Nemesis: Book Six (6 page)

Wren said nothing, only stood at the window and watched the action play out.

And dear God, was that a phone? Two of them? He watched as the woman covered in white moss dialed on the house phone and put it up to her ear. She was making a fucking phone call. And the alien just stood a few feet away, doing nothing after handing her the phones.

Wren didn't care if the creature heard him. If the alien wanted him dead, then he would have already killed him. He reached to the window and gently pushed up, cracking it. The noise felt substantial, as if anyone living in the surrounding five hundred miles would hear it, but neither the alien nor woman seemed to take notice.

Wren moved his head until it was nearly out the window, trying to hear what she said on the phone. He couldn't make out everything, just bits and pieces of conversation, but the woman that walked around the house picking at her hair and mumbling to herself couldn't be in control. The voice, while the woman's, was too collected—focused, something that Wren didn't think the real woman could actually do.

Something controlled her.

The white strands covering her, they allowed something else to take over. And that something else, well, it could only be one thing—Morena, the head honcho in this affair.

Wren, half standing from his chair and almost leaning out the window, looked back to Bryan. The noise from the window opening should have woken him, for sure, but he still lay with his eyes closed.

Wren didn't know exactly what was happening outside, but he knew it was some kind of transfer. Somehow, the alien had taken over the woman, just as she had taken over Bryan. The strands allowed it to happen. Could Wren do that with Bryan, with Michael?

Where's he going to go, though?

He couldn't put Michael back in his own body, that was clear. The body Michael once owned stood outside the window, looking like some kind of freakish bodybuilder—growing at an unnatural rate.

But if he found somewhere for Michael to go, a body for him to inhabit, could he make it happen? Could Wren figure out how those strands made the transfer and then
force
the head honcho to do it for him?

Would you do it?
Linda said. The question didn't concern Michael, not directly. No, because to find a body for Michael would mean taking someone else and replacing them with his son. Would he do that?

Maybe
, he said to his dead wife, but he knew that to be a lie. Of course he would. He would do anything for Michael.

* * *

R
igley gasped for air
, as if instead of strands covering her body, it had been water combined with a cinder block tied to her ankle. She felt the cold air run over her skin, the world finally touching her again instead of the maddening warmth the strands provided. She turned over on her hands and knees, gasping for air and dry heaving at the same time.

Snot and spit flew from her face, landing on the writhing strands beneath. Tears dripped straight from her eyes as she stared downward.

What just happened?

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?

Her mind screamed at her like a wife having found a condom in her husband's pocket. Demanding answers, pleading for the truth, and above all—confused.

Rigley looked at her arms and hands through a watery haze, seeing the red dots litter her body. Tiny holes. HOLES. IN HER BODY. She didn't need a mirror to know that they dotted her neck and chest the same as they did her fingers. The strands had gone everywhere, digging in a few millimeters, and now tiny drops of blood dried in each hole, looking like chicken pox.

She realized where she was, on all fours still atop the things that had done this to her. Panic welled in her body, overflowing into every synapse and muscle fiber. Rigley flipped backwards, landing on her ass and using both hands and feet to scoot as fast she could to the house.

She felt dead grass under her hands finally, and launched herself another foot just to make sure she was completely clear of it all.

Air surged in and out of her mouth. Snot and tears mixed on her face but she didn't bother to reach up and wipe them off.

She had come here ….

Why? Why had she come?

Because she wanted to help, because she didn't want Kenneth Marks to win.

Because of Morena's children.

This, though … she hadn't agreed to it. The boy that every moment looked more like Frankenstein, he might be evil, might be Kenneth Marks. But Morena? No. She couldn't be.

Rigley's eyes went to the spot that she had lain on. It showed nothing of her, not even a drop of red, though blood covered her body in tiny red dots. Morena did that. Morena put her there and made her call Kenneth Marks.

It was for her kids.

No. It was for her.

She did it to save her children; she had to.

She didn't have to do that. She didn't have to have him pull you off the goddamn bed by your goddamn hair.

She had to do it.

Not like that.

Her mind went back and forth, wrestling with what just happened, not noticing the large chunk of hair that fell from her head to her shoulder, resting on her tattered shirt.

M
ichael opened
his eyes and saw sand in front of his face.

He had fallen asleep. He didn't know why, but his mind still needed to rest—less than it had when he possessed a body of his own, yet sleep was still a necessity.

Michael searched for Bryan, briefly, finding that he was still asleep. Bryan slept a lot, more than he ever did before all this happened. No enigma there, though. He simply didn't want to be in this world anymore, and until he found his way to Thera, sleeping was the best way to avoid it.

Michael sat up, his head automatically moving to the last place he'd seen the creature.

His mouth dropped and muscles tensed. His hands dug into the sand at his side, trying to grab anything that might give him some sense of security. None of that existed here, though—perhaps security didn't exist in this life at all anymore.

She stood a hundred feet away from him.

No doubt that he was looking at a female.

Her white aura danced in the air without a single care, as if everything happening around it was natural. As if it didn't inhabit some kid's mind without his knowledge, while another mind witnessed it all.

She stood still, staring at him, not moving anymore; her hands hung at her sides. Michael couldn't pull away. The white haze glowed like phosphorescent jellyfish in the ocean, shining the most beautiful light he'd ever seen. All of it, though, stemmed from her, from the body beneath the aura. He looked it up and down, seeing the fine curvature of muscle, the perfect bone structure in her face, the elegance and strength underlying it all.

Michael closed his mouth, trying to ready himself to speak.

He opened his lips, wanting to say something, but no words came. He couldn't find them. They, like the rest of the desert around him, were lost in the creature's glory.

Minutes, or hours, passed with both of them staring at each other. Neither moving. Neither even glancing away.

Finally, Michael found a few words. "Are you God?"

Perhaps not the God of the Christian Bible, but God none-the-less. What else could look so beautiful, so powerful, and yet so incredibly kind? Her aura danced without care because when you loved everything, what could you worry about? The creature before him … hate didn't exist inside her.

She didn't answer, though, and a few more words came to Michael. "What are you here for?"

Again, only her white-eyed stare that said everything was fine and everything would be fine in the future.

But no, it said more. A sadness lurked behind the kind calm like the blackness that you know is beneath the beautiful blue of the ocean. Michael didn't—
couldn't—
know what caused such sadness; everything going on in his own life, everything happening outside of this small space he now inhabited—how could this creature be bothered with any of it? The problems of mortals?

Michael turned his head for the first time in forever, looking at the world behind him. Darkness and sand and nothing else. Where could he go? Back there, into more of the nothingness that made up Bryan's mind? He turned back and looked at the creature. Could he go to her? Would he? Bryan went to something made of white once, and now Michael no longer had a body and Thera was dead. Not to mention the world would probably end soon.

The only other choice was to sit here or try to run, but how could he run from something like that? Where would he run to?

Michael stood up. He didn't walk forward, but not because he felt fear. He didn't. The creature in front of him wasn't here to hurt him. Whatever else it wanted, violence wasn't part of it.

"What are we doing?" he said to the alien.

W
ill spoke
to Rigley an hour ago. She sounded like a lunatic, but she didn't sound like holes lined every inch of her body.

He looked at her through binoculars. She sat next to the porch, staring at the white cake in front of her. Another person … though, that wasn't completely accurate. Will recognized him, or what should have been him. The boy stood a few feet away from her—Will wracked his brain for a few seconds remembering the name—Michael Hems. It wasn't the boy though, not really. It was a grotesque caricature of what was once a teenage kid. Muscles bulging, bones bristling against the skin that was supposed to hold them in. Even his eyes seemed ready to pop straight from his skull, landing on the white cake with a bloody, wet,
smack
.

Will brought the binoculars back to Rigley. He could worry about the boy in a bit. Right now he needed to understand what was happening to Rigley. She breathed in the air around her perfectly fine, and God bless, Will wanted to take the fucking helmet off. He couldn't, though—not yet, at least. It was Knox's only connection to him.

The air wasn't hurting her, but the white cake had, and pretty bad from the looks of it. She was crying uncontrollably, and the rest of her? She looked like a holocaust victim, one that had been locked in solitary confinement and lost her soul as well as her body. The conversation they had, her calling him and it being tapped into his helmet, left him feeling a bit soulless himself.

Looking at her, crying, with pock marks all over, perhaps he was.

Because you know you're the reason she's here, don't you? Because of Bolivia. There might be more, but even so, it doesn't minimize your role in this.

The words might as well have been written on stone tablets by God's own finger. Will couldn't consider them anything but truth.

And does that make you soulless? Or does it make her weak?

He saw the girl again, a picture rising in his head, one that he couldn't discard no matter how hard he tried. The girl he saw when she opened the door, her body controlled by the same creature that forced her way into him.

She's dead now. Does that make you soulless? Or does it make her weak, too?

Will swallowed, his eyes wet. He couldn't reach them, though, to wipe away the tears. They would either dry or fall onto his face.

He had to focus on what was in front of him.

He looked back to Rigley, deciding that he had to get to her. It had nothing to do with any sense of regret; only she could help him understand what was happening. Help might be too strong a word, given what she looked like right now—but maybe she could give him
something
.

Could he get to her, though?

He was five hundred yards away, lying on his stomach.

She wasn't getting up any time soon; he felt pretty confident about that. She looked wrecked and out of breath. If the big guy went in, she would be alone, and he could get her then.

Will got to his feet, and while crouching, started jogging toward her.

* * *

K
nox watched
the president click his mouse. He couldn't see the computer screen, but didn't think he needed to.

Marks' voice filled the room. Marks and the woman, Rigley. Knox listened to them speak, leaning forward on his knees and staring at the floor beneath his chair.

Rigley wasn't speaking, Knox held no doubt about that. The alien controlled her just as it had controlled Will. Marks, though? Definitely. That was him, sounding as pleasant as always. Walking his dog in a park with a sunny seventy-five degrees surrounding him.

The recording ended and Knox didn't look up.

"What's that mean?" Trone said.

"Which part?"

"Well, first, the ending. What was that formula he gave her? F equals M-squared?"

Knox sat up, shaking his head. "I don't know, sir. It might not mean anything. Or it could be exactly what he says it is. Have you run it by the scientists he brought over?"

Trone nodded. "Yes. They don't have a clue either. It's got nothing to do with the disease he created; they're sure of that. I was hoping you might have some clue."

"No, sir. It means nothing to me."

Trone looked back to the computer screen. "And the rest?"

Knox understood the rest. He didn't need Marks' unyielding intelligence, because his life had been a training ground to understand the emotions running through people in tense situations.

"She's not lying."

"First, you think it's the alien?" Trone said.

"No doubt about that. The way she spoke, it resembled the way Will spoke when she was inside him. The alien was in control."

"What makes you think she's telling the truth? There's a pretty big incentive for her to lie about this."

"You can hear it in her voice, sir. She's panicked. For the first time since she got here, she doesn't know what to do. Marks has her on the ropes and she isn't prepared for it," Knox said.

"But, if she's not lying, he's got the entire world on the ropes."

"I think he does. I don't know if he meant to or not, but I've listened to a lot of people in bad situations. They sound like she did. Scared. Unsure."

Trone looked up from the screen and into the general's eyes.

"So he has to stop it."

"Well, the only other option is she
thinks
it is going to happen, but she is wrong. I doubt that's the case, though. I don't think she's wrong about much."

"Me either."

* * *

T
he progress was remarkable
, even by Kenneth Marks' standards.

The tablet showed him how far his disease had spread. A hundred miles into the strands. The alien was right, of course, that the core would die as well as her—but Kenneth Marks was
A-Okay
with that. Certain things were necessary; Machiavelli had been right: the ends justify the means.

The end here, well, it could justify anything.

Kenneth Marks knew it would happen, but the choice had been easy. Either he didn't create the disease, or he did knowing it would destroy the Earth if not stopped. There wasn't any
fixing
the planet's core at this point, as far as he could tell. Containment? Maybe. Some kind of symbiosis with the strands inside the planet? Perhaps. Or maybe he didn't stop it at all, and just let the whole thing drift into space as a cold rock.

Yet none of that need happen.

She would bend.

Those were only options he would tell the president, the first two at least.

Because they of course knew what he said by now and would question him fairly soon. They'd want to know what he meant by the formula—probably running every math permutation they could on the computers down here, but all of them coming up with nothing. Hell, Kenneth Marks didn't even know if the alien got it, but he thought she should. Certainly, her mind had to be capable of at least his fluidity.

And finally, the conclusion he'd been sitting here moving around slowly came to mind. He knew it was there, the whole time, but had walked in a circle around it, reaching out and touching it from time to time, but not fully looking at it. Not fully facing it. Kenneth Marks wasn't scared of the solution, quite the opposite. He wanted to savor this moment, much like he had tried to with Rigley.

Because the solution was he would meet her. Face to face.

The solution was going to Grayson.

He would tell Trone that Morena was right, that the disease would spread to the core. He would tell Trone that the only way to stop it would be to cut it off at the source—and if Kenneth Marks went to Grayson, that's exactly what he would do.