Nemesis: Book Six (21 page)

Helos' face turned, slowly, barely able to move at all underneath the pressure building around her. Still, with effort Morena could only imagine, she turned and looked at her daughter.

She said nothing, only locked eyes with Morena.

Pain and knowledge lived there.

Morena felt the antidote, her aura still hanging onto it. The key to her species' survival, that and her mother's death.

Matricide.

Morena didn't look away but she didn't move either.

M
orena's
green aura sliced around the house like a struggling octopus, whipping at invisible assailants. Michael saw it, though he couldn't focus on it. Standing just inside the house; he saw the edge of the war outside. He saw the white creature pressed against the siding like a doll, while a near endless array of colors attacked viciously; Michael didn't know how she still lived.

It's over, isn't it?
Bryan said from inside. He made no commotion, no struggle, only watched the same as Michael.
We're all going to die here, right now.

Michael heard his friend speak, but his mind was too busy. He saw everything around him, but he wasn't simply observing. He saw the future.

She would die, this white creature. Then everyone—all the humans—in the house died next. Morena, standing there with that small piece of metal—Michael didn't know how he knew, but that metal ensured everyone else on the planet died. It would allow her to finish her expansion on Earth and then decide that her expansion never stop. She would move to other planets across endless space.

The creatures in the yard, killing their own kind with the same viciousness seen in animals, would spread across galaxies.

That's what she was scared of
, Michael thought.
That's why she came. To make sure that it didn’t happen. And I'm the key to it, the missing part to everything.

Michael turned and looked at Morena, the torture she felt inside so readily visible to anyone paying attention. Her aura struggled just as hard as the creature's outside, fighting against forces unseen, but looking like it was in danger of dying too. Everything she did on this planet had been to keep her species from dying and now she watched as her own mother was killed.

Michael could stop it all.

He could stop the creature's death outside.

He could stop what came after her death, the complete genocide of the human race.

Michael didn't know if this was planned, his mixing with alien races, his sitting here in control of someone else's body while his own was twisted into some grotesque shape in the other room. Was it luck? But such a word didn't seem right when describing what now happened, what had already happened. Or had she planned it, that white creature dying against the house?

No, he didn't think so. He thought she looked at him as some kind of fortuitous gift, something that could stop all of this.

And he could. He saw it now. Parts of Morena were in him; perhaps, it took the connection with Morena's mother to activate it, or perhaps he simply hadn't been aware. He felt it now, though—an identification with the aura whipping in front of him. She needed to understand that her kind wouldn't die, and maybe then she would stop this.

You have to
, Bryan said. Silently, he listened to Michael's thoughts.
What do you need to do?

I can't
, Michael said.

What do you mean you can't? There aren't any other options, Michael.

It's too big; I hardly understand it.

Michael felt ice fall across Bryan's portion of their mind.
Thera died to stop that thing. Thera died trying to free us from her, and you fucking listen to me, if you can stop her, you're going to. Now what do you have to do?

Michael looked to his left, into the living room. Wren and Will looked out the large living room window at the fight. Will still pointed his gun at Briten, though Wren's rested at his side. Briten sat tied, also looking out the window, but without the apprehension plastered across his face like the other two. He was calm, and yes, Michael felt him too. He understood Morena's struggle and now saw that Briten understood what Michael had since the moment they met. Briten saw his own death; not the one out here in this world, where a gun pointed at his head
,
but the internal one. He saw the blackness that had been growing from the moment he latched on to Michael.

Michael looked back to Morena.

He needed to get her attention.

* * *

T
he world
no longer made any sense to Wren.He had given up on trying to understand it and now watched almost detached. With a speed he barely recollected, the war they fought inside the house had transferred outside, between different factions now.

Staring out the window, he was forced to squint. The colors were too bright but too beautiful to look away from. He didn't know what it meant, this battle outside, only that he and Will had been discarded to little more than a memory. Wren didn't really care what happened outside the house, as long as Michael was alive.

He forced himself to pull away from the creature plastered against the house. Michael. That's what mattered here, and so Wren had to keep up with Bryan. He scanned the living room quickly, seeing no trace of his son's friend. His right hand gripped tight on the gun he held, causing his knuckles to whiten. All he knew was he needed to find Bryan and then get the kid back in this living room. As long as Michael was inside him, Bryan's safety was paramount.

And then, he saw Bryan, walking across the foyer and heading back into the living room. A focus exuded from the kid's whole body as he stared at the alien tied to the chair. He looked nowhere else and moved with a speed which said anything outside of his mission meant less than a grain of sand floating in infinite space. Wren watched as he crossed the living room, wanting to say something, but the sheer determination on Bryan's face kept him quiet.

Bryan pushed the coffee table out of the way with his foot, kicking it hard enough to send it sliding. He squatted down so that he was eye level with the alien, and at that, Wren finally found his voice.

"Get away from it!"

Bryan paid him no mind, didn't even look up at Wren.

"Do you see?" Bryan asked.

Wren stepped forward, around to the front of the chair so that he stood just to the side of Bryan. He raised his gun, pointing it at the alien's head. "Bryan, get away from here. Now. Do you hear me?"

The alien turned his head slowly, from looking out the window to face Bryan.

"Do you see?" he asked again.

Wren didn't know what to do besides hold the gun so that if the alien tried anything, or Bryan for that matter, he would simply fire and end the whole damned thing.

"Don't hurt my son," Wren said, his head turning to Bryan. "Don't hurt Michael."

* * *

M
ichael heard
his father asking Bryan to leave, to keep his son safe, not knowing at all that Bryan had no control here. Indeed, Bryan had gone silent again, watching Michael as he moved across the living room and now squatted before the creature.

Michael knew his father pointed a gun at the alien, but there was no need for it. The alien wasn't going to move; he couldn't, but Michael thought he saw understanding in those red eyes. The creature saw what the alien on the porch saw, what Michael himself saw. The truth.

He opened his mouth to speak again but never got the chance.

Green wrapped around him and he saw it grab his father, too. He saw straight through the substance, as if it was little more than smoke, but yet it grabbed hold of him like a steel clamp. It lifted him in the air, fast, his hands and feet jerking forward as his body flew backwards. His feet hit the couch as he sailed through the air. His father came too, facing him, his face a mix of terror and surprise.

And then he was turning around, still moving through the air, but seeing Morena instead of his father.

Michael stopped inches from Morena's face. He didn't know where his father was, couldn't hear a word from him. Indeed, he heard nothing, the aura wrapped around his body blocking sound from reaching his ears. He only saw Morena's eyes, green orbs staring at him through a green haze. Ruthlessness rested in them, and that drove fear straight down into Michael's core.

He saw more, though.

Curiosity shone inside them, too, because she heard what he asked Briten.

"What was he supposed to see?" she said, her voice calm despite everything happening around her. He didn't hear her voice from her mouth, but heard it through the green surrounding him. Her mouth didn't even move as she spoke.

The ruthlessness, the war outside, all of it faded away. Michael felt a deep calm pass over him because he was looking at the end. Either she would see what he saw or she wouldn't, and if not, then she would certainly kill him. The aura around him folding in, crushing him like a hand does a Coke can. He had nothing to do but tell her the truth as he saw it. As the creature outside saw it.

"Do you see it?" he said.

Her eyes narrowed, the green looking out just as the red had from Briten. Michael lost himself in her eyes, feeling like he could swim there forever. Even the green wrapped around his entire body disappeared as he stared forward.

"So you're no longer Bryan?" she said, almost as if all the terror around her didn't exist.

"There's not time, Morena," Bryan said. "You know that right? If she dies out there, your course is made and you can't turn from it."

"I set the course when I arrived here. I set the course before the human race was even conceived. Why would I not want to follow it?"

"Why doesn't
she
want you to?" he said.

"It doesn't matter anymore. What she wants, what any of them want, doesn't matter. Why do you think I did all of this, child? Was it out of a sincere want? It was necessary."

Michael closed his eyes, floating in the air, his arms and legs suspended in a green substance he didn't understand. The crucial moment had arrived, because to her, all that mattered was her species' survival.

"That's why I need you to see this. Look at me. I can be what you can't. I can be what they can't. Not here, not on any inhabited planet, but somewhere, I can continue what you started."

She said nothing, but her aura tightened, gripping his throat tighter, shutting off his ability to speak.

Ask him
, he thought, hoping that it might travel through the green now choking him.
He saw it, Morena. Ask him.

Michael watched as her eyes flashed upward, over him, to the living room. He saw her mouth move though he couldn't hear what she said. The world was blackening around Michael, even the green of her eyes starting to fade as his oxygen starved brain began shutting down.

Michael,
he heard from inside.
You tried. That's all you could do.
Bryan spoke to him, though Michael could hardly hear his voice. Reaffirming, calm, okay with the death sweeping across them both.

* * *

"
H
e's right
," Briten said from across the room.

Morena held a boy in front of her and a man pinned against the wall, his mouth clamped shut—unable to speak.

"He's like us, Morena. I don't know how, but you feel it don't you?"

She did. She felt it when she grabbed him, thinking that she had hold of Bryan but quickly realized something had happened inside him, and this creature wasn't the one she met when she arrived.

"What does it mean?" she said, her voice carrying through the two rooms. She felt the life passing from the boy, understanding that her grip on his body was killing him. He didn't have long, neither did her mother. Very soon now all of her enemies would lay at her feet, dead, and she would continue with what she and Briten started so long ago.