Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation (43 page)

Christopher opened his mouth to talk, but only an exhale came out. Before he could try again, the RV’s cockpit erupted in shouted orders. His lips stilled and slowly closed, his eyes fixing on something behind Lila’s head.
 

He tried to turn away, but she saw his glance and looked, too. Lila’s hair lifted higher, electricity in the air gathering into something furious.
 

“What?”
 

But she knew what. So did Grace, Jons, Charlie, and Cameron. Lila slid away from the wall-mounted screen behind her as it sparked and popped, dying a sudden, unexpected death.
 

“Shit,” came a voice from the vehicle’s front.
 

There was a Vellum — just a simple ebook reader — on the shelf back there, too. It popped like popcorn.
 

The stove’s dials, farther back, sprang into small flames. The light above the sink. The lights down the RV’s center, snapping to black one by one.
 

And again from the front: “Shit!”
 

Cameron rushed forward. He stood between the seats, one hand per headrest. “What is it?”

“It’s offline.”
 

“Drive manual!”
 

“I
am
using manual, Cameron!” Piper’s dry voice yelled back. “I’m telling you it’s offline!”
 

“What’s
offline, if you’re using manual?”
 

“Not working! Offline! I’m sorry if I’m not using the right … ” Piper slapped the dashboard with her palm, frustration leaking from every pore. Her hair, along with loose ends from Coffey’s own tidy ponytail, was fraying, dancing in the air’s mounting static, “ … the
right term,
Cameron!” She slapped the dash again.
 

“Let me try.”
 

“I know how to drive!”
 

“Yes, of course, but there’s a — ”

The small dashboard clock popped like a wood knot in a fire. A small rain of sparks sizzled through slots in the dash, around the environmental controls. There was a backup camera screen above the clock. It looked like the Vellum’s, as if it had been dropped and someone had poured black dye behind the glass.
 

Christopher couldn’t see anything outside the windows, all of which had been drawn. He couldn’t see the city through the windshield from back here either, but he could see the mounting glow outside, turning Piper’s, Cameron’s, and Coffey’s faces bright white. Something happening. Christopher shifted, bringing his hand near the right-side table’s edge. A large arc of blue static jumped between his index finger and the metal trim strip, making him jump.
 

“Get out!” Coffey yelled, turning in her seat. “Get out and run!”
 

But that was ridiculous. Where could they go? The ships were about to annihilate the city, and at least three or four members of their party seemed convinced it would pack a nuclear punch. They’d seen cities hit before. But this time, there were four motherships. This time, Clara had said they had an intention other than destruction — to elicit a
scream
, whatever that meant. This time would be different.
 

“Go! Go!”
 

Coffey stood. She shouted. She waved them out as fast as they would go, practically pushing Christopher to the dirt. But once they were all outside, now on the far side of the RV, the light from … from
whatever
was happening over toward the city … was leaking around the big malfunctioning vehicle’s side, and no one knew what to do. The feeling of a mounting charge was so immense, Christopher didn’t trust himself to get too close to anyone, let alone touch them. He felt like he could arc untold voltages. Each was a generator in themselves, all hair wanting to stand, the air a soup of rushing electrons dying for ground.
 

“Run!”
Coffee screamed, though they clearly had nowhere to go. They could rush for the shallow ravine where she swung her finger to point, or put heads between their legs to kiss their asses goodbye. They could duck and cover for nothing. At this point, it wasn’t about saving anyone. It was degrees of destruction, loss, and pain.
 

Christopher, all too willing to be led if anyone cared to guide him, turned with the others.
 

But he couldn’t see the ravine because there was a shuttle directly in front of them, hovering in poisonous silence, arcs of blue lightning dancing between the ground and its gleaming chrome surface.
 

CHAPTER 89

The shuttle didn’t precisely open. It was more that its front, in a door like arch, fell away and was siphoned back into the edges. The craft settled on the grass. Its aperture was darker than it should seem — about the size of an 18-wheeler’s trailer, rounded out. Plenty of room to enter, if she’d been dumb enough to do so.
 

But Coffey, who’d been leading the charge from the ship, merely lowered her hand. They should go around. They shouldn’t change their plans. It wanted to settle and land? Fine. Maybe it was malfunctioning as badly as the RV, and they could still flee.
 

“We could go inside.”
 

Piper didn’t understand why she couldn’t
see
inside. It was as if the ship had an invisible curtain. It was large, but not
that
large. The motherships were shining a charged spotlight over everything, including the shuttle’s doorway.
 

“No.” She couldn’t say why.
 

Something emerged and took her by the arm:
Meyer.
 

“Hurry, Piper,” he said. “Get inside.”
 

Piper shook him off. She backed up a step then two. It was her husband, all right. But she felt upside-down, seeing him here. It was wrong in a precise and jarring way.

Trust me,
he said. But this time, he didn’t
say
it at all.
 

Meyer was dressed like always. To the nines. In his fine, bespoke viceroy’s suit, dark fabric, starched white shirt underneath, red tie and collar buttoned all the way to his strong neck. His dark hair was neatly combed, his green eyes hard, a ghost of stubble on his strong jaw. His cuffs were even perfect as he reached for her. He was the same man she’d seen every day in the mansion — and, honestly, most days before the Astrals’ arrival. But the perfection of his dress, here and now, was in itself a problem.
 

We’ve had this talk before, Piper. You know I’d do anything to protect you. To protect all of us.

Coffey looked from Piper to Meyer. She seemed to realize something was happening between them beyond the static-filled silence, but her expression was decisive. The energy behind them continued to swell — enough, Piper thought, that they might all get sunburns. For Coffey, the decision was between fat and fire: the least of evils, if only by a sliver.
 

“Get the hell inside! Hurry!” Coffey demanded, now shoving.
 

“No.”
 

Trust me, Piper.
 

“What are you waiting for? It’s going to go off any second!”

Piper shook her head. Cameron came up beside her.
 

“It’s not him, is it?” he asked.
 

And Meyer sent her images, as he had in her distant memory. She saw Trevor. She saw Lila. She saw something else, more like an emotion than anything real:
him
, not as a self-image but as something worth saving. As if he saw himself from the outside and wanted to protect
that
strange person, too.
 

I don’t have time to explain. You have to trust me. You have to
feel
me.

“No.”
 

Coffey was looking over with her mouth open. She looked like she wanted to punch them. Each beat of Piper’s heart felt like a countdown: one second, two seconds, three seconds closer to destruction. If they stayed here, they’d fry.
 

But this wasn’t Meyer Dempsey.
 

Coffey tried to move forward. To grab Charlie, who grabbed Lila, who already had hold of Clara. But Meyer continued to block the doorway as seconds disappeared, locking eyes with Piper, trying to convince her of a lie. Or a half lie. It was so hard to tell, so hard to recall.
 

“Trust me,” he repeated.

“No. We’ll stay here. I don’t trust
you
at all.”
 

“Then trust
me,”
said a new voice.
 

A man with sunken cheeks and a long beard appeared at Meyer’s side. In many ways, he was the first man’s opposite. Where Meyer was polished, the newcomer was disheveled. Where Meyer looked strong, the new man looked weak. He wore a threadbare white robe, his cheeks sunken, color pale and waxy.
 

But the eyes. His piercing green eyes were the same.
 

“Get on the ship, Piper,” the newcomer ordered.

He was Meyer Dempsey, too.
 

CHAPTER 90

Meyer pinched himself off.
 

It was more of an intellectual construct than anything he could precisely recall or even conceive, but he believed the other part of himself (the other Meyer, the
real
Meyer, the
donor
, to use the Astral term) when he said that there had been yet
another
Meyer Dempsey between the two of them. He believed that he, himself, had once held a Titan’s white body and had been connected more fully to the Astral collective.
 

He believed it, but it was hard to feel. Hard to internalize and accept. Because he was Meyer Dempsey, after all. Except that the proof was right in front of him in this frail human man: He wasn’t the real Meyer. The man in the robe was the true Meyer, and he — whatever the hell he should call himself, be it Titan or what — was the copy.
 

“I can hear you,” said the real Meyer Dempsey.
 

The being who intellectually knew he was a copy but was unable to fathom it said, “I’m pinching myself off.” He stood taller in the drive circle. He lifted the shuttle, watching the city shrink through the craft’s semi-translucent skin.
 

“I can still hear you.”
 

“Divinity feels we are connected. That means you will probably always hear me.”
 

“Of course we’re connected. You’ve sucked my memories like blood.”
 

They locked eyes. They’d had this argument many times already. The quarrel usually required no speech. They shared the same thoughts up until the moment Divinity had taken the Titan he used to be and bled Meyer Dempsey’s essence into him. Since then, they’d lived separate lives, but it had barely been a week. The real Meyer didn’t remember meeting with Andreus or squaring off with Heather, who hadn’t believed he was back from the dead. He did know about Trevor, and almost certainly about his ex-wife. Conveying those thoughts hadn’t required words. It was simply understood. Sorrow, regret, and rage flowed against the usual order, this time backwashing from recipient to donor. They didn’t need words to argue, and they shared the same obstinance, that petulant insistence on getting their way. Real Meyer knew it wasn’t Fake Meyer’s fault that he’d been created. He supposed he’d volunteered, but the Astral collective now struck him as bees in a hive with a singular mind. Now that he was more or less human, he couldn’t believe it had once been appealing. Especially given what seemed to be happing in the collective now. Especially since the Pall.
 

“Never mind,” said the man in the robe. And, unspoken:
Maybe it’s good that there’s two of us. Twice the insistence for the same desires.
And at that, he felt his not-quite-human lips smile.
 

The shuttle rose. It avoided the motherships, knowing the collective wouldn’t follow. The weapon was engaged. Seeing into Divinity wasn’t hard — a classic case of the hunter underestimating its prey. Of course he could still feel part of the collective, even after being pinched off from it. Even Piper seemed to feel it, and Real Meyer had told him that she’d only been on the mothership for one short trip. But once you dipped your toe, the ability seemed to stay with you.
 

He could sense the others, but they assumed he couldn’t. They also seemed to have thought him dead, given the confusing data he’d sent back before freeing his doppelgänger — or progenitor, if he admitted the truth. And with Heaven’s Veil soon to be ashes, it hardly mattered. There would be eight capitals. Eight viceroys. Meyer Dempsey could be dead. Both of him could be dead and gone and out of their hair, if they’d had any.
 

“They don’t understand.”
 

Real Meyer looked at the others: Piper, Christopher, Lila, Clara, Cameron Bannister, Malcolm Jons, a man who might be from Moab with a teen girl, plus a strong-looking woman who must be Andreus’s lieutenant, in a loose huddle on the shuttle’s other side.
 

“Would
you?”

He shook his head. “I guess not. But I’m still Meyer Dempsey.”