Dawn of Procyon (23 page)

Chapter 45

PSD 29-214: 0414 hours

Landry must have passed out, because he awoke to the sound of the Argoni coming down the tunnel toward him again.

Instinctively, he tried to move. He tried to get away. But he was still stuck fast. Looking down, he saw that the resin was coating his arm again, all the way down to the graft on his wrist. He was completely immobilized.

He didn’t remember the Argoni leaving. He just remembered the acid dripping on his skin, the searing, indescribable pain of it, and then he must have passed out. His arm was stinging with pain, and a part of him wondered how much of it was left. Maybe it was a good thing the resin was covering it again, he thought. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see his own burnt, disfigured flesh right now.

The Argoni stepped up to him and gave him a cursory examination, those cold eyes poring over his face. Landry held firm, returning its stare, but inside he was wilting. He’d never been so afraid.

“So,” Landry forced himself to say. “You’ve had your fun. How about we call it quits now?”

If the Toad understood him, it gave no indication. Instead, it simply turned away, extracting another string of resin from the ghastly mouth of the machine and attaching it to its wrist.

Landry knew what was coming.

“Don’t do that,” he said, his voice cracking. “Please. Don’t do that.”

The Toad ignored him, reaching out to link itself to his wrist. Distantly, he noted that there were no devices of torture in its possession this time; no shivs, no pipes of searing acid. He only had a moment to consider that before he felt the creature probing violently into his consciousness again. Assaulting his mind. And it
hurt
. The Argoni was forcing itself into him in a way that was so profound it almost defied description.

Images appeared in his mind. He saw Earth, the beautiful blue globe suspended before him in space, and for a moment it looked so real that he thought it was actually there, that he’d been somehow transported home. Then the image shifted, and he saw cities aflame. London, New York. Skyscrapers burning, people screaming. He saw Argoni warriors in the streets, hacking at terrified citizens with wickedly curved blades, limbs parting from bodies. Human blood
everywhere
. He was standing before a young woman, her torso ripped open, saw her gasping for breath. Then she was still.

Is this the past? Or the future?

The vision shifted again, and Landry saw Argoni dogfighters skimming across the skies of Tokyo, their energy weapons blowing UEM ships into oblivion. Their numbers increased, until there was a great swarm of them, so thick that they blocked out the sun. They descended upon the city, reducing buildings to rubble, vaporizing people in the streets.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he began to understand what was happening.

It tortured me physically, analyzing my response to pain. Now it’s testing me mentally. It wants to see how I react to this horror.

There were more visions, and the bloodshed only increased. He saw human heads blown apart, Argoni warriors walking unchallenged through the Red Square in Russia, their opponents vanquished. They came so rapidly that he could barely keep up.

Landry forced himself to concentrate through the pain. Something told him that in order to survive this torment, he had to find a way to block it out. He had to find a way to overcome the hurt and the fear, to rise above it.

He wasn’t sure how long he tried. It might have been hours. He felt as though his mind could unravel at any moment, that he would slip into insanity and never return. But somewhere along the line, he sensed a pattern. A cadence, a flow of thoughts emanating from his tormentor that he was able to lock into. And when he did, he began to sense the briefest stirring of thoughts that weren’t his own.

Something was bleeding out from the Argoni, a part of its consciousness flowing backward through the mental link and into Landry’s mind.

Sometimes communicatin’ is done without no words being exchanged.

He heard Grandpa’s words in his head again. And although it was not exactly what the old man had meant, Landry thought it was still somehow applicable.

While it was busy scouring his mind, Landry was learning something about the Argoni in return.

Not much, mind you
, he thought. The images that assaulted him weren’t making much sense. They were so utterly alien that he could barely begin to piece them together.

But it was a start. It was something to work with.

The Argoni relented for a moment, breaking the link between them, and Landry shivered in revulsion at the sensation of it withdrawing itself, like a giant, slimy tentacle sliding out of his body. It was hunching over its machine in what Landry could only assume was an attempt to analyze the data it had collected, and Landry took the brief moment of respite to catch his breath again.

The thoughts that had leaked into Landry’s mind were beginning to coalesce. He fought with every fiber of his being to make sense of them, to organize them into a pattern he could recognize—much as his enemy was doing as it manipulated its machine, he supposed.

Those tubes on the wall . . . there was no direct human translation for the term used by the Argoni, but the most appropriate label he could apply was
rhizome
. Its relationship with the Argoni was far too complex for him to understand just yet, but he believed that it was some kind of nutrient delivery system; that its black tentacles reached far into the soil, extracting the trace elements therein and converting them into nourishment for . . .

For what?

Landry glanced down the tunnel, where numerous plants grew from the rhizome, and saw one of the larger specimens bent over by its own weight. The nodules on its upper portion seemed to move, and Landry realized something that made his skin crawl.

The nodules were eye sockets. The plant wasn’t some kind of fruit, after all. It was a creature.

More than that, it wasn’t just any creature. It was one of
them
. The Argoni.

They aren’t growing plants to feed an army down here
, he realized.
They’re growing an actual
army.

The misting rain he’d encountered had been a kind of irrigation for the larvae. The rhizome drew in moisture from the surrounding soil and exuded it from tiny pores in its epidermis, providing water vapor that kept the skin of the larvae supple and moist.

And this Argoni before him, the one with the scar . . . it was the curator. The overseer, the one who established the hive and who made sure things ran smoothly.

Landry knew all of this for certain, because the knowledge had come directly from the Argoni itself.

He also knew that the Argoni was unaware of the leakage of information through the mental link. It viewed humans like Landry as inferior creatures. Dumb animals to be studied and manipulated, but in the end, no real threat.

It had underestimated him. Maybe that was the only advantage Landry had right now.

Something else occurred to Landry as he saw the larval Argoni close its eyes and return to sleep again.

I ate one. I ate one of the freakin’ Toad larvae.

He felt bile in his throat, and he thought he was going to puke all over himself, but somehow he kept it down.

The Toad finished its manipulations with the machine, and then it moved to initiate the mental link once again.

Chapter 46

PSD 29-214: 0606 hours

The Argoni probed forward again, and Landry felt the familiar surge of disgust as its thoughts scraped against his.

Curiously, the sight of its lumbering form hovering above him did not cause him terror anymore. He wasn’t sure why that was. Perhaps it was because the things it could do with its mind were far more abhorrent than its physical manifestation. Or maybe Landry was simply becoming accustomed to the sight of it, and it had now lost its power to scare him in that way. Like the boogeyman rattling around in the closet who finally jumped out, only to reveal itself as something far less terrifying when seen in full view.

Whatever the case, Landry was still afraid of what it could do with its mind. Despite the agony inflicted by the shiv and by the droplets of acid, the Toad’s ability to crack open his skull and look inside was somehow infinitely worse. He felt that, even should he somehow escape this predicament, he would never truly be rid of the Argoni, even if he lived another hundred years. The places it was creeping inside his mind, the things it was uncovering . . . those thoughts were Landry’s, and Landry’s alone.
No living thing should ever have the ability to delve that deeply within another
, he thought miserably.
It’s not right.

And yet, he knew that right and wrong were concepts that did not apply to the Argoni. Their species operated under a different set of rules. Morals, justice, fairness . . . these were human concepts, of which the Argoni knew nothing.

He understood with an awful certainty that this creature would torment him, torture him for as long as it wished, and it would never feel any sense of contrition. It would never feel as though it had done something wrong. To an Argoni, these acts of mental intrusion, of physical hurt, were as natural as eating or drinking or sleeping was to a human. The torture of another sentient being was simply a task to complete, one of many.

It had brought Landry down here to study him. To find his weaknesses. And it would not stop until that was done.

Landry knew this because the Toad itself had told him. Not through words or any attempt to directly communicate, but through that bleeding of information Landry had sensed through their shared mental link. That accidental leakage from its consciousness through to his.

He’d seen images of Gus, too, stumbling from the wreck of the scout. The Argoni had confronted him after the crash, attempting to capture him and bring him down into the hive, but Gus had fought back. Gus’s EVA suit had been sliced open by the Argoni’s blade, ruptured during the struggle.

You killed my only friend, you cretin
, he thought distantly.

That was why the Argoni hadn’t directly confronted Landry. It hadn’t wanted to lose another live specimen. Evidently understanding more about human engineering than Landry realized, it had taken parts of the scout instead, hoping to lure him down into the hive of his own volition.

It had left the limb in the sand over by the dogfighter, allowed Landry to observe it when it entered the hive.

It had been manipulating him the whole time.

And Landry had stumbled right into its trap. He felt so stupid.

There was no time for further consideration. The Argoni pushed into him, harder than before, subjecting him to more images.

This time, however, the visions were different. There was no Tokyo, no New York. No hypothetical destruction of Earth.

Instead, Landry saw his own Grandpa, smiling and pushing a swing, the sun shining overhead.

No
, Landry thought desperately.
Stay out of there. Stay out—

Now his Grandma appeared. She was wearing her favorite oven mitts, the ones with little cartoon mice in hats embroidered on the back. Landry watched as she pulled a cake from the oven and placed it on a cooling rack. She tugged at the mitts and placed them down on the counter, a satisfied look on her face.

“Your favorite chocolate rolls,” she told Landry.

He opened his mouth to respond, to tell her to get out of there, that they were in danger, but suddenly Landry saw Grandpa lying motionless on the floor, a bottle of pills scattered around him on the checkered green and black linoleum.

These two memories didn’t fit together, he knew. They’d occurred years apart. The Argoni was manipulating him, searching for a reaction.

“Get out of my head!” he roared, but he wasn’t sure if he’d even made a sound, and if he had, whether the Toad had heard.
“Get out!”

The Argoni did not understand this concept of family, of interpersonal relationships. Of emotional bonds. The discovery was exciting to it. It yearned to know more. Landry sensed it push harder, and in turn, the leakage increased. It was allowing more of itself through the link.

Landry was walking along a hospital corridor. Nurses with clipboards passed him, an orderly pushing an empty bed. An elderly patient standing outside her room clutching an IV drip stand, watching him with watery eyes.

No, not this. Don’t you dare—

He could see the room up ahead. The one he had visited in his dreams so many times before. The one where the tiny, frail woman in the bed awaited him.

Turn around. Go back.

But he couldn’t turn around. The Argoni was in the driver’s seat. It was in complete control. Landry continued to walk forward, and when he reached the door, he did not stop. He kept walking toward the bed, where Freida lay on her side, facing away from him.

Stop! Get out of here!

She sensed him, then. Her head shifted slightly. As he made it to her bedside she turned, and her face was pale and gaunt, just as he remembered, but her eyes were inky black, just like those of an Argoni. Landry tried to claw himself away from her, but he was frozen in place, forced to stare into those dead eyes.

There’s a part of me that will live on
, she said, her voice hollow.

Not like this
, he thought desperately. He was crying.
I don’t want to remember you like this. Not with this thing watching over us.

The hospital room dissolved, and Landry was standing inside Dr. Daley’s room at the clinic. The doctor was staring down at his desk, his arms braced and his knuckles white as he stared at a space where the clutter had been swept aside apart from one small object.

A tiny transparent disc.

The embryo was inside.

Landry couldn’t see it, but he knew that it was there. Somehow, he knew.

“Dr. Daley?” he said.

The other man said nothing. He simply stood there, his face bowed and his eyes turned downward as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders. Landry turned to look around, trying to find a way out, and when he turned back, it wasn’t Dr. Daley standing there any more—it was the Argoni.

The creature stared at him, and even though he could see no mouth, he could swear that it was smiling at him. Grinning cruelly, enjoying itself. It lifted one arm and, still staring at Landry, slowly brought it down on the disc.

There was a splintering, cracking sound, and then nothing.

Landry screamed at the Argoni, tried to leap at it and claw its eyes out, but he was still rooted to the spot. He bellowed and cried, struggled, but he felt like he was in a straightjacket. Everything he did was futile.

Tears were coming freely now. He cried for Freida, for his unborn child. For all of the stupid decisions he’d made in his life that had led him to this point.

“You broke me,” he wailed. “Are you happy now? You
broke
me.”

But he could sense the Argoni pressing in harder, lapping up the torrent of emotions that were flowing from its victim. This was just the beginning.

Things were going to get worse.

Landry saw himself in the chair, back on that day he’d discussed his future with Dr. Daley. He remembered his own thoughts all too well.

What’s the point of bringing a life into the world when no one cares anymore? What is one life even worth?

He wasn’t sure why, but he finally knew the answer to that question. Maybe it was his heightened emotional state, the fact that the Toad had stripped him raw and made him turn the mirror upon himself, bringing everything out in the open. Whatever it was, he knew.

One life is worth
everything, he thought.
Because it’s my son.

And now Freida’s words came back to him more keenly than ever before.

There’s a part of me that will live on.

He’d always told himself that she’d simply been asking him to remember her, to keep the thought of her alive, but he knew now that he’d been lying to himself all this time. She’d been trying to tell him in her own gentle way that she’d wanted him to bring the child into the world, to raise it. To carry forward the last little piece of her that was left.

Her son.

Their
son.

Landry felt something stirring within his belly, a fire that had been absent for so long that he’d forgotten it was there. Love and hope and rage all bundled into one.

For the first time in years, he felt something aside from fear and self-pity.

He unleashed it at the Toad with everything he had, screaming and thrusting every part of his consciousness back at his tormentor. Every minute, every second of hurt he’d endured over the last few years was flung back at the creature like the detonation of a nuclear warhead.

The Argoni was caught off-guard, buried deep within Landry’s consciousness, and it took the full brunt of the emotional barrage like a hammer blow to the face. The mental link between them snapped like a rubber band stretched too far, and the Argoni physically recoiled from Landry, snatching back its wrist as if it had been stung. It caught its foot on the base of the analysis machine and stumbled, landing in a heap on the other side of the room.

Uh-huh
, Landry thought as he fought to gather his wits.
That is, without doubt, the most satisfying thing I’ve seen today.

Visibly rattled, the Argoni got to its feet and snatched the string of resin from its wrist, flicking it away as if it couldn’t wait to be rid of it, then hastened from the room and along the adjoining tunnel.

Yeah. Take that, you jerk.

The Argoni disappeared into the darkness, and Landry convulsed involuntarily, expelling a huge breath of air. He’d been holding it in, he realized, but he wasn’t sure for how long. There were spots before his eyes, and he felt as though he might pass out.

Something caught Landry’s eye, and he looked over to see the string of rubbery resin that had detached from the Argoni’s wrist swinging idly beside the machine, moving back and forth like a pendulum. Its motion had been accentuated by the Argoni’s hasty retreat, and now it arced toward Landry’s wrist, almost close enough for him to feel the wind of it passing his skin. Then it fell away again.

It reached the far end of its swing, then started back again. He thought of the Toad using the link to manipulate the machine, how the stringy substance seemed to act as a kind of control interface through the patch on its wrist. Looking down at his own arm, Landry realized that he was now in possession of the same kind of organic interface.

Was there a chance that Landry could control the machine in the same way the Toad had, he wondered? Could he use it to get out of this predicament?

He had to reach it. He had to take the link into his possession. It might be his last chance of getting out of here.

Landry braced himself and strained his wrist toward it with all of his might.