She opened her mouth to speak, her bottom lip was red and swollen with the bite, but before she had a chance to say anything, he spun away and headed toward the now-empty breeding lab.
Inside, he had set up a secure, private office. He had just one more task to complete before he could relax for the day. He gripped the prism that hung on a chain around his neck and felt it buzz faintly like a dying moth, but the thing on the end was very much the opposite. The scion had news on Charlie and Denver.
Augustus had waited to hear the news, extending his fantasy like a child refusing to open a wrapped gift. The anticipation was glorious in its own right, but with his army falling into place, there was no time left to wait.
He needed to know if the trap had sprung and caught its prey.
HOW THE SCION truly worked he would never know. He wasn’t even sure how they existed without a physical form, but it was of no concern to him; he had seen enough in his lifetime to know that out there, beyond the moon and the sun, were billions of things humanity would never see or understand.
All he cared about was carving out a section of the cosmos for his own. And working with the scion fitted into the plan.
Augustus locked the office door and sat at his desk, the surface of which contained dozens of books that he was in various stages of correcting. He placed the prism on the surface and activated it, creating a beam of light that drew a holographic keyboard.
This time he didn’t need to use one of the radios to transmit the signal and connect to the scion server. His handler, Drone 21, had instructed him on how to hardcode the prism’s communication crystal to the farm’s transceivers.
Within seconds of tapping out his unique passcode, a purple holographic cone appeared above the crystal, giving the dark room a rich tint. Augustus shivered as he thought about the prism and how it was actually conscious. It contained a living entity that the scion used to connect to their great binary hive mind.
Drone 21 didn’t bother to construct a humanlike face on the cone this time. Instead, Augustus was greeted with a neutral voice he had come to know well over the years.
“Agent 3982, you wish to know the status of your algorithm?”
“Yes,” Augustus said. The idea of an algorithm never ceased to intrigue him. The scion believed life was just a set of rules—a problem-solving program that met particular conditions, and that life could be coded and manipulated as though it were a math problem. “But not just mine… I was promised news on others.”
“The Jacksons.”
“Indeed.”
A stream of code flooded the display too fast for Augustus to make out. The scion often did this to inform him that they were thinking on the problem, sending data across the galaxy to their server farms to analyze the probability factors.
“The Jackson function will meet its terminus in the near future. The probability is undeniable. As for you, Agent 3982, you are entering an uncertain phase that even the Order of Things cannot dictate.”
Augustus coughed, clearing a dry patch on the back of his throat. He wanted to press his handler further; this was a different answer than he had previously been given—the promise that Earth would be his, that his algorithm would know no end.
“The future has changed?” Augustus finally asked.
“It’s mutable. Your kind would say you’re at a crossroads. Defeat Unity, Agent 3982, and your algorithm will continue as promised. Fail… and the Order of Things cannot predict your fate.”
The cone disappeared, the crystal turned dark, and the prism was once more a trinket. Sweat beaded behind Augustus’ mask. Up until now he hadn’t doubted his success. With the scion’s promise behind him, the thought of defeat had never entered his mind… but now…
He stood up and flipped the table, sending the books flying and crashing around the room. Zoe gave her identifying knock.
“Come in!”
The door crept open and Zoe stepped inside. She had removed her hair tie and wore her locks draped over her shoulders. She looked around the room with fear in her eyes.
Augustus removed his mask. “Lock the door.”
Chapter 4
CHARLIE SHOULDERED his rifle and searched the darkness for the owner of that dreaded shriek. A light flickered overhead, providing a brief exposure of a lean four-legged creature, at least six feet long. Two tentacles writhed on its scaly green back. Bones were piled on the floor next to its black front talons.
It resembled a Komodo dragon with weapons. The sight of it made the hairs on Charlie’s neck tingle as he raised his rifle.
The creature screamed. Its left tentacle whipped through the air, cracking rigid between Charlie and Layla, who managed to duck out of the way of the attack.
With Denver’s rifle on the floor and the hunter closing in, Charlie didn’t waste another second and fired. His muzzle flashed with a three-round burst, sending the creature scuttling back into the shadows.
A boom echoed around the cavern. The ground shook. Scion bombs were the least of their worries right now. The overhead light flickered again. A rainbow of varied alien blood smeared the walls.
Denver skidded to the ground and retrieved his rifle. He rolled and fired as a tentacle lashed his leg, dragging him toward the beast.
Charlie aimed over Denver’s prone position and fired another three-round burst, this time at the encroaching figure of the croatoan hunter. With satisfaction, Charlie saw the hunter spin to the side with a grunt and collapse to one knee.
Denver fired twice at a position above him. The tentacle loosened and he scrambled to his feet, joining Charlie and Layla.
“You okay, son?”
“I think so… I’ll look later.”
“Quick, there’s a tunnel to the right,” Layla said. “This way.”
She grabbed Charlie’s shoulder and pulled him into the gloom. Denver’s erratic footsteps followed. It sounded like his son was dragging his leg. That wasn’t good. Charlie hoped he hadn’t broken it. When the adrenaline wore off, they’d know more.
“Keep going, son,” Charlie urged as he followed Layla through the narrow tunnel. It led to a dimly lit wide space. Small white lights ran along the roof like raised sidewalk markers as far as the eye could see. Shafts of light stabbed into the darkness from hundreds of entrances at either side.
Denver limped past and scanned the area with his rifle. His cargo pants had a six-inch bloodstained rip around his left calf.
Rapid footsteps pattered through the tunnel behind them.
“Take cover here,” Denver said, wincing as he jogged over to a metallic box on their left. He crouched behind it and aimed at the tunnel entrance.
Layla and Charlie joined him, sliding behind the alien machinery.
Charlie leaned his rifle over the warm humming box. Layla extended her pistol in both hands. The komodo-like creature with the twin tentacles ran out of the entrance and climbed the opposite wall some twenty meters from them.
“Hold your fire unless it comes for us,” Denver said. “The hunter’s close by; I’m sure of it.”
The creature snapped its head in their direction. Its tentacles unfurled and swayed in a hypnotic cobra-like fashion.
“I already hate this place,” Denver growled.
A glinting sword thrust through the entrance and the hunter bounded out, yellow blood spotting his arm where Charlie had hit him earlier. Charlie detected movement to his left. Something stood in one of the tunnels further into the cavern and watched on from the shadows, but didn’t appear to move. Charlie returned his attention to their immediate threat.
The hunter rushed forward and Charlie was about to fire when the creature lurking on the wall behind it leapt down and dragged the hunter to the ground, wrapping its tentacles around the croatoan’s neck and waist.