Enemy (23 page)

    
ONE OF THE JUDAS((!))

     THE JUDAS((?)) HERE((?))

    
UPLOAD AND DESTROY HIM((!)) ELIMINATE THE ROGUE CODE FROM THE SACRED PATTERN((!))

     West realized too late that he had dropped his guard.

     The light became a hypnotic glare as luminous tendrils grasped at him, reached for his eyes, struggled to pry their way into his soul. He clenched his eyes shut and rushed at the woman before him. He stepped in front of her, snapping the bonds the light had secured in her eyes.

     West gasped with agony as the light beams slammed into and throughout him, but the bond had been severed. She blinked several times and gazed confusedly at him.

     Silver eyes. She had silver eyes.

     Oh my god, West thought. It’s the President’s daughter.

     Spidery tendrils of silver lace enveloped his left foot, holding him solidly in place. he tried to shift, but to no avail.

     That can’t be.

      
Yet it was. The web crawled up his leg, entangling him. He felt a stinging pain as the metal web bit into the flesh of his calf and tendrils of silver wound their way under the skin of his leg.

     He panicked.

     They put out the ashes of the fire and packed their few possessions. A meager sunrise tried to light the horizon.

     Simon looked over the blood-stained uniform he had worn when they had been attacked in the tunnels. It had been red, bright red blood, but now it was a faded brown, just like dried human blood. What were they, underneath that black armor? He would have to run an analysis on a sample of that fabric. He cut off a small section and placed it in his pocket.

     Flynn rubbed her arms to warm them. “It’s colder today.” She put on her thermal fatigue vest, zipped up the front. She kneeled down, began to roll up her sleeping bag. There had not been a lot of sleeping during the night. They had talked until the faded sun tried to shine above the horizon. Simon had without any signal from her returned to his side of the fire, his own sleeping bag. He had not tried to stay on her side of the fire; he had been the perfect gentleman. She appreciated that fact, but still… She would have let him stay with her in the cold night air.

     “Maybe it’ll warm up when the sun gets higher.”

     It was not a reassuring thought. The sun was almost completely concealed by a translucent web of black and purple and silver. “Yeah, maybe.”

     “Any ideas where we should go?”

     Flynn shrugged her shoulders. “Wind River is gone.”

     Hayes looked up, startled. “How did you—”

     “I can hear things sometimes. Whispers. Except they’re usually thoughts. It’s how the Styx communicated. We could hear each other’s thoughts.”

     “And you heard me think of Wind River?”

     “I know it’s gone because I heard them command our own forces to nuke it.”

     “Why the hell would we nuke our own—”

     “The aliens took it... They did the same to Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. A Spear fleet was supposed to take out Seattle, but it was destroyed en route over Chicago. That’s why they triggered the bio-bombs.”

     “Seattle? We would have been…”

     Maggie stopped rolling up her sleeping bag.

     “Maggie? Are you all right?”

     She closed her eyes.

     “Have you ever heard a civilization die? Voices. Thousands. Millions. Billions. All at once. Everyone. I thought I could block them out... But the last days, I heard every scream, clear as day, in my mind. Echoes. So many dead...”

     West struggled.

     The metallic mesh climbed up his legs. He felt it bite into his flesh, drill into his femur and tibia. The light pulled back, ceasing its relentless attack on his mind. The webs quickened their pace.

     The woman who had once been a president’s daughter stood shocked to silence in front of him. Her face was a rictus of terror as the man before her tore at the metallic strands that snaked around him.

     ((help him))

     What? Who?

     ((HELP HIM))

     How?

     An image. A flash of light, a flickering of surreality.

     West was tiring. The webs became his flesh...

    
Please, please. I can’t panic now.

     Icy fingers grasped his mind. Reaching...

     From the very walls of the spherical orb chamber, aliens began to materialize, black shell forming over silver endoskeleton. They sensed him and approached.

     His thoughts were wandering as the excruciating webs worked their way into his flesh and the black presence struggled to grasp his soul.

     Patra Jennings shifted her arm, and with a flash of radiance, severed the webs that held him in place.

     “I can still feel them. The ones that aren’t dead.”

     “How?”

     “I can feel them still alive, billions and billions. Captured by the aliens. Their minds are being drained. Fading away. It’s like the aliens are collecting them, using them as a power source.”

     “A power source? Food?”

     “No. Yes. I don’t know... The Diablo vessel was powered by neural energy.” She pointed upward. “Neural energy. Electrical patterns. Souls. You see all of those?”

     Hayes nodded.

     “That would take a lot of energy. Billions of minds. Billions of souls.”

     The web severed, West could shift once more.

     The aliens rushed at him.

     He began the killing frenzy.

     The corridor he had walked down into the orb chamber sealed off, faded into solid black metal. No escape.

     West whirled around, warding off the mindless creatures that surged before him.

     Patra.

     She gazed at her own arm, spellbound by her shifted limb. West studied her face. She was definitely the President’s daughter, older, shorter hair, but hell, it had been over a decade since she had disappeared.

     In places, the metallic web had actually meshed with the underlying skin. She wasn’t human anymore. Disks of metal protruded from her temples. Extending from them were the strands of metal that had fused with most of her body. If he hadn’t pulled her back...

     No way out. Except...

     The aliens were upon him.

     “Diablo, Wyoming... Sounds pretty ominous.”

     “What?” Flynn looked up at Hayes, who had fallen silent.

     “Diablo. The vessel. Is it still there?”

     “I don’t know. I don’t know why they would have destroyed it. I don’t see how they could have destroyed it. They could have sealed it into the mountain, but I don’t think they would have. It was too much of an asset.”

     “Let’s go.”

     “What?” She was intrigued.

     “Let’s go to Diablo and see what’s there.”

     “I already know what’s there, Simon. Weren’t you paying attention last night?” She smiled that smile and her eyes shined.

     If she only knew… “I know, but that warship could be the key to winning back this planet... It’s a hope.”

     “No. We’re hope.” She embraced him.

     “Maggie?”

     “Hmm?” She looked up into Simon’s eyes.

     “You could hear me think of Wind River before.”

     “Yes.”

     “What else could you hear me think?”

     She grinned mischievously, revealing dimples. There was a spark in her shiny gray eyes. “Don’t worry, Simon. I didn’t hear too much. I don’t listen to everything, you know.” The embrace tightened, and she kissed him quickly on the cheek.

     Hayes stood motionless, feeling Flynn against him. He never had been good at dealing with awkward situations, especially those awkward situations dealing with women. He eventually put his arms around her and returned her embrace in kind. She looked into his pale blue eyes, and a sly smile came to her face.

     “What is it?”

     “In your book, in ‘Deus Ex Machina,’ do we win? Do we defeat the aliens?”

     He laughed, and sighed. “Rejected twelve times. Each time because it had a negative ending. Humanity falls, the aliens took over, and the stage was set for a sequel about the resistance.”

     “Did you ever write the sequel?”

     “Maggie, we’re living the sequel.”

     The battle was exhausting West.

     He and Patra had stepped close to the orb, so close that the light became a burning force. West looked at the light, had to struggle to look away again.

     The walls. Aliens everywhere. They were materializing from the walls.

     Too many.

     Desperation.

     Patra was in shock. West couldn’t blame her.

     The orb. Heaven.

     “We have to go through it! Now!”

     She did not understand. She was terrified.

     West shifted his arms back down, grabbed the young woman. “We have to jump into the light! We can’t stay here!” Her fiery silver eyes were blank; she was not comprehending. He looked once more around the chamber at the aliens. A voice filled his mind, his soul.

    
GO THEN. PRAY YOUR GODS, JUDAS. OMEGA IS THE ONLY—

     Shielding Patra with his body, they jumped into the light.

    
NO—

     Time stopped.

     The spire shattered with force enough to level the crater walls. An inconceivable deluge of light poured from the crater, swept out across the land, consuming everything in its path. Countless patterns dissolved into the landscape, the uploaded dead screaming with sudden freedom in the instant before they dissolved into nothing. In the sky above what had been Chicago, the translucent purple web cracked and the Enemy vessels fell from the sky, suddenly empty of their lifeblood of souls.

     The wave of light erupted from the dead upload spire, and nothing could stand in its path. The humans collected at the base of the spire, the Enemy vessels on land and in air, all were cleansed from existence in the pure wave of light. They felt no pain.

     West and Patra had entered the orb.