Enemy (25 page)

     heartbeat…

     “What was THAT?”

     Hayes sat up from where he and Flynn had been thrown to the ground.

     A searing pinpoint of light on the distant eastern horizon held Flynn’s gaze. No mushroom cloud...

     “That wasn’t a nuke, but the shockwave—”

     Another wave hit, and they grasped each other to steady themselves. The ground still seemed unstable, like some giant force threatened to tear it apart. The light on the horizon grew whiter and whiter…

     The sun was a small white dot in the sky, cold, distant, but for an instant—

     “The sun!” Flynn pointed upward. “Look!” The sky overhead, which had been clouded by the silver and purple blackness of the alien web, suddenly grew much brighter as the web cracked, shattered, fell from the sky in great shards of black.

     The sky is falling Simon thought, and his confused, desperate eyes searched for an answer in Maggie’s. Her eyes became a mirror of his fear as a fierce wave of sound washed over them, a sound that filled his head with an impossible image of screaming and wailing and hell and he noticed that the light on the eastern horizon was now somehow closer, and the sky was falling down upon them. Maggie’s face contorted in fear, turned back to the wave of light that flew at them from the east at a speed too fast to comprehend. They stood on a lightly wooded hillside overlooking a valley. Maggie could see that the light was a wall of white crashing into and through anything in its path. Too fast she thought as the wave poured over the other side of the valley, large shards of the Enemy web falling into its path as they stabbed into the landscape. Where the shards touched the light, where anything touched the light, there was a snap and a flash like lightning and the object vanished in a flash of silver. This is going to touch us. This is going to kill us.

     The deluge of light reached the bottom of the valley, began to ascend the hillside. The very road upon which they stood began to vibrate with an alien energy as the light touched it, ripped into it, reached out for them.

     Simon watched, face pale, motionless, helpless. Maggie looked from the light to Simon, from Simon to the light.

     She reached out for his hand, grasped it. She turned his shocked face to her own, looked resolutely into his eyes. He broke from his reverie, squeezed her hand in sudden awareness of its presence.

     “Simon!” she shouted over the din of the screaming light. “You have to trust me!” He blinked, opened his mouth to say something, anything.

     Her grip on his hand tightened.

     “Do you trust me?” The light was so close. Suffocation, blinding. She touched his mind and saw too many thoughts to read.

     His eyes were fire in the wave of white. He reached out, grabbed Maggie’s other hand, nodded his affirmation.

     Maggie’s hands flickered, shifted, enveloping Simon’s hands, forearms, shoulders. He cried out as his body became silver fluid fire nothing. Maggie shifted her entire body, stepped forward to hold Simon close. He was consumed within her as she shifted into him, as his body shifted into her.

     The wave of light passed over where Hayes and Flynn had just stood, washing away the asphalt and gravel and trees and flora and fauna and reality in a flood of the purest white. Then the wave was gone, leaving behind it a landscape that was a negative of that which had been. Hayes and Flynn were nowhere to be seen.

     Richter stood on an empty street in a dead town.

     The sun flared up, just for a second. The sky shattered and fell.

     The vessels dropped from the sky.

     Richter smiled, and paused for a moment. He stopped whistling for what felt like the first time in days. His sad song had been replaced in his head by the audible wave of screaming souls. He shifted as the wave of light washed over him. He rematerialized after it had passed, and continued his song. He walked on.

     black

     hatred

     NO.

     inquisition, unexpected fury

    
HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN((?))

     THE VERMIN—

    
CALM YOURSELF. IT CAN BE REMEDIED.

     BUT THE PURPOSE—

    
WILL BE COMPLETED. CALM YOURSELF, OR CEASE.

     silence.

    
AGAIN. HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN((?))

     IT WAS NOT LIKE THE OTHER PREY. IT WAS AFFLICTED WITH THE CONTAGION.

    
IT WAS A JUDAS.

     IT COULD SHADOW. WHEN IT TOUCHED THE NODE—

    
TWO ESCAPED. A DISRUPTION IN THE UPLOAD OCCURRED. PATTERNS WERE LOST.

     ALMOST ALL OF THE PATTERNS WERE LOST. THE VIRUS WAS UPLOADED; THE GENERATOR WAS DESTROYED.

    
THE UPLOAD HERE WAS ALMOST COMPLETE; WE WILL RESEQUENCE THE PATTERNS.

     BUT THE WEB. THE LOST SOULS—

    
SILENCE. SUBMIT NOW, OR BE PURGED FROM THE HOLY PATTERN.

     I SUBMIT.

    
NOW WE MUST COMPENSATE FOR THE LOSS OF THE GENERATOR. ALREADY THE STAR HAS BEGUN TO HEAL. WE MUST QUICKEN OUR PACE IF THE JUDAS ARE NEAR. THEY HAVE RELEASED TOO MANY OF OMEGA’S CHILDREN ALREADY. THEY HAVE CONTAMINATED OUR PURPOSE FOR FAR TOO LONG.

     YES.

    
LEAVE ME.

     the black parts

     A head aches. Eyes agonize with exquisite needling pain. Eyelids open uncertainly, blink away the first light.

     Hayes sat up, hand immediately reaching for his sidearm, a reflex that he could not explain or rationalize or stop himself from doing. He coughed a grating and uncontrollable rasp for a moment. He felt… odd. Not hurt, but different somehow.

     The sky was a muddy gray. Twilight? The ground upon which he sat was a black, fused silicate surface. He surveyed his surroundings, noted his rucksack and bedroll were only a few feet away. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, hoping to wash away some of the foggy confusion and physical exhaustion he felt. He stood up with a start, remembering the wave of light, Maggie frantically grabbing his hand, and then…

     And then…

     And then what?

     She was not anywhere as far as he could see. The landscape was stippled with shards of black of all sizes, creating so many blind areas. Simon stood, hurriedly began to jog among the ruins, calling out for Maggie. She was nowhere—

     Behind a shard of black that must have towered into the sky at least fifty feet, he saw a spill of curly crimson hair and a limp hand. He ran to her, lifted her up into a sitting position. She mumbled something that Simon could not understand, and her hand grabbed his fatigue sleeve weakly. The wound on her face had split open when she hit the ground, spilling a fresh layer of vital red blood both onto the shiny black ground and Simon’s fatigue jacket. He gently wiped the blood and dirt from her face, and her eyes opened. Silver eyes regarded silver eyes. They looked at each other in silence.

     Maggie reached down and weakly grasped for Simon’s hand. This time it was he who held her hand tightly. He held her hand tightly, and his mind told his hand what to do. It flickered with ripples of light and shimmered into Maggie’s hand, which shifted in response.

     “I trust you, Maggie Flynn.” He looked at her with his newly-silver eyes, and as his hand rematerialized, the mercurial fire within his eyes faded to a pale gray hue. His lips brushed her hand with a kiss. She smiled, sat up. Simon wordlessly took a bandage from his kit, and Maggie used it to carefully pat down the wound on her face. “I didn’t know if it would work, mind you.” Maggie smiled her mischievous smile, revealing the adorable dimples that she seemed to hide and only released for moments when she wanted to disarm someone with that smile. “I just knew we couldn’t very well stay there too much longer.” Simon nodded. He examined his hands, which flickered again with an inner, unnatural light. They shifted, rematerialized, shifted. He was testing the limits of his abilities.

     Maggie sat and watched him, her hands looped casually around her knees, her head canted slightly to the side, her hair cascading loosely over her shoulders, framing the quiet smile of her face. The sunlight was terribly cold now, and the sky was getting darker. It was not a natural landscape. As far as she could see, there was little but blackened, glassy ground and those black fragments of the Enemy web. It was silent. It appeared that she and Simon were the only living things for miles around, perhaps on the entire planet. What had caused that blast?

     Simon had stopped shifting, and he sat watching Maggie for a while, subtle smile on his face. “You’re shivering, Maggie.” He placed his hand on her forearm, which was now textured with goosebumps. His touch was fire and she felt her cheeks flush. She had not realized how cold she had gotten.

     “I’ll build a fire.” He got up, began to gather small pieces of wood and grass from the ruined landscape. She realized only after the fact that they had just spoken to each other without opening their mouths. The communication had taken place entirely in their minds. She arose as well and helped him, and after a while they had gathered enough brush to build a pleasant fire.

     The sky was blacker than it had been in weeks. And colder.

     Dim, dim light. A wave of vertigo.

     Where...? How...?

     “Don’t try to get up yet.” Feminine voice, nearby.

     The thing that had once been Patra Jennings cradled West’s head in her lap as he regained consciousness. They sat in a spherical chamber, a flickering remnant of a Shadow at its center, providing a meager light.

     Agony surged through his eyes once more. His clenched them shut; he felt her hands holding his head, hands that were human no longer. He felt the icy cold texture of metallic lace that had replaced her flesh. The pain eventually ceased, and he weakly opened his eyes.

     He had been here before.

     Diablo.

     He bolted upright, scanned his surroundings. They were in the orb chamber of the Diablo vessel.

     “How’d we get here?” He felt empty, exhausted.

     “I was going to ask you the same thing.” She did not say it tauntingly, only matter-of-factly. “I remember being at the other place, I remember jumping into the light, and then I woke up here. I don’t know how long we were out. You were mumbling something over and over in your sleep. Something about heaven.” West noted to himself that even her voice had taken on a metallic, shimmering quality. It was not the voice of a human. It was distorted, machinelike, as if she were talking to him on a blown speaker from another room.

     West rose, walked cautiously to the orb. It had faded considerably, as if their emergence had drained it of energy. It did not reach out for his mind. He raised his hand to touch the glassy clouded surface, but thought better of it and let his hand fall to his side.

     “They must be portals. We went into one and came out another.”

     She nodded, mimicking understanding when he knew that she probably felt more confused, alone, and terrified than he did.

     “Thank you.”

     “What?” West looked at her for seemingly the first time.