Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) (39 page)

“We have to go,” he managed to say.

Alarms screamed from every direction.

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Titans and Reptars watched Raj bind Heather’s and Terrence’s wrists. Meyer shook him away when he tried to tie him. Heather thought Raj would force the issue, but he didn’t. That gave her a sliver of hope — the idea that if Meyer remained free under the guards’ eyes, they might yet survive to fight another day — but it was only a spark. Meyer wasn’t a runner, and Reptar peacekeepers were fast. Free hands meant little. They were giving Meyer the Viceroy’s dignity of walking out unrestrained, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in custody.

As they walked down the main stairway, Heather thought about how glad she was that Meyer had sent Lila off after shooting Raj. How glad she was that Lila was probably in her room with Clara instead of being led away with her parents. And, as the cherry atop a bitter sundae, that Clara hadn’t seen a thing.

Except that Clara, Heather knew, probably saw everything anyway.

Meyer paused when they reached the front lobby. He didn’t stop moving and wait for the others to notice him. Meyer moved to the group’s front — ahead of Raj and even the Astrals — before ceasing his feet and challenging the others to run into him.

Raj recovered too close, barely avoiding crashing into Meyer’s chest. He stepped to the side and brushed fussily at his shirt and the canvas undershirt beneath — thick enough, as it turned out, to keep all but the darts’ tips from breaking his skin.

“We’re not walking them out like this,” he announced.

Raj looked at Meyer in disbelief. Heather wanted to laugh, despite her bound wrists. Being caught in the middle of intergalactic treason didn’t stop Meyer from showing Raj who was boss.

“Them?” Raj repeated.

“Heather is mother to my granddaughter. Even walking Terrence out in restraints shows unrest in the viceroy’s mansion at a time when we can’t afford to appear unsettled, given the recent turmoil. Many Heaven’s Veil citizens saw that, and right now we can’t afford to—”

Raj straightened.

“Who are you talking to?” He looked at the Titans, enormous but still so blandly polite. The Reptars had their mouths closed and were quiet, seeming to behave in deference to the sanctity of the viceroy’s residence. Heather supposed both classes of aliens must understand human speech, but neither spoke. Meyer talked to the Astrals through his mind somehow. This posturing meant nothing.

“Not to you, Raj,” Meyer said.

Raj shook his head, disbelieving. He turned to the first Titan, who seemed to cordially nod.

“The viceroy is under arrest,” Raj said. “As are these two. As Guard Commander, I hereby order you to take them away or whatever you do with criminals, when you send down shuttles and … well, do whatever. And as systems administrator, I can report that the viceroy and his accomplices have not only breached a secure area — ”

“Using my authorized palm print,” Meyer added.

“ — in order to install malicious software into the system that has already caused irreparable damage to — ”

“Damage that you were too busy with us to worry about,” Meyer said. “Which is a shame, since protecting our systems is your job.”

Raj jabbed a finger toward the door, glaring at the Titan. “Take them away.”

There were footsteps from Heather’s side. She turned to see Mo Weir, Meyer’s aide, approaching without any hurry.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

Meyer looked at Mo then at the Titans. Finally, his eyes settled on Terrence, and Heather saw him make a decision. A normal person would feel bad about what Heather realized he was about to do, but Meyer believed in big rights and big wrongs, and the small ones to match. It was always fine to commit a small wrong in the service of a larger right … even if that right benefitted mainly Meyer and those he cared about while sacrificing others. He’d done such things for their entire marriage. Heather hated how much it had always turned her on. He was willing to make hard decisions, and make unfortunate sacrifices when there was no other way.

“Heather and I caught Terrence doing something to infiltrate the house system, which has since spread into the city network,” he said.

The overhead lights flickered as if in agreement. Heather had no idea if the network’s failure would kill the city’s power, but it might be possible. Their computers would stop being able to connect to other computers, and those still wired in (or connected over the air) might be irreparably damaged. Phones would stop working. They’d be cut off — an island in the middle of hostile outlands.

Terrence glared at Meyer but said nothing. He must realize, Heather thought. Someone had to take the fall, and he was half there already. Lying about Heather and Meyer’s involvement wouldn’t change his fate, but still she could see Terrence’s resentment as it bored into Meyer — as it bored into her.

“That’s not true,” Raj said.

“Take him to confinement. Let me know when it’s done.”

“That’s not what happened!”
Raj put his face close to the nearest Titan’s. “You saw! You were there! They were all around the terminal, all three of them! They’re all in this together.
He’s a traitor!”

Meyer gave Mo an eye-rolling smile. “He’s misinterpreting my talk with Terrence upstairs.”

Mo’s returning look said,
Oh, that silly Raj
.

Raj was staring, stewing, boiling hot. His already dark complexion reddened. He didn’t seem to know where to aim his plea — at the Astrals, who should have seen what was right in front of their faces, or Mo Weir, who’d never liked Raj any more than Meyer or Heather had.

“Take him,” Mo told the Astrals, pointing at Terrence, “but leave them.” He flicked his finger between Meyer and Heather.

One of the Titans widened his eyes slightly — a look Heather had come to interpret as, “Are you sure?”

Mo nodded. “Ms. Hawthorne is a … well, she’s a character. They have a complicated history.”

The Titan continued listening, making no sign that he understood the subtleties of either “character” or “complicated history.”

“We’ll detain her,” he said. “I’ll let you know if further action is needed.”

Raj looked ready to leap from his skin. “Are you kidding me? You’re
letting them go?
You can’t let them go! Don’t you know who I am?
Didn’t you see what they were doing?”

The Titans made short, simultaneous nods. The Reptars’ currently yellow eyes flicked toward Heather, but they didn’t move or make any of their terrible noises. Then all four, with Terrence in tow and Raj following, remonstrating like an angry Rumpelstiltskin, walked through the front door to what Heather now saw was a waiting shuttle inches above the lawn.

When they were gone, Mo looked at Heather then turned to Meyer. “Everything okay then, boss?”

Meyer nodded. “I’ll handle her. Thanks, Mo.”

Mo curtly nodded then walked back the way he’d come.

Meyer reached into the drawer of a hallway side table and removed a small pair of scissors. He snipped Heather’s plastic tie and met her eyes.

Outside, the shuttle rose from the lawn, taking Terrence away.

“We count to fifty,” Meyer told Heather, taking her hands. “Then we run.”

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62

The room came alive with Titans, surrounding them in an enormous semicircle, having poured from dozens of unseen rooms and offices. Cameron was reminded of gophers rising curiously from their holes — except that instead of gophers, the just-now-diminishing alarm inside the archive had attracted the attention of scores of bland-faced, albino, hairless bodybuilder accountants. An odd combination, and plenty intimidating. But this had always been their worst-case scenario, and Benjamin had thought of everything.

The Titans could call for reinforcements, but the tunnels were still at the group’s back. They could pile in and run. Benjamin’s analysis of the tablet had given them an escape route that the leaders — including Cameron — had memorized. It was a route that the Templars who’d built this vault’s predecessor had expanded between Astral visits, without bothering to let their intergalactic partners know.

The ring of Titans moved closer. Slowly.

“It’s okay,” Cameron whispered to Piper. “Titans don’t attack. They can’t.”

“Shuttles,” was her reply.

Cameron nodded toward the exit, where he could see daylight teasing through an encroaching line of white giants. “Shuttles can’t get in here. The doors are too small.”

“They’ll shoot their way in. They’ll — ”

Cameron took her arm, silencing Piper before tugging her gently backward. Benjamin was shooing people toward the concealed tunnel, but the door had closed and nobody, yet, had summoned the nerve to break the stalemate by reaching to open it.

“We have to go.”

“Where?” She eyed the domed entrance beyond the Titans.

“The tunnels we came out of. There’s another exit.”

“They’ll come after us.”

Behind them, Andreus was reaching for the door, never moving his eyes from the Titans. The room and passageway were large. The hidden rooms the Titans had spilled from — inside which they’d apparently been hiding so the groups could do their work, until their deception was uncovered — were kissing the edges. Andreus could open the door right now. Cameron imagined that Titans could sprint, but it was hard to believe they would … or if, once they caught up, the intruders would get more than a stern shake of a disapproving finger.

They could block their way, though, and push them around.

They could grab them then call for Reptars.

Cameron and Andreus had played that scenario out, too: how long, once a signal was sent, would it take for reinforcements to arrive?

Minutes, surely.

But it would be enough time to reach the tunnels and lose them down further hidden doorways and labyrinthine passages.

Cameron looked back. Andreus’s hand was on the concealed door’s latch.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Hurry. Before they call for help.”

Cameron gently nudged Piper and turned toward the door. His skin prickled, sensing something behind them that couldn’t be heard or seen or felt.

Around the room, white-skinned Titans were bending at the waist, touching their hands to the ground, beginning to change.

Cameron watched their limbs elongate. Their movements become more insectile. They grew the long torsos of animals, their skin now black scales laced with a haunting blue glow.

Every Titan in the room turned into a Reptar and started to purr.

Then the screaming began.

C
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Out the back door.

Across the lawn.

Past Heather’s small house, which she’d so resented.

There was a rear guard house, but Meyer raised his hand to the man inside with his usual charming smile. The guard didn’t look at them twice. Why would he? Meyer was the viceroy. He could leave his house with whomever he wanted, and take them wherever he pleased.

They didn’t run. Meyer didn’t want to take any of the home’s many vehicles because he preferred to stay nimble, and vehicles could box you in — something Heather vividly remembered learning with the rest of them on a Chicago expressway. Nor did he want to run because flight was an admission of guilt. So they walked. Fast. Staying out of sight.

Heather let him lead but felt their actions amounted to trying to have their cake and eat it too. Meyer had come over to Terrence’s side in the end — humanity’s side, really — but he was still proceeding on viceroy’s eggshells, hoping his authority might protect him. They couldn’t stay in the mansion (that house of cards was top heavy; Mo Weir had either been protecting his man or genuinely ignorant, though Raj would find plenty of evidence to damn them eventually), but they weren’t yet fugitives.

They were in that curious in between: something not quite rebel and not quite sympathizer, not quite complicit and not quite insurgent. They had to keep moving, knowing they could never return, trying to find their way out and into the wilderness beyond the fences — where being world famous as Heaven’s Veil’s viceroy was a detriment rather than an asset.

But they could worry about that later. For now, there was only flight, guilt, and cold sweat.

Maybe a quarter-mile from the fence, they were almost sideswiped as a motorcycle screeched into the street ahead. The rider dismounted then removed his helmet. He drew a pistol from a holster and centered it on Meyer’s chest.

Raj.

Meyer raised his hands. Heather could see the lack of compromise in Raj’s eyes. Meyer wouldn’t be talking his way out of this one. They had to flee, or they’d be arrested then put on trial for treason for sure. The other option was being shot dead.

“I never had a chance, did I?” Raj said.

Meyer’s head cocked between his raised hands. Whatever he’d expected Raj to say or do, that wasn’t it.

“If none of this had happened, you’d never have accepted me as Clara’s father. You’d have pretended I didn’t exist.”

Meyer stammered the beginning of a response, but Raj went on.