Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation (6 page)

Meyer wasn’t in a session. Meyer was on a slab somewhere, taken away by the shuttle Heather had run from after clocking Raj and watching him die. She hadn’t wanted to stick around and Meyer no longer needed her, so she’d put feet to brick, having no idea at the time that she’d steer herself to Lila, right back into the hornet’s nest.
 

They’d taken him away. Maybe to dissect their erstwhile viceroy, like a science experiment. And the humans? Well, Heather would inform them.
 

She watched Mo reach the stairway. Meyer didn’t need a right-hand man anymore.
 

Meyer didn’t need breath or food or air.
 

Heather blinked. In the split second, behind her closed eyelids, she saw him die on her lap, his lips forming those confusing final words. Words that did nothing to comfort her, though they certainly should have.
 

Love you.
 

Heather had thought she was empty. But no one was in the hallway to witness her shame, so she let the tears claim her.
 

CHAPTER 10

Cameron looked up from the laptop when Piper screamed.
 

The external drive’s cord still protruded from the computer’s side, its safety still undecided. Cameron hadn’t been foolhardy; he’d asked Andreus and Charlie if cabling the lab’s drive to a laptop from the RV would just allow Canned Heat to destroy another machine. No one knew the answer, so Cameron had flipped a coin. So far, so good … though picking through Benjamin’s research for an ill-defined answer was like trying to find a hymen in a whorehouse.

Cameron half stood, almost dropping the machine to the floor. But at the last second he pinned it to his legs just as Piper emerged from the back section into the lantern’s glow, rushing, glancing back, her eyes wide and frightened.
 

“There’s something here,” she said.
 

Andreus stood from beside his daughter. He was carrying a rather large and intimidating-looking weapon Cameron had never seen. He pointed it after Piper, already taking tiny steps to protect what he’d found.
 

“Reptars?”
 

Piper shook her head, her breath heavy.
 

“Titans.” Andreus said it like a lukewarm warning. Just a few days ago, Titans had seemed like powerful pets. They were nothing to be feared because they could only hold you tight. That opinion had changed since Cottonwood. If Titans could become Reptars, then no Astrals were safe. They might all start life as the unseen shape some called Divinity then become one Earthbound form or the other, free to switch behind the curtain as required. And there might be more. There might be other forms. Other talents. Other dangers.
 

“I didn’t see what it was.”
 

“You heard something,” Andreus said, his barrel still raised.
 

“No. I saw it. It didn’t make noise.”
 

“No purr. No footsteps.”

“Nothing.”
 

“What did it look like?”
 

Piper paused. To Cameron’s eyes, she looked almost caught. “I … I didn’t really see what it looked like.”
 

“What did you see?”
 

“It’s hard to describe.”
 

“Try.”
 

Piper shook her head. Her chest rose and fell in rhythm, eyes flicking around like a nervous bird’s. She looked more afraid of the dark than scared of Astrals. The lab’s atmosphere was getting to her — or, more practically, the fact that Astrals were closer than comfortable, floating overhead.
 

“I don’t know. I didn’t really see it … directly, I guess. Just out of the corner of my eye.”

Andreus looked like he was about to ask more, but Cameron stepped in.
 

“I saw something outside.”

“Okay. What was it?”
 

“It’s like she said. Corner of the eye.”
 

“‘Corner of the eye’ isn’t a shape. It’s how she saw it. So, what? You saw it exactly the same way?”
 

It sounded strange, said that way. Cameron didn’t answer. He looked at Charlie for help, knowing there wasn’t any point. But Charlie surprised him again, as he’d done when they’d come inside and when he’d offered to run back to the RV for hot tea.
 

“I’ve seen it too.”

“Okay. Then what does it look like, Charlie?” Andreus sounded annoyed. He and Coffey were practically shaking their heads, irritated by the flighty civilians losing their shit on his precision operation.
 

“I haven’t seen the thing. Just its shadow.”
 

Piper’s head flicked toward Charlie. “Yes. It was like a shadow.”
 

“Jesus,” said Coffey. “You’re literally afraid of your own shadows.”
 

“It wasn’t
my
shadow,” Piper said, her voice suddenly anything but timid. “It moved when nothing else was moving, including me. And I could feel it … ” she swallowed, “ …
watching
me.”
 

“Pull yourselves together. We have a job here.” Andreus lowered his weapon. “Holy shit. You people.”
 

Cameron wasn’t having it. “Stop being an asshole. You were the one who discovered them watching us last time.”
 

Andreus yanked his signal tracker from his pocket. “With this! Which shows
no
signals,
no
presence at all! And we detected a
thing
, not a ghost!”
 

“I can feel it watching us,” Piper said.
 

Andreus rolled his eyes, turning, flopping onto the couch.
 

She looked into the lab’s darkest end. Cameron followed her gaze. Of course, there was nothing. Until there was: a fold of shadow making a shape, with pits for eyes. But it was like trying to see a hidden picture in a jumble of shapes, and when he blinked, he lost it.
 

“There.” The moment he pointed, the thing was gone.
 

“I don’t see it,” Piper said.

“It’s not there anymore.” Cameron shook his head, blinking forcibly, trying to see what had gone missing. Piper was right: He could
feel
its eyes on him. If it had eyes. If it even existed.
 

Andreus stood. With the mothership making no moves overhead, he’d run back to the RV for supplies. He’d returned with a backpack, and in that pack had been a heavy four-cell Maglite. He speared the darkness, the beam landing exactly where Cameron thought he’d seen the shadow thing reform. Nothing moved, but there was nothing in the beam, either.
 

Andreus stood, keeping his eyes on Cameron. Coffey stood with him, pulling a slightly smaller Maglite from her pack on the floor.
 

“This is me being a martyr for you all,” Andreus said. “We’ll look for your spook. And in the meantime, you’re going to pull as many drives as you can fit into that oversized pack I saw in the storage room. You think something’s after us? Fine. We’ll leave, analyze what we get somewhere that gives you fewer scares. This place is a graveyard anyway.” He must have thought back to Grace’s story because then, quieter, he muttered, “Literally.”

Cameron looked down at his own laptop. At the drive cabled to it — arguably the only one they’d need: a 100TB drive filled with Benjamin’s hodgepodge, disorganized research. Charlie’s records were definitely neater, but Cameron couldn’t shake the feeling that grabbing as much information as possible was overthinking the issue. Benjamin had seemed sure on the drive over that he knew where Thor’s Hammer was hidden — and perhaps more importantly, he’d implied it should be obvious to his son. That told Cameron he either knew or he didn’t. The rest was details.

“Five minutes,” Andreus announced.
 

He and Coffey headed into the darkness, guns and flashlights ready.
 

CHAPTER 11

Piper didn’t want to look at Nathan or Jeanine. A schism was forming, with Andreus and Coffey on one side and Cameron, Charlie, and herself on the other. Grace was something else — somewhere in between. Or perhaps more accurately, something like a suitcase. Belongings that one side held close, away from the other.
 

Piper desperately missed Trevor, enough that the thought was an arrow. She missed Lila and Clara. She missed Meyer, as he’d once been. She understood the desire to protect her own, and if she had those precious last seconds with Trevor back, she’d grab his weapon and yank him into the tunnel even if keeping him inside meant barring the door with her body. But what she saw with Andreus was different. Grace had run from him, and now he seemed unwilling to let her do it again. He’d hold her close, not with love, but with force if necessary. For her own protection. Because, in the big picture, of love.
 

But the roundabout nature of his affection was twisted, damaged, wrong. Piper didn’t like it. She didn’t like the way Andreus seemed to be wrestling for control of their group, the same way he’d recently commanded his Republic. She didn’t like the way Coffey, who was always armed, stood by his side like a good lieutenant. And she didn’t like the way her girlish fears had handed Andreus and Coffey more ammunition — more proof that the kid, the scientist, and the arm candy woman were unstable, and probably silly. Fools who needed protection, even if they didn’t want it.
 

Once in the sunlight, the feeling of being watched by the shadow felt far less pressing than it had in the lab. But Cameron had already told Piper that he’d seen something before they’d gone inside. It wasn’t just her. Or the dark that had got to her.
 

They were being tailed. Somehow. By something they couldn’t see — or, more accurately, couldn’t see directly. It was almost there but not quite, always present but somehow absent.

Once away from Moab with their horde, Piper found Cameron sitting on a rock while Charlie culled Benjamin’s data. Cameron was approaching this far more metaphysically than even Piper would have. He seemed sure that the data mattered, but not in finding Thor’s Hammer. It would help them reach the weapon, but
finding
was already within him. Benjamin had told him as much before dying, laughing at his son’s lack of vision.
 

Piper looked at Cameron’s profile. His stubble was almost a beard — but not really because Cameron’s face still belonged to a teenager. His perpetually young look made the stubble more odd than rugged.
 

She followed his eyes to the mothership above the ranch, now in the distance. Even from here, it was massive. A silver moon that had grown full too near the ground, its swelling metal belly seeming to hang like something pregnant.
 

Piper said, “If you stare at the ship long enough, the answer will come.”

Without moving his head, Cameron replied, “I’m not staring at the ship.”
 

She sat beside him. He was, indeed, looking directly at the ship.
 

“What’s it doing here, Cam?”
 

“Suckling. Recharging. I don’t know. Can you see the beam coming from the stone arch my dad was always checking out?”
 

In the bright sun, the beam was hard to see. But then it became easier.

“Yes. From the money pit.”
 

“Maybe it’s trying to reconnect to the network. Maybe soon, they’ll lay more stones and start again.”
 

“You think Canned Heat affected them, too?”
 

Cameron chewed his cheek, his gaze still unblinking. After a thoughtful pause, he said, “I get this feeling that what affects us affects them automatically.”
 

“Why?”
 

“It’s just a feeling.”
 

Piper understood, in a way. She’d had a feeling earlier, having to do with the vengeance at Little Cottonwood Canyon as somehow related to Meyer, his connection to Divinity, and the way it had changed him. And, perhaps most importantly, the way he’d stayed the same.
 

“How long are you going to stare at that ship?”
 

“I told you. I’m not staring at the ship.”
 

Again, Piper compared Cameron’s profile to his line of sight.

“Have a seat,” he said.
 

Piper did.
 

“Look at the ship.”
 

Piper did that, too.

“Now let your eyes settle. Don’t focus. Just let the muscles relax. Look
through
the ship more than at it.”
 

“Okay.”
 

“Now without looking away, see if you can check your peripheral vision. To the right. At the base of that big outcropping. And tell me I’m not crazy.”
 

Piper followed Cameron’s directions. The first few times she tried, her eyes wanted to look at the outcropping full on, and she had to start again. Then she got the trick of seeing into the corners without actually looking, and —