Chapter 5 Don’t Think #2
But can’t you--I don’t know--take over their phones or computers or something and tell them where to go? He asked.
I will be able to do that when we are together, but right now, I am limited, she explained and there was frustration in her voice. Then with almost a wry tone she added, Besides, they aren’t as trusting of messages from strange AIs as you are.
Right. That makes me feel--
“Jace, what’s happening?” she asked, her dark brown eyes flickering over his face.
“I…” He was startled out of his conversation with Gehenna. He had no idea how much time had passed. “I don’t know if you’ll believe me. I don’t know if I believe me.”
Sami lifted an eyebrow and gestured with her axe towards the broken window of the Con-Ve. “We’re being attacked by gigantic insects from space. I just saw you take one out like a boss with a laser gun. I’m pretty sure I’ll believe anything. Now what?”
“I’m talking to an AI in my head.” Jace lifted up the weapon which was sleek and light and made of some kind of silvery metal.
He felt a sense of unreality as he looked at it.
He recognized it, but something wasn’t complete about it.
It was like the first form of a Pokemon or something. “This--this is letting me talk to her.”
“AI?”
“Artificial intelligence,” he said. “Alien tech.”
Sami’s eyebrows rose. “Not those aliens, right?”
She gestured towards the Omull.
“No, not them. Others… uhm…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know everything. It’s all sort of… crazy. But I’m going with it.”
“Okay.” She nodded and gave out a slightly hysterical laugh. “I guess that’s the best way.”
“I’ve got to actually go. I need to go save Walter and his family--”
“I’m going with you!” She hefted up another axe.
He smiled. “What about--”
“Sami! Are the monsters gone?” George’s voice came up behind her.
“--George?” Jace finished.
The little boy’s eyes were huge when he caught sight of the Omull and the soldier’s dead bodies, which was--to Jace’s horror--were both slowly dissolving in the Omull’s blood.
He stepped in front of the horror, not that he could completely block George’s view, but the little boy focused on him instead of what was behind him.
“It’s okay, George!” Jace wondered if he sounded at all convincing. He doubted it.
Sami quickly dashed down the aisle towards her little brother. When he saw the axe in her hand his eyes grew even wider.
“Daddy says we’re not supposed to touch sharp things!” George cried.
Sami picked him up in her arms and clutched him to her. “Yeah, but today is an exception.”
“You stay here with George, Sami,” Jace told her again. “Like I said, I’m going to go to Walter’s. Maybe I can bring them back here.”
But Sami was shaking her head. “We’re staying with you. That weapon seems to be the only thing that hurts them. So… the safest place is with you, Jace.”
He opened his mouth to object. Was it the safest place? He wasn’t a trained soldier. He was just a clerk and a guy with crippling migraines. Yet here was Sami putting her and George’s lives in his hands. He opened his mouth to tell her that wasn’t a good idea, but then Gehenna was speaking.
She is right, Gehenna said. Nothing but the weapon you have will affect the Khul and they have sent their drones out here to capture as many humans as possible. Sami and George will be captured unless you protect them.
Why did the soldiers leave then? Jace asked, feeling ready to pull his hair out. This was insane. He was not a soldier.
Because they have realized that this is a ruse, she answered.
A ruse? Jace frowned.
What the Khul want is… is back at the base, she said. The soldiers are returning there to defend it.
Jace frowned deeper and was rewarded with a throb of pain so he quickly smoothed out his expression. The base?
She meant Area 67. Where his parents were.
His stomach roiled. Those things were going towards his parents!
But then he realized that the soldiers with the weapons came from the base.
Those soldiers were likely under his mother’s command.
So she knew about the aliens and the tech.
His parents would be safer than Sami and George.
Mom and Dad know about the Khul and the Precursors?
Know about all of this, Gehenna? He asked as a stab of betrayal went through him.
He had always known that his parents were involved in things that they couldn’t tell him about.
But he had always scoffed at the idea of Area 67 having an alien connection.
And I feel a little pissed about it now.
Aliens… Knowing that aliens exist… that would have mattered to me!
Yes, if it gives you any solace, keeping this information from you--especially after what happened--was very difficult for them, she said. Nothing I did would cause them to bring you back to the base.
He almost frowned again, but a warning throb kept him from doing so. After what happened? Something happened at the base?
He suddenly remembered his mother’s downcast eyes when she told him how she had been exposed to something at the base that had caused his illnesses. What had she been exposed to?
Again, I know you have questions, Jace, and I have answers, Gehenna reminded him. But we do not have time right now if you wish to save Walter.
I do, he said firmly. I won’t let him die!
What the Khul will do to him is worse than death, Gehenna said.
A chill went through Jace. He didn’t ask her to explain. He didn’t want to know right then, especially since he was going up against these creatures. But he also knew that this meant he couldn’t risk any further delay.
“Okay, let’s go. Stay behind me, Sami. Keep an eye out for more of those things,” Jace told her. He swallowed.
“Oh, I will,” she promised as she hefted George higher up in her arms. The axe she still carried along with her little brother was pressed flat against George’s back.
They picked their way out of the store, avoiding the corpses and went out onto the street. There was blood on the asphalt, but no bodies. Jace squinted behind his sunglasses as his light-sensitive eyes watered. But he saw that the needle-like ship was still there. It smoked. The gangway was down.
If anyone was brought inside there, it is too late for them, Jace. Concentrate on those you can save, Gehenna told him.
What do you mean?
The Khul infect the people they take with larvae who nest inside the bodies and then eat their way out when they’re ready to hatch.
They place the infected in pools of a liquid that softens flesh and bone to make this process easier, Gehenna explained almost briskly.
They are able to absorb a species’ traits this way and also what an individual knows.
That’s--that’s horrible, Jace said as he swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat.
Doubly so, because the people are alive throughout this process, she stated flatly.
Oh, God… I can’t let them get anyone else!
Jace cried. A wash of fear and uncertainty went through him again.
His palms sweated more heavily and he had to wipe them on his pants.
He was insane to take Sami and George towards more of these things.
He could barely handle a register and now he was going to go into battle with giant insects?
Are you sure there’s no way to call the soldiers back? Maybe I can call my parents--
The phones are being jammed. Human technology is nothing compared to the Khul’s. Even what humanity has gleaned from the Altaeth is not yet enough to defeat them, she told him.
People have really gotten the raw end of the deal if I’m their only hope, Jace told her.
Jace, you’ve been training for over a decade to fight the Khul, she said with a firmness that had his back straightening. You’re not fully ready yet, but… well, you can do this. Just let your body react to the situation. Don’t overthink.
Jace wanted to believe her. But all of his life he had been fragile, brittle, unable to do the simplest things that most people could, but now he was supposed to act all space marine?
On its face it was ridiculous. He could almost hear his father saying, “Champ, I love you, but you’re not really cut out for this.
It takes training and you just don’t have that. ”
But you do have that, Jace, Gehenna insisted. Though you cannot remember all your dreams with me, I assure you that you have been training extensively for over a decade. Believe in yourself. Or believe in me, if you can’t quite believe in yourself yet.
I have to keep Sami and George safe, he said.
You will. You’re the only one who can. I know you can do this, she told him.
He held onto how easily he had shot that Omull. He hadn’t been thinking and the shots had gone perfectly. So that’s all he had to do now. Not think.
How hard can that be? He laughed mirthlessly to himself.
Jace hustled down the block in the direction where Walter had headed.
The laundry where Mrs. Lo--a sweet elderly lady with a dumpling face--was usually behind the counter had its windows broken too.
Jace saw a splash of blood along the front of the counter and a smear along the floor as if someone had been dragged out.
He wondered if he would ever see Mrs. Lo again.
“Sami, have George close his eyes,” he said over his shoulder as he felt the color leave his own cheeks.
She saw where he was looking and she quickly turned her body so her little brother wouldn’t see. “George, we’re going to play a game, okay? But you need to keep your eyes shut.”
“Okay,” George said around the fingers he was sucking in his mouth.
Jace reached the corner and turned it before backpedalling. He held up a hand to Sami and she skidded to a halt right behind him. Walter’s house was just down the street. In that brief moment that he had glimpsed the house, he had seen that there were three Omull and a Cetix in the yard.
“What is it?” Sami whispered.