Nemesis: Book Five

by David Beers

  Briten put his hands underneath him, balling them into fists, and pushed up even as he felt Morena trying to hold him down. He wouldn't stop, though. He would see his wife on his feet, not lying down. She must have felt his determination, because her resistance turned into support, as her aura helped hold his body. He put one foot underneath him, kneeling, and looking at Morena's world around him. He had seen it before, but not from this vantage point. Not next to his wife. Before he had seen it with only that one thought: finding Morena.

  Now she was next to him, and when he stood, he would see her.

  This was her world, what she was creating. Briten thought of his plan, the one that had them banished from her homeland. Spread Bynums to another world because their home planet couldn't sustain life any longer. She had done it.

  He closed his eyes and braced his body, knowing that it would struggle. He didn't care. He wanted to see her and he wanted to see her from his feet.

  He stood, slowly, his eyes closed, but feeling Morena all around him. Feeling the being that he gave up his life for. The being that he loved.

  Briten turned so that he faced her. His legs shook and he felt his fingers trembling as well. Despite her help, this body was exhausted, nearly unable to continue. And yet, he stood before her, not falling.

  He opened his eyes and saw what he had thought he would never see again.

  His wife.

  His Morena.

  Her aura hadn't faded at all, still the green that communicated power, and for Briten, love. He would die for her, before, now, and in the future. Morena had his heart, his very essence, and as he looked on her, he knew that every decision he ever made was right, because it led him to where he stood now.

  Morena's eyes narrowed as she took him in. She wasn't expecting this body—he knew, if she had ever expected anything. Still, Morena knew it was him, but not the being she fell in love with. Not the body of the being she fell in love with, at least. And did that change anything? Could she accept this frail body as his?

  And then she smiled, her aura pulling him close, her arms wrapping around him.

  Briten was finally home.

  Was it actually possible, or was she dreaming? Would she wake to a strange world, alone? Morena didn't know. She could look at him, touch him, speak with him, but him being here still didn't seem possible. When she thought about the time, the actual years passed since they had been together, the whole notion seemed absurd. Millions upon millions of years, with the last time they stood next to each other in that cavern. The machines walking back and forth. Building a fleet that would never be used.

  She held him then, his aura barely pink. She held him and then froze him.

  And yet, here Briten was, sitting across from her on this foreign planet, inside shelter that neither of them really understood.

  Briten stared up at a vent on the ceiling.

  "So they heat and cool their homes through these?" he said.

  "The hot or cold air comes out of that, but there is a machine inside here somewhere that generates it."

  "It's so primitive, Morena." He looked down and walked around the living room, looking at other artifacts from the people who used to live here.

  She couldn't think of anything to say back to him. She felt lost, like she didn't have any clue what to do next or where to go from here. Nothing in her plans changed now that he was here, and yet everything did. Before, she was singularly focused on her children, and now she felt something else pulling her.

  Briten, but not truly him. Of course the body he used was different, but she didn't care about that. Something deeper. Something about his essence, something that she didn't think he noticed yet. She didn't know what it was either, couldn't name it, but her focus on her children … it hadn't faded, but she wanted to know what was happening inside her husband.

  Because it felt wrong. Deadly, even.

  "How are you feeling?" she said.

  Briten stopped walking across the room and turned to look at her. "I suppose pretty good for everything that happened."

  "You don't feel different at all?"

  "Why?" he said, walking to her.

  "Your body—what happened to it?" She said and reached for his hands, his new hands. They didn't feel like Briten, but they were him regardless. She didn't need his old body, but she needed to understand what was happening with him, even he didn't sense it.

  "The Ether. I think it's still there, but I can't be sure."

  "What do you remember?"

  "I was dying. I think so at least. And then this boy, the one whose body this is, I felt him somehow—"

  "Felt him?" Morena said, not understanding how any of it was possible; his body transferring to the Ether, him feeling a human.

  "Yes. He felt like a Bynum. I didn't know if he was or wasn't, but I thought I could call him, and so I did. And he came, and then I felt I could take him, so I did."

  "But why now? Why did your body finally expire?" she said.

  "When did you leave the ship?"

  And it clicked.

  She had been sustaining him. Her body giving life to the ship, and it giving life to Briten. When she woke, when she left and entered Bryan's body, her power diminished considerably. And the Ether pulled him over, maybe because of his weakened aura, maybe for some other reason, but that's how he got there.

  "You couldn't survive over there, not without a source of life. That place is nothing but the dead," Morena said, speaking to both herself and Briten. "And now, you feel fine? You don't feel like anything has changed inside?"

  "Well, this human has built some kind of library in here, and he's populated it with what he calls books."

  Morena nodded, smiling, remembering her own venture into a library.

  "So I think he's studying me, maybe us. But other than that, no."

  Just because he didn't feel it didn't mean it wasn't so. She needed to figure it out, one of them did, because Morena didn't think what she felt would stop progressing, not until Briten couldn't take whatever it did to him. She didn't want to see that end, when this body finally shut down.

  "Let's talk about your strategy," Briten said, his hands still in hers. "Where are we going from here?"

  Michael hadn't found what he wanted before she arrived, but better late than never, right?

  He sat in the oversized, plush chair, his skin clean and his clothes new. He hadn't been able to control the blood flowing in, nor its outflow, yet when it stopped, he found that he controlled the rest of this place. With a shot, a rainfall shower started in the corner of the vast room, and when he stepped out from the water, his bloody clothes discarded on the floor, a fresh, new pair waited—folded just the way his mother used to.

  He cried for quite some time when he found out his father lived. He listened and watched as they shuffled him to Morena and as she wrapped him in her aura; she then took all of them to the house everyone now resided in. He wanted to make sure Wren was okay, that his survival wasn't a momentary lapse in death's chase after him.

  After all of that, the crying, the showering, he went back to the only thing he could do. He started reading again, listening as Briten and Morena spoke—moving in and out of the words on the page with the words from their mouths.

  And he understood now.

  The paragraph he just finished showed him the truth of it all.

  Who these two were. Where they came from and why they arrived here. He thought he understood before, understood enough to know that she meant to kill humanity, but he hadn't known the why behind it, and that why dictated her resolve in a way that made him realize he previously knew nothing.

  She wouldn't stop.

  She couldn't.

  Morena, Mother, had nowhere else to go. No ship to release her from this planet and no planet to return to. This was her last chance at her species' survival. And Briten?

  Perhaps Michael should be more fearful of him than her. He read what Briten did in that room when the two of them were nearly execu
ted. The creature was lethal, perhaps in a way that Morena never could be. And more, he was dedicated to her—all of this, everything that he put Michael and his family through had been to find Morena.

  She felt the wrongness, though, didn't she?

  Michael thought so, based on the questions she asked. She felt what Michael saw earlier, though she didn't know what it meant yet. She felt the black that Briten still didn't notice, and that was because he couldn't focus on anything but getting to Morena, and now his mind was switching to how they would survive the coming onslaught. He spent no time paying attention to the body he inhabited, and that's why he didn't know death was eating him.

  She didn't know yet, either. Because if she did, Michael wasn't so sure she would continue on with her conquest plans. He thought she might sacrifice everything, the whole world, to try and save Briten. Morena would find out though, either through Briten or by herself, and when that happened …

  This creature had hurt before, Michael saw that. Hurt a lot. But to be reunited with the only thing she loved in this universe, and then to have it ripped from her?

  What could Michael do from in here, though? What could he do to stop any of this from happening?

  Michael closed the book and lay it down next to him.

  No one saw this, not as clearly as he did. Not the two of them, and certainly not anyone outside of this little circle they now formed. These two … they weren't simply dangerous or destructive. The power residing in them could destroy universes, and neither understood that one would be taken from them. One would die.

  When this perfect storm finally gathered together, Michael didn't think anything would survive. Not her species and not his own.

  Rigley knew the kid's face, knew his name too. He had been on the reports she received, him and the rest of his friends. He didn't have red eyes on those reports, though, and none of them told her that Morena was in love with a teenager, so despite his resemblance to the pictures, Rigley didn't think this was Michael Hems.

  The other two, Wren Hems and Bryan Yetzer, had been shuffled to the back of the house. Rigley didn't want to remain inside any longer, so she walked to the porch to sit alone.

  Briten—or as Rigley was coming to think of him given the newest revelations, Junior—sat on the other side. She didn't know he would be here, had wanted some space, but she actually needed to talk with him.

  "We need to go back in," Rigley said. "Their reunion has to wait."

  Junior didn't look over to her, didn't rock on the chair like she did. He sat perfectly still, his hands in his lap, and that blue haze flowing freely. "No. Var needs her time right now and we will give it to her. There is still time for what we must do."

  "Time? I'm shocked that they haven't attacked yet, but they're going to."

  "And what will they do? Our domain stretches over a third of this land mass. How long will it take them to reach the Var?"

  He wasn't getting it. Maybe he couldn't get it, couldn't possibly see that his Var—Morena—wasn't invincible. That right now she only had two functional creatures like her, and soon she would face the entirety of the world's armed forces.

  "You have to listen to me or we're all going to die. You have to understand that basic premise. If you don't listen, we will die."

  Her mind was focused now, but it seemed to be going in and out of focus regularly. Sometimes she found herself staring off into space without a clue as to what she thought about. Other times she realized she was at the end of a sentence, but couldn't remember what she said, her hand rapidly combing through her hair. And yet, other times, she felt like this, on point and ready to move. She couldn't tell if Junior noticed because he showed her no emotion, no thoughts.

  She didn't understand the mix-up, but she didn't have time to think about it, either. The threat was real, even if no one else saw it right now.

  Maybe you should take some time to understand?

  No. Not right now. She needed to protect Morena's children and to do that, she had to use her mind while it allowed her to focus.

  "I am not saying we do not need to act, only that Var needs some time right now. An hour will not mean her death."

  "How far along are the others?" she said, switching targets. If he wasn't going to haul his ass in there and get her moving, then they needed to understand what they would be capable of when he finally was ready.

  "They're moving rapidly, much faster than I did, but they need more time."

  "Everyone in your goddamn organization needs more time. What I'm trying to say is humanity doesn't need more time. They're amassing and they're going to hit us."

  Junior stood up but didn't turn to her. His aura moved rapidly, like snakes in a hundred different places. Rigley saw them coming for her, but she couldn't move. She didn't have enough time. They grabbed hold of her wrists, binding them together behind her back, and tied her legs together so that not an inch of space remained between them. The blue snakes trapped her neck and shut her mouth, then lifted her in the air, twisting her so that she lay straight, face down, staring at the porch.

  She was completely immobile, unable to neither speak nor move.

  "There is time. Perhaps you need to see that more than I need to hear your argument. We have a force amassing out there, too." Another part of his aura flared into the air before the porch, gesturing to the force—the Bynums. "And all of them will be able to do what I just did. All of them will be almost as powerful as our Var. Nothing you bring, nothing any of your kind can bring, will have a chance at destroying us."

  15

  Rigley's Mind

  Rigley finally saw what she created. She didn't know it, but she had only needed a better vantage point. She only needed to walk around the entirety of this room, to find the stairs, and then she could see what she painted on the wall.

  She had finally found the stairs though, which was most important, because the room felt like it might begin boiling the sweat on her brow. She had to get out of this place even if she didn't know where she was heading.

  Rigley turned around just before she took her first step down. She still remembered how she first felt when she reached this room, like freedom had finally been bestowed from some all-loving God. Now, though, as she looked back at it, she didn't understand how any of that was possible. The place was a nightmare.

  And, God, what had she been doing?

  Marks' body lay collapsed on the floor with the fucking parrot feasting on his neck now, just digging in like his jugular was some kind of buffet.

  The painting. She thought she had been creating something beautiful, something that she would want to live around. It wasn't though. At all.

  She now looked across the room at her art work.

  A huge, red, smiling face looked back at her. A large X stood where each eye should be, and the now dried blood had dripped from the Xs, as if they were crying. Long traces of blood ran from the smile, looking like the mouth had just feasted on some morbid treat.

  She painted that.

  With blood.

  Rigley turned around, unable to look at what she had done anymore. Sweat dripped in her eye, and she reached up to wipe the stinging liquid away.

  Just get out, she thought. Just get out of here.

  The stairs were dark, just as dark as they had been when she climbed them, but darkness was better than light right now. Not seeing anything was preferable to looking at the gruesome face behind her. She started down, probably faster than she should, but she had to get away from the parrot, from everything in that room. She put her hand on the wall to steady herself and kept her feet moving.

  Find the bottom floor. The real bottom. Where you started. Get there and don't ever come back up here.

  She rushed down and down, nearly falling multiple times, but she managed to stay upright. She reached the first landing, her knee almost buckling as it realized there wasn't another stair to step down. At the end of the hallway a red sign beamed to her. Where are you going? it read.

&nb
sp; The sign wasn't there when she ascended the stairs, couldn't have been.

  It doesn't matter. Just keep going down.

  She started moving again, a slight limp in her step as her knee swelled.

  Her hands were her eyes, feeling the walls, trying to find an opening that meant stairs. Finally her hand touched air instead of the warm walls. She grasped forward, finding the wall lining the stairs, and she started down, if only a bit slower.

  She found the door she wanted at the bottom of this staircase. She had traveled up two stories and now she had traveled down two. She sighed as her fingertips touched the door that would grant her freedom.

  She pushed on it, knowing the moment light shone in from the first crack that she shouldn't be here. She shouldn't be upstairs; she shouldn't be downstairs; she had nowhere to go. Her momentum kept the door opening, though, and as it swung outward, she saw where the heat originated from.

  It reached out to her like a giant's hand, wrapping around her with fingers that only knew how to kill.

  Fire blazed in front of her, eating everything. Furniture, walls, wallpaper, even the hardwood floor. Her home, the place she resided in for so long, gone. She tried to suck in air, but her lungs screamed in pain as she did—the hot air scalding the soft tissues inside.

  Back upstairs, get back upstairs.

  Death reigned below. She couldn't be here, not if she wanted to live. She couldn't escape by going down, and that meant she didn't know if she could escape. No choice though. Remaining here meant death.

  Rigley ran, not bothering to close the door behind her. She ran back into the darkness.

  16

  Present Day

  The Founding Fathers would not recognize the United States of America; even the people who celebrated the last New Year wouldn’t recognize it. Indeed, to look at it now from almost any viewpoint, one would wonder if they might have been transported to a different planet entirely—forget country.