Nemesis: Book Six (16 page)

B
lackness ruled
the room like a cruel dictator, offering not a single shred of light though it could if it wanted.

Or rather, Chilras could if she wanted.

Morena saw nothing, not even her own aura floating around her, trying its best to understand this world.

Had Chilras done this before? Had she been here?

All of Morena's confidence in her abilities faded as soon as the challenge started. The darkness fell from the top of the room, cascading down like water, and then Morena could only remain still in such blackness.

Chilras was here, still. Controlling this room with an ease Morena didn't understand was possible. She had been here before, done this with another being. Morena's mother hadn't told her, hadn't said a word. Either she didn't know or she was leaving this completely up to Morena.

Either way, it came to the same.

She was here by herself, facing an adversary who knew this room better than Morena.

Morena kept her eyes open, though it didn't matter in the blackness.

She heard wind whipping around above her, slamming into the walls like asteroids from the sky, so hard that the noise echoed down to her ears.

A white light opened up in front of her, right where Chilras should have been sitting. Whether or not the Yorn remained in that chair wasn't important; she could be floating in the air or right next to Morena's ear. What came from the light was all that mattered. Chilras had gained control of this room.

Morena stayed still watching the white light grow, a circle that seemed to open right in the middle of the air. She peered through, her eyes unable to focus on anything else given the darkness surrounding the hole. That's what it was, not a circle, but a hole into another … world? Was Chilras showing her something else, some other dimension?

Morena saw shapes forming as it grew. As the hole widened, the more solid the shapes became, though still blurry, as if they couldn't quite fully separate themselves from the white surrounding them.

"That's where you're going."

The words whispered down from the ceiling, falling like tiny jolts of electricity, not only hitting Morena's ears but her entire body.

"You're going there."

"You'regoingthere."

The words kept hammering at her as the circle grew. The shapes turned more solid, separating themselves and becoming singular objects. Singular creatures. Morena saw them, finally, for what they were, and Makers, no. No. No. No.

It couldn't be possible;
that
could not be another world. Those couldn't be creatures from it.

Huge things, slimy, with tendrils that stretched and lashed out at the world around them. The tendrils were massive, like giant, black tubes, the ends of them massive openings with hundreds of teeth lining them. The teeth continued inside, looking razor sharp, and growing as far up the tendrils as Morena could see. And where did they end, these dripping, wet arms? The huge tubes fed into a tiny, small, red bump. No eyes. No mouth. Nothing to sense the world except the black appendages.

They whipped into one another, snapping at other tendrils the second anything crossed their territory.

How many were there? She couldn't count the tendrils—far too many—but the little red bumps numbered easily in the tens. The wider the hole grew, the more she saw, as if the world in front of her contained nothing
but
these monstrosities.

"Ready? Ready? Ready?"

The words weren't Chilras, but some old thing that hated life because it could never have it again. Something that lived in here, something that Chilras now controlled.

"Time to go!" It shouted in its sick, raspy voice.

Morena closed her eyes and shut out the sick world opening before her.

She had to take control of this. The voice speaking to her, rattling her thoughts, she needed to push it away. Had to silence it before anything else.

"Open them! Open, open, OPEN!"

Morena kept her eyes shut, but instead of running from the voice, trying to block it out, she went to it. The words battering her from every direction, where exactly were they coming from?

"Moorreeennnnaaaaaaa …," it said, singing her name like a child's nursery rhyme.

It wasn't coming from above. It couldn't be. Nothing existed in this room outside of the her and Chilras. Certainly nothing above, floating around like some ghost.

"Shhh," Morena said, interrupting the voice's chatter. She breathed in deeply and let the air out slow. "Quiet now."

The voice shrieked in her ear, blaring like a lunatic siren.

Maybe a world existed like that, one with creatures who snapped at one another, blind and angry. Maybe Chilras had seen it at some point. Morena wasn't going there, though. The white light in front of her, that's all it was. A light with an image in it. And this voice still screaming in her ear? A nuisance. A
bold
nuisance.

Indignation grew inside Morena like a predator, standing up and taking its place in the world.

She would be Var.

She would rule this world and usher it into whatever future came.

This voice screeched at her as if it had any right to, a past relic or simply a trick.

Morena stood up, her aura wrapping around her close, protective. She needed no protection, though. Not anywhere on this planet. Nothing could or would harm her here. She was created for this place, specifically for Bynimian in a way that only a strict lineage could be. She was the only indispensable living creature on this planet, perhaps besides her mother.

"No," she said at the voice. Morena opened her eyes and the darkness destroying her vision fled. She stared at an empty stone chair. Chilras wasn't there, but she hadn't left—she couldn't flee this room like the darkness.

Morena turned around and saw her. Chilras' aura was quickly retreating, having been spread across the room like a fog. Morena remained still, silence filling the room which had just overflowed with cries. She looked up at the ceiling and remembered how the darkness looked as it fell. Chilras had done that. Trying to drive Morena insane, trying to force her from her birthright.

Morena blinked and white light started falling, tumbling down like small cubes, except as they fell they left their perfect white streak behind, lighting up the room gloriously. She looked back to Chilras, whose eyes said they knew what came next. Fear beamed as brightly as the light falling from the ceiling.

She sees where she's headed. To a world of insanity. And in reality? Exiled, but she might not even understand that she's there. Because this room doesn't forgive. When you enter here, if you don't leave sane, then you leave with no mind at all.

The light covered Chilras' eyes, and Morena knew she could no longer see the room. Morena saw her clearly, her eyes dancing around, trying to find something to latch onto. Nothing would come though, because Morena controlled false light. She increased the intensity.

"AH!" Chilras cried out as the brightness burnt her eyes.

Large chains rose from the ground, huge and heavy, yet made of light as well—a green the same as Morena's own aura. Leg clamps and arm shackles, each latched on Chilras' body, shutting silently but with finality.

Chilras let out a shrill scream as the shackles clicked home.

The chains of light connecting the ground to the shackles began to retreat into the stone floor, dragging Chilras down with them. Morena watched her collapse, slowly, as she used all her strength to try and hold herself up.

Morena, with a detached, clinical mind, watched the chains bring her low to the ground. As if she wasn't controlling the chains, but simply watching them trap her nemesis.

Chilras lay on the ground, face down, her eyes shut to keep from going blind.

Morena used no fake creature to speak. "You'll stay like this forever, Yorn. Eventually you'll open your eyes and go blind. You'll stare out into darkness forever, knowing that you're surrounded by light. Unable to move. In silence."

Chilras' aura weakly tried to attack the chains of light, like baby serpents snapping at something much too large for them to ingest. She whimpered quietly but said nothing.

Will you sentence her to exile? Is that who you are as Var? Is that what you'll start your reign as? A murderer?

* * *

H
elos stood outside the chamber
, unnamed besides that general term. The building was almost something that Bynimian tried to hide, to push out of its collective memory because it went against everything else in their society. A remnant of some past evolutionary desire, but one supposed to be eradicated. Helos stood in front of the building though, Briten to her side, waiting for her daughter to emerge. Morena would exit either knowing who she and Briten were or with her mind a canvas of terror, unable to understand life around her.

Hours had passed already, and still both of them remained. Neither spoke. Helos had nothing to say and she felt sure Morena's husband felt guilt in this. Her daughter was inside that building because of him, at least partly. Did Helos hate him for it? She knew that Chilras had been in that chamber before though she hadn't said anything to Morena about it. Chilras vanquished a member of The Council and the rest of the world never knew. It couldn't be seen, this disgusting part of their culture that rose from its putrid lair every few thousand years.

So did she hate him?

Did she hate herself for not telling Morena?

No to both. Morena made the choice to bring him here, well aware of this custom when she did—and that Chilras' challenge was always a possibility.

And, despite Helos' love for her daughter, she would not play any role in this affair. Morena made her decision and now she dealt with the consequence.

Helos' eyes brought her from her thoughts in one quick jerk; one moment she stood a hundred yards from the chamber with nothing but emptiness filling the space. The next, Morena stood outside the chamber, having walked through the ephemeral walls.

"That's her," Briten said, his feet already moving forward, taking him to his wife.

"Wait," Helos said, not moving at all. "She looks like Morena, but there may be nothing remaining in there. Wait."

The machines came quickly, flying in from the sky—the singularity alerting them to the duel's end. Two large winged machines flew in, flapping their mechanical wings as they slowed in front of Morena. Helos watched, noticing that her daughter didn't shriek, which was a good sign. She didn't run away from the machines, which could mean she understood what was happening.

Or it could mean she understood nothing, and not even the sight of such forbidding figures scared her.

The machines scanned, each sending out a horizontal red laser. It moved from Morena's head to her feet, conforming to the shape of her aura as it moved slowly around her.

The machines reached the feet of Helos' daughter and then turned toward one another, an invisible language passing between the two of them. A second later they walked around Morena and headed inside the chamber, leaving her standing in the open plain.

"What's that mean?"

"That she's okay."

Briten left then, jogging across the field and leaving Helos standing alone. She watched the two of them reach each other and embrace before she started moving.

"Chilras?" Helos said as she arrived.

"Inside," Morena answered.

Helos looked down at the ground, understanding what that meant. The Yorn was no more, her mind something very different than what entered that chamber.

"No, Var," Morena said. "She's fine."

Helos looked up with wide eyes.

"I didn't push her all the way." Morena held on to her husband, her head against his chest. "I let her live."

Helos opened her mouth to ask why, but stopped the words just before they left. She was going to ask why Morena had done it, but realized she didn't have the right to ask that question. She should simply be happy her daughter understood grace.

Such a trait could help make an amazing ruler.

"
T
here it is
," Marks said.

And there it was, right in front of Knox. The house they came to see. The house that probably contained the end of the world. They weren't more than two hundred feet out.

Knox did a lot of thinking on the short mile over here. Probably more thinking than he'd done in his entire life, at least in reflection anyway. His life was his job. He'd known that for a long time, he supposed, even if he hadn't come right out and said it. And what had it come to, this job? He walked next to a psycho, intent on somehow becoming another species. He walked alone except for the psycho. His army taken from him. The leadership of the country decimated , hiding in holes away from this mess.

A life dedicated to protecting America and yet all he saw around him was the outstretched, clutching hands of another planet, white strands grabbing everything they could touch.

Didn't do that good of a job, huh?
He thought.

He didn't see any way out of this, either. The walk was nearly over and they would come upon a creature that shouldn't exist in this world, that had no business in it at all, because God or evolution hadn't put her here. She showed up on her own.

Knox kept walking, one foot in front of the other, just as he'd done since he was a toddler—though now he was coming to a very, very important decision.

This situation wasn't created by Kenneth Marks. The alien created it by crashing a flaming orb into the planet. She was trying to spread just as the Europeans had when they arrived in Latin America. They both pillaged, humans and this other species. Knox fought it, this alien, of course; but that didn't mean he could
blame
it. Species want to survive. That was the very nature of DNA.

Marks, though? He didn't create any of this; he only played his cards in such a way that the final two contestants were him and this alien. Marks wasn't trying to enrich a species, but only himself. He was willing to sacrifice his species and the other, all in his own interest. Knox gave his whole life to keep this one country safe, and Marks would literally cut all three hundred million throats personally if it meant he got what he wanted.

And that's where his decision came from. That one fact. Marks would give up everything Knox worked for without a second thought.

He didn't know how anyone made it out of this alive. Certainly he didn't know how to stop this alien, nor did he have a plan to stop the disease that would soon kill his world. Maybe none of that was possible anymore. Knox certainly couldn't save it.

He could kill Marks, though.

No matter what happened inside that house, he could make sure Kenneth Marks never woke again.

He would need to be sure that he saw no way out for the human race, but the minute he understood that for certain—that having Marks' blood was pointless, the man was dead.

The short mile walk gave Knox a focus, a purpose for the last few minutes of his life.

And look there, they had arrived at the house which held the end of the world.

* * *

F
ifteen feet separated
Kenneth Marks from his goal. Fifteen feet and a few words. He had other goals, of course: torturing and killing Rigley, torturing and killing Knox. Those were secondary, though, like a football player wanting a certain amount of yards while the main objective was to win the game. Well, Kenneth Marks was about to win and it felt
great.

He didn't look to his left, didn't care what Knox had to say about any of this. He was here because the President wanted him here—no other reason. Kenneth Marks could handle him if it came to physicality, and he was always aware of his surroundings—completely ready if Knox did anything foolish. Like attack him.

People were screaming in the house; the words flowed into Kenneth Marks' brain, registering as they always had before. He processed them, but almost subconsciously, because he didn't care what Will was doing inside. He imagined the mercenary was bargaining, or trying to, though he didn't have much to bargain with. From the screams, it seemed to be the case, anyway.

The alien didn't have time for bargaining, though, and she had to know it. The disease was nearly here. Her kind almost dead.

Kenneth Marks smiled.

Because she would have to
make
some time to bargain with
him
.