13

PREDATOR

GNASHING MY TEETH, I sink my heels into the hard earth, trying to fight against the creature’s pull, but it’s far too strong. That Reptile spider was six times my size and it hadn’t stood a chance against the thing. Twisting painfully as I’m dragged along the ground, I struggle to get my free arm around my back to grasp my ninjata, but it’s no use. I can’t even signal Sauer for help because my comms piece has been ripped out of my ear and is lying out of reach.

Defense, I tell the suit.

It hardens immediately, offering some protection against the sharp stones and bits of bone stabbing into me. I try to turn my body onto my stomach so that I can grab my harness, but the constant yank of the beast is making it difficult to get any leverage. For two seconds, I’m flung onto my side, my right arm aligning with my thigh holster. I don’t hesitate, grabbing the gun and firing at the ropy vine, freeing it for a brief moment. The beast answers by thrusting two more tentacles in my direction—one reattaching to my ankle, and the other winding brutally around the hand with the gun. Even with the suit, I can feel the creature’s strength. I cry out as the bones in my wrist shatter and the gun falls from my limp fingers.

This is it. This is how I’m going to die.

But I’m not going down without a fight. I kick out and wrap my uninjured hand around the vine, digging my nails into its clammy, snakelike membrane. It tightens more, making me gasp. I let go—I don’t want any more broken bones. If, by some miracle, I’m able to get free of it within the next ten seconds, I’ll need a working arm to kill this creature.

I see Bass swing around on the hoverbike, heading in my direction, and I shake my head wildly. He’ll get himself killed.

But if he sees me warning him off, he gives no indication. He skids in on the bike and vaults off, his staff spinning. The dynamic blades on the ends have been replaced with spikes and he doesn’t hesitate as he slams one end into the tentacle that’s crushing my wrist, and then rotates the staff to rip through the vine squeezing my foot. A third spin frees me completely, green ichor spraying from the severed tentacles. The smell is fetid—rotten meat and bile—making me gag.

“Thanks,” I yell out, scrabbling backward.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Bass shouts.

Several more vines shoot out and I vault to my feet, grabbing a sword in my good hand. The nanobes are doing their best to heal my body, but my entire right forearm has gone numb. Bass and I hack at the tentacles as fast as they come, but the thing is like a mythical hydra in the stories from the Otherworld—we cut down one vine and ten more sprout from its place. The beast shrieks—a hair-raising sound that makes both Bass and me slam our palms to our ears.

“The only way we can kill this thing is with the ship’s lasers,” I pant. “We need to make a run for it so Sauer has a shot.” Bass nods, his staff spinning, warding off yet another thrust from the creature as I locate my comms unit. “On my mark. One, t—”

The word is snapped from my lips as a huge vine snakes around my waist, crushing the breath from my body, and a second binds the arm holding my ninjata. A third grabs Bass by the leg, and he goes down hard. He is out cold and blood is pouring from his ear. My eyes snap to the rising hover ship and I wave my arms wildly. I wouldn’t put it past the moss monster to pull the whole ship down if it came anywhere within reach.

“Shoot it, Sauer!” I shout into my mouthpiece. “Shoot it now!”

“We can’t,” he replies. “You’re both in the kill zone. We could hit you.”

“It’s going to kill us anyway. I’ d rather die without being digested. Shoot it!”

“Hang on, maybe we can get closer.”

“Don’t! We don’t know how far this thing can reach!” But even as I scream the words, the air is already filled with greedy, grasping vines. We’re forgotten for the moment—though still held fast—as the beast focuses on larger, more dangerous prey. “Sauer, pull up. Pull up!”

“What the hell!” Sauer’s shout rings in my ears. One tentacle wraps around the tail end of the hovertank, jerking it downward just enough so that two more can hook onto the underside. The situation couldn’t be worse. Watching this attack is like seeing something out of one of Caden’s science fiction movies—a monstrous green beast latched on to a spaceship, about to ingest it whole.

“Sauer,” I call desperately, “you have to fire, or we’re all done.”

“Stand down, Commander—” The voice is Caden’s. I sigh in exasperation. I knew he wouldn’t be able to separate his emotions from executing what needs to be done. I’ll pull rank on Caden if I have to.

“Do not stand down, Sauer. Do your job! Fire.”

“Riven.” Caden’s voice is calm, controlled. “We will fire, but only when I give the order. Can you get to Bass?”

I frown. He’s only a few feet away. “Yes.”

“Okay. Do it.”

Kicking my legs sideways like I’m swimming underwater, I crawl to Bass’s side. He’s still unconscious. “What do you want me to do?”

“Are you able to use your free hand?”

Of course it has to be the injured one. I wiggle my fingers and wince. “Depends on what you want me to do.”

“I want you to evert with Bass. We’ll shoot, and then evert back in thirty seconds. Do you understand?”

I open my mouth and close it. I have to hand it to Caden—it’s a crazy idea, but it just might work. I take a breath and punch in the parameters for eversion on Bass’s wrist pad. I enter mine remotely—via wireless command—and sync the two, before closing my eyes and throwing myself over Bass’s body. Then I press ENTER.

Everything around us disappears into mist as the wind sucks at my belly button, pulling me into the wormhole and then ejecting me on the other side in the Otherworld. I fight the nausea, soil filling my nostrils and wind whipping against my face. You’ d think I’ d be used to everting by now, but every time it feels like your body is being turned inside out. It’s enough to make a grown man puke, just as Bass is doing right this minute. I look around, getting my bearings. Looks like we ended up on top of a small hill in a rural area. Could be worse—we could have everted right into a crowded mall or somewhere just as conspicuous. Hard to explain materializing out of thin air.

“What happened?” Bass croaks, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Everted. You passed out and that thing had the ship. You okay?”

He gives me a sidelong look. “How did you know I’ d taken the serum, and it was safe to evert?”

Crap. I hadn’t even thought about that. But he’ d had to or he’ d be a liquid human mess at my feet. “I didn’t.”

“I take it every day, just in case.”

“Isn’t that bad for your organs?”

Bass stands, clutching his staff, and touches his injured ear gingerly. “Danton improved it. We both took it in the Otherworld in case we needed to evert in a flash. Where are we, anyway?”

“I think Texas.” I blink, reconciling the map of our world with the one in my head. “Somewhere near San Antonio.”

“Maybe we should move away from this spot so that when we evert back, we don’t end up in a puddle of green guts.”

Bass’s quip forces a grin to my lips. “That is a great idea.”

We limp down the hill. Bass is already inputting the coordinates for us to evert back to Neospes, and after a few minutes, he gives me a thumbs-up. “Ready?”

I nod, linking remotely to him. “Just hope we don’t evert right into that thing’s stomach.”

But luck is with us when the wormhole spits us out a few feet from where we’ d been trapped. Instead of the moss monster, there’s only a blackened crater, green and brown muck splattered everywhere, and it stinks to high heaven.

“Good to see you.” Sauer’s voice chimes in my earpiece.

Bass and I hobble to collect the hoverbikes. “Good to see you survived,” I reply.

“Thanks to Caden’s quick thinking, we all survived. How’s the wrist?”

I flex my fingers and curl it around the hover’s handlebars. “Nearly healed.”

Bass shrugs and turns over his engine. “Wish I could say the same.” He swipes at the crusted blood on the side of his face. “I’m going to need a medkit and a couple of very steady hands.”

“You got it,” Sauer replies.

A short while later, we’re back on the hovertank, bikes strapped in place and again on course to Avaria, but everything feels strangely anticlimactic. I’ve been lying down—Sauer’s orders—to get some rest, but I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, all I see is green flesh-eating moss. I glance over at Bass who’s said nothing since we came back on board. He’s resting quietly on a nearby cot while Sylar’s very expert hands tend to the wound on his ear. Her training as a field medic is already being put to good use.

“Stop fidgeting,” Bass says to me.

“Can’t sleep. I keep thinking about being eaten alive. What do you think that thing was?”

“Some evolved terrestrial life form, I expect.”

“Do you think there are more of them out there?” I stifle a yawn.

“That, and probably worse.”

I yawn again, despite being wide awake, and prop myself up on my elbow before addressing Sylar. “Where’s Sauer? Up top?”

“Yes, with the Lord King.”

At least Caden’s in good hands. His eversion plan had been a stroke of brilliance. But if our positions were reversed, and it’ d been Sauer out there instead of me, I would have fired without a second thought—soldiers should be prepared to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the mission. Getting Caden to Avaria is the first—and only—priority.

That said, I’m grateful to be alive. Bass, too, I expect. I messed up big time. To be honest, once Caden gave the order to evert, I hadn’t completely thought it through since, with my nanobes, I’m used to everting on a whim. Truth is we’ d gotten lucky. Without the serum, Bass would have been pulverized.

Squashing my guilt, I squint at Sylar. “Do you know if they got anything on the tracker?”

“The commander wanted to wait until you were back on board, just in case we had issues accessing the tracker’s information.”

“Did the moss beast do any damage to the hull?”

Sylar shakes her head. “We’ve run a quick diagnostic and everything seems fine. It’ d probably make sense to land and run a more thorough analysis when we can do so safely.” She pauses, looking at me grimly. “Though out here, you can never tell if it’s going to be safe. One of those vines hooked into a propulsion jet, but I think the hover gear is fine for the moment.” She eyes me as I cover my mouth, suppressing another wide yawn. “You really should try to get some rest. I’m just about finished with him.”

Nodding as she leaves the cubicle, I will my body to relax, starting with my toes and working my way up. I engage the nanobes, sending out a command for them to go into hibernation mode. I inhale deeply, then exhale a few seconds later, making my mind a blank slate where there’s no moss, no monsters, and nothing but an empty void. My heart rate slows; my body stills. Everything fades to black.

In the darkness, I see Cale’s face.

But it’s not the Reptile Cale. It’s the boy I used to know, beckoning me. “Come on, Riven. I have something to show you.” He’s younger, maybe fifteen or sixteen. In my dream state, I follow him to the dungeons of the castle, grimacing at the sewer smell. I’ve never been to this part of the castle before, but obviously Cale has. He’s navigating the twists and turns of the dark passages as though he knows exactly where he’s going. Cale stops. “Close your eyes. I have gifts for you,” he says with a gleeful smile. I obey, and feel his hand on my arm, leading me down steps into an area that smells even worse than the rest of the dungeons. “Open them now, Riven.”

Bile rises, clogging my throat. Some kind of desert feline is inside a wire cage. It stares at me with baleful eyes, snarling at Cale for a minute before turning away. I see a wound on the creature’s side. Bloody and ragged bits of threaded tissue wind around shiny pieces of metal. It’s a clockwork cat. “Where’ d you find it?” I ask, repulsed.

“I built it,” young Cale says, puffing out his chest with pride. “Do you like it?”

“Built it? How?”

He rolls his eyes and stares at me as if I’m an imbecile. “I caught a stray cat sniffing around Sector Five outside the dome. Then I gutted it and hooked it up to another Reptile. Before long, the Reptile—I don’t remember what it was—started taking over the cat. It was so cool to watch.”

“That’s sick.”

A gruesome smile overtakes Cale’s mouth, making his childish face look sinister in the dim light. I take an involuntary step back, and feel the slimy wall of the dungeon pushing against me. The entrance has disappeared. A shudder ripples through my body. “Don’t be afraid,” Cale says. “Come. I have another gift for you.”

What could be worse than a gutted animal? My feet move like leaden weights as I walk past the cat to another room with another cage. I retch into a dank corner of the cell.

“Do you like her?”

In this cage is a girl… a girl with my face.

Only it’s not a girl—it’s a Reptile. She could be my clone, down to the slanted gray eyes and dark, choppy hair with its blue braid. She’s holding two swords, watching me with a feral stare. Her head cocks to one side, a slow snarl pulling up the corners of her lips. I swallow hard, looking from a satisfied Cale to this creature with my face.

“Where’ d you get it?” I snap, finding my voice.

“Your father’s garbage,” he says in a smug voice. “Didn’t you know he was trying to clone you? Guess it didn’t work. Out you went with the trash. But you’re lucky I found you. Isn’t she beautiful? She does anything I want.” He studies me with a crude, meaningful expression that makes my breath come fast.

I swallow hard. “Get rid of it,” I manage to say.

“Why? She’s perfect. You’re perfect.”

Suddenly, Cale morphs from a boy into the form I’ d seen out in the Outers, his single red eye glowing. I want to run, but my feet are glued to the floor. I can’t move a muscle. Every part of me is dead, unresponsive.

“She’s not me,” I mumble.

Cale’s next words, slid in so smoothly, jolt my subconscious. “Where are you going, Riven? You think those people are going to help you?” He leers, a laugh bursting from his lips. “Oh, you think I didn’t know? I know everything. You will fail. Join me where you belong. We will take Neospes together.”

“Never. I’m nothing like you.”

“Aren’t you?” His voice is mocking. A metal finger glides down my cheek, down my shoulder, to my arm. It hooks into the side of my ribs and pulls. I gasp, staring down at the coils of wiring protruding from me. “They made you, just like they made me. You’re a thing, not a person.” The words are like bullets.

“I’m going to kill you,” I growl.

“With what? You’re unraveling. Look at yourself.”

Cale’s voice goes hollow, and I glance down. My legs have disappeared. I’m nothing more than half a torso on the filthy floor. Cale’s laughter echoes throughout the dungeon as the robot girl approaches. She grins, kicking at what’s left of me with her metal foot, and leans down until we’re nose to nose.

“He’s right, you know.” She even sounds like me. “You hold yourself back. Give in to what you are. It’s inevitable. We are inevitable.”

“The only thing that’s inevitable is your death.” I take my ninjata and stab robot-me right in the throat, nearly cleaving her head from her body. She disappears in a haze as I splutter through a mouthful of blood, and wonder why my ninjata is lodged through my neck and why the ground became a slippery pool of blood.

“I give you a choice,” Cale says. “Join us or die.”

I wake in a cold sweat, the sound of mocking laughter echoing in my head, and grasp at my neck. It’s still in one piece. My breathing is ragged and I take a minute to calm my racing heart. Bass is still asleep in the cot next to me.

Something flickers in my brain, filtering information. I fly off my cot waking Bass who leaps off of his own, staff in hand, blinking wildly. “What’s wrong?”

“Arven,” I yell, “get Sauer. I need to see that tracker right now.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

Arven puts the craft into autopilot and engages stealth defense. Once Sauer’s in the hold, we surround the tracker and I enable it. A single yellow point glows brightly at its center as it boots up. Disabling any inbound and outbound remote access capabilities, we connect the tracker to the ship, letting the information feed directly to us.

Sauer stares at the screen, frowning. “There’s nothing here. It’s wiped.”

“Hang on,” Bass says, narrowing his eyes. “There is something there. See that dot blinking in the lower left corner? Looks like some kind of message icon.”

Always cautious, Sauer runs an analytic check first. It comes back clean—the file is a picture. He taps in a sequence and a hologram opens on the screen. I stop breathing, my hands clutching the edge of the console.

It’s a photo of a cage in a dungeon—the exact replica of the one in my dream.

“What is it?” Caden asks.

“A message from Cale. That tracker has been operational this whole time, programmed with a subliminal encoded message meant for me.”

“Wait, how is that even possible?”

“I have microscopic computers in my brain, Caden.”

He frowns. “Cale would need your DNA to develop something like that.”

I shrug. “Plenty of my blood was spilled in the Outers during the Reptile attack when we everted. It wouldn’t have been hard to collect some. Remember that frequency Philip and Charisma used to track me? It’s sort of the same idea, like sending a mental email.”

“Can he hurt you?”

Without thinking, I run my fingers across my neck. “No.”

“What did it say?” Sauer asks. “The message?”

“He knows that we’re trying to get help. He’s going to take back Neospes.” My eyes meet Caden’s. “And he wants me to help him do it.”