The Parabiont Invasion Book 3

by Y. J. Gendron

  The words erupted inside her head.

  Trying out something new, Beatrice? Tebayi’s stare glowered with renewed intensity. You shouldn’t play with things you don’t understand.

  Beatrice pulled up an image of sealing the voice inside an airtight jar.

  That, too, won’t work.

  Tebayi stepped closer to her, slipping her mask of spite back into place. Enough of this.

  She smiled anew but her eyes burned with cold ferocity. It’s time you learn to be quiet.

  Beatrice held her ground, refusing to be intimidated. “Not a chance.”

  Tebayi shrugged. “As you wish.”

  A cry came from the open door. Two burly men shoved a third one forward, propelling him inside the room with a strong push.

  Beatrice’s breath caught in her throat.

  Noah!

  The teen picked himself up from the floor, eyes ablaze with defiance. He looked around the room. His face crumpled when he realized he was surrounded. One of Tebayi’s followers turned to him. Dumbfounded, he stared with disbelief as his mother, Jenna, gazed back at him. Though she looked like her, he knew at once that Jenna was missing, locked away by the Parabiont. His heart broke. What he had feared from the very beginning, the reality he hoped wouldn’t come into fruition, was now indelibly etched in his soul. His parents were no more. Jerome and Jenna were now strangers, entities with no special relations to him other than the fact that they were once his parents. In his heart, he still loved them but he knew they couldn’t be trusted anymore, that he needed to separate what they were from what they’d been. It was a jarring switch to make and he felt weakened at once, the hopelessness of the situation seeping deep inside his heart.

  Beatrice watched his face contort in confusion and fear. Their eyes met. The desolation she felt from him, even from across the room, made her gasp in dismay.

  Noah, I’m sorry.

  Tebayi watched Beatrice’s reaction with interest. “This young man is your friend, no?”

  Beatrice’s fists tightened reflexively. “Leave him alone, he has nothing to do with this.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, he’s just a kid.”

  Tebayi huffed. “A kid teamed up with traitors.”

  She glided forward, crossing the distance to Noah in one effortless stride. “Do you know who I am?”

  Noah nodded, riveted despite himself by Tebayi’s penetrating stare.

  “I assume they,” she gazed at Eklan and Asalak, “told you all about me, about what I intend to do.”

  She touched his chin and caressed the side of his face. He jolted in alarm, surprised by the sudden scrutiny.

  Beatrice found his attention. He gazed back at her. She beamed a resolute expression, one intended to let him know that he wasn’t alone, that she was there for him. He acquiesced with an almost imperceptible nod.

  “But they are wrong,” Tebayi’s silky voice continued. “And if you believe them, then so are you. Do you not see, Noah?”

  He flinched when she spoke his name, a long tremor that spiraled down his spine in one continuous pulse.

  “Do you not see that what I’m doing is for the benefit of everyone on this planet? That my plan will assure your survival? That it is your only chance?”

  Tebayi shook her head from side to side, disappointed. “Don’t you see, Noah?”

  He stared at her, working his jaw to keep quiet.

  “Of course you don’t. How could you? You’ve been lied to,” she flashed an accusatory finger at Asalak, “from the beginning.”

  Tebayi touched Noah’s chin once more. “It’s not your fault.”

  She abruptly spun on her heels and made her way to where Graves stood.

  “It’s the fault of your Colonel and all those in authority. They were the ones deceived by the traitors. They were the ones misguided by the fears planted by the traitors, by those too scared to do what needs to be done.”

  Graves’ stare didn’t change an iota as he faced Tebayi.

  “You need to see, Colonel.”

  Tebayi glanced up at the ripple of light emanating from the stack. “Just like everyone else on this planet.”

  With an abrupt change of stance, she hurried over to the main computer interface and settled next to Carl Oliver.

  “It’s time to change that.”

  Don’t you think, Beatrice?

  17 Ploy

  Paige Hillcox’s heartbeat accelerated.

  For she knew what was to come.

  She stood on a vast desert plain, all sand and minerals, the browns and deep grays of the soil and sky wrapped around her like an overstretched tapestry. The sun shining down on the starched land was overly large, a white bulb that hurt the eyes if you stared at it for too long. Out to the distant horizon, the vast swath of land buckled and flexed, shook by powerful underground waves.

  The ground cracked open with an explosive spasm.

  A dagger of ice raced up her spine.

  She closed her eyes but the imagery still made its way to her brain.

  From the shattered ground, an eruption of dark limbs and grotesque appendages spilled out, tumbling out like a wave that had nowhere to go. A torrent of creatures escaped the underground, a nightmarish surge that careened across the ground with incredible speed and unstoppable force. Of the thousands of creatures, one in particular took interest in the lone human prostrating herself on the bare soil of the desert.

  Paige’s heart pounded in her chest. She knew the creature was standing right in front of her, an arm’s length away.

  But she refused to look at it.

  Because it was a ploy.

  A ploy to break her. To make her do things she didn’t want to do.

  So she hunkered down and screwed her eyes shut, calling to mind the song Mom sang from time to time, the one about little stars twinkling in the sky.

  The creature hissed.

  In her mind, Paige screamed. She knew what would come next. The pain. The darkness. And the nightmare would resume, once again.

  But there was a change, this time. It came with a flash of light.

  White.

  Intense.

  She opened her eyes.

  It was daylight outside. The glow of the sun penetrated inside the room despite the thick curtains that had been put up to the window’s frames. She lifted her head from the pillow. A wave of wooziness flooded her insides. She kept absolutely still, taking deep breaths to curb the unease. Minutes went by and at last the wave eased, though she sensed that the cause was still hunkering close by, ready to crash down at any moment.

  To her utter surprise, she was no longer under the brutal sun of the nightmarish wasteland. But rather in a room.

  She lifted herself up on her elbows and stared at the figure looming in her field of view. Doctor Leyland was holding up a clipboard and glancing at it with a tight frown. Paige watched her with interest. Leyland looked like one of those wax statues she’d once seen in a museum. It was eerie the way those statues seemed to track your movement as you moved about.

  It was the same for the Doctor.

  Paige propped herself up, now fully awake. There was a quality to Leyland’s stare that no wax statue could replicate.

  An aliveness.

  Weird.

  She looked around the room. Motes of dust danced in the narrow pencil-thin shafts of light that streaked in at the edge of the curtains. In opposition to the Doctor, they appeared to be behaving normally, obeying the laws of gravity as they drifted in slow-motion to the floor. Acting on instinct, she made a cone with her hands and blew a breath toward the shaft of light. To her delight the particles swooshed aside, twirling every which way as the air from her lungs disturbed their trajectory.

  This is the coolest dream ever.

  Feeling stronger with each passing minute, she began a thorough visual survey of her surroundings. There was the Doctor, an empty chair, a large plastic container in a corner, and an IV stand with a line dangling from a bag. Sh
e followed the line with her eyes. It snaked from the stand, went over the blanket and finally to her arm. She stared at the needle sticking in her flesh. With a shrug she pressed a finger on it.

  A sharp prick of pain shot through her.

  Ouch!

  She looked up at Marilisa Leyland. “Uh, Doc? I’m feeling better now. Can you remove this thing from my arm?”

  The Captain’s eyes twinkled but her body remained fixed.

  “Doc?”

  What the hell?

  The last tinges of wooziness lifted away. She moved her legs and they responded at once, like they always had. There was a wrapping around her right shoulder and she gingerly lifted a corner to view what was beneath. There was a neat circular flesh-wound patched up with stitches.

  Why God! Did someone shoot me?

  She had no memories of being shot but then again her head still felt as empty as her bank account. Looking out to the door that had been left ajar, she called out toward the open space, the one she knew existed outside the room. “Hello? Anybody out there?”

  She cocked an ear. There was the hum of the heating and ventilation system, but no replies. She straightened up and called again, louder this time. “Can anyone hear me? I need help.”

  “Corporal Hillcox?”

  Although faint, the voice seemed to come from right outside the door.

  At once surprised and relieved, she called back, “Is that you, Kyle?”

  The voice acknowledged at once, sounding equally relieved. “Yes, Corporal.”

  “Can you get up?”

  There was a pause before De Rozan answered. “Aside from my nose feeling twice as big as what it used to be, and a IV line, I think I could.”

  She nodded to herself. “Yeah, same for me. Is there someone with you, someone, uh, that seems frozen in place?”

  “Yes. Nurse Allston is five feet away from me. She’s just standing there… real weird if you ask me.”

  Damn. I might not be all dreaming this after all.

  “Ok, Kyle. I think something bad is going on,” she said, her voice getting raw from the effort of speaking up.

  “Yeah.”

  “We need to get out of bed and investigate.”

  She could almost see Kyle’s eyes widen in understanding. “Yes, Corporal.”

  “So I’m going to pull out my IV line and then I’ll do yours.”

  There was an audible gulp.

  “Is that okay, Private?”

  There was an hesitation followed by a clear, “Yes, Ma’am!”

  “Ok, here goes. If you hear me scream or collapse, you can come to my rescue if you feel like it,” she said, closing off her statement with a short guffaw.

  The Private gave a short chortle.

  Glancing down at her arm, she stared at the needle with apprehension. She’d never thought that one day she would need to do something like this.

  Suck it up, girl.

  With careful attention, she plucked the bandage away to expose the skin. The needle’s extremity stuck out at an angle, giving the fingers of her right hand easy access. She gripped the extremity of the needle, a centimeter above where it vanished inside the skin. Gritting her teeth, she took three quick breaths and pulled. There was an indistinct sensation in her arm and a small arc of blood sailed up in the air. She stared at her arm. There was a solitary drop of blood, but nothing else.

  She was free.

  She dropped the IV line and pushed the blankets away. She realized she was only wearing her sport bra and panties. Shifting her focus to climbing down from the bed, she put one leg out then the other. The effort made her head swim but she relegated the sensation aside and with a short cry of triumph, stood up. Standing on the balls of her feet, she felt the world dip crazily around her, as if she was back on the Gruff Seas. Her stomach heaved and she put a hand out to the wall. The disorientation passed and she felt better. Turning to the other person in the room, she went around the bed and touched Leyland’s arm.

  Not a dream.

  The Doctor was definitely real, and in the flesh.

  Unless the dream was the new reality.

  “Doctor, can you hear me?” She asked, jiggling the physician’s arm.

  Nothing. No outward sign whatsoever.

  Jesus.

  Leaving the Doctor behind, she went over to the container. Bending down, she pulled the cover away. Her clothes lay in the box, washed and neatly stored. She quickly got dressed, sensing her confidence grow with each of the familiar gestures. Pushing herself to go faster, she tied up her shoelaces, bounded out of the room and made her way to where De Rozan waited.

  Hold on, Kyle. I’m coming.

  18 Tendrils

  Tebayi inserted the compact, oblong-shaped device in the machine’s interface. She waited for it to do what it was programmed to do. The confirmation would take but a few seconds. Five heartbeats later, the device confirmed the successful completion of the task.

  Disruptor.

  She snickered inwardly at the name given by the Humans to Asalak’s misguided folly. They would soon find out that the disruption they were hoping for, the one promised by the disloyal Amilaki, would undergo a radical shift.

  A shift that would change everything.

  She glanced back at Asalak. His stare was locked to the young woman, the one with the secret in her head. Though she knew there was something special about Beatrice, the true nature of it escaped her.

  And that was bothersome.

  She could extract the information by tearing down the walls the human had put up in her mind… but would the secret still be viable after such a brutal course of action?

  It wasn’t a certainty.

  And she needed to be certain before attempting it.

  Asalak and Eklan were proving to be more devious than she’d anticipated. They were always a step ahead, building systems that went beyond what she thought possible with the technology at hand.

  She had to give it to them.

  They had changed. Evolved, even. And they were much more crafty.

  She had taken the threat of their efforts too lightly, and only now realized the impact of their work.

  An AI.

  The system they wanted to activate was beautifully inspired, a tour de force that managed to transcend the limitations of Human engineering. But there was so much you could do without a true vision of what needed to be done. And they were too close to the humans, to their beliefs about the sanctity of Life to achieve true success.

  Only she could.

  Only she had the genius to accomplish what the Amilaki should have done eons ago.

  Only she had the audacity to go against what had always been.

  She glanced at Eklan, the venom in her heart blossoming anew. He, of all of the Coalescence, was the brightest of the bright. The cumulative knowledge of the entire Amilaki civilization was at his disposition. And what did he do with it? He had built a machine that should not exist.

  Though brilliant, he had followed Asalak blindly, too young and too new to grasp the complexities of what they were all facing.

  For it was impossible to deal with the Snyl problem from the outside.

  With a program.

  Even if it was the most brilliant one on the planet.

  No. You needed to be inside.

  A living entity within.

  Someone with a way.

  Someone with a destiny.

  And now that she had the perfect tool at her disposal, there was nothing to stop her from being that someone.

  “Proceed, Vokug.”

  The man acknowledged with a characteristic, strictly functional, nod.

  There was a sudden flash of intense light.

  Beatrice flung her arm up in self-preservation. Around her, the sound of bodies hitting the floor in perfect synchronization echoed in the chamber. Fighting down the raw outburst of nausea clawing at her insides, she threw herself down, her knees meeting the concrete floor with a bone-rattling jolt.

 
Keeping absolutely still, she let the wave of queasiness pass through her, refusing to succumb to its debilitating effect. She took a deep breath, then another. To her surprise, the wooziness eased, calmed down. She willed her heartbeat under control and cracked open her right eye. In front, in an arc that circled her position, the soldiers’ bodies lay on the floor, unmoving. She swiveled her eyes to take in the scene. Every Human in the room was down on the ground, unconscious. Only the Amilaki were left standing, apparently immune to the device. She shot a glance at Noah. His face was turned away from her, but he lay inert, his fate the same as Graves’.

  Her stare found Asalak’s. Though he stood on his feet, the paralyzing effect was still in function and he could only gaze back at her, aware but powerless to do anything about it. Her head was clear of the gray veil yet she remained prostate. It was the only way to hide the fact that contrary to the others, she wasn’t insensate, that she was still conscious. She surreptitiously moved her head, letting a few locks of hair fall over her eyes. Her legs hurt but she refused to think about them. She was in a position to observe without being seen and though she was the only one from her camp able to move, it was better for the moment to make it appear as if she couldn’t, if only for a few moments.

  She prayed that neither Tebayi or Vokug came any closer, fearing they might see through the deception.

  But, for now, she was safe.

  She heard footsteps from beyond her field of vision. If she was right, they were coming from outside the Cube, or at least from the doorway. The steps came inside. For some reason, they appeared hesitant. From the corner of her eye, she watched Tebayi made her way to the front of the room.

  Senses on maximum, she strained to listen to what was going on.

  Tebayi’s voice glided to her ears. “Is the procedure ready?”

  The voice that answered broke Beatrice’s heart.

  “Yes, Tebayi.”

  Beatrice’s mental anguish cried out. She flicked an eye to Asalak. The pupil of his left eye expanded.

  And she knew that he was as devastated as she was.

  “Then we can proceed?” Tebayi asked.

  “If that is your wish,” Kalxin said. “But I must advise you that this is all highly experimental. I can’t guarantee the results.”