Watching Over Us (4 page)

When he'd made it through the town, Quinto took another glance back. The kid was a hundred yards behind, one hand clutching his side. No way this kid was going to run another four or five miles. Panting, his throat coated in phlegm, Quinto considered leaving him behind. No. No matter how fast he ran, he wasn't going to outrun Luyten on foot. He could try calling HQ and beg for a carrier to come get him, but they'd only tell him what he already knew: They weren't going to feed the fish any more than they had to.

So he stopped, pulled out his comm, and waited for the kid to catch up. The kid stopped beside him, put his hands on his knees.

“You want to call anyone? Your mom or dad alive?”

The kid eyed the comm. “Just my little sister.” He swallowed, looked at Quinto. “We're going to die, aren't we?”

“Yeah. We are.”

“Maybe they got distracted by something. Maybe the others killed them.”

“Maybe,” Quinto said. He thought he heard the snap-crackle of something moving through the woods to the north. “Come on.” He tugged the kid's jacket and headed into the woods on the opposite side of the road.

Should he call his own mother to say goodbye? He would like that, but he didn't want to risk having her on the line when he died. He didn't want that to be her last memory of him.

Branches whipped his face as he tore through the brush. It was pointless, but he couldn't relinquish that last millimeter of hope that he might get lucky, just one last time. He barreled down a slope as the landscape opened, then splashed through a stream and raced up the bank.

He spotted a flash of crimson ahead, behind a thick cover of green leaves, and stopped short. The kid stopped short beside him, looked at him, questioning, just as a bolt of lightning burst through the foliage.

March 9, 2030 (nine months later). The South Pacific.

The door was locked. The room was comfortable, replete with a well-stocked kitchen and an entertainment system that was so up-to-date it contained movies yet to be released. But the door was locked.

You're considered a risk. They don't know the extent of my power to influence you.

Oliver turned in his rotating chair to face Five, whose accommodations were less plush. Behind the carbon alloy mesh that separated them, Five's room was empty except for a water dispensation device that resembled a giant hamster lick. Five was lying flat, his appendages splayed like the spokes of an elephant-sized wheel. His skin had a stony, mottled texture, and there were bristles protruding at evenly spaced intervals across it. The cilia protruding from the tips were as thick as nautical rope, and transparent.

“Because you were able to win over a thirteen-year-old boy, they think you might be able to convince me that I'm fighting on the wrong side? That's absurd.”

But they don't know that
, Five said.
They think you've become too familiar with me. Too friendly.

The CIA yanks him out of his position at NYU three days after the invasion begins, shifts him from Research to Interrogation as their field agents die off, tells him to figure out how to communicate with Luyten, and when he succeeds, he becomes a suspected sympathizer? Beautiful.

The next time someone comes, ask them when you'll be informed where we're going.

Oliver couldn't help laughing. “You mean
you
don't know?” He waved in what he guessed was the direction of the submarine's bridge. “Pluck it out of someone's mind.”

I don't have to pluck. Your minds are all laid out in front of me. No one on this vessel knows.

“
No one
knows where we're going?” It seemed an absurd notion, though it also made sense. If no one on board knew where they were going, or why, a Luyten who happened to be flying nearby—within their eight-or-so-mile telepathic zone—wouldn't be able to find out, either. The mission must be important. “How are they navigating if they don't know where we're going?”

They're given a set of coordinates corresponding to a point in the ocean, and when they reach it, they're given another.

“So where are we?”

Oliver jolted back in his chair as one of Five's mouths opened, revealing a bobbing, twitching hole ringed with teeth that resembled the spines on cacti. Smacking, hissing air and background sounds like water draining came from the hole, the sounds so unearthly and repulsive that at first Oliver didn't register that they were approximating words.

“Find out where we're going,” Five said aloud.

The ubiquitous hum of the sub's engine was the only sound in the room as Oliver composed himself. Ultimately it didn't matter whether the Luyten communicated telepathically or using spoken words, but it was still profoundly disturbing to hear the thing speak.

“You're just full of surprises, aren't you?” Oliver said.

“Unlike you.” Somehow the creature managed to inject a note of irony, and perhaps contempt, into the awkwardly formed words.

Oliver slid out of the chair, went right up to the nearly invisible net of carbon fiber that separated them. “Don't assume you know my mind just because you can read my thoughts. We may not be as simple as you think.”

“Yes, humanity is the pinnacle of evolution. The chosen ones, the purpose for the existence of the entire universe. How could I forget?” Aware that Oliver was having trouble understanding his strangely formed words, Five simultaneously broadcast his words directly into Oliver's mind, giving him the uneasy sensation of hearing the words with an indescribable overlap. “I know your mind better than you.”

Oliver grunted, folded his arms across his chest. “Right.”

“You're uneasy. You're afraid I might try to prove my claim.”

It was pointless to disagree. Oliver had quickly learned how absurd it was to deny what you were thinking or feeling to something who knew precisely what you were thinking and feeling.

“You love your wife now—”

“
Shut up.
I don't want to hear about Vanessa.
Just leave it.
”

Five waited patiently through Oliver's outburst, then continued. “After her affair, her denials, the angry divorce… now you love her. Before, when you claimed to love her, you also despised her.”

Oliver turned, went to the door, and thumped on it with the flat of his palm. “Hey, come on. Unlock this door.
I'm
not the POW.”

“There's an irony you're not aware of, in your newfound feelings for your wife. Should I share it with you?”

Oliver turned to face Five, who was running the fine cilia that served Luyten as fingers across the stump of the limb he'd lost. “No. Thanks for the offer, but, no.”

“It's something you'd be interested to hear.”

When Oliver didn't answer, Five continued. “All right, then why don't I move on? What else can I tell you, to demonstrate you're as simple to read as I think you are? How about your deepest sexual cravings? Some of these you would never admit to yourself. For example, you'd like to be tied up, gagged with your own dirty sock, and spanked by a woman twenty years older than you.”

Oliver couldn't care less about his repressed sexual desires. They were what they were; he couldn't control them, only whether he acted on them. But Oliver knew Five was only playing with him now. It had already dropped the bait it knew Oliver couldn't resist.

Five grew quiet, waiting for the question it already knew was coming.

“Fine. What's the irony I'm not aware of?”

All of Five's eyes fixed on Oliver. “The irony is, your instinct to love her is right, because she never had sex with Dr. Paul.”

As the words registered, Oliver's vision darkened around the edges, as if he were going to pass out. In some ways, he wished he would. “You told me she had. You gave me specific details.”

“I lied.”

An icy numbness crept through him. He'd destroyed his marriage on the word of an alien bent on wiping out the human race. He'd taken Five's word as unassailable proof, because Five could reach right in and pluck the truth out of Vanessa's thoughts. Only he'd forgotten Five had abilities beyond reading minds. The ability to lie, for instance.

He'd told Vanessa he knew she was lying, said her unwillingness to admit the affair bothered him more than the infidelity itself. The floor, which was nothing but steel under a thin layer of beige carpeting, lurched beneath him, either because the sub was adjusting course or his knees were wobbling.

“Why would you lie? I didn't even ask you about Vanessa—you volunteered the information.”

“I did it to serve as a reminder.”

“A reminder of what?”

“That I might be lying to you at any time.”

It dawned on Oliver that he had no way to contact Vanessa, and had no idea when he would, because he didn't know where he was going, or why. When he did finally contact Vanessa, would an apology make any difference? He'd trusted the word of a Luyten over hers.

This was going to torture him. In all probability that was Five's intention in telling him now. Or maybe he was lying now, simply to distract Oliver at a crucial juncture.

“Maybe,” Five said.

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