“I feel pretty good, considering,” she said, attempting to sit up. The slight movement sent a wave of fatigue through her body. She rested her head back on the pillow. “How long have I been out?”
“Almost five days. Your heart rate was so low when we got you back here that we had no choice but to put you in a cryo chamber. You also had a nasty gash on your side that required Alexia to perform emergency surgery,” Emanuel said. “You look a heck of a lot better now.”
“Did you listen to the message from Dr. Hoffman?” Holly asked.
Sophie reached under the covers of her bed and massaged her injury. The rough surface of what would be a very nasty scar ran from her hip to her belly button.
“Yes, I heard it all.”
“Good. We hoped if we hooked you up to one of Alexia’s AI consoles with electrical nodes you would hear the message. We thought it might trigger something in your implant,” said Emanuel. “It was playing on all our monitors for a day and a half.”
“Smart thinking there,” Overton said, patting Emanuel on the back.
The Marine smiled and ran a hand through his hair before turning back to Sophie. “You should rest.” He began ushering the team out of the room. “Come on, everyone.”
Sophie watched them leave as a wave of drowsiness swept over her. With one last ounce of energy, she grabbed Emanuel and tugged gently on his arm.
“Will you stay with me a bit longer?”
He smiled and dragged a stool up to the side of the bed. He sat down and held her hand, his thumb tracing her palm.
“Do you really think you can find a way to kill the Organics?” she asked quietly.
Emanuel nodded without hesitation. “Everything has a weakness, and I’ve found theirs.”
They sat in silence for several moments. The lights in the room dimmed, and the ambient sound of the ventilation system kicked on. Sophie concentrated on the warmth of his hand over hers. They both knew what had been lost, what Dr. Hoffman’s message meant for the future of mankind. And most of all, they knew how difficult it would be to survive in this strange new world. But, for that single moment, none of it mattered. All that mattered was that they had each other—and hope.
EPILOGUE
A CRIMSON sunset peeked above the black outline of a mountain range in the distance. The cloudless sky was a brilliant mixture of orange and purple, almost obscene in contrast with the dying valley below. A dry riverbed snaked through a browning forest. It had been weeks since the invasion, and the world was a very different place. Surface water was gone. The temperature had risen several degrees, and humidity was nonexistent. According to Alexia’s calculations, the sea levels were slowly dropping around the planet. The Organics were advanced, but not all-powerful. They had found a way to get almost every ounce of freshwater on the planet, but the saltwater was slowing them down.
The Earth was dying, but it had been dying for a long time.
Sophie sucked in a breath of the dry air while listening to the now-familiar sound of laughing children. She turned to see Overton tossing a football to Owen and David halfway down the tarmac.
“When you’re taking a long shot, you have to take wind direction into consideration,” said Bouma from a few yards away. Sophie leaned her back against the outside of the blast doors and watched him help Jeff sight his rifle over the valley.
Holly was strolling across the tarmac with Jamie in tow. They stopped next to Owen, and Jamie picked up the football, pretending to hand it to him.
“Here you go,” she said with an innocent smile.
Owen reached out to grab it, but she yanked it away. “Bet you can’t catch me!” she shrieked, taking off down the runway.
Overton laughed. “Don’t go too far!”
“Think it’s really safe out here?” Sophie slid a few feet over to make room for Emanuel.
“Overton said there hasn’t been a sign of a drone in over a week,” Sophie said. “The RVM seems to be keeping them away.”
“For now,” Emanuel said.
Sophie didn’t respond. She didn’t want to think about the inevitable, not today. She didn’t want to think about when the Organics would come back, or when the team would be forced out of the Biosphere to scavenge for supplies. She just wanted to enjoy the sunset and watch the children.
“Got you!” Owen yelled as he wrapped Jamie in his tiny arms. She squealed with laughter.
A smile broke across Sophie’s face. It was then it finally hit her. She was looking at their future. All this time, she had believed the Biosphere mission was the most important one of her life, that Mars was the future for humanity. But as she scanned the faces of the four children, she knew that her mission had changed. Her goal was no longer to prepare for a new life on a distant planet—it was to protect what was left of life on Earth.
She thought briefly of those that they had lost: Saafi, Timothy, Finley, her parents, and those of the children they’d managed to save, and the billions of others who had perished. She wouldn’t let their deaths go unavenged. Dr. Hoffman was right about one thing: the human race had to go on.
Alexia’s calm voice sounded over Sophie’s headset. She put her finger to the earbud, straining to listen over the children’s laughter. “Dr. Winston, I’m picking up a radio transmission on the device Dr. Hoffman left behind.”
Sophie gasped, reaching for the radio on her belt, but her hands came up empty. She had left it inside. “Can you patch it through?”
Static filled the channel for several seconds before a muffled voice finally broke through.
“This is Alex Wagner with the Biosphere facility at Edwards Air Force Base in California, requesting assistance. Over.”
Sophie froze, her eyes widening as she grabbed Emanuel’s hand. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Overton drop the football and put his finger to his earbud. One by one her team members stopped what they were doing and rushed over to her.
“What do we do?” Bouma asked. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Holly, and for a moment Sophie thought she saw their hands touch.
“Well?” Overton said. “How are you going to respond?”
Sophie hesitated, looking at Emanuel for assistance before turning to face her team. Holly’s advice from days before echoed in her mind. Now was the time to make good on her promise to Holly and to herself. “We tell them they’re not alone,” she said firmly. “And then we tell them that we’re working on a way to defeat the Organics.”
In the distance, the sun had finally disappeared behind the black mountain range. Sophie took a moment to admire the dazzling, star-filled sky. As she scanned the heavens, she couldn’t help but wonder if one of the tiny dots of light was Secundo Casu on its way to Mars.
—End of Book I—
THANK YOU
Thank you for reading Orbs. If you enjoyed this book, please stop by my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter for updates on the Orbs series.
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To my friends at Simon451 for all the support and encouragement, and for believing in me and the Orbs series—especially my editor, Brit Hvide
PROLOGUE
THE waking sun cast a brilliant glow over the wasteland as it crawled higher into the morning sky. Rays of scorching light carpeted the remnants of lakebeds and extinct rivers, unveiling the sun-bleached bones of dead trees that littered the harsh landscape.
Alex Wagner cleared his visor of grime, wishing he could wipe away the beads of sweat forming inside his helmet. The ventilation system in the suit he had swiped off a dead NTC soldier had stopped working yesterday.
He adjusted his lean, athletic body inside the oversized suit. The damned hunk of armor was more of a detriment than anything. He glanced down
at the exposed skin of his forearm beneath the foot-long claw mark in the suit. Standing there under the blistering heat of the sun, he imagined what the soldier he’d taken the suit from had been thinking in the moments before his death. A blur of images entered his mind and then solidified into a vivid picture. The razor-sharp claws slashing through the air, the guttural shrieks of the aliens hunting the NTC soldier. Alex could see it all, because he too had experienced it, and the memory made his skin crawl.
A gust of wind whistled past his suit, peppering his visor with dirt. Alex flinched. Squinting, he blinked several times to avoid the burning sweat dripping from his forehead and checked the temperature reading on his HUD.
One hundred degrees.
Could that be right? He checked his mission clock; it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. If the reading was correct, it meant the temperature was rising faster than he thought. But maybe it was wrong. Maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed.
He peered back down at the claw mark in his suit. The damage to the suit had probably destroyed more than just the ventilation system. Cursing under his breath, he pushed on through the hissing sand. When the wind cleared, he caught a glimpse of the wasteland around him.
Like a photograph, the world appeared in a simple, frozen pane through his visor’s glass. He halted to take in the view, his boots sliding to a stop in the loose sand. In the valley below, the dead branches of leafless trees reached toward the white sun. A deep groove from a dried-up river snaked through the cracked red dirt. Beyond the cluster of trees he could see the hint of a road, two dusty trucks sitting idly where they had been abandoned on invasion day.
Taking in a measured breath, Alex closed his eyes to listen to this new world. The sound of death echoed inside his helmet: the cracking of a dying tree branch, the desperate bark of a starving dog somewhere in the distance, and the memories of the people screaming as he watched them die. It was a chorus playing on repeat, and he knew it would be with him until he, too, died.
Alex couldn’t grasp why he had survived, while so many others had perished. What made him so lucky?
He pushed on, trying to recall the series of events that had led him here. The time line blurred like the heat waves on the horizon.
He could remember signing on the dotted line, promising six months of his life to a Biosphere team. But he still wasn’t sure why they had picked him. He wasn’t anything special. He wasn’t a genius or even exceptionally smart. Five weeks before the invasion, he had simply been a history teacher and assistant football coach for the local high school team. Sure, he’d had a good run as a wide receiver in college, so good that he’d drawn the attention of a few NFL scouts before he blew out his knee, but that didn’t explain NTC’s interest in him. There were millions of people better suited for the project. Divorced and saddled with student loan debt, Alex was hardly the best candidate for an NTC-run Biosphere team.
Yet they had recruited him. His decision to accept their offer might have even saved his life. But for how long?
With the surface water gone, the temperature would continue to rise, baking the Earth’s surface. Trees would die and stop producing oxygen, filling the atmosphere with unbreathable levels of carbon dioxide. Alex hadn’t taken a science class since college, but even he knew what was happening. He had a front-row seat to the end of the world.
The Earth was dying, and so was the human race—what was left of it, anyway.
Alex stumbled over a rock as he continued deeper into the valley. His helmet bobbed up and down, his dry lips smacking together with every step. The heat was nearly unbearable, and he was low on water, but still he remained focused, vigilant.
He hadn’t seen any of the aliens for hours now, and he hadn’t come face-to-face with any since they had attacked his Biosphere. The memory was still fresh, hemorrhaging like an open wound.
Four days earlier, he had been sitting in the mess hall with nine of his teammates, chatting over plates of pasta that he had cooked himself. They heard the faint scratching and scraping noise first. Then came the terrible high-pitched shrieks that made him want to cup his ears. A brilliant blue glow followed moments later as dozens of the spiderlike creatures emerged from the ceiling.
He’d escaped into a sewage line, covered in hog manure and his friends’ blood. At first he’d hesitated and turned to go back, but what he saw from inside that tunnel changed his mind—the Spiders spinning his screaming colleagues into orbs. He crawled away like a coward minutes after, tears streaming down his filthy face.
He shook away these thoughts and continued walking, his eyes darting back and forth as he scanned the landscape for signs of the monsters. He focused on a dust-covered road sign in the distance.
His plan was simple: head west, toward the ocean. The Biosphere had been located in an abandoned missile silo on the outskirts of Edwards Air Force Base in California. Alex, a Maryland native, had little knowledge of the local geography and could only guess that he was now somewhere northwest of the base. After escaping the attack, he had headed as far away from Edwards as possible. He didn’t need a military background to know the Organics were probably swarming there. After four days of traveling, he knew he had to be close. Maybe he’d get to see the Pacific before he died, after all . . . if it was still there.
An abrupt and powerful windblast knocked him into a boulder, his armor meeting the rock with a crunch. As he pushed himself off the dirt, he caught a glimpse of something. The sky to the west seemed different; there was a blue wall on the horizon. It couldn’t be. Could it?
It looked a lot like rain.
Another wind gust tore into his side, knocking him to his knees.
He grunted, pain racing through his body. He was burning up in his suit, and the inside of his helmet felt like a furnace. Sweat stung his eyes. He winced, waiting for the burning to subside. For a former college athlete, he wasn’t in the best shape, but at least his damned knee wasn’t acting up.
As his vision cleared, he saw something odd about the rain: It was traveling up, into the sky.
Were his eyes playing a trick on him? Was his body finally succumbing to dehydration?
He forced himself deeper into the valley, heading for the rocky hills to the west. Blinking sweat from his eyes, he tried to focus on the phenomenon in the distance.
What the hell was it?
The rainstorm appeared beyond the rocks, but just how far beyond he wasn’t sure. Alex paused to marvel at the sky. He licked his dry lips with grim fascination, his gaze locked onto the strange rain. He knew he didn’t have the energy to travel much farther, but he was curious, and his curiosity propelled him forward across the dead landscape.
An hour later he reached the last embankment of the valley. Gasping for air, he began to climb, clawing his way up the loose dirt. Rocks and dead vegetation rained down the hill behind him. By the time he reached the top he could hardly breathe. He inhaled, closing his eyes as air filled his lungs.
“Just a little farther,” he muttered.
From the hilltop he could see a tan beach extending along the shoreline for miles, but where there would normally have been sunbathers, there was a graveyard of boats. Hulls were twisted in all directions, their cargo littered across the sand.
The ocean had receded far beyond the buoys that had once warned boats away from rocky areas. Now, they stuck out of the sand like dormant missiles. Miles away, the wall of water rose out of the ocean where it was still deep and blue.
He followed the rain with his eyes until it disappeared into the sky. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they must be there. Somewhere above him, the aliens had a ship that was draining the sea.
Alex shook his head and another bead of sweat dropped into his eye. He grimaced, waiting for the pain to subside. To the east, rectangular buildings rose up out of the ground, the structures flickering in the heat waves. Civilization meant resources, which mean
t water and food. But it also meant danger. Spiders tended to congregate near cities and towns.
He hesitated, painfully aware of the dryness in his throat. Alex knew he was going to die, one way or another. It wasn’t a matter of if, just a matter of when and how. And he had two choices: die from dehydration, or die like the NTC soldier that had worn the suit before him.
Neither option was particularly appealing. He took one last look at the wall of rain over his shoulder and started down the other side of the hill.
* * *
Alex approached the buildings cautiously, scanning for aliens. There was no sign of movement besides the blur of a miniature dust tornado brewing in the distance. He paused, listening for any hint of the creatures’ shrieks. Just because he didn’t see them didn’t mean they couldn’t detect him. That was another thing he had picked up during the last four days: If he wanted to stay alive, he had to keep focused.
He checked his HUD again. The display revealed no signs of life. Hesitating, he strained to listen one more time. Besides the wind, he heard nothing but the whining sound of a strained power line.
Satisfied, he entered civilization for the first time in days; a neighborhood, much like the one he’d grown up in, sprawled out in front of him.
He checked the road to ensure it was clear and then took off running into the yard across the street. The tall blades of prairie grass snapped like twigs as he passed through them. Nothing green remained, not a single leaf.
Alex’s vision fogged over. Gritting his teeth, he narrowed his eyes and tried to focus on the house in front of him, but the effects of dehydration were taking over. He rested against a child’s swing set and listened again for the familiar scratching of Spiders. Wiping his visor clean, he saw the filthy glass doors leading into the house. They were covered in dust and dirt, but otherwise unscathed. He checked the windows; they too seemed to be undisturbed. His HUD still looked clear. Everything appeared safe.
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