by David Beers
"And if he is infected?" Trone asked.
"Then we'd already be dead. He's been free for hours."
"And you think he's going to head down there, that he's not simply going to run off?"
Knox was quiet for a few seconds, not dropping his eyes from Trone's own. "No," he said finally. "I don't think he will. He's got grit in him, and I think he's a patriot."
A politician of thirty years was needed now. Knox should be court-martialed for what he just did, but Trone couldn't afford any such nonsense right now. Accept what was done and move on. Knox called Will a patriot, and Knox was one as well—so maybe his instincts were right. Either way, they had to move forward.
"Alright, you have your man in the field. Let's get mine."
Knox stood at the back of the room, away from Trone and Marks, which was what Trone wanted.
He only wanted himself and Marks to hear the conversation that came next.
He stood in front of the cage, the one to his left empty, the door still open. Marks sat at the back of his, his knees folded up toward his chest.
"Your plan not working?" Marks said, smiling.
"It's gone more poorly than I would have liked," Trone said, smiling too. "How about yours, is it working?"
"You're here, aren't you?"
Trone nodded, looked at the ground and paced slowly in front of the cage. "I am."
"Alone."
"Alone."
"So what are you bringing me, Mr. President?" Marks said.
"That depends on what you want."
"Full pardon, freedom, and complete control of the operation in Grayson."
"Complete control? So the rest of the world is cut off?" Trone asked, not looking up, not stopping his walk.
"I'll answer to you."
"And if you and I disagree?"
Marks laughed. "If we disagree, I think I've proven repeatedly that I'll be right."
"But if we do—your demand is that your way wins?"
"Yes. In regards to Grayson, I have complete control."
"You know, regardless of what happens, I can throw you back in this cage, right?" Trone said.
"Do you think I haven't considered that, Mr. President? Let's stop with the formalities. Everything that I wanted to happen has happened, and will continue to happen. Yes, you can always throw me back in here, but the truth is, you're not going to want to—because if you do, then that thing out there wins. I don't know what's happening right now, but I can tell from Knox that it isn't good. You need me out of this cage even more than I want to be out."
Trone stopped walking and looked toward Knox. The General stood with his hands crossed over his chest, his face the usual stone of emotion. Did Marks really see something from him, across the room like that? Or was it just talk.
He looked back down and continued walking; at this point, what did it matter.
"What's your plan, then? You know I'm not letting you go without hearing it."
"We're going to inject a disease into the white cake. Something similar to the poison you put on an ant hill. The disease will spread all the way back to ground zero, and it'll kill any offspring touching the cake."
Trone stopped then, turned and looked at Marks.
"What disease?"
"That's the tough part, no? I've been thinking about it for some time, and I believe that I've figured it out." Marks was smiling, and Trone read everything that smile meant to portray. Devilish cleverness. Danger. Fun. All of it rolled into a simple movement of this man's lips.
"Really drawing this out, huh?"
"You've made me wait a good bit, I thought I would return the favor. Knox was right about the cold—wherever these things are from, they need heat. That's the reason for the hole in Grayson. The sun isn't even enough for them, or maybe they evolved to not take it in through their skin; I don't know yet. The cold, though, they aren't adapted to it—"
"We just tried to use the cold on one of them—an active one, and not the Queen. It wiped everyone out in minutes, and then laid waste to Houston," Trone offered no deference to Marks' speech.
Marks waited a second before talking. "I imagined that would happen, but that's not what I'm talking about. If you go up against these things in battle, you're going to lose, no matter what you do. The disease, the cold, has to go in through the strands. That's the only way."
"And you think you can do it, inject this inside the white cake?"
"I'm kind of staking my life on it, aren't I?"
Trone turned around, his back to Marks, and looked at Knox.
Marks was a dangerous game, Trone understood that. Even so, no one else even hinted at what Marks just announced. All these brains, all these people, and no one dreamed of injecting it with a disease. Trone wanted the fame that would come with victory—the legacy, but this stretched much further, obviously. The fate of the world rested in Mark’s hands. Trone didn't see how he couldn't play the game. Knox thought playing it put the world at risk, which it did—but not playing?
There lay the question. Which was more dangerous? Trone thought not playing was more dangerous, because nothing else they did worked.
Marks planned the rules of the game, and plotted each of his moves, but none of that changed that it was the only game in town.
"General Knox," Trone called across the room.
"Yes, sir?"
"Release Kenneth Marks. He is receiving a full pardon and command of our armed forces."
27
Present Day
Whatever else happened in America, apparently major corporations needed to keep advertising. Huge swaths of the country wiped out, yet Will could pull up the news on his phone, complete with pharmaceutical and reverse mortgage ads. Capitalism continued, even when government failed.
Will saw the war, saw the CNN sponsored maps about where the alien had 'landed'. Somehow the idiots in control of the major news networks were still trying to use clever gimmicks to sell their nonsense.
The creature was wiping out Texas, and heading further west, making a way for the strands to follow.
Foreign countries flew planes over, trying to bomb it—Will didn't know if that was authorized or not, but it didn't really matter, because the creature dealt with them the same as it dealt with anything else. A six foot five Godzilla, swatting planes like flies.
Will thought the only good piece of information was that it appeared to be staying in the West, moving through Texas, and likely heading to Mexico or California. Will was headed south. He didn't know what he planned on doing, but definitely knew he didn't want to run into that thing—that or Morena.
He looked out the windshield of the stolen Jeep, parked just beyond Morena’s world.
He had looked at nearly this exact same landscape days ago, only Knox had been in the driver's seat. Then he was forced into the white wilderness; now, he chose it.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he asked himself. "Just what in the fuck?"
Luck didn't begin to describe how he was still alive, let alone that his brain wasn't a bowl of soup; yet here he was, about to go back into an area that he couldn't control—couldn't even influence—at all. He saw the alien and from that understood any chance humanity might have had ended when she took physical form.
So why go any further south?
Why not leave?
"Because you're a goddamn idiot," he said, believing it fully, but still not putting the Jeep in reverse.
He wore a hazmat suit, everything but the head zipped up and on. He yanked it before leaving the bunker, though he hadn't seen anything like it before. He tried it out fifty miles back, and it seemed to work, even if the holes lining the thing should have defeated the purpose of a hazmat suit. The suit created a mist around it, shooting out water from the tiny holes lining the material, water so cold that it was almost particles of ice rather than liquid.
Hopefully the thing worked against the strands. If not, he would probably quit cursing at himself, he supposed.
Is Rigley
in there? The thought broke through his mind's focus on going forward. Did she make it here? Is she helping it?
Everyone involved with this mess—all of their lives were ruined. The girl he saw at the door, Thera. Rigley. Himself. The two agents who worked with him in the beginning … two kids whose names he couldn't remember anymore. What a fucking mess this thing was. Everyone fucked except for Marks. He probably still sat in that cage wearing his sick smile, thinking that somehow he would morph into the alien.
She came here and started all of this, but it was Marks who truly began ruining lives. Marks who shaped what the current world looked like, despite what anyone else believed.
Except for the dead girl. That might be the only body not on his hands. He hadn't killed her; the alien's hands were red from that.
"Don't act like she's the reason," he said aloud.
Except he always went back to her.
Marks on one side and her on the other. One he knew and one he only saw briefly. She summed up this whole thing to him, somehow, despite what he just said. The poster child for this whole fucked up situation. Innocent and caught in it, with no choice, and now dead.
I already have the suit on, he thought. Would be a bitch to take it off.
He opened the Jeep door and stepped out. He reached in for the helmet and slid it over his head, securing the locks, and listening to the filtered air start pouring in through the side panels. The old sound of being an astronaut—he hadn't heard it since Bolivia.
The Jeep still running and the door still open, Will began his walk into the white.
28
Present Day
"I don't know what we can do," Michael said. "I mean, attacking isn't even an option, and everything I learn from him shows no way to beat them."
The three still remained in the bedroom, no one wanting to venture out. The grays were arriving, slowly, but coming all the same. Bryan could look out the window and see a scattering of ten, with two more appearing on the horizon. The voices brought them, perhaps the vibrations created through this silent world, or perhaps they just had some kind of super hearing. Either way, they were coming, and Bryan certainly had no interest in seeing them again.
Looking at Michael now, he saw something close enough.
Gray, transparent, with eyes like golf balls.
Michael would be okay. He had to be. It didn't matter what he looked like right now, Bryan could help. Even if he couldn't beat Morena, that didn't mean he couldn't keep Michael from turning into one of them.
They just needed a plan, something that would free him from the other creature's grasp.
And yet, no one had a clue.
"Are you okay?" Wren asked. "We've been here for a while, and I … I guess I don't know what is happening with you. Is it getting worse?"
"I feel alright," Michael said. "But I really don't know anymore than you do. I don't know how long I can stay over here; I don't even know if time is the same."
"It's not," Bryan said. "It can't be. I feel like we've been here for at least a day, but the sun has barely moved outside."
Bryan watched as Wren turned to the window; he might have glanced out it a few times before, but his attention was mostly focused on Michael.
"A full day and nothing gained," Michael said, looking out as well.
Which was true, and frightening. Bryan came here because he thought that seeing Michael would bring some insight, but he found nothing here besides reunion. And reunion wasn't enough.
"He's dying," Michael said. "Her husband or whatever. He doesn't know it yet, but it's happening."
"Why?" Bryan asked.
"No idea. I found him over here after you left. I don't know if it was here or what happened on their home planet, but he's being eaten alive. Not my body, but his … I don't know, soul, maybe?"
"What happens when he dies?" Wren said.
Michael said nothing, only looked out the window.
"It'll take you, too?" Bryan said. "If it takes him, you'll go down with it?"
"I think."
Bryan watched as the delicate mirror he had placed together shattered. He could feel the pieces of glass breaking into even tinier shards. He couldn't save anyone. Not Thera. Not Michael. And what did he give up to be here? His parents. His girlfriend. All of it for nothing if Michael died.
"You can't," he whispered. "You can't die."
Michael smiled absently, not looking around. "I wish that were true."
"How long does he have?" Wren said.
"I don't know. He's sleeping more, and I think it's because of the sickness. He'll notice soon, probably—when it gets bad enough."
"Can she heal him?" Wren said.
"I don't know. I'm not sure this is like what she did with my body and yours. I think it might be too deep for her."
"How are you able to come here?" Bryan said, realizing he was changing the subject, but the thought sprung up in his mind. Something obvious, not yet no one had asked it. "How do you get over here like they do?"
Michael looked at him. "There's a curtain." His eyes glazed over a bit, as if remembering what he saw. "I reach for it, but I can't pull it back, instead, my hand moves through it, and when I keep going, I end up here. Like, it's a curtain in my mind, separating reality from here."
"Before, before you found him—how did you get here?" Bryan asked, following a thread that he couldn't see the end of.
"He brought me. He brought me the whole way, from your house, to this world, and then all the way across this world."
"He?" Wren said.
"Yes, her husband. He felt me somehow." Michael's eyes regained focus, and he turned to Wren. "I got lost in everything that happened. Holy shit. I didn't even think about how it was all possible. The colors. That's what it was; that's how he saw me."
"Michael, slow down," Wren said. "Just slow down—we don't know what you're talking about."
"Look, before we found Bryan, I started to see these colors everywhere. I didn't know what they were, but they were alive, Dad. And now … Jesus Christ, I think they were souls."
"No," Bryan said. "Auras. They're called auras."
Michael snapped around. "Yes! That's what they were. I saw them, more than I could count. And one of them, I breathed it in. I took it into me, and then woke up over here."
"You what?" Wren said.
"It went through my nose and filled my lungs. That's when he felt me. It had to be, and then he started pulling me to him because he needed someone he could inhabit. That aura, it changed me. It allowed him to see me."
"And now you come and go through this place as you please …,” Bryan said, seeing the thread's end. A way that Michael might live.
"Not as I please. Something about being here is destroying me; it's turning me into them."
Bryan didn't say anything. He stared at his shoes, assuring himself that the next words he spoke were words he actually wanted to say. It might work, but it meant everything from the first time might happen again.
Was it worth it?
If Michael lived? Was Bryan ready to go through all of that again? He could think of no other way, nothing else that might separate him from Morena's dying husband.
He saw Thera's face, then. A white mess of strands moving through her eyeballs, eating her intestines the same as a bacteria. He saw her lying in that forgotten ditch, braver than he, and dead for it. He did nothing while she went after Morena, only watched. And would he do that again? Would he shy away from possible pain, let fear dictate his actions?
He looked up at Michael, whose eyes still shone with the knowledge he just discovered. "I want you to try something."
Briten remembered almost nothing.
He had never felt something so strange, almost as if he'd been born only hours before. He lay on the couch, staring up at the ceiling but unable to make himself move.
The boy was gone, and with him, all his memories. Briten had his own, everything from his childhood until his and Morena's near execution, but ev
erything that he knew from this world was gone. The boy took everything with him, and Briten sat in a body he didn't know, with a history he couldn't access.
Where had he gone? And more importantly, what did it mean? Briten still controlled the body, but the mind? Yes, that was his alone now too. Could he use it as well as Michael, or had Briten relied on him the entire time?
"Morena!" he shouted from the couch.
"She's not here," a woman's voice came back.
Briten looked to his right; Rigley stood at the living room's entrance. Unannounced and for how long? He didn't have time to consider it, though. This psychotic woman didn't really matter.
"Where is she?" he said.
"Outside, I think."
Briten sat up, but didn't stand. He looked around the room, making sure he understood where he was and what he saw. The boy hadn't taken the present moment from him, thank The Makers.
He stood and passed by the woman without looking at her. He walked through the parlor and out the door, where chilly air met his body. He only wore a … but he didn't know what to call the garment on his chest any longer. When he went to sleep, he could have used the boy's memory to find out what he wanted to know. Now, he only knew he was cold and not even the word to ask for something that might warm him up.
"Makers," he said as he looked out at the endless white yard. "Morena!" He didn't see her anywhere, not even above, in the sky. He turned back to the door, seeing that Rigley had followed him. "Where did she go?"
"I don't know."
The woman stared at him with accusing eyes. Her pale, thin skin filled up her whole face as her eyes squinted down on him. She wasn't manic, though. She was focused right now. She could stare all she wanted—he didn't care. He needed to speak with Morena, and whatever this woman wanted could wait.
He broke eye contact with Rigley and walked across the porch and into the yard, letting the strands touch his bare feet. They would know what he wanted once they touched him, and hopefully they would send it to Morena, because he certainly couldn't scream loud enough for her to hear.
