do you see a pattern?”
Dr. Randall was silent.
“Dr. Randall?”
He huffed and called back over his shoulder, “No.”
Not the answer Erika wanted to hear. Erika wanted to know what they were stepping into. If there was a pattern to the flow of the water, then they could anticipate the resistance they might face from the Conexus.
“At our pace, we should be to Ian within five minutes,” Dr. Randall said.
The closer they got to their destination, the soggier it became. Xenos fell to her knees and Erika lifted her.
“Lean on me. But you have to keep moving. We’re almost there.”
“Leave me. Your Dr. Randall knows the way. Leave this Infractus.”
“No, I’m not leaving you. I promised you I’d take you away from here and I meant it. You can make it,” Erika said.
Erika dragged her along, and after a few steps Xenos stumbled forward on her own. Erika kept her arm around Xenos’ waist for support. Perhaps it was Erika’s body heat that warmed Xenos or maybe the
fact that Erika didn’t leave her in a dark hallway to die, but whatever it was, Xenos found the surge of energy she needed to keep going, albeit resting some of her weight on Erika.
Though the water had an extremely adverse effect on Xenos, Erika was overall glad this area of A.H.D.N.A. future was soggy. They encountered no Conexus. Erika didn’t look forward to gunning more of them down.
It took about fifteen minutes to walk at their slow pace from the room where they’d stolen the package that held Ian’s only hope to where they had been holed up. Erika propped Xenos up as she waved her arm to gain entrance.
The doors did not open.
Erika’s heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. She was so tired and hungry for both food and oxygen. The dark hand of dread took hold of her.
Fortunately Dr. Randall was there to think when she was fogged out. “Xenos, you need to wave both hands. Try again.”
Xenos’ head lolled on her shoulders. Her eyes were glassy, like two darkened mirrors in her bulbous head. She didn’t wave her arms.
Erika wasn’t sure Xenos had heard Dr. Randall. Erika moved behind her, letting her body rest on Erika’s, grabbed Xenos’ arms and waved them for her.
The doors slid open though slowly. They looked like they were moving through peanut butter. The tired old doors didn’t bother to close again.
Dr. Randall entered and Erika dragged Xenos in with her. The room smelled of body odor and urine and vomit. Erika pulled her shirt up over her nose with her free hand to keep herself from adding to the puke smell.
“Ian?” she called out, her voice slightly muffled by her shirt.
He didn’t answer.
“Xenos, do you see him?”
Xenos slowly raised her right arm and pointed to their left.
Erika let go of her hold on Xenos and the Infractus crumpled to the floor. I’ll have to worry about her after I take care of Ian.
“Dr. Randall, do you have the injector?”
H.A.L.F.: The Makers Page 17
