Nemesis: Book Six (18 page)

M
ichael stepped
through the doorway into the darkened room.

His father didn't turn around, just stood with his hands clasped behind his back.

"You're not real," Michael said.

"I guess that depends on how you define reality," his dad said, his voice sounding exactly the same.

"You're not like Mom was, in the kitchen."

"No, I don't suppose I am, though I don't know exactly how that happened."

Michael didn't know what to say or where to move, so he remained silent and still.

"You hate me," Wren said.

Michael looked at the window Wren stared at, the blinds drawn, barely allowing the moonlight to stream in. "I don't even know you," Michael said. "It's like you're some entity that's driven by alcohol. Like you have no humanity. How can I hate that?"

Wren nodded; Michael could see the back of his head moving slightly.

"That's what is up front. That's what you're allowing yourself to see, but that's not the truth."

"How the fuck would you know what the truth is?" Michael said. "You don't know me anymore than I know you. We're two strangers that have lived in the same house for a decade. And you did it. You did all of it without a single bit of help from me or Mom."

"Do you think I don't know that, Michael? Do you honestly believe that I hold myself blameless for this life?"

"WHAT THE FUCK DOES ANY OF THAT MATTER?" Michael screamed from across the room. Hot tears rushed to his eyes, both from the strain on his vocal chords and the emotion that ripped forth from them. "It doesn't matter if you blame yourself. You weren't there. You were never there. My whole goddamn life, Dad."

The tears fell over onto his cheeks. They burned as they ran down his face.

Wren turned around.

Except it wasn't Wren. It wasn't Michael's father.

Michael stared at himself, an older version—maybe in his thirties or forties—but him without a doubt.

"Did the anger disappear when I turned around?" the other said.

And it had, replaced immediately with shock.

"Would you rather me turn around so that you can scream more?" the other said.

Michael didn't respond. He couldn't.

Something moved from the shadows of the room, coming from Michael's left. He turned his head quickly, fear rising, and saw his father. The man stepped into the circle formed by the three.

"Go ahead, scream at him," the other said. "That's what you want isn't it, for him to understand how bad he hurt you? Tell him, then."

Michael looked at his father; he'd never seen anything like it. Truly, what he saw didn't seem possible.

The man stood as tall as he did in life as an adult, and at the same time, Michael saw him changing. He saw him as a baby, a toddler, a young kid, a teenager, and so on, the man growing older with each passing minute. His father's skin had been smooth once, his eyes youthful and full of life. And yet, he kept moving forward and everything about him aged. Into his twenties, slight wrinkles on his forehead, but still a look of contentment rested on his face.

Like the world was a good place, somewhere he could trust.

It didn't stop, though, this aging process.

Michael watched as his father's body continued to weather, yet those eyes didn't change. The shape of his mouth remained the same, one of expectation and happiness.

And within one minute, it all changed. Radically, like one of those old black and white films of Hiroshima, when a bomb suddenly changes everything. His father's eyes dulled, like a tiny fire inside them died, water pouring over even the embers. The years kept turning though, so fast Michael almost couldn't keep up. Nothing went backwards—the light didn't return and the mouth that said happiness was here or just around the corner shifted, looking more and more like an abused animal with each passing second.

Time finally stopped and his father appeared as he did today.

Michael thought back to the child, the first few images.

That child resembled nothing of the broken man in front of him. Stooped and beaten.

"Life, Michael. It comes for us all," the other said. "It came for our dad, too. It's coming for you now, even as we speak."

"He didn't," but Michael's voice cracked as he tried to finish the sentence. He looked down to the floor and wiped away the tears with a hard brush of his palm. "He didn't have to do what he did. He didn't have to start drinking."

He heard the smile in the other's voice as he spoke. "And you didn't have to start hating him, either."

Michael said nothing. He stopped wiping away the tears and watched as they fell to the carpeted floor beneath his feet.

"He loves you and you know it. You're all he has in this world. He would die for you, right now, if you asked him to."

"It doesn't change what he did."

"No, nothing will." The older version of Michael looked to his left—Michael's right—and the creature so white she was nearly made of light walked into the room. She moved to Michael's side, taking her place in between him and the other. She looked ahead at Wren.

"You're the key," she said. Her eyes didn't fall on Michael, though he knew she spoke to him. "You're what can stop this and maybe no one else. You know what I speak of?"

Michael's eyes widened slightly at the question. She hadn't spoken to him before, let alone ask something of him. Yet here she was, expecting an answer.

"Yes," he said, his voice much softer than the rage he showed earlier.

"I can't send you, though, unless I know you're … or can be, like us."

Michael shook his head. "I don't understand."

"You hate your father, and in that, hate for yourself lives as well. You'll be just as polluted as the rest if that's true. It would be better we all die."

"What are you asking me to do?" Michael understood what she meant about dying. Everyone on this planet faced extinction, but the rest … he didn't know what the hell she was talking about. Michael wasn't saving anything; Michael, in reality, didn't even exist anymore. He lived inside someone else's mind.

"I'm asking you to forgive him. To forgive yourself."

He laughed, the tears still sticky on his face. Laughed at the creature and the older version of himself, both of them here for the same reason.

"Right now? Just like that? Just say I forgive you and move on?"

"Yes," she said.

He looked to his father. He'd seen his whole life move in a few moments and it saddened Michael, but didn't change anything. Nothing changed the past decade. Nothing changed the fists, the words, the years of hiding in his room so that he didn't have to go into the living room and hear Wren's cursing.

"We all die if I don't forgive him?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Then we're all going to die."

K
enneth Marks' breaths
came in huge, ragged gulps—as if his lungs were first learning to breathe, not used to the practice of expanding and contracting. He looked up at Morena slowly, his head a daze. He had never felt like this, so
slow
, and yet he knew that he had to react fast. She had the antidote. He didn't know what she could tell, whether or not she knew already that with it, she could halt the disease.

"It won't work without me," he said, his voice sounding sluggish to his own ears. He hoped she understood him; God, she had to.

He saw her look up from the chip, her eyes finding him.

"My blood activates it. No one else's. If I die, you die."

His chest heaved up and down, but the words still moved from his mouth and nothing else mattered. As long as he kept her looking at him and away from the chip, he was in this. He hadn't lost. He couldn't lose.

The thought focused him, brought a hint of calm back to the disarray shrouding his brain. Destiny wasn't thwarted; it couldn't be shoved aside and if he lay against the wall with blood dripping from his lip, then that was exactly what he should be doing. She still looked at him which meant she was listening.

"Your righteous anger is endearing," he said, "but it changes nothing about what's going on outside this house. It changes nothing about my demands. It changes nothing about what you're going to do. You don't have to make me a part of your clan, or whatever you call the rest of your kind, but you will make me resemble you. I might not have colors whipping about my body, but even you haven't done what I have. I'm beating you, right now, on all fronts, and you're going to remake me because of that."

The alien looked back to the chip, studying it.

She couldn't understand the technicalities of it; no matter how intelligent, no matter how far advanced, she couldn't understand the metals of this earth and how they weaved together inside that small shell. It would keep her out.

It had to.

Fate ruled here. Not her. Not him.

Her eyes flicked up and a smile rose back to her face. Kenneth Marks watched as her aura slowly moved across the room, colorful water dancing to a song that no one else heard. It flowed to him, caressing his head softly like a lover before sleep.

"You see?" he said. "You have to have me."

His chest slowed it's movement more, calm prevailing as he looked into that smile.

Morena lowered the chip from her face, and she stood facing him fully, a beauty he had never seen before. He didn't know what he would look like when he ascended, but he found it hard to believe that he might even approach her beauty. She was … magnificent in a way that gods could only hope for.

"You're beautiful," he said, unable to help himself.

"Thank you," she said, still smiling. "Would you like to look like me? Like us?"

Was he losing himself in her? Yes, no doubt about it. That was okay, though. Kenneth Marks' brain was moving again and he read what her smile said. She understood she'd been bested; she understood no other choice existed to her.

He nodded, ready.

"You lied, though, Kenneth Marks. There's not a trace of you in this machine, not a piece of it that needs you at all."

Kenneth Marks' eyes widened, only slightly, as his brain immediately ran through a hundred calculations and lines to find the best way out of her accusation.

He watched as she looked back at the chip, a small grin on her face.

Kenneth Marks saw the large swath of green coming at his head, but he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

The green collided with his head and Kenneth Marks slumped to the floor.

* * *

H
elos felt her daughter
.

She could think of no other way to describe it. She
felt
her though she couldn't see her yet. A few feet from her daughter and she couldn't bring herself to cross the steps. So much power rested in that house, more than Helos ever thought possible—and, part of her was already inside, in a way. The part with the human named Michael. The part trying to understand him. Trying to see if she could change him.

Helos couldn't be there fully, though. She had to be here, outside the house, ready to meet her daughter.

"Mother?"

Morena's voice flowed out the door, touching Helos' ear with a softness that she hadn't remembered, but which immediately exploded in her memory like a supernova. It lit up everything, and in that light, happiness reigned supreme.

"You're out there aren't you?" her daughter said.

She feels me too.
And of course she would. Two Vars, less than a hundred feet apart?

"Yes," she called, her voice carrying easily through the planet's atmosphere. Helos breathed in, unprepared for what came next but knowing she must go forward anyway. She climbed the steps of the house, and with each one, her daughter's green aura revealed itself. Breathtakingly beautiful, just as it always had been. Helos almost stopped, wanting to simply take in what she remembered from so long ago.

She didn't, though. She kept walking, entering the house, and saw her daughter for the first time since Helos passed from Bynimian.

"Morena," she said, whispering the name. Her aura looked into the rooms around her, showing her a man pinned to the floor, the others beyond Morena (
and was that Briten?
), but Helos didn't care about any of it at all.

"Mother," Morena said, lowering her head and looking at the floor, showing the deference she had her whole life, even though she was Var now, and her mother only a relic from the past. "How?" she said, not looking up.

Helos didn't move forward, standing in the foyer, the man on the floor a few feet behind her. She couldn't remove the love almost overflowing inside her and yet couldn't shake the reason she was here.

"What are you doing?" Helos said.

Morena looked up. "The only thing I can."

Did she know? Did she see the difference between what had once been and what was now?

"I'm here because of you, Morena, but then you know who sent me, don't you?"

"The Makers?" Even as she looked up, her head kept the reverential downward tilt.

Helos nodded.

"We're going to survive, mother. We nearly didn't. I was the last."

Helos nodded.

"And now, with this," Morena said as her aura hoisted the small metal chip in between them, "we're going to make it. This was the last piece."

"Who are they behind you?"

Morena didn't turn and said nothing.

"Why do they point weapons at what I think is your husband? Why is someone dead behind me?"

"So that we can live," Morena said.

"We used to live without killing, didn't we?"

Morena's head raised with the question, almost unconsciously, so that her chin reached level with Helos' own.

"We don't live in those times anymore," she said, her voice no longer a whisper.

"No, you don't."

Silence fell across the room and Helos felt ice growing between her and her daughter, the first time such an immovable wedge had formed between the two of them.

"You plan on killing those behind you, as well."

"I plan on Bynums living, mother. That's all I've wanted. To protect us."

Her chin high, Helos said, "at what cost?"

She didn't know how Morena would have responded, but nothing came, because the noise from outside roared into the house, breaking apart any conversation or focus that anyone might have held.

Helos looked to her right and Morena to her left, both of them turning to the noise of what sounded like a thousand tiny asteroids smashing into the ground outside.

No asteroids; a thousand auras stared back, colors that Helos hadn't seen since her death. So many of them, just like they looked on Bynimian.

She turned fully and walked to the door, each step revealing more of the Bynums her daughter created. They looked endless, more than Helos thought possible given the short time they'd been on this planet. She stepped through the doorway and took them in their full glory.

They stretched around the side of the house and deep into the yard, not quite so far that Helos couldn't see the end, but even so, what she saw was amazing.

A blue aura moved forward, its owner coming slightly after.

"False Var," he said.

* * *

W
ill watched everything
, completely stunned. He saw Marks lying on the floor, trapped the same as Morena’s lover. Bryan and Wren stood like statues, hands at their side and Wren’s gun facing the floor.

Will looked down to the only thing under his command, the alien.
He
stared straightforward and watched everything with a detachment Will couldn’t begin to understand. No emotion showed on his face, not even with this new creature arriving. Will turned to Morena next and saw her green aura moving toward the door, following the newest alien to simply show the fuck up.

He had a plan when he arrived, a shitty one, but a plan.

Now, he was nothing more than a bystander … and that meant, humanity was simply a bystander.

His eyes finally went to Knox, standing in a corner of the foyer. His own face stared out the door, watching whatever showdown was about to happen.

Rigley shrieked from the back bedroom, though Will didn’t know if anyone else heard her. She sounded like some kind of bird, far in the distance—especially with everything else happening. He didn’t put her in that room for her own safety, but for everyone else’s.

Are you really considering that?

What else is going to happen to her? Do you think even if you all make it out of this, that the powers that be are going to let her live? She’s done, and if you let her out now, she might be able to cause some kind of turmoil—a disruption.

Will looked across the foyer and down the back hall. He could see the door bulging from her banging on it, the doorknob rattling.

He had already fucked her life up, years ago. Why not let her have what she wants? Why not give her the species she picked over her own? Maybe it gave Will a second chance to do something here, and if it didn’t? Rigley was dead anyway.

Will kept his gun at eye level, but backed away from the chair holding the alien. He headed toward the back hallway.

* * *

"
S
top
," the voice commanded.

Michael quit walking, his feet nearly through the bedroom doorway. Nearly into the light of the rest of the house. He didn't know where he would go once he stepped into it, perhaps back to the kitchen where he would resume his mindless vigil, curled up on the linoleum.

The voice speaking, though, left no room for him to continue moving. Authority ran through the words like steel wires through a building's foundation.

"There's nothing left if you leave," she said. "Nothing for anyone. Not my kind, not yours."

"I don't even know what you're asking me to do. But I know that I can't turn around and forgive him."

No one in the room moved, but she kept talking. "Something happened to you; I think when Morena let loose this planet's core. You somehow became like us … even now, I can see an aura inside you. An orange aura."