Mari stretched, bumping pleasantly against the men she was sandwiched between. She opened her eyes, taking in the sight of washboard abs—dual washboard abs. Two pairs of green eyes fixed upon her as she tried to figure out what time it was and why she was in bed instead of on the couch.
“Um. How long did I sleep?”
“All night.” At her horrified look, Finn quickly reassured her that one of them had gone to tell Patrice she was safe with them.
“I should—” Sudden memory of the diary assailed her. She swallowed, abruptly uncertain. When she had fled Flagstaff, her uppermost thought had been to get away from Tim, clinging to the hope that her father had left something valuable here. Sure, she’d successfully navigated to Winter Street, but she hadn’t connected all the dots until now. She’d have to talk to Patrice about this and sort through the items on the cluttered cherrywood table.
In retrospect, assuming the alien device was valuable had been a foolish hope. Still, she sensed there was something important in her father’s diary—something he’d been preoccupied with for years. Every time news came in about Scar City, he’d perked up and listened carefully, asking pertinent questions. He did that about no other City—even San Francisco, where he’d been born and raised.
Aware that the Twins were still watching her, Mari rubbed her eyes. “I have to get back to the other house. I need time to think.”
The men exchanged quick glances. “Is opening this diary something you’d like to do privately?” Finn asked.
Mari nodded immediately. Getting all emotional over her father’s words wasn’t anything she wanted to do in front of the Twins. And she couldn’t be sure how much the diary covered—had he written about her mother’s death? Or was it simply a factual account of their journey from their cabin in the woods to Scar City itself?
Distracted as she was, she was grateful when the Twins insisted upon accompanying her back to Patrice’s. It wasn’t a long walk as the crow flew, but rubble and other debris in the street made it a haphazard journey. A fire engine, red paint peeling with age, blocked off a narrow alleyway and jutted partially into the main road. In its dubious shelter, a junkie hunched, eyes glassy and vacant, the early morning sun playing across his partially clothed body.
The Twins had taken up position on either side of her, subtly herding her to the other side of the street. She was grateful for their protectiveness, although she couldn’t help but wish life were different for the addict in the fire engine. He wasn’t that young, so he’d probably had some sort of adult life pre-Invasion, maybe a family.
Things could be worse for me, she reminded herself. Much worse.
When they reached Patrice’s front door, she squeezed the men’s hands. “Thank you. Did you want to come in?”
“We have to check in with headquarters, give them a status update.” Finn gave her hand a return squeeze before letting go.
Mari blinked. Status update? Was something wrong? She fought down a surge of panic at the thought of the Twins being recalled to this mysterious Complex, possibly without her…
“They’ll want to pull us from the City when we tell them how bad it is here,” Gareth said in his typical blunt style, accurately reading the distress in her expression. “We can tone down our report a little, but not by much. I’m going to recommend this city be voluntarily evacuated beginning today—and that a forcible evacuation begins at the end of the week.”
“Easy for you to say,” Mari blurted, and immediately blushed at her runaway mouth. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Why is it easy for us to say?” Gareth’s green eyes fixed upon her. Not angry, she decided, but intent, focused on the truth. She liked that about him—his no-nonsense directness, his firm approach often tempered by Finn’s diplomacy. She liked that too.
Still, she looked away, uncomfortable with the topic. “When you talk about forcible evacuation, what exactly does that mean?”
“The National Guard moves in and sweeps the City. They find anyone hiding, they’ll direct them to the train station and get them out.”
“They’re not rough, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Finn added. “A non-voluntary evacuation rounds up the more stubborn people. The world is short of humans. We need people to concentrate on survival, otherwise we’ll die out.”
“Yes, but then where do they go?” Mari made a sharp gesture at the house in front of her. Patrice’s house. Despite its peeling paint, it was a solid structure. “Some people won’t leave—not voluntarily. Their whole lives are here. How can they start over?”
“They—”
Mari cut Gareth off with a shake of her head. “As for the whole humans must survive thing, by that logic I ought to go back to Flagstaff to marry Tim Johnston and bear his children.” The idea was so reprehensible to her that she looked away from them both.
“Mari, honey.” Finn caught her face in both hands, bringing her gaze gently but firmly back toward him. “I wish I could tell you what will happen to the evacuees, that they’ll get food and housing and whatever they need. But all I can do, personally, is try to get them out of here before it’s too late. I have to concentrate on giving everyone a fighting chance. Okay?”
“Patrice,” she said in a low voice. “What about Patrice?”
The thought of the elderly woman being evacuated by an armed soldier didn’t sit well with her. Patrice’s whole life was here—not only memories, but her only livelihood, her house. For that matter, the woman would probably refuse to go since she still held out hope that her granddaughter would return to Scar City someday.
“If she truly prefers death over leaving, then there’s not much we can do for her,” Gareth said. “But I’d like her to come to the Complex with us. I won’t drag her kicking and screaming, but the offer’s there. Did you think we’d leave her behind?”
“I don’t know if she’d go voluntarily.”
“If it comes to that, we’re stronger than her,” Finn said with a touch of Gareth’s sternness. “Now, let’s go in. I want to be sure you’re safely inside before we leave.”
She obeyed, and once she was settled, the Twins departed, leaving Mari with a curious Patrice and an affectionate Tank, who seemed to have accepted her as a member of the household. Mari stroked his wide head as she perched on the edge of a chair and told Patrice of yesterday’s adventures.
The elderly woman raised her eyebrows. “Barks inside the ship? Of course. Why didn’t we realize the bastards would hide there? Hell, there could be more aliens on Earth than we bargained for.”
Mari’s hands stilled atop the dog’s head as she digested that. Nobody had come up with a clear estimate of how many Barks there were on Earth. There were hundreds of thousands of dead Barks though, which meant that more than likely millions of the aliens existed on Earth, since the suckers were tough to kill.
“It’s harder to destroy those ships than to knock down houses. And a lot of them landed intact, after the first ones overwhelmed our guns.” How many aliens were inside those ships? The Twins could probably hazard a decent guess, but she had no idea.
“Yep. Fat lot of good our politicians did back then, investing in weapons to kill each other, rather than the aliens on the horizon.”
Tank settled at their feet with a sigh. Mari envied the Rottweiler’s ability to live in the moment. Her mind was tied up with mental calculations and half-remembered conversations with her father. He’d said that hibernation facilities had been found aboard one of the intact ships. Humans had seized it outside Seattle and killed the aliens inside.
Did all the ships have hibernation facilities? And were they still in use? With a sigh, she abandoned that line of thinking and regarded the old woman. It was time to solve her dad’s mystery—or try to, at least.
“Patrice, did your daughter ever find anything really strange when out scavenging?”
She snorted. “Uh-huh, and plenty of it. Once, she brought back a wedding dress and a prosthetic leg in the same haul.”
“What about an alien device?”
That earned Mari a long, slow series of blinks. “Say what?”
“My dad, Jorge Aquino, mentioned Winter Street as a place he was supposed to meet a trader.” Mari rummaged in her pocket for the last page of notes, handing the slip of paper to Patrice.
“Scavengers, $150 offer. Valuable. No-show. Winter St. Other half?” Patrice read. Setting the paper down, she frowned. “Other half of what? My daughter often priced her rarer finds at a hundred and fifty. Don’t know why she would have been a no-show, except… When was this?”
“Seven years ago to the month.”
“Oh.” Patrice grimaced. “Back then, I used to turn people away when they called to buy somethin’. Told my daughter I didn’t want to deal with it. Could be I turned your dad away.”
Mari took the paper as Patrice handed it back. “I wish I had clearer memories of his comings and goings, but it all seems like a puzzle.”
“When you get as old as I am, it’s all a damn puzzle.” Patrice looked over at the cherrywood table. “You want to go through the stuff, see if any of it looks familiar?”
“It won’t.” Mari rose, giving the dog one last pat. “I won’t know what I’m looking for yet. I’m going to go read his diary.”
Bolstered by Patrice’s good luck wishes, Mari retreated to her bedroom and knelt by her father’s old case. Her parents had shown her its false bottom years ago, and her mother kept the key in her locket. Still, the delineation was so subtle that she had a difficult time locating it until she chanced upon the tiny keyhole.
After a moment’s hesitation, she unclasped her mother’s locket and opened the metal heart, letting the key inside drop to her palm. Her mother’s photograph stared back at her, a pretty young woman with blue eyes and brown hair. Mari realized with a start that she was probably the same age now that her mother had been when the photo had been taken. It felt strange.
She brought the key to the lock, holding her breath without conscious volition. If it didn’t fit, she was going to be mighty ashamed.
But it did fit, clicking as it turned, and the false bottom opened with an ominous creak. Mari let her breath out in a ragged whoosh, reaching inside to remove what was there. It had been a good hiding place, designed to appear a natural part of the suitcase’s thick outer layer.
She withdrew a slim, leather-bound notebook. It seemed too insignificant to have caused so much fuss in her life, and for a moment she couldn’t bring herself to open it. She traced the cover with a lingering finger, then decisively opened it before she could chicken out.
Tears threatened as she began to read, her eyes skimming across her father’s achingly familiar handwriting. He’d always preferred to write longhand, even when so many others turned to electronic means.
In this diary, the first entries were dated pre-Invasion, although only a few months beforehand. Her father had inscribed a mix of everyday observation and his take on current events. She flipped forward, resisting the urge to read about herself as a child, to relive those half-forgotten yet still cherished memories of ballet lessons, horseback riding and impromptu after-school ice creams.
One day she would be able to read it, assimilate it and spend the proper time grieving over her parents—and a lifestyle that seemed like a dream. For now, however, she flipped ahead, skimming through to where her father had noted down his visit to a smaller, crashed spaceship. The entry was short, cramped and hastily written without a date appended.
Found one of their intact spaceships. It was daylight, so I poked around. No life forms inside, seemed completely abandoned. Ship’s inside contained technology more advanced than our own, with controls designed for their sucker-like extremities. There was a possible communication device on the dashboard… I took it back with me. It was only a whim, but I feel strongly that I did the right thing. Don’t want them calling more pals in from the ends of the universe.
In his meticulous style, her father had drawn a picture of the item he’d taken. Mari frowned, studying the page. The shape wasn’t familiar. Had she handled it as a child? Part of her was disappointed it wasn’t valuable, but her curiosity was sparked—what had her father discovered?
And where was it now?
She read on, sifting through information, viewing her own childhood through adult eyes. The communication device was why her father had agreed to go to Seattle—he was afraid the aliens would return to find their ship tampered with, and their cabin wouldn’t withstand an attack for long. So they’d retreated behind Seattle’s walls.
Not long after, the aliens had attacked that City in droves. Their concentrated assault had nearly been successful, and her father wrote about his decision to take them south, behind Portland’s walls. Mari snuggled up on her bed as she read, recalling the way they’d bunked down in Powell’s bookstore. The huge store had been turned into a library, and she had been furious when her parents told her they were moving to Scar City.
The diary gave her the deeper reason for the move, cooling her remembered anger immediately.
I’m afraid, her father had written. I still have this potential communication device, and there is a possibility the aliens are tracking it. We had a close call getting into Seattle when that convoy of aliens nearly caught up with us. I convinced Sara that the attacks were coincidental, but after our arrival in Portland, the attacks ramped up yet again.
I need more time to research this device, but it’s difficult without the resources. Everyone is focused on survival. Hopefully I will be able to go examine another ship. It may be that these devices are simply a standard feature on their transports.
I’ll try one more move—we’re going to Scar City. After that, I don’t know.
Mari put down the diary and took a deep, shaky breath. Holy crap. So the aliens had been following them? Tracking them from City to City, looking for their stolen precious?
“Great,” she muttered. “So where is the thing now?”
On impulse, she flipped to the end of the diary, where a loose piece of paper attracted her attention. At the top, he’d scrawled FAILSAFE???? At the bottom was a quick, scrawled diagram of Scar City and two more diagrams of the device. The word Tracking was underlined several times, and a yellowing train ticket poked out of the end of the journal—an early morning train to Flagstaff.
Mari blew out the breath she’d been holding. So the Twins were right: the City was unsafe. Very unsafe, if her father was correct about the aliens wanting their possession back—and tracking it.
That still didn’t explain why her father had mentioned Winter Street. With a sigh, Mari delved back into the diary until the words trader and half caught her attention. Shit, so were there two devices?
Was one of them downstairs on that cherrywood table?
Mari put the diary away and stretched to her feet, blinking out the window. Through the iron bars that reinforced the glass, she realized it was already late afternoon. She had been up here over two hours, and she’d reached information overload for the day. Besides, she missed the Twins.
Silly, she chided herself, and tried her best to push them from her mind. Much as she wanted to put this new, terrifying knowledge out of her mind, she had to brace herself to search the mound of items in Patrice’s living room. The stairs creaked as she went down them, heralding her arrival.
Patrice gave her a warm smile. “Want some tea? I was just making some.”
“That would be great. Does it have any caffeine?” She tried to stifle a yawn.
“Nope, sorry. It’s herbal, made from local stuff. You want caffeine, you’ll have to pay through the nose and probably bribe some officials.” Patrice gestured to the kettle. “You mind pouring? My arthritis is acting up today.”
“Sure.” Mari swallowed mild disappointment. She really was logy, but at least she hadn’t entered the post-Invasion stage with a full-fledged caffeine addiction. Her mother had been snappy for years without her daily latte.
“Find anything interesting?” Patrice asked.
“Oh, nothing serious. Just that the device my father found is being tracked by aliens, and he thinks there’s another part to it, possibly located right here on Winter Street.”
Patrice set down her cup with a sharp clack. “No foolin’?”
“Wish I was. Would you mind if I searched the pile over there?” Mari sipped her own tea. The hot liquid perked her up a little despite its bitter taste.
Patrice was eyeing the cherrywood table with trepidation. After a minute, she nodded decisively. “Go ahead. I’ll finish my tea. You okay? You look pale.”
“I’m…not looking forward to what I might find.” Mari crossed the room and knelt by the low table. Part of her wanted to believe her father was right. Another, larger part wanted to deny any knowledge of the aliens having tracked them from City to City. Small wonder her father had been haunted.
“I’ll keep talking, if it helps,” Patrice said. “You ever have any pets, Mari?”
Mari began setting items aside, grateful for the change of subject. “I had four goldfish. John, Paul, George and Ringo, although we think George was a female.”
Patrice’s full lips rounded in a smile. “Funny how attached you can get to fish. My brother had a saltwater tank full of creatures. He named every single one of ’em. When he died, he had the tank and everything donated to the local museum.”
“I was pretty fond of those fish,” Mari admitted, “but I’d been leaning hard on my parents for a pony. Funnily enough, they never agreed that our little backyard was sufficient grazing ground.”
That was a tenth of the table sorted. She reached for a jumble of wires, flinching as a sharp piece grazed her skin. Was this human or alien? No—this had to be part of a computer. She set it aside.
Patrice sipped her tea, eyes sparkling. “Let me guess, they got you a stuffed pony instead.”
“They did. And riding lessons, which was a decent compromise, us being in San Francisco. I never really gave up my dreams of moving to a ranch out in Montana, though.”
“Well, maybe you ought to amend that dream to living with two nice men in Chicago. It isn’t safe here, not any longer. Everyone’s talkin’ about it.”
Mari nodded, lifting a box of detergent from the table to the floor. She peeked inside as an afterthought but saw nothing but powder. When she slid a partially disassembled laptop toward her, Tank raised his head and let out a gruff bark. Both women tensed, following the dog’s gaze to the door. His next warning bark nearly eclipsed the knock.
“The Twins won’t be back this soon, surely.” Mari frowned.
Patrice grunted, her expression pained as she gripped the sides of the chair and attempted to rise. “Probably someone tryin’ to sell goods door to door. Or maybe I should call that bads, seeing as this is Scar City.”
“I’ll go find out who it is.” Mari went to the door as the elderly lady sank back in relief. Going to the peephole, she peered through and relayed the details softly to Patrice. “He’s a clean-shaven guy, light brown hair, decent clothes, carrying a notebook. Anyone you know?”
“Nope. Ask him what he wants, would you?”
“Hello?” The man pitched his voice to carry through the door before Mari could raise her own voice. “I’m looking for Dr. Aquino’s daughter.”
Patrice’s eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline. “Huh. Up to you whether to let him in.”
“I just want to talk to you for a few minutes about your father. I recently received a tip that led me to this address,” the man continued. “Please?”
Mari hesitated, glancing at Patrice one more time. The woman nodded skeptical permission, hand draped casually in a fold of her oversized cardigan. Most likely she had a handgun concealed there, and between that and Tank’s presence, Mari felt safe enough to open the door.
The man immediately smiled in a way that set her teeth on edge. “Marisol Aquino?”
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m Josh Hobart from the New York Times. Can I come in?” He made as if to step forward.
“This is about my father?” Mari continued to block the way, and there was an answering glint of challenge in the reporter’s eye.
“Yes. I’m privy to some information that might interest you.”
“And what do you want in return?” Patrice’s voice caused Hobart’s eyes to flicker toward her for a brief second before he spread out that conciliatory smile again.
“More information. And maybe a glass of water, if I may.”
“You can sit in the living room for a spell,” Patrice decided, and Mari stepped back. She let the elderly woman watch Hobart while she poured the reporter half a glass of water in the kitchen.
“How did you get this address?” Patrice demanded.
“Like I said, I’m working on a lead I received.”
“What do you have to say?” Mari asked as soon as he’d taken a sip. How much had her father communicated to others? He’d placed a call to the government in Chicago, but had he contacted the press?
Infuriatingly, Hobart took his time, examining his surroundings in a way that bordered on rude while he finished the water. Then he turned his attention to her—and Mari didn’t like the gleam in his eye.
Neither did Patrice, apparently. “Talk,” she demanded. “Now, before I run you outta here. Tank?”
The Rottweiler sat up, fixing his attention upon Hobart.
“All right, all right. Traveling is hard work these days. I haven’t had a moment to sit in peace for weeks, so I forgot myself for a minute.” Hobart set the glass on a side table and pulled out a large notebook. “You are Marisol Aquino, right?”
“How did you find me?” Mari was starting to wish she’d brought her Glock downstairs. Her father had hosted many reporters pre-Invasion, all asking about his scientific breakthroughs…but they’d stuck to the facts, treating her father—and her—cordially. This reporter seemed as if he’d sell his own mother for a quick buck.
Even so, he was well-dressed and his notebook and pen spoke of authenticity. And Mari wanted to know what he knew about her father.
“One of my colleagues saw your name on a list of people traveling from Flagstaff to Reno. He figured you’d be interesting to talk to because of the train breakdown. I heard there were Twins aboard.”
Mari waited stonily through the ensuing silence, all but certain the man was withholding information.
“Anyway, someone else recognized your name as being Dr. Jorge Aquino’s daughter, and since you were coming from Flagstaff, his last known location, we figured there might be a chance we might find you.”
“What do you want with her?” Patrice challenged. Mari sat up straighter, confidence rushing through her at the other woman’s implicit support. After so many years of being mostly on her own, it was nice to have someone like Patrice at her back.
“Look, Dr. Aquino contacted the government shortly before he passed away, claiming he had some information we might be interested in. Bureaucratic incompetence prevented that information from actually getting passed on. We were hoping you might fill us in.”
The room seemed to grow ten degrees colder, and Mari schooled her expression to neutrality. She knew Hobart wanted talk about the device—devices, she reminded herself—but she didn’t trust this man enough to spill the beans. There was something about him that made her think he wouldn’t use the knowledge in an ethical way.
“Dad had cancer, and he wasn’t very lucid in his last weeks.” That much was true. The pain meds she’d near-bankrupted herself to get had been effective, but they’d left her father in a deep sleep much of the time—or at best, a zombielike state. “So maybe you ought to start with what you know.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Hobart’s face and was rapidly smoothed away. “Sure. When Dr. Aquino contacted my source, he told them that he knew of a device that the aliens sought. At that point, he was cut off due to communication issues, and my source was unable to reach him again. Do you know anything of this device he mentioned?”
Mari shook her head, curling her toes as she did so. Judging by the intensity of the nightly attacks, the Barks were determined to get their property back, but she preferred to save that information for the Twins rather than involve this man.
“Ah, well.” Hobart looked deeply disappointed, but a certain hardness about the set of his jaw betrayed his anger. He got to his feet. “I’m going to give you my card in case you unexpectedly…remember anything. I’ll be staying in a room at the Wanderer Inn downtown. Call in anytime you like.”
Mari heroically refrained from wrinkling her nose. That down-at-the-heel gaming hall was the perfect place for Hobart. She took the card he offered and slipped it into her pocket. “All right.”
Hobart paused on the doorstep, thin eyebrows drawing downward. Pacing a few steps into the street, he gestured at her. “One last thing. Could you tell me which way the main gates are?”
Mari nodded, leaning out to point down the street. “If you—”
Hobart lunged, grabbing her arms and yanking her into a tight embrace. One foot lashed out, slamming the door behind her. “Okay, you’re coming with me. Don’t scream.”
She obeyed—only because she opted to sink her teeth into his shoulder. He jerked, swearing at her, calling her a bitch and a whore, but his grasp never lessened. To her horror, he was strong enough to half carry, half drag her down the street. At this rate, Patrice wouldn’t catch up with them, and she wouldn’t get a clear shot either.
But Mari had underestimated her landlady.
“Tank, get him.”
A blur of black-and-tan fur barreled into Hobart, knocking them both to the cracked asphalt. The Rottweiler planted his paws on Hobart’s chest with a snarl and latched on to the man’s arm, holding him firmly to the ground. Mari got to her feet, shakily clawing her hair back out of her eyes. Patrice hobbled toward them, considerably slower than her dog. She looked pleased as punch.
“Tank, release the bite. Good dog.”
The last words were interrupted by a shout, and Mari looked up to find the Twins sprinting toward them. Finn enveloped her in a tight embrace while Gareth—no, Mari wasn’t going to look. There was a crunch and a yell as she buried her face in Finn’s chest.
“You okay?” he asked.
Mari swallowed hard. “Yes, but there’s something important I need to tell you.”
* * * * *
Finn acknowledged her with a neutral murmur, but his focus was on his brother. Gareth was in a killing rage, and Mari’s abductor was very much at his mercy. With a whimper, the man cradled his broken arm and glared upward.
“Don’t hurt me anymore—there’s money in it for you.”
“Yeah?” Gareth’s tone should have tipped the man off, but he kept talking.
“My boss pays really well for Experiments who defect—”
“Easy,” Finn warned as Gareth placed a booted foot on the man’s throat, effectively shutting him up.
“I’m done hearing this shit.” That could mean anything—and the turmoil that racked Gareth’s mind wouldn’t let him get a clear reading on his brother’s intention. A movement forward would kill the man under his foot; a movement backward would spare him.
“Mari needs us.” Not for the first time, Finn was relieved to have someone else in their lives, someone whom Gareth cared about.
“Someone to distract me with, you mean. I know what you’re doing, Finn, and I appreciate it, but this guy’s a damn Shadow Fed. What the fuck does he want with Mari?”
“I don’t know, but killing him isn’t going to provide an answer.”
“You’re right.” Gareth took his foot away and there was a corresponding wheeze as the man got his breath.
“His name is Josh Hobart. He says he’s a reporter from New York,” Mari supplied in a low voice.
“He’s not. He’s a Shadow Fed, one of the power-hungry assholes trying to topple the current government.” Finn spoke absently, still observing Hobart’s every move.
“Dad says—said the current government only rules because everyone pretends they do.”
“Yeah, these guys don’t want to pretend anymore. What did he want with you, Mari?”
“He said he had information about my father.” She peered ruefully up at him. “He did, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t know—and then he tried to strong-arm me into telling him anything I knew about the device Dad discovered.”
The flicker of worry in her brown eyes made him think that the bastard Shadow Fed was actually onto something. “Okay, Mari. Did you tell him anything?”
“No, but I need to talk to you and Gareth.” She lowered her voice to the point where a human wouldn’t be able to hear her, but Finn had no problem. He inclined his head, acknowledging her silently.
“Gonna take him to the human jail,” Gareth sent. “That guy I dealt with yesterday should have something to keep him on his toes. Too much solar-powered solitaire might warp his brain.”
“Sure.” Finn kept a lid on his surprise. The old Gareth would have required a bit more cajoling to back off. “I’ll take Mari inside, get her a drink and calm her down a bit. She’s trembling.”
It wasn’t long before Patrice and Mari were settled back inside, with a smug Rottweiler at their feet. Finn sensed that Mari didn’t want to share the information before Gareth was back, so he busied himself making drinks, keeping a mental ear out in case Gareth needed anything.
But his Twin returned without incident, taking the seat next to Mari and tucking her under one muscular arm as he gave her a critical once-over. “You okay?”
Her dark head dipped in a nod. “Physically, yes. Mentally… Well, maybe with a good night’s sleep. I read my father’s diary. That man—Hobart—is right. Dad did discover a device, a communication device.”
Gareth nodded. “A couple of the scientists have a theory that the aliens might be able to call up some buddies. After the first ships invaded, there was a second wave about a month later. They studied the radar readings and found that a large concentration of them landed in the Arctic or Antarctic. That environment would aid cryogenic sleep.”
“Oh great,” Patrice interjected. “More Barks. Just what the world needs.”
“So the device my dad stole…” Mari trailed off, going a bit white.
“Wakey-wakey,” Finn said, disguising his worry in wryness.
“Surely those aliens would be more organized than that.” Patrice’s words were laced with disgust. “Wouldn’t there be more of those devices?”
“Maybe that’s where the second half fits in,” Mari said. She glanced at the other side of the room as if she were frightened. “Patrice’s daughter might have found another one.”
Finn nodded. “Makes sense there would be more than one. Think about it—we put up way more resistance than the Barks expected. We shot down one of their motherships just a few miles away from here, and our missiles obliterated a decent chunk of their fighting force midair. For all we know, they were used to prey that rolled over and died, so the fact that we fought back damaged their usual strategy.”
Finn wasn’t merely parroting the scientists’ favorite theory, he fully believed it. He’d also spent numerous hours in their file system, browsing information he probably wasn’t supposed to see. He strongly suspected there was more to the Barks than met the eye, that they were a piece in a puzzle nobody had figured out yet.
“So…you do something with these devices, and they call up the sleeping Barks?” Patrice fixed him with a skeptical look. “That’s a big range on these things. My late husband would’ve been in seventh heaven with a remote like that.”
“Given that they probably piloted that second wave of ships through space via remote control, that’s very probable.” But Gareth cracked a smile at her phrasing.
“Okay. If these devices are remote controls,” Mari said, her voice wavering a little, “you should know that they’re also being tracked by the Barks. My dad stole his out of an intact ship near Oregon. After that, every City we went to was attacked by increasing waves of aliens. When we went to Arizona, he left it here. From what I gather, the attacks here kept intensifying.”
“Ah, that explains a lot,” Gareth sent. “Makes sense that they’d have trackers attached.”
“We think one of them might be on that table over there,” Patrice said, gesturing to the other side of the room. We haven’t been able to bring ourselves to look through it yet—I’m too damn sentimental, and Mari’s scared.”
“I’m not scared,” Mari protested. “I’d rather not…touch it, though. The idea of being tracked gives me the creeps.”
“We’ll deal with it,” Finn soothed. “Can I read Dr. Aquino’s diary, Mari? I need to know what I’m looking for.”
Mari nodded. “Of course. Dad drew a few detailed diagrams.”
“Why are the Barks so bound and determined to get to these particular devices?” Finn asked his brother while Mari went to fetch the diary.
“Could be that the others went down with their ships. Maybe these are the only ones left. Maybe Dr. Aquino was right, and they’re two halves of a whole. Question is why the aliens are so determined to get at them.”
“Some of the researchers believe the aliens kept their females on the second wave ships.”
“Then they aren’t going to give up looking. Let’s find the things and get out of here.”
“I’m with you on that. Let’s handle it carefully, though. Mari’s pretty sensitive.”
“You think she feels guilty?” Gareth would have been impatient with anyone other than Mari, but Finn sensed nothing but consideration from his brother. “She was an adolescent when her parents took her from here.”
“I think she feels bad that her father inadvertently brought this upon Scar City. She feels guilty on his behalf.”
When Mari returned with the diary, Finn took her hand and squeezed it gently. “Look, there’s a lot we don’t know about the aliens. Your father couldn’t have realized it was being tracked until too late—and what was he going to do about it? Turn around and give it to the Barks?”
“Maybe that would have saved this City.” Mari’s hand remained limp in his.
“Hey now, this City hasn’t fallen yet.” Patrice thumped her cane on the floor and rose, laboriously, to go into the kitchen. “For that matter, we haven’t eaten yet either. You boys bring anything?”
“Got some bread in my pack,” Gareth offered.
“Good. I have jam. And I got canned peaches, which we might as well eat up if they’re still good.”
Finn watched Mari perk up a little at that last. “Peaches?”
“In syrup.” With a flourish, Patrice produced a large can from her cupboard. “I’ve been saving this damn thing for nearly a decade, but…well, with the state of things, I don’t want my granddaughter coming back to Scar City.”
“Have you thought of leaving yourself?” Finn didn’t miss the way the elderly woman’s shoulders tensed, the slightly too long pause before she answered. She was thinking about it.
“I’ve lived here for thirty years. I don’t see myself upping sticks at this point.”
“Well, we’re taking Mari to Chicago.” Gareth took the can opener from her shaky hand and earned a grateful look from Patrice. “You ought to come along.”
“I’m too old. I’d be a burden.”
“Nope. And you know that Tank would pine for you.” Gareth dipped a slim stick into the can of peaches, testing for botulism before he began doling out peach slices. The aroma was heaven to Finn’s nose. The overly controlling scientists had frowned upon Twins eating anything outside of the officially sanctioned cafeteria, but they’d sometimes eaten at Hailey’s house. And Hailey hadn’t been much of a cook, so they’d eaten plenty out of cans.
“He would,” Patrice murmured. “Hard to teach an old dog new tricks, though.”
The food didn’t last long, and Gareth rose to do the dishes. “Now’s the time to go root through all that junk on the table and see if there really is some kind of alien device hidden in there. I think we really need to find it and get the hell out of here.”
“Agreed,” Finn replied, already cracking open the diary.
“When I was dropping the idiot Shadow Fed off at what passes as a government office, they were already drawing up battle plans for tonight. I promised them I’d drop by after dark and see if I could be of any help.”
“Good. They could probably use you.”
Mari snuggled up next to him on the couch, seeming all too happy to hand over some of the responsibility. There was a slightly glazed look in her brown eyes that spoke of stress and information overload. So he tucked her under his arm and began to read.
An hour later, he set the diary down, having read it from front to back. Mari was asleep on him and Patrice dozed in her armchair. Gareth sat nearby, idly stroking Tank while watching an action movie on his tablet. Finn was vaguely aware of the tinny sounds of explosions through Gareth’s headphones.
“Anything interesting?”
“Yeah, there are two devices. Dr. Aquino stole one directly out of a spaceship, hid the thing somewhere in Scar City, and then felt guilty as hell afterward when he heard of increased alien attacks. But with his wife dead and him suddenly in sole charge of a young teenager, I don’t blame him for not going back.”
“Hid the thing somewhere in Scar City? That’s not exactly helpful.”
“He mentioned the south wall a few times, and that’s where the attacks have been heaviest.” Finn gently lowered Mari’s head onto a pillow. “We have bigger fish to fry, though.”
“What?”
Finn strode over to the table in the corner, looking in mild dismay at the huge pile of random items. Several minutes later, he’d shoved aside everything obvious and stared down at a tangle of wires. Computer parts? Patrice had obviously made an attempt at keeping things tidy, placing the electronics inside a shallow cardboard box.
He almost missed the gray corner jutting from underneath a motherboard. Carefully, using his index finger and thumb, he pulled the thing free from the wires that had hidden it for so many years. Strange that a seemingly simple-minded alien race possessed such a sophisticated device, but he’d learned not to underestimate the Barks.
Gareth whistled as Finn held up the thin metal triangle, seemingly made out of the same gray material as the alien spaceships. Mari had been right—Patrice’s daughter had managed to dig up a goddamn alien device.
“Dr. Aquino theorized he possessed one half of a whole. Here’s the other half. Except…this is different from the diagrams in his notes.” Finn sent.
“What’s different about it?”
“It has extra…control parts—their equivalent of buttons that they can suck or whatever with their tentacles. This isn’t the exact one that Dr. Aquino diagrammed.”
Gareth shook his head slowly. “Yeah, it’s different. So there are two of them in this City. This one, and the one Dr. Aquino hid.”
“Two? No wonder the aliens are going bonkers. Shit, with the state of those walls, we need to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.”