Defenders (6 page)

We would have done that gladly, but we know your minds. Do you really think your kind would have taken us in as refugees? They won’t even take you in.

Kai pulled open the grate leading to the church’s basement and dropped the food Mrs. Boey had given him into the darkness.

Wake up.
Five’s message was deafening, like an alarm set too loud.

Kai lifted himself from the cold concrete, looked groggily into the street, where mist crawled close to the pavement. “It’s the middle of the night.”

Soldiers are coming with spotlights. Hide in the bathroom.

Still half asleep, Kai gathered the towels and blanket he’d pilfered from an apartment using a key hidden by its owner and hurried into the bathroom.

A few minutes later Kai heard the purr of engines. Two all-terrain crawlers rolled past on fat tires, flashing spotlights as soldiers scanned the buildings with night glasses. Kai pulled the bathroom door closed.

“How do they know where to find you?”

My heat signature. I have a baffle, but I can’t run it all the time.

“Why not?”

The crawlers purred away. Kai wondered if Five was debating whether to trust him. He wondered if it should.

I trust you now. But after I leave, or I’m killed, you’ll tell your people what you’ve learned about me. If I’m gone, probably they won’t believe you. But if I’m caught, they will.

Kai immediately thought to lie, to claim he wouldn’t tell. Then he caught himself, remembered lying was impossible.

Talking to you was a betrayal of my kind. I feel deeply ashamed. I was alone, in terrible pain. I was afraid to die.

Was Kai betraying his kind, by keeping Five’s secret? He was sure he was, although it wasn’t as if Five was a threat, hiding under a church, cut off.

To answer your question, I’m almost out of power. That’s why I can’t run the baffle all of the time.

Kai had gotten accustomed to the sensation of Five speaking in his head. It wasn’t as unpleasant as it had been at first. It reminded him of how he’d grown to like hot sauce on his chili. The first time he’d tried hot sauce it had been awful, burning his tongue and lips, making his eyes water. But the stinging had grown pleasant.

When he pictured where the voice was coming from, though, when he pictured that giant starfish crawling around under the church …

That made him dizzy with fear.

“I don’t understand why you don’t just sneak out of the city, if you know where everyone is.”

I am large, and a novel sight. I can’t evade the eyes of every person who might look out their window.

That made sense. “So how will you ever escape?”

Unless one of my kind enters my range so I can contact it, I won’t.

It was morning when Five woke him again.

They’re coming back. More of them. Many more.

Kai peered out at the rectangle of street visible from his sleeping spot, at the passing vehicles, the faded pod-style apartment complex across the street. “Will they find you?”

Yes, probably. You should get away now, before they come. Otherwise they might question you about what you’ve seen or heard. Their eye gear is equipped with vocal stress-detectors, so they’ll know you’re lying. I don’t want you to get in trouble because you were kind to me. Go now, through the back.

Kai gathered up his bedding and ran out through the back side of the bay, into waist-high milkweeds that choked the space between the garage and the building behind it.

The telltale whisper of an ultralight copter grew louder as Kai pushed onto the sidewalk and turned right, up a hill.

You should feel proud
, Five said.
We should both feel proud. We were kind to each other, despite everything. I’m not ashamed to call you my friend.

A line of army crawlers appeared at the top of the hill, the crawlers’ legs tucked, their big wheels spinning.

Kai watched them pass, his emotions in a tangle. He would miss Five, would miss its company at night, but he was also relieved to be getting away. He wanted to be free of the terrible guilt that he was betraying his people, although he would probably always feel guilty for consorting with the enemy. What would people think, if they found out?

Kai heard shouted orders. A moment later a squad of soldiers trotted around the corner—men and women, young and old, some in brick-red camo fatigues, others in torn jeans and soiled T-shirts. Head down, he pressed close to the buildings to let them pass. They were young, but not kids. Soldiers in their prime. There weren’t many of them left.

What if a soldier asked him directly if he’d seen or heard anything? Would he lie to protect Five? Five probably knew the answer to that better than Kai did.

Maybe that was why Five told Kai to leave: not out of concern for him, but because Five was afraid Kai would betray it.

That’s not true. I’m trying to protect you.

Down the hill, Kai could see the church, had a partial view beyond the fence, into the garden. Two soldiers were in there, but they didn’t seem to know where to look. Five’s baffle must still be working.

I’m using the last of my power reserve to operate it. It won’t last much longer, but maybe long enough.

One of the soldiers was a woman. Asian. It could be that woman’s daughter. What was her name? Valerie. If those two soldiers went into the basement, would Five kill them?

I’m not a soldier. I’m not a fighter.

Kai would, if they were Luyten, coming to kill him. In an instant.

He took a step toward the church, then hesitated. What should he do? Both choices seemed wrong.

He closed his eyes, pictured his mom. What would she want him to do? What she would want was what he should do.
You don’t throw away friends
, she’d told him once. But wasn’t it wrong to be friends with a Luyten in the first place? They’d killed her, and Dad, too.

Opening his eyes, he headed down the hill, toward the church.

Kai, please. Don’t. I just want to go home. I just want to see my mother. Now that I know you, I could never help them.

As Kai pushed through the gate, the soldiers turned, their weapons pointed at the ground.

“Go back to your home—” the Asian soldier started to say.

“It’s in there,” Kai said, pointing at the church. “In the cellar.”

Both soldiers were suddenly wide-eyed alert.

They’ll kill me. Please. They’ll burn me.

“You
saw
it?” the other soldier, a black man, said.

“I—” Kai struggled to describe how he knew. “I heard it.”

We’re friends.

The Asian soldier was babbling into her comm, repeating what Kai had just said, then giving their location.

“Promise you won’t hurt it. It’s just a scout—not a soldier.”

The two soldiers gawked at Kai like he was nuts, as a dozen others stormed through the gate.

“The cellar?” a gray-haired soldier called as they ran by.

“That’s what the kid says.”

They surrounded the hatch, one of them holding a flamethrower.

They’re coming. I’m scared, Kai. I’m so scared.

Kai bolted toward the church. “
Don’t hurt it.
”

“Hang on,” the Asian soldier shouted at the others. They waited as she turned to Kai, one hand on her wrist comm. “Kid, I need the truth from you—this is very serious. Are you saying the starfish actually
spoke
to you? Or do you mean you heard it moving around down there?”

Kai looked her right in the eye. “It spoke to me.”

After a short interchange on her comm, she ran over to the others, huddled around the hatch. “We’re taking it alive.”

“Holy shit,” a tall, brown-skinned soldier said.

“CIA is sending people to help.”

The Asian soldier sidled over to Kai, wrapped a hand over his shoulder. “Stick around. They want to talk to you.” She must have seen that this scared Kai, because she added, “Don’t worry, they’ll take good care of you. There’s lots of food there.”

His shoes echoing in the big, dank corridor, Oliver picked up his pace. He was late, and he couldn’t easily explain why that was, because the truth was he’d been on the toilet, dealing with anxiety-induced diarrhea.

It was one thing to be drafted into the CIA, given the circumstances, but this—this was too much. Maybe his background made him the perfect candidate to attempt communication with this Luyten, but his disposition did not. He was not an action guy; he was a behind-the-scenes guy. He should be in Research, advising someone on how to approach the situation; he should not be approaching the situation himself. But so many of the action guys and gals were dead, and Oliver had to admit, on
paper
he seemed ideal for this assignment. He knew more about how to bend someone to one’s will with words and gestures, more about the use of language to gain power, than anyone alive. He just wasn’t sure how well that knowledge translated into action.

He watched the room numbers pass on the big steel doors, but it turned out that wasn’t necessary. Ariel Aardsma, his supervisor, was waiting in the doorway of the room he was looking for, her arm across the shoulders of Kai, the boy who’d talked to a Luyten. Assuming he was telling the truth.

Kai was big for a thirteen-year-old, but with a baby face, and long-lashed eyes. He was staring into the room where the Luyten was being held.

“Dr. Bowen,” Ariel said. “This is Kai.”

The boy went on staring into the room. As Oliver reached them, he peered inside the room as well.

The Luyten was unconscious in its cell. It was mustard yellow, its body housed in a thick, ornately ridged exoskeleton. Doctors had sealed the massive wound, injected binders to facilitate healing. Oliver eyed the stump, trying to imagine what it had looked like when the soldiers went under the church to get it. They’d said that after losing the limb in the crash, the thing had sutured the gaping wound closed with electrical wiring it pilfered from an air-conditioning unit under there.

Being so close to it was unnerving.

“Kai has been very helpful,” Ariel said. “We’ve had a good talk with him.”

Oliver had watched the interview remotely the day before. Incredible as it was, the boy’s story checked out in every detail. The woman’s corpse in the bus repair depot, the key under the flagstone, the hidden cache of food, his intimate knowledge of the local woman’s relationship with her daughter; all of it had checked out.

Beyond the facts, Kai looked scared to death. He kept swallowing, and he was blinking rapidly, his hands dangling limply at his sides. This was not a kid who craved the attention that came with making wild claims about telepathic conversations with Luyten. Under ordinary circumstances Oliver would have been repulsed by the idea of subjecting this child to any more close contact with the Luyten, but these circumstances were as far from ordinary as they got.

Ariel led them into the room, closer to the Luyten. Kai was staring at it like it might leap from the cell and tear him apart at any moment.

“It can’t reach us. Don’t worry.” It had to have been a kid. Oliver was clueless when it came to kids. He didn’t know how to talk to them, was uncomfortable in their presence. When his sister visited with her children, Oliver always found urgent work he needed to do.

“Well,” Ariel said, “I’ll leave you to it.”

Evidently Kai shared Oliver’s wish that Ariel stay, because he watched her leave with an expression bordering on panic. Ariel and others would be monitoring remotely, but Oliver was on his own when it came to getting Kai to relax.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Oliver gestured toward a chair.

Kai sat on the edge of the chair like a kid in the principal’s office. The room didn’t help things; it was bland and oppressive, windowless, nothing on the walls but an American flag in a wooden frame, and the ubiquitous population tracker, doggedly ticking back the dwindling world population.

“So it looks like we’re going to be working together.”

Kai swallowed, nodded.

“Maybe we should discuss procedure and strategies?” When Kai didn’t respond, Oliver forged ahead. “Here’s what I think might work best: Once the prisoner regains consciousness, repeat anything it says to you out loud. This way we won’t have to rely on your memory later. It’s important that you repeat word for word…” The boy was looking past Oliver, his lips forming a tight O.

Oliver looked over his shoulder. The Luyten’s eyes were open. It was watching them.

“Is it speaking to you?”

Kai shook his head.

Oliver stood, inched closer to the Luyten. “Say something to it. Out loud, like you did when it was under the church.”

It was clear Kai had no interest in speaking to the Luyten. He licked his lips and said, “I just wanted to get you help. You were hurt.”

Oliver studied the Luyten, then turned and watched Kai. “Anything?”

“No.”

Feeling simultaneously foolish and very uneasy, Oliver moved within a few feet of the flimsy-looking mesh that separated them from the creature. “My name is Oliver Bowen. I understand that you can communicate with us. Are you in pain? If you are, I may be able to arrange relief.”

He had no idea if the medical people had administered a painkiller. Probably not—they knew next to nothing about the creature’s physiology. He’d made the offer more as a generic gesture of concern.

Oliver turned and looked at Kai. “Anything?”

Kai shrugged. “No.”

There were a few possibilities. The Luyten might be staying silent because Kai could no longer help it, or because it knew they wanted to communicate with it to seek some advantage in the war. It was also possible the Luyten was communicating with Kai, and Kai was lying because he was on its side. Oliver thought that was unlikely.

“What’s that?” Kai asked, eyeing the population counter on the wall. At the moment it read three billion, seven hundred thousand and change. The numbers went on rolling backward, counting down.

“It’s an estimate of the world population.” The number shrunk by several hundred in the time it took Oliver to answer.