Something was wrong.
West looked at the bodies near him.
Horror.
They had been changed.
Fine lines of glistening metal had encompassed most of their bodies, like some grotesque spider’s web. Flesh and metal were intermingled. West saw that the bodies were quickly decaying, becoming mercurial extensions of the room. When the body was gone, the remaining metal webs fluidly merged with the walls of the massive room, disappearing into the black.
Thoughts flickered in his mind at a phenomenal rate as he made a connection between this monster embedded in the earth and the vessel they had found in Wyoming.
There had been no metal webs in Wyoming. There certainly had not been this ravenous silver substance.
People, falling. Dying. Being webbed and encompassed.
Souls being harvested. Souls being uploaded.
Who had the owners of the Diablo vessel been fighting?
Wars through time and space. Wars in the space between sanity and light and yesterday. Who had they been chasing?
Only one human remained, a woman partially ensnared in the metal webs. The orb of light snaked outwards, lines of fire entering her mind through her eyes. West knew she must be strong to withstand the force of the light, which crawled over her eyes, trying to gain entry into her mind.
He could save her before the light took her soul.
He shifted back into human form.
fury
INTRUDER((!))
HOW((?)) WHAT((?))
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.