by David Beers
"I could talk to them…," the woman whispered.
"You could have done that before you came here. Why didn't you?"
Silence.
"You didn't because you knew that they didn't want peace. They want war. They want my death. My children's death." Morena's aura tasted something with that word, with children. She didn't know what, exactly, but the woman reacted when she heard it.
Why? Morena wondered. What's there that you're not showing me? She could find out, easily, with her aura if she wrapped it around the woman, but that could end poorly. Yet, that word felt like a pressure point Morena could push down on, could twist in order to get what she needed.
"What do you want to do, then?" the woman said.
"I want to protect my species. My children." Morena lowered her voice, playing off the information her aura gathered. She needed to sound meek, perhaps even frightened. "You came here wanting peace, but they won't let us have it. I have no choice but protection. Look at him. His name is Briten. I named him after my husband, and he and I are the last of our kind. The last and the first. Have I tried to harm you since you arrived? No, because I don't hate your species. They hate me."
She paused for a second as the woman's eyes turned to Briten.
"They're going to kill him, and though he stands taller than you, he's no different than the babies the mothers on Earth carry in their arms. He can't defend himself. He has no hope without me. None of them do."
Morena's aura stretched out in front of the woman then, pointing to all the other capsules of colors around her. "They will all look like him. Soon, too. Their births are coming. If they're not all dead."
* * *
Rigley's eyes fell across the color filled pods.
They were babies. And how many? Endless. Rigley turned again, doing a slow circle, as she looked out at the white fields, and knew that she couldn't possibly count how many pods she saw. All of them full of life. All of them wanting to live.
Just as her own child had wanted to live. Rigley never had the chance to talk to her daughter, but who could doubt that life wanted to live? Who could doubt that every cell in every creature to ever exist wanted to continue existing, to replicate if possible?
What was this creature, this alien, asking Rigley to do?
To help her save these children. Nothing else. The alien didn't ask for war, didn't ask to help kill, didn't threaten Rigley at all. She only wanted help saving those that depended on her most. An alien that wanted the same thing any mother would want, a safe place for her offspring.
I can help her, Rigley thought. I can help save all of these children.
Tears pricked at her eyes. How many men had she killed in Bolivia? Hundreds. And here, right now, she could redeem herself—she could make up for those murders by saving these beings. None of them had harmed a soul, none of them had even been given a chance to harm anyone. Humanity judged them before their births, the same as fate judged Rigley's own child.
Rigley turned back and looked at the men shooting the ice across the white fields.
"I can help," she whispered. "I can help save them."
* * *
"How?" Morena asked. The speed at which the conversation progressed made her want to see inside the woman. Something was desperately wrong with her, something irrevocably broken, and Morena wanted to explore it. She wanted to know why the word children seemed to matter so much. She wanted to know what could make a woman show up here and agree to betray her own species in such short order.
Perhaps humans weren't attached like Morena. She remembered Bryan and Thera inside the Ether, remembered the way they shrieked when Morena hurt their parents. Morena witnessed attachment amongst a small group, but here, there appeared to be none? Perhaps humanity's attachment didn't truly extend to those outside of one's own social group.
Perhaps the survival of the species mattered only in that one's own group must survive, and that is why those on the edge of Morena's grasp were trying to kill her. They weren't concerned with those across the world, only concerned with making sure that those here, those close, didn't die.
Morena could never see life like that. Each Bynum, each one waiting to come out of their capsule, was her child, and each one dear. No social group existed outside of their species. They were one.
Whatever lay broken inside this creature had severed the remaining ties she held with humanity. Morena need not plunge inside her mind. This woman would walk the entirety of humanity to extinction.
"Do you have the ability to attack? While being assaulted?”
"It depends on the range, on what I'm attacking," Morena said.
The woman turned back and met Morena's gaze. Her look of wonder, her whispers were gone. "There are strategic places you can attack that will disrupt them. The problem is, they're a long way from here, and attacking one probably won't do it. You'll need to attack multiple places simultaneously. And even then, it's going to bring more people to fight you. A lot more. It'll give you time, but it won't free you from what they're trying to do."
“Time…," Morena said, thinking through what the woman told her. Time was what she needed. Time enough to let the birth occur, time enough to try and mature some of the Bynums, because with an army behind her, it didn't matter how much cold these humans amassed. They would fall. She needed time to gather strength, nothing more. "Time will work."
"Okay, then," the woman said. "Let's talk about how you'll attack, and what your plan is after you do it. If we don't have a plan, they'll all be back, and you won't get another chance to save any of your children."
Morena looked at this woman. These weren't the words of a mother, or of a broken being, but the words of a leader. Words Morena might have said herself, if the roles were reversed.
30
Present Day
The woman, Rigley, was….
Fucked.
That's how Will's mind had termed it when she came to visit him, and Morena picked up on the word. Now, Morena understood the intricacies of the word, because Rigley was most definitely fucked. Even so, now that she had decided to help, her mind was like that of a general. She seemed made to do this work.
Morena, if being honest, had been somewhat scared before this woman showed up. She didn't see a way out, didn't understand how to combat a world she barely knew. Now, though, she might be able to create enough room to breathe a bit, and in that breath, her children would come to life, and then all of this would end. The woman might be fucked, but she wasn't dumb, and she understood how important that breath, that time, was.
Morena had her plan and now it needed to be operationalized.
Rigley floated behind Morena, wrapped inside her aura. The heat from below would have ravaged her just as it had the surrounding landscape, but Morena's aura protected her from the brunt of it. Morena could have killed Rigley now that she understood the spots she needed to hit with this attack, but she saw Rigley as valuable. Not indispensable by any means, but worth keeping around because of her knowledge. And her apparent commitment.
Morena flew over the core, staring down into it again, but this time not thinking on what should be done. Now she looked down thinking about exactly how it would all be done. The strands remained tied to the core, stretching from the very edge where the cold killed them, to the outer ring of the hole that Morena floated over. They told her what was inside the core as well as out, letting her know both their pain and the amount of internal heat available.
Morena had to be careful here, not only with herself, but with the core. What she was attempting would weaken every piece of strand extending across this world. It might even weaken her, and certainly would weaken her children nearing life.
And in truth, she didn’t know if she could do it.
She told Rigley that she had a way to attack, and this was it. Truly, the only way that she could hit multiple targets at once.
There was no sense in sitting here and thinking about it any longer. The humans around her perimeter
hadn't slowed; indeed, they still pushing inward, and within the hour the first of her children would be frozen and killed in their wombs.
Morena might die doing this, or weaken herself so much that it came to the same in the end. She had no other choice though; that was one thing Rigley helped her see in their walk to the core. Humanity would keep coming. They wouldn't stop, and now that they knew her weakness, they would press on until not a trace of her or her children remained.
Morena nodded, steeling herself for this, for the weight of it.
* * *
Miles into the Earth, the first wisps of a green smoke like substance filtered in. It moved around the edges of the inner sanctum which held the liquid rock, tracing along the cavern's ceiling. It didn't venture into the lava, only kept pouring down from a single spot, like some kind of green, ephemeral waterfall. It spread, trying to understand the new world around it and at the same time trying to envelop that world.
Finally, the green aura finished wrapping the lava in a cocoon, and then it waited, the color still shifting and moving as if trying to gain a better position.
It waited thirty minutes as it took information it gathered and fed it back up the waterfall to the aura's source, to its home. Finally, though, it was ready to act, ready to take in the information flowing down from its source and use it.
From across the cavern's ceiling, tiny points of the aura formed needles, and started pushing inward. The outer shell of the aura remained, creating what looked like a circular iron maiden, only with smoke instead of steel. The points moved inward and inward, until at the same time, they reached the molten lava. The churning liquid took the aura in as it would anything, afraid of nothing, accepting of all. The aura disappeared at once, the points of it flowing into the lava.
The outer aura connected with the inner lava, and across the entire cavern, poles of green light grew from the outer edges to the churning liquid, feeding more and more of the aura into it, where it dispersed with each passing second.
The aura across the cavern lit up, shining brighter than it had ever before, all at once—and then with the same immediacy, shot that light down through the poles and into the lava.
There had been churning, constant churning inside the Earth's core. For millions of years.
Yet when that light entered, a wave pulsed through the entirety of the moving lava. It started on the edges, sending ripples across the outer circle, and then pushing inward, moving through the churning, and stilling the entire mass of liquid.
For a single second, maybe less, as the pulse reached the very center of the circle, the whole of the Earth's core was dormant.
And then it started moving again.
Churning, but very differently. A section of the lava, the section closest to the waterfall, rose from the rest of its brethren, twisting and turning around itself, but obviously heading upward. It kept going, though physics said it should fall back in, splashing down into the boiling liquid below. It didn't. Up and up it pushed, slowly, even though the churning with which it wrapped in on itself again and again was rapid.
The section grew long, with more of the liquid following behind.
Higher, until it met the sunlight for the first time in its existence.
* * *
Morena floated above the Earth, perhaps three hundred feet above Rigley.
Every muscle in her body held the tenseness of wire supporting a massive weight. She wasn't moving though, only holding position with her eyes shut. She refused to open them. Her aura relayed every piece of information she needed back to her immediately. If she opened her eyes—to actually see what was happening around her, the beauty of it—she would lose focus and the missile she now created would collapse back to the ground.
She felt it rising above the Earth, felt it rising into the air, even felt the temperature rising around her as the core's heat infected the rest of the atmosphere.
The weight of it consumed her entire being. No other thoughts went through Morena's mind for the first time in her life, only the focus on moving this weapon. Any deviation from that focus and all was lost.
She took the tunnel of lava and spread it in an ever increasing circle, creating a kind of massive, orange mushroom. Nothing above looking down, no satellites, would be able to see it because it still resided within the protective wrap. Soon though, when it breached the strand's perimeter, everyone would see it. Everyone would know exactly what Morena had done.
The lava continued rising from the hole, and the umbrella forming above Grayson kept growing, spreading a wave of heat across the land never before witnessed.
Morena, eyes closed, pushed onward.
31
Present Day
Briten stood up, the people around him all jumping backwards at nearly the same instant. He turned his head to the right, looking at the door—the way out.
Pain.
He felt it the same way he first felt Morena in this world. She was in pain.
The boy inside still sat in his library, but Briten was no longer there, no longer cared about it, because Morena's feelings had rushed through his consciousness like water from a broken dam. He couldn't tell why, or what was happening, only that she hurt.
Go, he thought.
"What's happening?" the boy's father asked, standing closer than anyone else in the circle.
Briten ignored him, stepping through the circle before any of them could react. His eyes searched frantically for what the boy termed keys, looking for them across the room even as Morena's pain shouted from what felt like everywhere.
"Where are they?" he said into the quiet room, his own voice hard but low.
"Where is what?" someone asked.
He saw them then, though—or saw what he thought could be them. A small loop holding metal on it, sitting next to a box on a brown piece of furniture. Briten didn't bother trying to understand the box, didn't care at all what the furniture held. He stepped forward and grabbed the keys, and then whipped back around to the door, moving as quickly as he could with this odd body. The boy inside him said nothing, but Briten could feel him watching, trying to understand what was happening. It didn't matter; none of the people in this room mattered. Now, only finding Morena mattered.
He opened the motel room door and walked outside, though he stopped once he reached the breezeway. He knew the keys went to something called a car, but he didn't know what car meant. Anger didn't rise in Briten as it would have in Morena, but a calm coldness seeped over his mind, perhaps so cold it even chilled the boy inside.
He heard people moving behind him, filing out the door almost as quickly as he had, trying to follow him. They stopped abruptly, though—just as Briten did, staring at the back of his still body.
Where is it? Briten said to Michael.
Why do you want it?
Briten didn't respond, but remained silent while his senses continued bringing him Morena's struggle. The boy wasn't simply going to give him the answer, and the only other choice was to rifle through his memories until Briten understood what he was looking for. Instead, the child wanted to bargain his information.
I have to go to her, Briten said, making the decision nearly instantaneously that he would trade this information rather than haggle or search. Morena. She's in pain. Something is happening.
The boy said nothing for a few seconds, and in that span of silence, Briten felt his patience finally stretching. There wasn't time for this, for any of it, and yet here he was, waiting.
Finally, though, a vision came to him—popping up in the forefront of his consciousness. A large, blue vehicle sitting in the parking lot beneath him.
Briten went to his left, his feet not quite at a jog, but close, and yet he still heard the people behind him starting to follow.
Down the steps, pausing briefly as he scanned the parking lot, looking for the picture in his head. He saw it in only a few seconds, twenty feet from him, and still the cold certainty held sway over his mind. He continued his quick steps
, not breaking into a run, not letting any other emotions or wants to break through the shield he held in front of them all.
He reached the car door and stared at the keys for a second, not knowing what they meant or what they would do to the huge piece of metal in front of him.
What is this? How does this work?
He heard the boy laughing inside, not at him per se, but a chuckle at Briten's infancy, and at that moment, Briten realized this would be tougher than he imagined. Getting to Morena under any circumstances would be difficult given his lack of understanding of nearly everything around him, and getting to her quickly would be even harder. He needed to ask this boy everything, and the boy seemed just as calm as him, perhaps more so.
Briten turned and looked at the family hustling behind him.
Hey, woah, Michael said. You don't have to go there. I'll tell you, man.
He read Briten's thoughts, understood that turning around was a threat in itself.
There's no time for communication, let alone the lack of it, Briten said.
The boy didn't say anything while the rest of his family approached. Briten could tell he was thinking, but not the exact thoughts. Somehow the kid kept them from him.
You'll hold them over me forever, Michael said, though if it was to Briten or to himself, Briten couldn't tell. You'll threaten to hurt them for whatever time we're together if I don't do what you ask.
"Where are you going?" someone standing around the car said. Briten stared straight ahead, focusing on the internal conversation.
No, I'm not going to let you do that, Michael said. We're not going another step forward unless there are some ground rules met.
