But even this dull life was not forever. He could see the cycle. The strong become stronger, but then, like everything else the Devourers touched, they would be consumed, worn down, undone by the monstrous touch of these creatures. They were many when the Devourers took the chieftain's world, dozens of warriors captured, but their numbers dwindled, disappeared, fed into the machinery of this place.
At least the numbness kept the worst of it away. Suffering is not noble, he thought. Suffering is not brave. Not like this. Not in this place.
Sometimes he dreamed—or perhaps it was something else, a hallucination, a prophetic vision—of his wife, or his children, or his home. His tribe, his entire people, did not marry for love, nor did they have children for love. Everything was for the betterment of the tribe, to ensure survival, and all activity and efforts were directed toward that one goal, to be stronger, to be more powerful.
But when he dreamed, and envisioned the hollow outlines of his wife's cheeks, when he saw the yet-unscarred skin of his newborn son, held in his hand like a toy, he remembered love. Even in the battle to be strong, love will find a way to exist. Love is born where lives intersect.
He missed his wife and his many children. In the darkness, he silently recited their names. It became more difficult with each day, though. He wondered if that meant he was fading. If he would soon be fed to this infernal machine and discarded like a bone picked-clean.
All I wanted was a warrior's death, he thought, sitting in the darkness, the silence around him oppressive and deafening. A blade in my hand, face to face with some grim beast, and we would know, that creature and I, that we would fight, and one of us, or both of us, would die in that place. I just wanted to die on my feet. Brave. To feel my death, fang or claw opening up my veins. I hoped to smell the wilderness of my home world once more before oblivion came for me.
This is no death, the chieftain thinks. He tries to recall his father's face, his first battle. These things slip around the edge of his consciousness like tiny fish. He looks once more at his brother, lumbering and heavy-limbed, and wonders if he could free him, if they could free each other. Perhaps together they could find a way home.
Except home is gone, he reminds himself—broken-hearted that he'd forgotten. There's no home to go back to. Only this waiting, this cold passivity, this horror clinging to his chest, filling him with strength and devouring his spirit.
He closed his eyes and wished for oblivion, hoping, on the other side of that darkness, his family might be there waiting for him.
Chapter 23:
An elemental force
Jane monitored the faces around the table as much as she watched the alien reveal his story. How he'd crossed the stars as a messenger to their world, to try to get here in time for Earth to prepare. Seng was clearly exhausted; the act of speaking alone seemed to take all of his effort, and he frequently paused to cough, or to grimace and hold his ribs in pain.
Doc, of course, listened intently, quietly, taking everything in from behind those red glasses. Emily leaned forward, fascinated—this is what she dreams about, Jane knew, science fiction as reality, aliens and spaceships and everything strange. Titus wore a mask of worry, which, Jane understood, would mirror her own. We're the caretakers she thought, the watchers. She knew the werewolf would have a gnawing sensation in his stomach, fear and concern and anxiety chewing away at him.
Bedlam, the newcomer, looked blatantly overwhelmed. With each new fact Seng uttered, her mouth would drop open, often with some vile combination of curse words that even turned Emily's head a few times.
And then there was Kate. Unfazed, unconcerned, all business, listening and plotting. Jane wasn't sure what she could be planning—this was so far beyond anything they'd done before, after all—but there she was. Fearless and ready for a fight.
"Okay, so what I don't understand," Emily said, resting her chin on one hand thoughtfully, "is what they want?"
"I think Seng is saying that they want to eat our world," Titus said.
"I mean big picture wise," Emily said. "It has to lead to something, right? Can't just drift from world to world, munch munch munch burp, moving on, forever and ever, right?"
Seng made a strange gesture with his hand. Jane realized as he performed it that it seemed to indicate agreement.
"This is something the beings your world calls the Luminae have pondered for ages," Seng said. "Because they, like we, demand a purpose to things. We want—"
"—A reason," Kate said.
Seng bowed his head to her.
"But from what we have seen, from all of the battles, all of the dead worlds, we think they are…" Seng tilted his head as the Luminae sharing his body the way Dude shared Billy's helped him find the words he was looking for. ". . . an elemental force. They simply exist, and this is simply what they do."
"That. Is messed. Up," Bedlam said.
"So what do we do about a force of nature?" Jane said. "Have they ever been defeated before?"
"There have been worlds where the Nemesis have been driven off," Seng said. "Not many, but it is not unheard of."
"Well that's good. What are we talking about, a twenty-five percent chance of survival?" Emily said.
"We can recall… perhaps three or four incursions when the Nemesis fleet has been repelled," Seng said.
"Okay then, never mind, we're screwed," Emily said.
"Well, they're already here," Titus said. "Whatever that means."
"Fortunately," Seng said, "what you've encountered are only seedlings. They grant power, and they do the bidding of the fleet, but they are stoppable, as you've shown."
"If those are hardly a threat, I want to know more about what's coming for us," Kate said. "Because if those are the average foot soldier we'll be dealing with, we're going to need more help."
"Your main concern is to keep the seed ships off your world," Seng said.
"Oh, that sounds fantastic," Bedlam said. "Seed ships. Let me guess, they crash and thousands of those things we fought come crawling out like baby spiders and start taking people over."
Seng looked at her as if she'd taken the words out of his mouth. Bedlam's eyes widened. "Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm wrong, man, I don't want to be right," she said.
He looked around the room, his alien expression unreadable.
"The seed ships are their…" again, Jane watched as the alien conversed with its Luminae symbiote for the right word. "You would call them their terraforming device."
"I have no idea what that word means," Bedlam said.
"You need to read more," Emily said.
"You need a punch in the mouth," Bedlam said.
"You both need to shut up," Kate said. "If one of those seed ships lands, how long do we have? Can we stop the process once it starts?"
Seng stared at Kate with huge, unblinking eyes.
"It would be recommended that this not happen," he said.
"What about Billy?" Jane said. "What are the chances he's already dead? We sent him up there to investigate."
"If the Straylight did not choose to engage the fleet alone, he should be able to outrun them," Seng said.
"Like you did?" Emily said.
"I was ambushed," the alien responded, not taking the bait in Emily's taunt.
Doc spoke next, and everyone, even Kate, turned to listen.
"Then we need to make sure these seed ships don't get here," Doc said. "I'm going to go scare up some help for us. Emily, you and I are going to head over to the Labyrinth. I hate to admit it but they might have something there that might help you if we have to go toe to toe with these things again."
"Field trip!" Emily said.
Doc looked at Jane.
"I'll come with you," Jane said. "I'm kind of curious what they might have for all of us."
"And the rest of us?" Titus said.
"Eyes on the sky, Titus," Doc said. "Let's hope we hear from Billy soon."
Chapter 24:
The toy box
Hen
ry Winter met them at the gates of the Labyrinth, smiling broadly as he leaned on his cane. He led Doc, Jane, and Emily inside with the light playfulness of a millionaire showing off his bungalow. You'd never know, Jane thought, that he had been a prisoner here himself for almost a decade.
The trauma was still fresh enough in her own mind that she felt an electric creep of anxiety crawl up her spine just by walking inside. From the sour look on Emily's face, Jane guessed the younger girl felt the same way.
"I can't believe I'm saying this," Doc said. "But we need to get a look at that item you showed me the other day."
Winter's face displayed genuine surprise.
"I thought…" he said.
"We're dealing with an alien invasion," Doc said. "I'm trusting you to tell us the truth about what it does."
Winter nodded solemnly.
"Of course. You know I wouldn't lie about something like this," he said.
"Something like what?" Emily said, an edge to her voice. She was dancing around as she waited for the men to finish talking, indicating she was either getting very bored or had to pee.
"Come on down to the toy box," Winter said. "I'll show you what we've got."
The toy box was what Winter had taken to calling the lab where he'd once been put to work developing tools for the Department under Prevention's watch. An open room littered with tables and half-built inventions, it looked like a mad genius's workshop. They walked past what had to be several prototypes of the armored suit Winter used to wear when he was a hero like they were, a dismantled "null gun," the type of weapon that had been employed to knock Dude out of Billy's body, and other, more esoteric items Jane couldn't quite place.
And then they saw the man who could have destroyed the future, puttering away at a work station.
Keaton Bohr. The scientist who, in another timeline, turned Emily into a battery to power weapons of war, had somehow tinkered too much with Emily's powers and turned her into a world-destroying bomb, and who, in the end, found nothing left for himself but death and oblivion. Jane had a difficult time looking at him. It was because of him the future versions of herself and Emily from that other timeline were dead, why that version of Billy was dead, why that other world was a cataclysmic disaster.
None of those things would come to pass here, they hoped. When they returned to their own timeline they had two options—put Bohr down to prevent him from making the same mistakes, or target the genius he clearly possessed in better pursuits. And so the Department took him in, and told him to make a better world.
It turned out a genius is a genius, and given the right tools and the right motivation, Keaton Bohr stood a chance of redeeming himself in this timeline, of being a hero and not a villain, or at least, Jane thought, building a better battery. Leaving the world a better place for having been in it. Which is all anyone should really strive to do in life.
But still, when she looked at him—this mousy man with his lank hair and glasses, looking so gleeful and proud in front of his inventions—it was hard not to see the man who played a huge part in ending an entire timeline. She wanted to be more gracious than hating a man for what he had not yet done, but it was hard to forgive him for the things she'd seen.
Emily barely looked at him. Somehow, his reaction to Emily ignoring him actually broke the tension, because Keaton clearly wanted to be liked, and could not understand why she seemed so bent on giving him the cold shoulder. Jane, at least, made an attempt at being polite.
"I was tinkering with the suits the Department developed based on the kinetic-energy powered armor confiscated from that young drug dealer," Keaton said. "The Distribution suits."
Jane actually smiled a bit at that—Distribution, a low-level supervillain and all around sleaze—was the target of the Indestructibles' first mission together. It was a disaster. A successful disaster in that they apprehended him, but, as Billy liked to say when they talked about that first fight, they were like kids in a bouncy castle, not superheroes.
"Yeah, I didn't do too well against those," Emily said, picking up a mass of wires and circuit boards which Henry Winter promptly removed from her hands and placed back down on the countertop.
"Because they absorbed the kinetic energy you used against them, right?" Keaton said. "You used some sort of reversion of your floating spheres—"
"Bubbles of float, yo," Emily corrected.
"Bubbles of float," Keaton continued. "And turned it into an outgoing kinetic force."
"A wall of slam," Emily once again corrected. "Dude, this isn't hard to remember. I use very small words."
"Speaking of your wall of slam," Winter said. "I've been meaning to ask. When I took over, I had a structural analysis performed taking a look at the whole Labyrinth, and I found several locations on the detention level where entire sections of wall looked as if it has been moved forward several inches, doing severe damage to the integrity of the—"
"So you were saying something about my bubbles of float?" Emily interrupted.
Winter looked at Jane and winked.
Jane just offered him a wide-eyed expression—lying had never been Jane's specialty, and she'd been right there when Emily, pitching a fit, moved an entire prison wall with her mind.
"I understand you have trouble with precision," Keaton said.
"Not true," Emily said. "I can pick your nose with a bubble of float."
"But with your… offensive abilities?" Keaton said.
"I call it wall of slam for a reason," Emily said.
Keaton pulled a black plastic cover off an object that had been sitting on the worktable and drew out a metallic glove, robotic and segmented like armor.
"This might help," Keaton said.
"We've discussed," Doc said. "Nothing that draws power from her."
Winter waved a hand reassuringly.
"All this does is let her point that wall of slam with more precision," Winter said. "It lets her concentrate it into a smaller wall. One the size of her hand. Like a long distance punch."
Emily picked the glove up and promptly slid it on. Everyone at the worktable, including Jane, took an involuntary step away from her.
"You guys are such wimps," Emily said. "So this'll let me basically…"
Emily aimed the glove at a glass beaker on another table and flexed her fingers. The beaker shattered.
"It's a wallop of smash!" Emily said.
"Those beakers actually cost money, y'know," Winter said.
"Wallop?" Jane said.
"Ha ha," Emily said dramatically. "I have my own Infinity—"
"No," Jane said.
"Power glo—"
"I think that one's taken too, Emily," Jane said.
"My own Iron F—"
"Taken," Jane said.
"I call it the gravity glove," Keaton said.
Emily gave him a sidelong glare, pursing her lips.
"It pains me to say this, but I like it," Emily said.
Jane had removed the earpiece she and the others used to stay in touch, but she heard it chirp from where she'd looped it on her belt. She tucked it back into her left ear.
"Jane, get the others on the line," Kate said.
Jane motioned for Doc and Emily to join in.
"What do you have, Kate?" Doc said.
Titus answered instead.
"We've got some kind of message going back and forth," Titus said. "It's coming from the RIETI institute. Either there was another sleeper agent we missed, or they got wind of Rice-Bell being taken out and sent someone to finish the job."
"Do we know what it's saying?" Jane said.
"We can't be a hundred percent sure, but Neal thinks it's landing coordinates," Titus said.
"Oh, awesome," Emily said.
"And what does Neal think those coordinates are?" Jane said.
"Hey Titus, what's this thing?" Bedlam's voice chimed in.
Jane heard Titus ask Neal to zoom in on something, and then all three of them, Titus, Kate, and Bedlam, started swearing at
the same time in a cacophony of curse words. Together, they covered a huge expanse of foul language in just a few seconds.
"Well that sounds fantastic," Emily said.
"Yeah it's landing coordinates," Titus said.
"We've got something inbound," Kate said. "It hasn't come through the atmosphere yet but it's definitely some sort of craft."
Doc and Jane exchanged a look.
"Send us the location," Doc said. "Can the three of you get there in case they make it to the surface?"
"Already on our way, boss," Titus said.
"Okay. Jane and I are going to try to keep it from landing," Doc said.
"And I'm just going to watch?" Emily said.
"You are going to practice with that thing," Doc said.
"The heck with that," Emily said. "What better way to practice than on actual bad guys, I mean seriously Doc. There another one of these?"
"The other isn't fully operational yet," Keaton said.
"Want me to suit up?" Winter said.
Doc shook his head.
"No, you get your people ready in case this is the big one," Doc said. "Kate, Titus, we'll see you there."
"How are we going to get there before them?" Emily said.
Doc waved a hand, and a purplish sphere of emptiness appeared on front of them. On the other side was nothing but blue sky.
"Through the looking glass," Jane said. She waved at Henry Winter and stepped past Doc, through the portal and into the waiting sky.
Chapter 25:
Aerial combat
Emily stepped through Doc's portal and immediately started plummeting toward the ground. Catching herself abruptly in a bubble of float, she looked for Jane, and found her, as she often did, basking in the direct light of the sun, her skin glittering like a diamond as she absorbed its energy, eyes closed, an involuntary smile on her face. Jane's hair seemed to come alive, dancing flames trailing behind her as she readied herself for a fight.
Like A Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 Page 13
