The Parabiont Invasion Book 3

by Y. J. Gendron

“Asher?” She mouthed, uncertain.

  For all answer, he tilted his head downwards. She pushed herself up, galvanized by the realization that somehow he still existed. There was but a whisker of air between their lips. From the corner of her eye, she saw a black and spiky limb slither over his right shoulder, moving silently in the stack’s golden light. The appendage glided closer, as if aware it had been spotted.

  Eklan turned his head a fraction of a degree, toward her.

  The tendril, pulsing with dark light, wriggled its way down his head, behind his ear.

  He shuddered.

  She kissed him.

  The rush of emotion inside her blended with his own. The kiss filled her heart with passion, superseding everything else. Eyes closed, she let the moment linger, the blissful feeling levitating her soul. She felt Asher’s presence with a sharp and poignant intensity. It lit up her heart with a beautiful light, relegating the dark thoughts, the terror, the pain, to distant and out-of-sight shores. Bathed in the light, she could, at last, see him with clarity. He was smiling at her. A genuine smile, full of warmth and full of love.

  In the glorious light of her mind, the kiss went on, seemingly without end.

  She didn’t want it to end.

  She knew that when it did, things would never be the same again.

  He pulled back and with her heart breaking into a million pieces, she saw him grimace in pain. He pressed a hand to the side of her face.

  “I always loved you, Trish.”

  Her heart fluttered.

  “Help…”

  She saw his face change. He was Eklan, once again.

  “…us.”

  There was an explosion of gray light.

  And she was at once transported into another world.

  30 Asher’s Light

  Jose Garcia heard the noise of the outside battle quiet down. He hesitated, unsure of what to do. Should he go out there to make sure the Colonel was okay or should he listen to his gut and head for the Cube? He shook his head to clear away the stray thoughts exploding his mind. He couldn’t let himself be distracted by them, not now. Taking a deep breath to better think, he settled into position and peeked around the corridor’s corner. The Cube was bathed in a glow that reminded him of an aurora borealis he once had the chance to view, up in Fairbanks. The light danced across the darkened walls with a slow, undulating movement; a wave of yellow, green and gold that seemed to emanate from the ether itself. He gripped his rifle tighter. Ahead, the stack glittered with hundreds of tiny lights, the tower glowing with rings of focused energy.

  He closed his eyes. For the last five minutes, a wave of pain had found refuge in his head, robbing him of the clarity of thought he so desperately needed. Putting a hand out to the wall to steady himself, he let the wave do its thing, the battering intensifying even as he tried to ignore it.

  Jesus.

  He had never felt so bad in his entire life. The sensation was akin to having a balloon filled with shards of glass inside your noggin. A sac that swelled with sudden and explosive bursts. Eyes screwed shut, he let the pain wash over him.

  Begging for it to stop wouldn’t work.

  And he had the sinking certainty that it was all caused by what lived inside the Cube.

  Fighting down the urge to curl up on the floor and let the hurt do its thing, he tightened the grip on his weapon and eased through the door. Bad idea. The pain exploded forth, filling his head with a ball of pure agony. He fell to his knees. It was too much. He couldn’t take it anymore. His head was one solid mass of hurt.

  That’s when he noticed them.

  Eklan and Beatrice.

  They were sprawled on the ground, both of them about a dozen feet in front of the main console.

  They didn’t move.

  He stared at the scene. The desire to go out to them, to check to see if they were still alive hit the sphere of hurt in his head. He felt the pain fluctuate, lose strength. Emboldened by the realization, he concentrated on that one single thought.

  Go to them.

  He repeated the three words in his head over and over, using them as a crutch to lift himself from the floor.

  It worked. Though the pain was still there, he had found a way around it. Each step was like stepping into a vat of burning, hot, agony; but he bit down and pushed forward, his heart free of doubt.

  He reached Eklan first. Fighting down a spiral of vertigo, he put a knee to the floor. Waves after waves of pain smashed inside his head. He closed his eyes to focus on the task he had to accomplish.

  Check pulse.

  He stretched out his hand and put two fingers to Eklan’s carotid artery. Eyes screwed shut, he pushed back the surge of hurt and shifted his attention to his fingertips. He waited. There. A minute pulse. Feeble, unsteady, but there nonetheless. Eklan was alive, but barely. He veered his head to Beatrice. She looked so pale, so fragile, so helpless, that his heart tumbled in his chest. He shifted his body to get closer.

  The pain in his head exploded anew.

  He stared down. An ugly wire-like tendril of dark light went out from behind Beatrice’s ear directly into the stack. He saw a saccadic movement beneath her left eyelid, going from left to right and back again.

  Then the pain shut down his cerebrum.

  He collapsed.

  “Welcome.”

  Beatrice opened her eyes. She was standing outside. It was the middle of the day and the sun burned with feverish intensity, casting a golden light across the landscape. The wind picked her hair up, whipping it across her face. She wrestled with a particularly rebellious lock, stashing it behind a ear, then looked out at the scenery.

  The desert stretched out for miles in every direction. Deep cracks crisscrossed the desiccated land, carving the plain into millions of small, jagged, islands. But there was no water to be found in this land, and no greenery of any kind. It was barren, lifeless, a zone where nothing lived but the maggots that had burrowed deeply underground. In the horizon, the silhouette of a city could be seen, the skyscrapers heaped together like so much kindling wood. The city was as dead as the rest of the landscape, the ruins covered in thick layers of sand and debris. Here and there, the sun glinted off the rooftop of half-buried cars and trucks, the vehicles strewn about like unwanted dandelions.

  As she took in the desolation, Beatrice’s dismay rose with each razed building, flattened bridge and burned house. This was destruction on a catastrophic scale, a devastation so complete that it seemed inconceivable. Yet, the more she stared at the ruins, the more she realized that the real horror was not about the shattered city.

  It was about the absence of life.

  The absence of people.

  There were no men, women, or children.

  There was just the yellow sky, the wind and the calcified vestiges of Humanity.

  “What you see, Beatrice, is the future.”

  The exquisite and impossibly perfect form of Tebayi shimmered into view. She wore a long white dress, superbly tailored to enhance her magnificent beauty. Her hair, the color of the sun, caressed her bare shoulders, while her blue eyes, rimmed with gold, glowed with abnormal brilliance.

  She floated forward, her feet skimming over the ground with the lightest of touch. Beatrice anchored herself, not daring to move. Even though the Amilaki looked like a goddess straight out of Greek mythology, she knew that looks could be deceiving.

  And that evil came in all shapes and sizes.

  “All this,” Tebayi said with a delicate gesture of the hand, “is Humanity’s destiny.”

  Beatrice flinched, dismayed by the flippant remark.

  “It is inevitable. As I said to poor Eklan, it is in humanity’s nature to destroy itself.”

  Tebayi circled around Beatrice, the corners of her mouth raised in a seductive smile. “But, there is some hope for you. Instead of annihilation, I offer you… redemption.”

  “Redemption?” Beatrice said, wondering what Tebayi had in mind.

  “You don’t need t
o do anything, really. I have it all planned. You simply need to obey me and your soul will be freed.”

  “Soul? What do you know about the soul?” Beatrice hissed with outrage.

  Tebayi snickered. “Isn’t it the primitive belief that your essence will survive death?”

  Beatrice’s eyes shifted, nervously tracking each of Tebayi’s steps.

  “You are so clueless about everything. It makes me wonder why Kalxin was so interested in you.”

  “That’s something you’ll never be able to understand,” Eklan said, materializing into view.

  Beatrice felt a mad rush of emotion. Eklan’s eyes had an unmistakable gleam.

  Asher’s.

  They radiated warmth like a pair of powerful, miniature suns. She was at once attracted to them, pulled into orbit like a planet around a star. The light around her dimmed, opening up to a universe filled with billions of images and sensations. But the imagery wasn’t hers. It was Asher’s. His whole existence was laid out for her to view, to absorb. Be it pain, heartbreak, loneliness or love, the emotions swirled around her like a vortex of infinite complexity. And she realized that those emotions were a commonality of the human condition.

  That it was what made us humans.

  ‘Yes,’ Asher’s voice said, filling her mind.

  Our minds might not connected,

  ‘But our hearts are.’

  “Ridiculous!” The laughter sliced into Beatrice like a knife. “You are so ignorant,” Tebayi said with a cluck of impatience. “So incapable of transcending your limitations.”

  “On the contrary,” Eklan said, his features back to being Amilaki, “It is you who is locked inside a prison.”

  “A prison?” Tebayi snorted. “You call my dominion over this world… a prison?”

  “Yes.”

  Tebayi shook her head in disconsolation. “You know nothing.”

  Eklan leveled his gaze to her. “Quite the opposite, in fact. I know the path to transcendence.”

  “Impossible.”

  Eklan turned to Beatrice. He blinked. Asher’s gaze returned, as luminous as before. “I just need to be in her heart.”

  He stepped closer and tilted his head to her. Beatrice knew at once what to do. They pulled closer together. She felt his lips on her’s and they kissed. There was a surge of emotion, a wave that filled her with pure, absolute hope. She shoved aside all other thoughts, giving in to the rush, at once certain that it was the right thing to do.

  The kiss lingered for one immortal moment.

  Then everything changed.

  A shocking emptiness crashed inside her, pulverizing the bliss that had barely began to settle in her heart. She felt a tremor travel through Eklan’s body and a millisecond later he slumped to the ground, insensate.

  He was gone.

  Just like that.

  Tebayi had not only severed the connection, she had erased him from reality, like a program no longer needed.

  She felt a powerful resolve anchor itself into every atom of her body. He was not gone. He lived inside her, inside the emotion of their bond. And even if the connexion with Eklan had been abruptly terminated, the sensation of oneness still burned inside her, like a volcano forever percolating with magma.

  She turned to Tebayi.

  “You are mistaken.”

  Taken aback by Beatrice’s cool and collected countenance, the Amilaki shook her head. “Not, it is you who are misguided. Look at yourself. You are alone. You stand there, believing you still have a chance. There is nothing you can do, my dear. Not anymore. Eklan is no longer able to help you, nor your friends in case you wondered. You are imprisoned in my oh-so-real world.”

  Tebayi gave a small gesture. “Behold.”

  The world changed. Overhead, the vast dome of cloudless sky fractured open, revealing a fissure that pulsed with dark, dangerous, energy. Raining down from the hole in the sky, an army of glistening, black-as-night, creatures appeared, the untold numbers streaking to the ground with terrifying speed.

  Beatrice watched the horde of insectoid monsters claw their way across the parched land, a wave of black death careening over the world with total dominion. The sheer number of them was astounding, but so was their unwavering fierceness. Nothing could escape their savagery. They were the final calamity, the destroyers of Life.

  The Snyl were but a few seconds away from reaching her, yet Beatrice stood her ground, refusing to give in to fear. She knew this was another one of Tebayi’s test.

  But this time, she had a secret weapon at hand, a gift from Kalxin.

  Twenty-five feet out, the first creatures fell into view, their long talons ripping up the ground with an earth-shattering noise.

  She pushed down a rush of panic, focusing instead on what she needed to do.

  The leader of the horde, a huge creature at least fifteen feet tall, veered her way.

  Time slowed down.

  She watched with curious detachment as the creature charged, its multifaceted eyes gleaming with a hideous glow.

  Tebayi stood a few feet away, her dark heart anticipating the next moment, the one that would mean the end of the Human. For even if this was all virtual, Beatrice’s terror would be real.

  And it would kill her as surely as if the bugs were physically real.

  Then the Snyl did something unexpected.

  It skirted around the human, the razor edge claws brushing harmlessly past.

  Tebayi’s eyes widened with disbelief.

  The Snyl had a new target, now.

  Her.

  31 Beyond

  Tebayi’s first thought was that there must be a flaw, somewhere, in the simulation. She must have overlooked it. It was highly improbable but there was no other explanation. She had to plunge into the code to make sure. She dove in, sifting through the countless bits of information, searching and hunting for that one evasive flaw, for the hole in the logic. But the imperfection was nowhere to be found. In desperation, she launched one final query into the latticework of data.

  No results found.

  The Snyl leapt.

  It flew toward her, the terrible eyes reflecting the golden hue of the sun as it opened its arms for the fatal embrace. She stared at it, impressed by its savage and primitive reasoning. The creature’s claws zoomed into view, angling down to cut her in half. Examining the angle of attack, she danced out of the way with ease, thankful for the bug’s ineptness.

  So pitifully predictable.

  Steadying herself, she watched the horde approach. Letting mathematically attuned reflexes process the danger, she sidestepped the first waves with prowess, her highly attuned mind foretelling the horde’s moves. But the torrent of Snyl rained down from the sky without interruption, a tide of a scale so vertiginous that it defied even the laws of nature.

  She avoided the claws and mandibles like an automaton, ignoring the screeches that filled the air with a cacophonous tumult. Time stretched out beyond normality. With every creature defeated, another took its place, an unending cycle that had no end in sight. Glancing at Beatrice, she saw that the young woman was staring back at her, her green eyes filled with defiance.

  She noted that Beatrice was safely encased inside a sphere of safety, out of harm’s way of the hellish tsunami.

  Deciding that the game had gone on long enough, Tebayi brusquely moved across the arid plain, zigzagging between the stampeding creatures. She came to the periphery of Beatrice’s bubble. There was a flicker of doubt on the young woman’s face. Emboldened by the sight, Tebayi dove forward.

  There was a sudden burst of light.

  And she found herself a few feet away from the human, in the zone where no Snyl attacked. Beatrice took a step backward, fists clenching reflexively.

  “Time to end this charade, don’t you think?” Tebayi hissed.

  “Agreed,” Beatrice said, her voice mirroring the steel in her eyes.

  Tebayi darted forward, cutting in half the distance between them. “You have no idea what to do, ri
ght?” There was a look of triumph on her face. “You are finished, little girl. There is no way out unless I decide it. You should not have tampered with something you don’t understand.”

  Beatrice grinned. “Wrong.”

  Without warning, the bubble vanished.

  A dozen of the Snyl surged forth. Extending their mandibles with a shrill shriek, they exploded inside the open space with stunning swiftness, filling the void with a flurry of lacerating limbs and razor-edged claws.

  Tebayi’s mind twitched. She skirted sideways, slamming into Beatrice with force. There was a moment of confusion as both of them came into contact. Beatrice flinched. An hail of claws raked the air, centimeters away. She dropped to the ground and looked up.

  Tebayi stared down at herself. A huge cut appeared on her white dress, the crimson spreading out like black ink on paper. Her torso was almost completely slit in half, the internal organs spilling out of the wound with each heartbeat.

  The scene froze.

  She couldn’t believe it. The game had changed… and she had lost. It was impossible, yet she couldn’t deny it. Not anymore. The creatures had managed to hurt her. She could feel the pain, down to her inner core, to the level where her electronic life roamed the virtual systems. It felt shockingly real, as if her physical body had been ripped apart.

  How could that be?

  She was beyond such primitive emotions.

  Ever since the transcendence.

  But the bugs had nevertheless found a way inside. Inside her core. She had no other choice now but to exit the simulation… and take on the real world.

  Noah entered the Cube. The towering stack of machines threw a weird light show in the dimly lit room, accentuating the hardware’s otherworldly purpose. He deliberately shifted his stare to what he needed to focus on: to the three silhouettes lying on the concrete floor.

  Shit.

  He sprinted across the room, refusing to cede to panic. He reached Garcia first. The Corporal lay flat on the floor, immobile. There was no outward sign of injury, except for an ugly expression of pain across his features. He felt for a pulse and found one immediately. It was strong and even. Garcia was out cold, for reasons still unknown. Moving to the other two, he immediately noticed something odd snaking along the floor. A wire-like tendril, glowing with energy. Inching closer, he realized with a start that the two bodies were those of Eklan and Beatrice. His heart froze.