Nemesis: Book Six (4 page)

M
orena paced
.

Her aura danced around her quickly.

She didn't look at Junior, who had remained by her side, nor any of the Bynums in the distance. They had all retreated outside of the city, leaving the remains of the storm Morena brought down.

"I have to find him," she said, not knowing if Junior knew who she spoke about.

He was quiet as she paced; she knew this scared him, that he didn't know how to react. She came with no announcement and brought pain to this city that none of the other Bynums could. None of it mattered though, not his disbelief or fear.

Kenneth Marks mattered.

"He has to know what I'll do. He has to understand that if he cares about anything, his own life even—all of it is going to end."

"Var, I apologize, but I don't know what you mean."

She stopped walking and turned so that they looked at each other. His pale blue aura wrapped tightly around him, but he didn't drop his eyes.

"There is a man. His name is only important in that it might help me find him. Kenneth Marks. He's killing us, all of us. Not here where you are, but back where the strands grow. Somehow he's put … a disease in them. I don't know how he did it and I don't know how to stop it."

"A disease?"

The concept was foreign to him. Disease didn't occur on Bynimian; Stage Five had passed the need for medical support as genes almost endlessly self-replicated—killing off what had been damaged. Morena knew because she was Var, because she was old.

Disease was here, though, bringing death along with it.

"It's killing us. That's what matters. It's going to kill every one of us, you, me, and every other Bynum. The strands are dying now, and any Bynums still attached to them, waiting to be born, will also die."

She saw understanding come over his face, a deep concern forcing out thoughts about the situation in front of him. The Var's pacing, her rage that rolled through this city. Junior cared about the future of their species and now he understood that all of his force wouldn't help them at all.

"There's nothing you can do?" he said.

"I don't know. I have to talk to the person that created it. He has to understand what I'm doing out here, what I'll continue to do. That if he doesn't stop this, nothing remains, not even the core—"

"The core?"

"Yes," Morena said. "The disease will destroy the entire planet. It's not only affecting us, but it's going to affect the Earth's core when it arrives. It'll stop the burning beneath the ground. He has to know that even if he kills us, there won't be anything left for him."

Junior was quiet, and Morena realized he didn't know what to do—at all.

Morena turned from him, facing the destruction.

Of course he didn't know. He was her child; what could he possibly tell her that she didn't know? Morena looked at the burnt and broken city. Bodies littered it, some decapitated, some still whole, but all dead.

Whoever was in charge of the humans' assault had to know what was happening. There must be eyes on this, somehow.

She looked up at the sky.

She hoped they saw her. Hoped they understood that she wouldn't stop. That not a single structure or trace of life would remain if Kenneth Marks didn't stop the disease.

W
ren opened
the door to the bedroom. He didn't step out, but looked down the hallway. He hadn't heard or seen anything for a couple of hours. Bryan hadn't moved and Michael … well, Michael was the same person as Bryan for all intents and purposes.

Wren wanted to see if anything was going on in this house, if anyone else was here or if they were completely alone.

He didn't want to die, though, and clearly any steps outside their bedroom increased the likelihood of that happening. He didn't want to think about that, because if he considered how with each subsequent step, the danger grew, he wouldn't leave.

Vodka.

The word started moving through his head an hour ago, swimming around like a shark smelling blood—hunting. It had been a long time—days—since he really thought about alcohol, and all of a sudden a part of him thirsted for it as if he hadn't had his fill for the past however many years.

He wasn't leaving the room for that reason, at least not completely. He couldn't stay sober, though, and not say at least part of him wanted to search the house for something to drink.

He wasn't going to do it. He couldn't. The worst was behind him, at least the worst in regards to his addiction. If he had a sip now, he had less than no chance of getting Michael back. His boy. No, he would walk out of this room, explore the house, and not dig through a single fucking cabinet.

He stepped across the room's threshold, putting himself in the hallway. He looked both ways, unsure where to go first.

To the front.

He walked slowly, rolling his feet to keep from making noise, but even so with each creak from the house his heart exploded in his chest. If he didn't die from blunt force trauma, then the stress would kill him long before he made it back to the room. He kept going, though.

Finally, he found himself at the end of the hallway, the house opening up in front of him. He didn't see anyone but strained his ears to hear. He thought he heard someone faintly behind him, in a room at the other end of the hall. That was the woman—he thought her name was Rigley, but didn't know for sure.

He exited the hallway, entering the house's foyer, still seeing nothing.

Where was everyone? The woman was behind him, but she was mostly harmless. Insane, perhaps. The other two, the ones he really feared, weren't here.

"Hello?" he said. His voice echoed off the foyer's ceiling, making him feel even more alone. Eerily so, as if the entire world disappeared except for him and the two people behind him.

"Hello," a voice came back. Wren felt his stomach seize up. Michael was speaking to him, or at least Michael's vocal chords. Michael existed in some space within Bryan's head, and the thing speaking to him now was an abomination. A creature wearing Michael like a suit.

"Come on in," Michael's voice said again.

Wren didn't want to go to him. Yet, what else could he do? Turn around and go back to the room where he would keep staring at Bryan?

Wren walked forward, moving from the foyer to the living room.

His son sat on the couch. Wren's eyes filled with tears; it wasn't his son. At all.

The thing that sat in front of him was more of an abomination than Wren could have ever imagined. He saw the growth earlier, back in the motel room. As if his son had taken steroids, and his muscles were growing at an unprecedented rate. Now, though, Wren understood steroids could never do to a person what he saw before him.

Michael's bone structure was changing, everything about him simply
bigger
. He sat on the couch, and his weight must have been pushing two-fifty, because the couch sunk in around him. His shoulders hulked, stretching the fabric of his t-shirt, though the creature seemed not to notice that soon he would burst from the clothes on his body.

His head was at least one and a half times bigger than it should have been. His bones either stretching, expanding, or just growing. Wren didn't know, but he could barely look at what used to be his son. He didn't want to. Didn't want to stand here staring at the insanity.

"Your face says you're not happy with what's happening to me," the creature said. "I'm not completely sure why, but I think it's just based on my nature. I'm not meant to be kept inside a body this confined. An aura should be wrapped around me, but without it, I guess this … expansion is happening."

Wren looked at the creature, not human, but as alien as the one with the green color around her. He sat so calm, as if everything happening to the rest of the world hadn't occurred to him.

"He's gone. You know that right?" the creature said. "He's not in here with me anymore; I'm completely alone. Do you know what happened to him?"

Wren didn't need to think about the answer he gave; he only shook his head no.

The creature looked at him for a few seconds, his red eyes seeing everything and nothing at once.

"I'm not sure I believe you, but I don't have the energy to focus on it right now. There are too many other things that need my attention."

Wren reached up and wiped his eyes before any of the tears spilled over.

"What made you come out of the room?" the creature said.

Wren didn't answer. He couldn't find the words, stumped like a child caught cheating on a test. Why had he come out? To escape? To run? To just understand his surroundings?

"You're sick, aren't you?" it asked. "I remember, one of the only things still left from when your son was in here." He tapped his temple. "You drink something, have for a long time, and it's made you ill."

"I'm an alcoholic," Wren said. The first words he spoke to it, and really hadn't even known he would until he started.

"An alcoholic," it whispered. "I don't know what that means, not in your terms, but I suppose it fits with what I'm saying. Are you dying?"

Wren's eyes narrowed. "I don't know. Maybe. I'm done drinking, though."

"There's a lot of things to drink here, if you want them. The woman back there has checked everything in this house, and she's lined a lot of it up in the …" He paused, clearly unsure of the proper word. "The room behind us."

"That's a kitchen," Wren said.

"The kitchen, then. I think some of it is the clear liquid you drink, if you want some."

Wren's eyes flashed up to the door behind the couch. It was right; he could see the a bottle of vodka—Belvedere, if Wren read correctly—standing on the kitchen counter, right next to the sink.

"You want it, don't you?" it said. "All the fear in you left as soon as you looked up. Your mind completely forgot I was here."

Wren didn't glance down at him, couldn't really. His eyes couldn't pull away from the bottle. Because he wanted it. The creature was as right as the purest drop of rain to ever fall from the heavens. He wanted to go in there, open the bottle, and do the old tip to the lips.

His mouth watered, just as his eyes had when he entered. Different reasons, though, of course.

And yet, somehow, he brought them back to the creature wearing his son's body. He swallowed the spit in his mouth.

"I'll be fine," he said.

The creature nodded, a glint in his red eyes saying maybe Wren would be, and maybe Wren wouldn't be.

"So what is it you want?"

"My son," Wren said.

"I don't think you'll ever have him back. You might want to get used to that," it said.

Wren looked at the creature for a long time, not dropping his eyes even as the red tried to burn straight through him. He didn't know whether they looked at each other for seconds or minutes, but he stared at it the same as he would a god condemning his son to hell—in defiance. Wren might be sick and wanting liquor, but he didn't give a goddamn. He was going to get Michael back, and if this thing didn't want him to, then it should kill him now.

"I think I will," Wren said finally.

* * *

B
riten walked
out to the porch barefooted. The rest of the clothes he wore still hung on, barely, but his feet couldn't fit inside the … he didn't remember the name anymore. He held the remainders of them in his hand, the toes split wide open and the seams bursting all along the rubber soles. He dropped them onto the porch, discarding them forever.

The cold from outside immediately attacked his feet; he pushed aside the nagging mental note.

The father was interesting. He possessed some of the strength that Briten remembered from Michael, wherever the hell he was now. Briten thought the father might know something about Michael's whereabouts, but he wouldn't tell. He'd die before that happened. It didn't really matter. The boy was gone and Briten had no real reason to chase him. He'd been toying with the man, wanting to see if the stuff he drank would completely control him, but it hadn't. He managed to reel himself in.

A welcome distraction, but Briten needed to focus on the solution to Morena's problem. The problem of this death quickly coming to them all.

Only, another distraction stuck its head up as soon as his feet touched the wooden porch boards. A strand started snaking out from the mass laid across the yard, singular, and moving directly for the porch. Briten watched as it found the steps and didn't slow, but moved vertically, then horizontally, climbing the stairs.

Heading straight for him.

He didn't shy away as it reached him, knowing that it wouldn't be moving like this unless commanded by its mother. She wanted to talk to him. It reached his toes and smoothly wrapped itself around all of them, not digging in, but preparing for whatever Morena wanted to say.

Briten?

Her voice filled his mind, more beautiful than any music to ever flow from an instrument.

I'm here.

You know what's happening?
she said.
The strands told you?

Yes.

We have to stop it. I've got to talk to the man that created it.

Where are you?
he said.

I'm with Junior, out west, but I can't do anything here. Nothing substantial unless I speak to him. Get the woman, Rigley, and bring her out. I'm going to make her get in touch with him.

Briten was quiet for a few seconds, thinking through what Morena wanted to do. It might work, though his solution wound down a different path. Either way, he hadn't reached a conclusion yet.

Okay
, he said.
I'll be back.

The strand unwound itself much quicker than it had wrapped around him. He turned and went back into the house, moving quickly, his feet almost pounding on the floor beneath him. Reaching the door, he turned the knob, didn’t feel it twist under his hand, so simply leaned in with his shoulder. The wood split easily and the door flung open, bouncing off the wall.

Briten looked at the woman, her eyes jumping to him, fear draping across her face like a black shroud, hiding whatever positive features might still remain. Briten didn't care about any of it. He walked across the room, grabbed her hair and then headed back through the house. She shrieked as he pulled, but he ignored it completely, marching her through the house at the same speed with which he came to her room.

He stood at the top of the porch, grabbed her with his other hand, and tossed her into the nest of strands.

* * *

M
orena felt
the strands take hold, digging in to Rigley—not far, not enough to truly hurt her, but enough to put a whole lot of fear inside her—and spreading Morena throughout her body.

Hush,
Morena said, her voice whipping through Rigley like a shark through water.

Rigley hushed. The strands numbed the pain of their entrance , allowing Rigley to calm some.

Listen to me, and listen closely,
Morena said.
I won't repeat myself, Rigley, and if you can't help me here, then everything you've done so far will come to nothing. Do you understand?

Morena felt fear, resistance, and at the same time some strange need to continue helping. Whatever broke this woman held her in its grip with a ferocity Morena didn't understand. She didn't care to understand it either. She needed this woman to think, and to think in a way that would help Morena. She couldn't have resistance right now—none at all.