His voice echoed in the empty hallway. No one responded.
“The doors are thick. Even if he’s in there, he may not have heard you.”
“Or he may be unable to respond.”
“We’re running out of time, Doc. Pick a door and I’ll torch a hole.”
Dr. Randall stood silently in the middle of the hall with his eyes closed.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to think like a Conexus. Where would they put him?”
“Good luck with that.” With the torch in hand, Erika moved to the door closest to her and pushed the red button on the torch. The heat was so intense, it singed the hair on her hands, filling the air with the smell of burnt hair. She moved quickly and traced a large rectangle in the door. She pushed the center of the shape she’d cut, and the newly formed door fell in.
Dr. Randall climbed through the hole.
Erika stood in the doorway. It was dark inside. “Anything?”
“Nope.”
Of course it can’t be that easy. Not in this godforsaken place. Erika pushed a strand of her greasy hair out of her eyes and handed Dr. Randall the torch. “It still has some juice. You pick the door this time.”
Dr. Randall headed down the hallway and made a hole in the last door. But that room too was empty.
“Look, Doc, your hunch about where he is could be wrong.”
Dr. Randall ignored the idea of searching elsewhere and torched three more doors. All three rooms were empty.
With each empty room, Erika’s patience grew thinner. All she could think about was how they were no closer to finding Tex and that she’d left Ian alone and vulnerable for a fool’s errand. They’d been able to stretch the canister juice, but they were on their last canister and still had three more doors. They likely didn’t have enough fuel for the torch to cut holes in all three.
“We’re running out of fuel, Doc. Let’s give this up and try somewhere else.”
Dr. Randall’s eyes grew dark with anger. “He’s here. I feel it. I’ve trusted in you, Erika. Now I’m asking that you trust in me.”
Erika raised her hands to concede his point.
“I’ve picked the last two and was wrong. Why don’t you pick this time. You may have more luck,” Dr. Randall said.
She found herself doing what Dr. Randall had done. If I was a Conexus, where would I put him? The exercise was futile. She could no sooner think like a Conexus than think like a tree or a dog.
She closed her eyes and tried to reach out to Tex with her mind. She’d once gone ape on him for reading hers. She now hoped he would hear her thoughts and give them a sign of where he was. But he didn’t speak to her telepathically, and they heard no one in the hall.
It was up to her, and she decided to go with her intuition. She took the torch from Dr. Randall and went to the next-to-last door on the left.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“No, but I’m doing it anyway. Stand clear.” Erika used the last of the fuel to torch the door. Her fingers were blistered from the heat of the torch and her eyes burned from the intensity of the light.
The steel fell to the floor with a crash. Dust billowed into the air. They coughed up dust; then the hall was once again silent.
The prior rooms they’d tried had been dark inside. A dim light emanated from the hole she’d just cut. Erika was about to step through when Dr. Randall caught her arm and whispered in her ear, “Remember. He may not be alone.” He pulled his gun off his back and held it out before him, ready to fire. Erika tucked the spent torch in her back pocket and readied her rifle as well.
Dr. Randall pushed out in front of her and Erika followed on his heels as they slowly and quietly entered the room. They met no immediate resistance. The only sound came from water hissing and spitting in pipes above their heads.
There were lights along the perimeter of the ceiling as well as the floor. Though the light was quite dim, it was the largest amount of light Erika had been in since– well, for however long they’d been at A.H.D.N.A. future.
A knot seized Erika’s stomach as a foul odor assaulted her nostrils. The smell was a combination of urine and sweat and – something else. Something familiar. A smell that brought to mind the awful memory of dead and dying soldiers in Aphthartos.
Blood.
They moved toward a monolithic table that appeared to be made out of a single slab of granite or some other smooth rock. And there on the wide table lay a small, naked being. His large head looked all the bigger by the frailty of his body. Tex’s ribs were clearly visible, his collarbone poking up in a way that looked like it would break through his skin.
Erika edged closer. A device was hooked up to Tex at the back of his head. A long tube came from the dark ceiling and was attached to him with metal clamps. She didn’t know what the device was doing to him, but if the Conexus had put it there, it wasn’t for a good purpose.
Tex lay entirely still and silent. His chest rose and fell so slowly, Erika had to concentrate to even see it. The only other movement was an all over shivering that racked his fragile body.
For as long as they’d been stuck in this horrid nightmare of a future, they’d been in the dark. Literally. And now she approached Tex, who was bathed in a bright white light. She could see him clearly. Plainly. Not in shadow or silhouette. And in the moment that she grasped fully his condition, she wished they were back in the dark. She knew she would wish for the rest of her life to never have seen what was on that table.
Feet shuffled through the shallow water, taking Erika’s gaze away from the broken and suffering Tex lying on the table. Before she could see anything beyond them, a twinge of pain throbbed at her temples. It wasn’t enough to send her to her knees, but it distracted.
Erika ignored the pain as best she could and reached behind her for her gun. Dr. Randall held his head in his hands and stooped over. He looked like he was trying to speak, but she couldn’t hear what he said. He pulled one arm away from his head and tried to grasp one of the grenades hanging from his ammo belt, but his shaky fingers couldn’t get hold of it.
Erika inched away from the table where Tex lay, back into the dark shadows behind her. While Tex still lay on the table bathed in light, the rest of the room was a silhouette against the bright cone of light. She knew she’d heard something, but she couldn’t see anything other than Tex.
She roved the room with her eyes, searching for another way out. But the door in was the only way out as well.
She took a few deep breaths to calm her nerves. She created an invisible force field of energy in her mind and used it to repel anything trying to get in. The pain didn’t cease, but it got no worse.
She wanted to open fire and blast the scrawny grey creatures to hell and back. But in the dark she couldn’t see where to aim. She could end up shooting Dr. Randall or Tex.
Erika breathed deeply as she crouched down. Her injured thigh reminded her that it was unhappy as she shuffled toward the door, hoping the light from the hall would give her a better view of the situation.
Her eyes were trained on Dr. Randall and Tex, but something flitted across the periphery of her vision to her right. She turned, and for an instant it was there, no more than five feet from her and advancing on her.
Erika pulled the trigger. The spark of gunfire briefly lit the dark room and reflected off the huge eyes of her attacker. It let out an eerie screech but continued to advance, its arm outstretched toward her. She pulled the trigger again only this time with better aim and more intention. One round then two and three. Her face was slick with sweat, her heart thumping away in her throat.
The Conexus made a gross splat sound as its body hit the ground. Erika looked forward to feeling the relief of the pain going away, but it didn’t ease. There’s still at least one more in here.
She considered continuing on her path toward the door but decided to stay put. I’ll let it come to me.
Erika hunkered down again and tried to calm herself. It was no use
. The Conexus she’d killed was only a few feet away from her. She could smell its blood, a putrid smell that was a mixture of iron and peat and rotted flesh.
The perimeter lights flickered. The water’s shorting them out. The bright cone of light over Tex sputtered too and then went dark. Though it left Tex in the dark, the loss of the bright light helped her see the room better. Dr. Randall was on his knees beside the slab where Tex lay, his head in his hands.
Erika’s temples throbbed and she wanted to rub them to ease the pain, but she kept her hands on her gun instead. Dr. Randall was out of commission. If they were to survive this room and get Tex out, it was up to her.
Something moved at her right side. She turned and was ready to fire at it, but long, thin fingers came from behind and wound themselves around her throat. She had the presence of mind to hold her gun with her left hand as she used her right to try to free her windpipe from the surprisingly strong fingers that squeezed her neck.
Already weakened and lacking for oxygen, Erika knew it wouldn’t take long for the thing to kill her. She couldn’t get any leverage on it with only one hand, so she decided to drop the gun. It splashed on the ground as Erika got her left hand up under one of the skinny fingers and simultaneously kicked backward, hoping she hit something. Her foot hit the creature and it let out a screech but kept its hands on her.
As suddenly as the thing had taken hold of her, it let go. A loud smack filled the air followed by a thud as the thing fell to the ground behind her.
Erika sucked in breaths of the fetid air. Dr. Randall’s tall frame loomed over her in the shadows. He held his rifle like a baseball bat.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. I think that’s all of them. Let’s make haste.” He shuffled back toward Tex.
Tex lay as still as the stone on the table.
“What is that at the back of his head?” Erika asked. She rubbed her throat and tried to get her starved lungs as full of air as she could.
“I’m not sure,” Dr. Randall said. He bent down and looked at it. As he did, the overhead light flickered on for a second then off again. “We’re running out of time.” Dr. Randall felt at the back of Tex’s head.
“Do you think you can remove it?”
“Probably. But the bigger question is whether it’s safe for me to remove it.”
“Doc, how can it be any worse?”
Dr. Randall’s face was pale, his eyes bleary and red. He took a deep breath, gently removed the metal clamps and pulled the tube from Tex’s skull. Fresh blood spilled out of the back of his head and joined the puddle of blood that had already gathered beneath him on the table. Tex didn’t move, speak or show any indication that he was aware of what Dr. Randall had done.
Erika looked upon the shell of a being that used to be Tex. When they’d first met, he’d been small in stature but exuded power. He’d nearly killed a half dozen men merely by thinking of it. And Erika had known immediately that he was capable of so much more. Now he looked like a skeleton wrapped in a thin film of skin, his flesh like a cellophane candy wrapper.
Erika’s eyes welled with the tears she’d held back. She allowed her heart to feel all of the hurt she’d experienced since they were taken aboard the alien ship. The separation from Jack. The dark, quiet isolation. Missing her home, her school, even her mom. The illness and fear that she’d die, then the even larger worry that she’d live but Ian would not.
As she looked at Tex, it all broke loose and she let the tears spill. She wanted to scoop him into her arms like she had so long ago when she pulled him across the floor under the door to safety. She’d held him to her and warmed him with her body heat and saved him, though from what she could no longer be sure. He would have been better off there.
They searched the room and found a Conexus tunic and pants. The cloth glittered, and even in the dim light, it was reflective. Erika put the top on him while Dr. Randall took care of the pants. Dressed in Conexus clothes, Tex looked even more like a grey than he did before.
“I bet this fabric has moisture-wicking properties,” Dr. Randall said.
Dr. Randall scooped him up. Tex looked even smaller now in Dr. Randall’s arms than he’d looked in Dolan’s. Her tears created a river down her face and joined the half-foot of water covering the floor, tinged purple now with the blood of the Conexus she’d shot.
Erika’s fingers trembled as she reached for his bony hand, limp and lifeless and dangling. His fingers were dry despite the moisture in the air.
She held his hand in hers. On the off chance that he could still read thoughts, she pushed aside her grief at seeing life ebb from him. Erika tried as hard as she could to think encouraging thoughts to him. I’m here now. We’re going home.
30
TEX
Eternal black oblivion was replaced with the fiery fingers of merciless jabbing pain in his skull. The Conexus were there at the periphery of his mind like gentle waves lapping at the shore of a lake. He allowed them to step a toe into his consciousness and his pain eased. Their horrible, mind-splitting buzz became quiet chatter. Tex allowed them in further and the chatter fell into a low, persistent hum that was nearly soothing compared to the buzz they’d been before.
Images flashed in his mind’s eye. He saw Earth, but these thoughts were not his own. He had never been to the places shown in his mind though he knew them from photographs he’d seen in his studies at A.H.D.N.A. The pyramids in Egypt. Aztec and Mayan ruins in South America. Stonehenge and Machu Picchu. These places were intermingled with the faces of humans. Young and old and of all nationalities. Some were in clothing that looked similar to that worn by the people he’d known, yet others were in strange costumes perhaps from another time. Symbols flashed in his mind. Words in a language unknown to him. And another place. It did not look like Earth. But it was not this place he was in either. Pyramids of gleaming green glass and smooth, pearly stone. And an image of Aphthartos.
He tried to make sense of it. The Conexus were trying to tell him something. But as he tried to think, the pain grew. And as the ache in his head returned, it made him wish for his human companions. He tried to pull up a mental image of Dr. Randall or Erika or Ian. But try as he might, it was as though he was trying to access a forbidden file. The harder he sought to remember them, the larger the pain in his skull grew. But if he let them go, he’d be lost and cease to be. The memories of his human friends kept him tethered to his being. He forced himself to hold onto them despite the agony it caused.
How long this went on, he could not know. He would allow himself to fade back into the darkness only to be pulled out of it somehow by a force he could not see or understand.
Quite suddenly and without warning, tendrils of fiery pain wound their way through his head. It was as though something had been ripped from him, as though a part of him had been excised. And while it was a shockingly painful way to awaken to the world again, within seconds the sharp stabbing that had filled his head receded.
Something brushed the skin of his hand. It was familiar, but he could not place it. The touch stung his tender skin. He wanted to pull his hand away but lacked the energy to move.
He had fought the Conexus. He tried to fend them off, to be Tex and not just one of many. But there were so many of them and they were too strong. The pain too great. He had fallen down a spiral of nothing and allowed it because it was the only thing left for him to do.
But here he was. Tex. I still am.
They had not taken him. At least not entirely.
He could think and feel, and he knew that they were his individual thoughts, not those of the collective.
It was his pain, white-hot and agonizing.
It was his fear, shaking and cowering.
And it was his curiosity, seeking and wondering.
Who touches me?
And then as if in answer to the question that he knew he had not spoken out loud, there was a solitary voice in his mind. It was not the collective voice of the Conexus.
>
“I am here,” she said.
Though he had no way to count the days of his tortured existence in the realm of the Conexus, it had been long enough – agonizing enough – that he had given up hope that he would ever know anything else. And he had assumed that Erika, Dr. Randall and Ian had either been killed or abandoned him.
She held his trembling hand in hers. Yes, it is Erika’s hand. Though he was too broken to move, too weak to open his eyes, he smelled her. Sweat and dirt sought to mask the scent, but it was still there, underneath the grime of this place. A powerful odor of musky spice and citrus with a hint of sweetness like a wildflower. It was Erika and she was here. She did not give up on me.
Tex had never experienced love before. He had been trained to ignore his feelings of empathy and to quash desire. He had no observational frame of reference for what love must be like – feel like.
But he knew that Erika’s touch lit within him the desire to live where mere seconds before he had wholeheartedly committed himself to dying. And he knew that he wanted to lay waste to anything or anyone that tried to harm her.
Tex yearned to gaze into her eyes, to touch her smooth skin with is hand, to press his lips to hers. He had faced death. Had asked it to take him. But he was not dead. And he was still Tex. He had survived the onslaught of the Conexus and it emboldened him. I will cower from my own feelings no longer.
He tried to raise his head, but it was no use. He might as well have been trying to lift a boulder with his pinkie. He was inert, lying like a pile of broken refuse on the stone table.
“Be still, my boy. We’re getting you out of here. I’ll …” Dr. Randall’s voice cracked.
Tex’s feelings about the man who had created him were complex. He’d considered Dr. Randall to be the only father he’d ever know. But the Regina had shown him the dark side of A.H.D.N.A. – and of Dr. Randall – as well. It was as though he’d been shown two photographs, each conflicting with the other. He didn’t know which to believe. At the moment, he was too tired to figure it out.
Tex was lifted from the hard bed on which he’d lain for countless time. Cool air rushed over him and he shook again. He tried to remember the warm sun on his face, golden and beautiful. But it was no use. It was like a strange dream a life before he was always cold and perpetually hungry and waiting only for it all to end.
H.A.L.F.: The Makers Page 20
