Nemesis: Book Six (2 page)

D
o you see her
?
Michael said.

See who?
Bryan asked.

Michael needed no other answer. Only Michael saw the white creature, the one who looked so much like Morena.

Do you see anything having to do with me?
Michael said, wondering if Bryan saw him sitting in this desert.

No. I can just feel you.

Michael was balancing the world inside Bryan's head with the reality outside—they still sat in the back bedroom, with Wren staring out the window, silent. Silence reigned inside as well, without Michael or Bryan having much to say. Until now.

Because Michael had to tell them about her.

What did you mean, do I see her?
Bryan asked, Michael watching as his mind came back from the darkness.

The three of us need to talk,
Michael said.
I see something different than before and I'm not sure what it means.

* * *

"
W
ren
," Bryan said. He watched Wren turn to him, away from the window. "Michael says he needs to talk."

Wren's eyebrows raised and he turned the rest of his body, becoming actively engaged. Bryan knew what the man thought of him. Wren saw him as a lost cause, something hosting his son right now. He gave no indication of wanting Bryan's help or to even keep him up to date. All of that was fine with Bryan. He had no desire to support Wren. In fact, with Michael now in his head, he wondered if he had made a mistake.

Because Bryan was dying when this was over—he would entertain no other options. And from what he could tell, Michael had nowhere to go. He couldn't get back to his body, now owned by an alien in another part of the house. What did that mean for him, when Bryan passed from this Earth? Nothing good. That's what Bryan was beginning to think.

I'm seeing something
, Michael said from inside his head.

Bryan's eyes focused back on Wren, still staring expectantly.

He didn't know how much Michael knew or how much he could see from his vantage point—but Bryan wouldn't try to hide what he saw as the end. Michael needed to face it just like Bryan. Just like Thera.

"He says he's seeing something," Bryan said, becoming the middleman for Michael's words.

"What?"

Bryan listened, taking in what Michael gave him, putting it into his own language—understanding it—before speaking.

"It's something like her. Like Morena. Except white. A white aura, like Morena's green one."

"Where is she?" Wren said. "He's still … inside you, right?"

"He says she's in there with him. He's sitting in a desert …." Bryan felt a smile tug at his lips, knowing what Michael
didn't
say: the desert was what his personality had left. "And he sees her standing across it."

"What's she doing?"

"She looks like she might be walking to him, but he can't tell. She's far away and it's dark."

Bryan paused, unsure if he should say the next word, unsure why Michael said it. Like he couldn't help it.

"He says she's beautiful," Bryan whispered. He tried to see her even as he said the words, wanting to peer into whatever world Michael inhabited. He couldn't though. All he saw inside himself was blackness. No light. No creature.

"You're not giving me much here, Bryan," Wren said. "What's it mean? What's he say she wants?"

Bryan shook his head, coming back to reality. "He doesn't know. He just wants us to know what he's seeing."

Wren stood up and walked over to Bryan. Both looked at each other, Bryan knowing what Wren wanted but understanding he wouldn't get it. Bryan would never be Michael, no matter how hard or how many times Wren looked into his eyes.

And Bryan didn't want to look at Wren anymore.

He didn't want to look at anything.

Because he saw only darkness when he looked inside himself, and the light out here, the light shining off Wren's eyes, only put a spotlight on the area that Bryan couldn't enter anymore.

Even coming out of the darkness, coming out to talk to Michael, to relay this information—all of it created more pain. Because Bryan was changed, more than anyone else involved, and he wasn't changing back. Unending black waited for him in this life and it waited for him in the next, too.

He moved to the side and then around Wren, heading to the bed. He lay down and closed his eyes. Michael fell silent and the blackness took over.

* * *

D
isbelief wasn't
a word that Wren would ever use again. He could see nothing on this Earth, or in this universe, too strange for him to believe.

But that inability to disbelieve didn't mean he understood everything, because Bryan was a complete mystery to him. Wren watched as the boy walked around him, making his way to the fucking bed again. Wren found himself growing angry at it, as if a piece of furniture actually caused his frustration at Bryan. The anger only grew, though, because every time Bryan did this, he went to the bed. Had he gone to the window and stared outside, Wren would have begun hating the glass.

His anger truly grew from the desperation he felt at Bryan.

The kid was broken and not willing to fight to fix himself. Wren certainly wasn't any professional in that regard, but he was doing his damnedest right now; Wren was keeping it together, for Michael if no one else, and this kid was acting like a pre-teen going through his first fucking breakup.

Wren didn't know what happened just now, why Bryan went from speaking to silence in only a few seconds, but in doing so he shut Michael up as well. So much rested inside the boy now sleeping—or feigning sleep. He connected Wren to his son, and his son to the rest of the world. Bryan had Morena's knowledge, or what he was allowed to gather while he'd been possessed, but Michael was different from that.

Had been different for quite some time.

Michael was … connected. Wren didn't know to what, nor did he know how, but he was different than the rest of them. And Bryan halted that connection when he shut himself down. That connection might allow Michael to do
something.

Wren still looked at Bryan; the boy's eyes were closed. Wren didn't know if he slept or not, though he wasn't sure much difference existed between wakefulness and sleep for Bryan anymore.

Something had to be done about him. The conclusion appeared on the horizon of Wren's mind like a blood sunrise, casting light across the world, but red and frightening.

Something, but what?

Michael lived inside the boy, and what was Wren thinking?

Are you going to harm him?
Linda said.
Is that what you're seriously considering?

He didn't know, not completely. He didn't want to hurt Bryan, but this couldn't continue—he needed to jumpstart whatever Michael was able to do, because in the end, only Michael mattered. Not Bryan. Not Wren. Not the rest of the world. Only Michael's survival.

Jesus, Wren,
his dead wife said.

"Shut the fuck up," he whispered. She wasn't here having to make these decisions. She didn't have to watch all of this, unable to do anything. So she didn't get to judge, not now, not while he stood here sober, at last, trying to save their son.

Even what she said didn't matter—not anymore, because she wasn't Michael.

"
T
hanks
," Will yelled to the front of the helicopter. He stood at the door, ready to make the jump.

Thumbs up from the pilot. No other communication. That had been his relationship with the man in the cockpit, hand signals, and when Will jumped from the chopper, their relationship ended. Another person Will would never see again. How many pilots had there been like this?

What the hell are you thinking about?

He didn't know, or rather, didn't know
why
. He stared out of the helicopter at the white ground five feet below him.

This is what it's like when you see death
.

He wasn't staring at Morena in all her terrifying glory. He looked at white strands growing over each other where once existed a town called Grayson. He looked into nothingness and his subconscious couldn't stop
understanding
that this was it. That when he hopped out of this helicopter, no cavalry would show up to save him. Jumping from this machine was no different than a kamikaze pilot flying into a ship.

He had stood here long enough, so long that the pilot had to be wondering if something was wrong.

Will jumped, his suit fully attached, and landed on the relatively soft sponge beneath. His boots began shooting their endless cold, attacking the space around him. Will turned and watched as the helicopter pulled up, flying off into the air, leaving him alone in this strange landscape.

He looked back at Grayson, Georgia.

Weeks ago this place had been suburbia, if a bit country. Now, nothing remained. He couldn't spot a single difference from the area where he now stood and the area in which he had entered the strands' domain, hundreds of miles away.

"Knox," he said, speaking into his helmet, hoping that the general might be holding a mic on the other end. He waited a few seconds and then said the name again. "Knox."

Nothing came back.

Will was completely alone with no plans or strategies.

He turned around, a full circle, looking at the hills and houses—one and the same now—all covered.

Where to?

Does it matter?

No, probably not. Just get moving, get some action going, and see what you can find.

* * *

R
igley's phone
finally lost its connectivity.

It had taken a while, but the telephone company finally lost the struggle for the United States' best coverage, apparently.

Rigley snickered at the thought, a twisted and off kilter smile jumping onto her face like an insect suddenly landing on a picnic.

"No more news," she said. No one else sat in the room with her, but it wasn't completely clear whether she knew that or not. People had started ceasing to exist for Rigley, falling away like leaves in autumn, scattered by the wind of her thoughts, lost and forgotten.

She was bored now, though, because her phone no longer delivered the outside world. She looked up from it for the first time in a few hours, seeing the room around her as if she had never sat in it before. Her mind took a few seconds to catch up, to understand where she was and what she had been doing. Morena. Morena's children. Saving them.

Rigley had her work cut out for her, that was for sure. Though, she thought she had done a fairly spectacular job so far. She didn't know what the end result had been with the boy's message, the word (
What was that word? She couldn't remember it.
)
she repeated over and over. Hopefully it worked—certainly it appeared so. The grotesquely growing teenager (
Who was actually Kenneth Marks, why kid ourselves?
) had been asleep for some time now. Which was good. As long as Kenneth Marks wasn't up and moving around, the world could keep spinning.

And yet, even with all this good news around her (
besides her phone disconnecting, because that was just awful
), Morena wasn't here. Rigley didn't remember where the others went, those few people that Marks brought to the house, but they didn't matter any longer. She needed to know where Morena was—she needed Rigley's help, now more than ever.

Rigley's eyes flashed to her phone again, dashing the thoughts of Morena, mindlessly flipping to her contact list. No thoughts ran through her mind, as if the train she had been on simply disappeared—not even stopping. Wires inside her head misfired at rates too frequent for her to understand they even happened, leaving her unable to focus for long periods of time.

Her fingers scrolled down the contact list, watching names come and go, seeing none of them. Just endless words. When she reached the bottom, she started back up.

Back and forth. Up and down. Rigley watched the names without a thought in her head.

Until she saw
Will.

Her finger smacked down on the screen, halting the scroll.

Will.

He was a person. He was someone … she liked? Had she liked Will, in that past life? Certainly parts of him, and yet something dark resided in her mind about him. Something that she didn't want to look at.

Will.

Where was he?

She tapped his name on the screen and put it to her ear. Thirty seconds passed before she remembered that the phone was out of commission. She put it back down in her lap and stared at the screen again.

Will. Will. Will. Where are you, William?
The thought went through her head in the tune of a child's song, light and free.

And then she remembered that the house had a telephone, underground lines. Would those still work?

She stood from her chair and walked into the kitchen, picking up the cordless phone and referring back to her cell.

She dialed the number and put it to her ear.

* * *

"
W
ill
?"

He couldn't believe the voice in his ears. Not Knox, who had been the only person to contact him. Rigley spoke to him now—a ghost for all he knew. He walked out of her life when he went to Grayson last, and from what he gathered, she walked out of everyone else's. Yet, her voice echoed in his helmet.

"Will, are you there?"

"Rigley?" he said.

"Yes, yes, it's me. What are you doing?"

She asked the question like she wanted him to come pick her up and drive her to run an errand, not like she abandoned her species by siding with an invading alien.

"Where are you?" The words moved slowly from his mouth as he tried to remain calm. Rigley's tone said that she walked a very, very, thin tightrope, and that the slightest gust of turmoil would send her falling a long way.

"I'm with her, Will," she said.

"Where?"

"In Grayson."

Will didn't say anything for a second, gaining control of his frustration. Of course she was in Grayson. It wouldn't do any good to tell her that, though, not unless he wanted to watch her fall.

"Where in Grayson?"

"We're at a house."

He closed his eyes, blocking out the white surrounding him. He needed her to give him something that made sense, but she wasn't able to make that connection. She certainly didn't know where she was, no coordinates, and most likely, she had lost the ability to even access that information. The Rigley of old was dead. He didn't know this person despite how her voice sounded.

Will couldn't save her.

All he could do was get to her, and hope that he might be able to do something to the alien who once ruled his own mind.

"How did you get my number, Rigley?"

"I looked it up in my cell phone."

Will shook his head, unable to smile at the absurdity of it all.

"You still have your cell phone?"

"Uh-huh."

"Okay, I want you to pull up the maps on it. You're still going to get satellite reception. Tell me where you are."

"Why?" she said.

Was he the enemy? Is that what she saw him as now? If so, she wouldn't let him anywhere near that house. Again, though, he found himself out of choices. The only one left to him—which didn't make it much of a choice—was hope. Hope that Rigley … even if she didn't like him, perhaps some part of her might trust him.

Oh, yeah? After Bolivia?

He pushed the thought away. "I'm here to help, Rigley."

"Help who?"

And only one word came to his mind. "You."

He listened to silence, not hearing any clicks of her phone turning off. He
hoped
she was doing as he asked, finding her goddamn location.

"You ready?" she said as if he was going to write this down, like she was giving him directions to a barbecue.

"Yeah."

"Thirty-three point eight nine north and eighty-three point nine six west."

Will repeated the numbers in his head, not knowing if Rigley kept speaking. He had to remember them, and at fifty plus, his memory wasn't what it used to be. Finally, when he thought he had it all in his head, he turned his attention back to her.

"Rigley, what's happening there?"

"Well, she's gone right now."

"Morena?"

"Yeah," Rigley said.

"Where did she go?"

Rigley went quiet for a second and Will waited for the click to tell him she hung up.

"She didn't say." Her voice quiet, pained. Because she cared about the alien. Morena just leaving … it hurt Rigley.

Stop the psychoanalyzing. Find out what you can and then get your ass there.

"What's happening at the house?"

"I think Kenneth Marks is here," she said, the pain in her voice replaced with a conspiratorial whisper.

Will didn't even know where to go with that statement. Not what it meant, not anything. Rigley would give him nothing useful outside of those coordinates.

"Okay, Rigley. I'll be there soon."

"You're really coming."

"Yeah."

"Okay, I'll see you soon then!"

The connection died. Will didn’t move for a few seconds, only stood thinking about her exit. Rigley sounded like she was heading to clean up before company arrived.