Nemesis: Book Six (17 page)

M
ichael twisted the doorknob
.

The creature still stood behind him. She hadn't moved, but left him alone to open this door.

He pulled and it opened easily enough.

Michael's head cocked sideways as he looked through the doorway, not quite believing what was before him. He hadn't thought of this place in a long time. He had actively blocked it out because it hurt too much.

It hurt to remember the past because it made him think about what the future might have been.

Michael looked at his house. His old house, not the trailer. The house he and his mother and father all lived in together. And then just he and his father. And then some other family, as Wren moved them to the trailer on the other side of town.

It looked exactly the same as he remembered, at least the part he could see. The living room held the same couches, the same end tables, the same pictures on the walls. Michael knew he wasn't supposed to stand here and stare, though. That wasn't the purpose of this door. He was supposed to walk through it, to actually go
inside
. And yet, he didn't want to. He would have walked through if it had been almost anything else, anything but this past. Had the creature behind him told him to walk into Morena's mind, Michael would have done it. Had it told him to go back inside his own body, trapped as a prisoner, he would have done that, too. Something in the creature made him trust it, yet this was too much.

Michael turned to look over his shoulder, back at her, the creature in white.

She was still there, watching him now, but with her hands at her sides.

She wanted him to walk through, even with the refusal building up inside him. She had to know. She put the door there, so she must know the terror he felt. Yet, she wasn't backing down or changing her mind. She
expected
him to walk through it.

Michael turned back to the doorway, to a living room that he didn't know anymore—that didn't exist anymore.

Where else would he go? Back to the desert? Go stand in front of an alien that only said a single word to him for however long they both had been in here?

Michael took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

He closed his eyes, not wanting to see what came next—almost unable to.

He lifted his right foot and moved it forward, crossing the threshold from Bryan's mind to his own. His left followed and he heard the soft click of the door closing behind him. He was alone in this old house, eyes still closed. He breathed in deeply again, faster this time, taking in the same smell that had been there all those years ago. A bit of his mother's perfume, a bit of her cooking, and his father's aftershave. He remembered those three smells and as they came to him now, tears formed in his closed eyes.

You've got to open them. You can't stand here like this, refusing to look around.

So he did, and the tears hiding behind his eyelids immediately fell to his cheeks.

He turned, slowly, amazed at what he saw. Everything
exactly the
same. The kitchen to his left. His parents' bedroom down the hall to the right and his to the left. He looked at the ceiling, and even the fan was the same.

"Michael?"

His mother's voice rang from the kitchen, just behind the wall where he couldn't see.

Fresh tears fell at the sound, so beautiful, and something he hadn't heard in a decade. A voice that he didn't expect to ever hear again. It was her. No doubt about it. As light and sweet as it had always been.

Michael didn't say anything but took a few steps across the living room and toward the kitchen. He stopped, though, almost scared to death—his heart wanting to freeze up from what he might see when he turned the corner into the kitchen.

His mother.

Dead or alive? A skeleton, bald where beautiful blonde hair used to be? Or her, dressed in jeans and barefoot?

What would she say?

Tears kept coming, dripping off his chin now and silently hitting the floor.

"Michael, that you?"

"Yes, Mom," he whispered, nowhere near loud enough for her to hear.

"Come here, I want to talk to you."

He didn't move, unsure if she heard had him.

"Don't be scared, Michael. I think you're here for a reason and I don't think there's a lot of time."

Michael was stunned. He had thought this was his own mind, and the voice he heard a projection of that mind. But those sentences, they sounded like she was an active participant in this, like she knew some of what might be happening.

"I can't come out there," his mom said.

Michael stepped forward, crossing the living room and trying not to think as he did. If he stopped to think, he would freeze, or worse—try to find the door that let him in here. So he walked and within a few seconds stood in the kitchen.

His mother leaned against the sink, facing him, a smile across her face and tears in her eyes just the same as his.

"Oh my god, it's really you," she said.

"Mom?" Sobbing now, unable to hold it all back.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again," she said.

Michael didn't know how to respond. He didn't know what to do at all.

So he went to her. When he was younger, his head only went to her stomach when he hugged her, and now he stood almost a foot taller. He barely noticed, only wrapping her in his arms and pulling her tight.

"How?" he said. What he hugged wasn't his mind, but his mother.

"I don't know," she said.

"Are you alive?"

"You know the answer to that, honey."

"But you're here, now. You're with me." Michael pulled back and looked down at his mother. She reached up and wiped the tears from her face, still smiling.

"I know that, but I don't know how I got here. I wasn't and then I was."

"Why, though?"

"Take a step back and let me get a look at you," she said, pushing him away gently. He listened to her, though as she looked him up and down, his mind raced with questions.

"Why are you here? What's this mean?" Michael said.

She nodded, still smiling so large. "You're so handsome, Michael. You've grown into such a fine young man."

Michael shook his head, unable to take it all in, what all he saw. His mother, his
actual
mother, stood here talking to him and all she could do was admire what he looked like now.

"Mom, I need you to listen to me. I need to know what's happening."

She laughed, more tears coming to her eyes as she looked up from his body and to his eyes. "Okay, honey. Okay. I just had to see you." She wiped the tears away again, her finger touching the corners of her eyes. "That's about all I do know, is why I'm here. Not how, nothing else. But when I showed up in this kitchen, I knew you were coming and I knew I had to tell you something." She paused and looked to her left, toward the kitchen doorway. "I think he's back in our bedroom."

"Who?"

"Your father."

"How's he here?"

She looked back to him and smiled, shrugging as she did. "I don't know what's happening with you, whatever was placed inside me didn't come with that. It showed me you, though. Whatever is coming up next in your life, you've got to get past your anger, Michael. Your anger at me, for leaving. Your anger at your father, for whatever he's become."

"At you?"

"I'm sorry, honey. I'm sorry I left. I would have stayed with you forever if I could. You're my baby boy and I miss you more than I miss life." She reached for him, putting her hands around his waist and bringing him close. "I can't come back, though. Probably not ever again. I'm so sorry, Michael."

Michael bent down and breathed in her hair, the smell as beautiful as he remembered it. He sobbed into her, unable to stop it for even a second. He sobbed and said nothing else, only hugged her.

He didn't know how long he stood there, but eventually his mother pulled back, tears running down her face too. "You have to go now, honey, to our room. Your time's running out, and mine is almost up."

"No, Mom. No. Don't make me go. Don't make me leave. We can stay here. We can."

A sad smile spread over her face. "No, we can't, baby. I wish we could, but there just isn't time."

"No," he whispered, unable to believe it, unable to pull himself away to do her bidding.

She nodded. "I love you, Michael. I always will. Goodbye."

Michael watched as the sad smile on her face disappeared, as her entire body simply faded from existence, turning into some ephemeral creature, her body like smoke, and then fading from that to nothing.

He stared at the kitchen sink.

Michael fell to the floor. He curled into a ball, wrapping his arms around his legs and laying his head on the linoleum. Everything he knew, about his life outside this and all that happened to him over the past two weeks, disappeared from his mind. He was empty, lying there in his tears and wracked with a pain he didn't know existed.

Years he laid there, unable to move. Centuries. Worlds were born and died and still Michael didn't move. A fallen sphinx.

But finally, at some point, his mind returned. Slowly, not all at once, it came back to him and he remembered his mother. He remembered what she said, what she'd instructed him to do.

The back room. His parents' room. He was supposed to go there because his father waited for him. Wren. Michael felt dead inside, a husk hollowed out from years of sun and not a drop of water. He stood, his eyes red and swollen, his cheeks dry but stained with his tears. He looked to where his mother once stood centuries ago, but he still only saw the kitchen sink.

Nothing existed for him in this room anymore.

He walked across the kitchen and through the living room in a daze, his feet knowing where to take him though his mind didn't care at all. He found the hallway and moved down it as quickly as he crossed the rest of the house, and then his hand was opening the door.

Centuries and a few seconds brought him to his parents' old bedroom.

It was dark, the lights from the overhead fan not turned on. The blinds were drawn and, while it had been daylight in the kitchen, it was clearly night on this side of the house. Michael didn't step in, only scanned the room.

Next to the bed, his back to Michael, looking out the window, Wren stood.

K
enneth Marks stepped
up the short stairs, across the porch, and into the house.

He smiled the whole way.

Why wouldn't he? His life had been made for this, what would come to him once he entered.

He walked into the foyer, and seeing the green aura immediately to his right, he turned. The alien stood with her back to him, one of the boys who started this whole thing wrapped tight in her aura, standing in front of her as if she was a thug with a knife to his throat. Kenneth Marks quickly surveyed the room, finding Will, Wren Hems and a grotesque creature that slightly resembled another teenage boy. That one was strapped down to a chair, looking almost like a makeshift mummy, except his head wasn't wrapped.

"Morena," Kenneth Marks said, still wearing his smile. He didn't think anyone in the house had noticed him, the tension palpable due to how tight everything was pulled.

"I hoped it was you," the alien said, her voice a sad song, contrasting with the terror moving through the room. Terror for everyone but Kenneth Marks.

"I figured it was time we met in person," he said, knowing that she would understand the slight joke. She, even if no one else.

The alien turned around, the boy still in front of her. His eyes were wide and her aura wrapped tight around his throat, arms, and legs, not letting him move in the slightest. In fact, Kenneth Marks saw the boy actually floated a few inches off the ground, the alien holding him up like a doll.

"Things appear to be a bit out of control," Kenneth Marks said. He reached with his left hand to his right, and pulled the latch that held the suit's glove on. It fell to the floor, and then he did the same with the opposite hand. "I won't get completely undressed, but it's still nice to have a bit of freedom, don't you think?"

The alien looked down at the floor, pushing the boy out a few inches with her aura so that she could see all of him. Kenneth Marks looked at her smile and felt slightly unnerved. She shouldn't be this calm, not right now. She shouldn't appear so in control.

Except that wasn't right. She should appear like this, unnaturally calm, because Kenneth Marks would have too—indeed, did. She wasn't like the rest of the rubes in this house. She had ascended.

"What is it you want?" she said. "You came her to bargain with me, right? To allow my children to live if I give you what you're wanting?"

Kenneth Marks' breathing didn't accelerate at all. His heart rate remained exactly the same. Yet, how often had he thought what he would say here? How many times had he rehearsed the words to describe what he wanted from her?

He had reached his moment.

"I want to become like you."

She nodded slowly, still not looking up at him.

"Do you believe I can do that for you?" she asked.

"I think you can do whatever you want, Morena."

Again that knowing nod.

"And the people behind me? The one who came with you? What do we do with them?"

Oh, God yes.
Ecstasy filled Kenneth Marks, better than sex or any drug he could ever take.

"The one next to me, I'd like to hold onto. And the woman? Rigley? I'd like to keep her as well." He glanced behind her to Will, quickly making a decision. "I don't care about the rest."

"And your species? Once you're like me, what would you want to happen to them?"

"They've never been my species," Kenneth Marks said.

* * *

M
orena listened to the words
, a smile on her face, hating everything the man said. He was the antithesis of Morena, of Briten, of any Bynum to ever live. Had she been able to see it, she was sure his aura would already be black. He was already dead, only he didn't know it. He thought the life he walked through was actually living, when he really traveled the world as a shadow figure. Dead inside. Incapable of love. Incapable of caring.

She could morph his DNA, most likely, but he wouldn't survive. His body might change and his black aura might escape from the cells inside him, but she could never morph the parts of him that felt nothing for others. Those strands of DNA would stretch and break, and then even the body that carried him around would die, just as his aura already had. Or maybe he was a stillbirth. Maybe this creature never lived a day in his life.

Morena felt a little pity.

Only a little, though.

Her aura slung Bryan, releasing his legs, neck, and one arm, throwing him with the one remaining limb. The rest of her aura flashed forward and grabbed hold of the dead thing. It gripped him tight and then rushed him toward her. His grin changed almost as fast her aura moved, turning from an arrogant smile to a twisted face full of fear. He saw death now, she could tell, and it was completely green.

Her aura tightened as he came toward her, and she felt his bones creaking beneath the pressure.
Good.

Kenneth Marks hung before her and she stared into his eyes with more hate than she could ever muster for Chilras.

"Where is it? The antidote?" she whispered. Her aura still swam around her back, taking in the room, and she processed that as she spoke. Everyone in the room stared at her now, no one thinking about Briten. She had their attention and that meant Briten was safe for a bit.

"I have it," he said. The words were strained and barely above the sound of a passing breeze. Morena's grip nearly cutting off his oxygen flow.

"Where?"

"The … suit," he said, his eyes slowly shutting.

Morena's aura searched, going both in through the neck hole and wrapping around the entire outside. She found it in a few seconds, pulling a tiny piece of metal out from inside the suit.

She threw him then, slamming him against the foyer wall. He hit with a loud crash as the wood cracked from Morena's power. Marks slid down, landing on the floor with his head hanging slightly to the left. His mouth was open and his tongue protruded stupidly from it.

Morena brought the metal to her eyes. Her aura searched it as quickly as it had Kenneth Marks.

She paid him no mind as his eyes slowly opened and his head lifted, leaning back against the wall.