Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation (39 page)

In his mind, he saw cartoon images of sprung booby traps: snares snatched from the ground, heavy rocks falling on a trigger, poison darts shot and walls beginning to squeeze inward. All were only symbols, but the meaning came through clearly, along with words as obvious as if they’d arrived in a letter.

Clara’s voice, as he’d heard it in his dream. As he’d heard it when they’d shared minds in the cell. It had all made sense back then;
Clara
was what they’d returned to Heaven’s Veil to find. She wasn’t Thor’s Hammer, but the girl knew his mind well enough to help him pinpoint its hiding spot, where Benjamin, a lifetime ago, had buried the knowledge in Cameron’s young cortex.
 

A historical joke. A doozy.
 

Obvious, Cameron felt certain, once Clara helped him find the memories.
 

Charlie says that Benjamin thought turning the key would call them. That once it’s turned, you’ll be trapped.
 

Cameron wasn’t sure how to respond. The communication seemed to be one way. Whatever in the fog had led him and Heather to this chamber, it had done so for a reason. Each of them had a purpose. Cameron had seen the stone’s depression and assumed this was his, as carrier of the key. It would start some sort of machinery. It might destroy the Apex.
 

But it would call them. They would come, and take the key.
 

Charlie says the same key does both things, and that you will need it again. You can’t let them catch you or they’ll take it. You can’t let them find you here after you turn it.

How do you know this?
Cameron tried to ask.
 

I ran out to ask, silly.
 

Cameron stared at Heather. He felt his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide. He thought she’d tell him to get on with it. She didn’t seem to have any more of an idea how they’d reached the sub-Apex chamber than Cameron, and she was probably in a hurry to flee.

“I heard her too,” she said.

“I thought — ”

“Live with Clara long enough, and you stop asking questions.”
 

Cameron’s head perked up. Something had moved beyond Heather’s shoulder, down the passageway. Someone was coming. The sounds were faint, but Cameron could swear he heard someone talking. To himself, maybe.
 

“What do we — ” Heather said.
 

Cameron realized who was coming.
 

He dropped the stone key into the depression. Putting both hands atop the thing and pressing down, he turned it to engage the tabs on its sides, the way it seemed suddenly obvious that the thing must work.

The chamber’s light had been dim. Now, the Apex strobing above seemed to percolate down the passages, sending blue into the chamber, flashing off the stone walls like a sapphire disco.
 

As if the energy hadn’t ramped down, but
up
.
 

As if the key, turned in the plinth, had shoved the giant antenna station into overdrive.

CHAPTER 78

Nathan stopped when the mostly opaque mist began to throb in a sickly blue light. His guide had disappeared; he’d been leading Coffey and whoever else was following down a corridor that felt increasingly like a trap. He’d lost his bearings entirely. At first, it had seemed like he was headed toward the Apex, but he’d gone too far. He’d gone down, up, sideways, then down and up again. It felt like circles, and for a while Nathan thought he might have been following a loop — around the edge of amassed Titans to a more advantageous location above. But now it didn’t seem that way at all.
 

He turned and realized he could see Coffey behind him. Either the fog was beginning to lift, or the light was managing to penetrate what sunlight couldn’t.

“It the Apex,” Coffey said. Nathan couldn’t see much of her face but saw enough to know his usually staunch lieutenant was terrified. There were shapes behind her; the rest of the soldiers must have followed. But if any of them thought they were in charge right now, they surely had another thing coming. They were fish in a barrel. Soon, the unseen force would start shooting.
 

“Where is it?” Nathan looked forward, backward, to each side. The passage walls were still mostly opaque. Muted blue flashes were coming mainly from each end and above. There was no way to tell the source, diffusing through the mist like light and concealing its origin.
 

“We were headed toward it,” Coffey said.
 

“We’ve walked too far. My sense of direction is fucked.” He looked backward, suddenly sure it was behind him. But he’d been turned in a maze; he was entirely uncertain. “It could be back there or straight ahead. I don’t know in this soup. All I know is it either got a lot brighter just now, or this shit’s finally breaking up.” He looked around. “Heather. Where did Heather go?”
 

“Lost her right away. I thought she’d be ahead.”
 

“I could hear her mouth.”
 

“I don’t know, Nathan.”

Another blue flash. And another. Goddamn if the things didn’t look stronger by the round. It reminded Nathan of an overheated coal, glowing bright as bellows blew oxygen across it.
 

“It’s that way.” He pointed.

“I’d be happy just to get out.”

“That’s noble of you.”
 

“We stopped having any control over what came next a while ago. We’re being led. Frankly, we don’t have much of a choice. If something wants to fuck us, then we’re fucked.
Sir.”
 

“So your weak will is something thrust upon you, not something — ”

Another blue flash, this one clearly from behind. The mist was thinning, no doubt. Nathan could see shapes moving around him: probably Reptars and Titans, somehow held at bay, soon to be visible — and the Andreus clan visible to them.
 

“It’s this way.”
 

“Nathan, I think we were being led
away
from — ”
 

But Nathan could see it now.
 

The pyramid’s gleaming blue glass, now a few blocks behind.
 

And nothing else outside its front door.

CHAPTER 79

There was a circular, rotating skin of thin stone sliding over the top of the plinth’s key. It was closing the thing in, hiding it. Cameron had a moment of panic, but then saw the key’s far edge peeking out from the rotating skin’s other side. Emerging. But far too slowly.
 

Cameron pushed at the cover. Dug his fingernails into the groove between key and plinth. But he couldn’t get the thing out until whatever needed to be done was finished.
 

Heather’s head perked up at a sound. Cameron followed it with his eyes. It was coming from the other passage: approaching voices now hitting them from two directions at once.
 

“Feet,” he said.
 

“Lots of feet. That guy Nathan Andreus. He’s outside with a bunch of soldiers. Maybe they’ve come to — ”
 

Cameron shook his head, holding up a finger for quiet. The stone machinery whirred behind him, grit grinding like heavy sandpaper. He wanted silence, but his action betrayed the chamber’s quiet.
 

“It’s not Andreus,” he whispered.

“How do you know?”
 

“Clara said it would call them. Listen. Too steady. No rush.” He swallowed. “It’s Astrals. Titans.”
 

“So what?” Her face changed. Cameron didn’t think anyone had told Heather about the Titans’ shape-shifting trick, but she knew. He could see it in her sudden pallor, sharply visible in the flashlight’s glow.
 

“The light. Turn out the light.”
 

Heather had been holding the thing. She didn’t hesitate. She clicked it off, and it was if the black cloud had returned. Scant light bled from both passageways: the one where the Astrals were making their casual, no hurry way down, and the one from which Cameron could still hear Raj talking to … to
someone
who wasn’t replying.
 

The stone continued to grind.
 

“We have to get the key and go. We need it.”
 

“For what?”
 

“It’s a long story.”

Cameron couldn’t see Heather in the darkness but could sense her stare.
 

“Cameron,” she whispered.
 

“Shh.”
 

“You and Piper came back. Nathan told me about his daughter and someone named Charlie Cook. He talked a lot about your father’s research, in a way that makes me think he might have died. In the rebel raid we heard about from a few days ago.”
 

“Shh. They’ll hear us.”
 

Even more quietly, seeming to move closer, Heather said, “Where is Trevor? Where is my son?”
 

Cameron felt his skin crawl. Something had led her to this place, just as something had led him. He hadn’t spent much time with Heather before he’d taken Piper from the Axis Mundi, but he knew she was vastly different. Life had changed her. And there was more to it; he’d heard Heather updates from Piper, too. This was a changed woman. Just as Cameron’s guides had told him things he wouldn’t have known otherwise, maybe Heather’s had indicated certain unpleasant truths to her as well.
 

“He’s fine.”
 

“Then where is he?”
 

Cameron could sense a serious, strangely mature gaze that the darkness forbade him to see. Heather was inches away, her voice barely audible. If he’d seen her, Cameron supposed he would have seen the mask that crumbles when a person stops lying — to themselves, most of all.
 

“He’s gone, isn’t he?”
 

“Shh. He’s … okay. I’ll explain later.” The lies were awful, but she’d chosen the worst possible time to ask. The indigo light was still intermittently flashing, filling the room, leaving only Heather and Cameron, behind the stone plinth, in unbroken shadow. Something was on a countdown, and the slowly revolving disk above was hailing enemies like a clarion call. They couldn’t get out with the key unless they could remain undetected. And she’d cry if Cameron told her the truth. She’d yell. She’d throw one of her famous tantrums. Then they’d be dead.

“Meyer isn’t Meyer. There’s something wrong with him. Do you understand me?”

“What?” Had she bought it? It seemed impossible to believe.
 

“But whoever he is, he’ll turn. He turned last time, and he’ll turn again. I’d bet on it.”
 

“What are you — ”

Hands grasped both of Cameron’s cheeks, palm to skin. He felt himself pulled forward, smelling the fresh scent of rich woman’s soap. Heather pressed her lips into his, far more insistent than sensual.
 

“What was that for?”

“If you ever find him, give him that for me.”
 

Cameron was about to ask more, but Heather stood and ran up the first corridor, toward Raj Gupta’s echoing voice.
 

CHAPTER 80

Raj blinked. Meyer was gone.
 

In his place was someone with long black hair. Someone he definitely didn’t want to talk to. Now or ever. But his head felt foggy, and as he blinked around Raj saw the strange dark pall had cleared. He was at the end of a downward-sloping stone passageway. Somewhere underground? It was so hard to remember how he’d got here, let alone how he’d found himself face to face with Heather Hawthorne.
 

She grabbed the front of his shirt. Dragged him farther down, toward where Meyer had been leading him. Although Raj was no longer sure about any of that. Had the viceroy really been here? It all seemed like a dream. There was something he was supposed to do. Something that would let him prove himself to Meyer.
 

They spilled into a dark chamber. In the intermittent blue light leaking down from above, Raj could see that there was some sort of a stone cradle in one corner. There was an altar or something similar in the middle, emitting a slow racket. The grinding stopped. Raj could see a circular depression in its top, with a round thing sitting inside it. Something seemed to move behind the altar, but he’d been jumping at shadows enough. It was a trick of the light, just like Meyer had been.
 

“You’re looking for me,” Heather said.
 

But Raj didn’t think so. Now that his head was clearing, he didn’t think he was after Heather Hawthorne at all anymore. He’d tried to arrest her once, and no one had cared. Nobody ever cared. Meyer certainly hadn’t because the viceroy had been in on it with her. Meyer had turned on them all and recently beaten the shit out of Raj.
 

He didn’t owe Meyer a thing.
 

The Astrals.
That’s whom he’d come here to talk to. And he could hear them coming, down the opposite corridor.