THE SIMULATION LURCHED, AND I jerked, my eyes flying open again. I was sitting on the floor of the break room in between Cage and Jasper, both of whom were gasping for air.
Priya shot to her feet, the chair falling over behind her. “What the hell was that?” she growled.
Eden smoothed her hand over Wendell’s head. “Easy,” she admonished Priya. To Wendell, she said, “Thanks, bud. You can go now. I’ll make sure you get something special to eat tonight, okay?”
The boy raised his eyes, and for the first time he spoke, his voice a raspy whisper. “Chocolate?”
Eden laughed and ruffled his hair. “I think I can manage that. Don’t tell anyone else, though.” She passed him off to his caretaker with a nod and, as they vacated the room, closed the door behind them. Only then did she return her attention to us. “He’s the reason I can’t give up,” she said quietly. “Him, and all the other people living here. Especially the children. They deserve more than this.”
I staggered to my feet. Cage and Jasper followed suit and a moment later we were all standing, grouped in a loose circle around the table. “You said you could help us if we helped you,” I said slowly. “What exactly did you have in mind?”
Eden folded her arms across her chest and analyzed each of us in turn. She wasn’t a tall woman, but she had presence. As she leveled her gaze across the room, not even Mia interrupted her. “We can’t go on like this,” she said. “It’s time we took the fight to the aliens. And with your help, I know where to start.”
A babble of protest erupted, ranging from a semihysterical laugh from Reed to a drawn knife from Hallam. I only stared at Eden, trying to anticipate what was going on behind those dark eyes. She hadn’t spoken accidentally. She’d known the reaction she would provoke, and she was waiting for it to die down. That meant she had something big to offer. “What did you have in mind?”
Eden braced her fists against the table, raking her eyes over us. “We’ve tried to fight the zemdyut before,” she said. “There are military facilities near here. Even a missile-storage range not too far away. We tried to get there, tried to blow them up. But we didn’t have the manpower or the technology to move the missiles, and now we don’t have enough soldiers left to try again. We need your help because we need information. I mean, we don’t even know why the creatures are still here, let alone why they want us dead.”
“And how are we supposed to help with that?”
“You mentioned that one of you had the power to interact with computers, with technology. Who is it?”
I winced. The last thing I wanted to do was expose Rune to some half-formed plan. But before I could speak, Rune stepped forward, brushing Cage’s hand away when he tried to restrain her. “That’s me,” she said. There was a calm, almost powerful note in her voice, a confidence that hadn’t been there a few weeks ago.
Eden nodded. “You might save us all,” she said, speaking directly to Rune. “I told you we thought the creatures were hiding in the desert, in an abandoned military base. The truth is, I know it. I know because Gideon and I tried to raid it once for supplies. We barely escaped with our lives, but before we did, we saw … things. Some kind of bizarre technology superimposed over our own. The creatures were taking over the facility entirely, creating their own base. Of course, even if we could get in there, we wouldn’t have a hope of understanding the tech. But you … you might.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Priya dryly. “You want us to march into this alien hideout—a hideout we’ve never seen, where you and your pal Gideon almost died—infested with these creatures. Hundreds of them. Potentially thousands. And then you want Rune to mine the alien computers for information. Does that sum things up?”
“Oh, it gets worse,” Eden replied pleasantly. “Sit down and I’ll show you.”
Matt and Hallam looked to Priya, and everyone else looked to Cage and me. We looked to each other. But there weren’t any easy answers. “Let’s hear what she has to say,” Cage said at last, arching an eyebrow to see if he had my agreement. I gave him a fractional nod. “No harm in that, right?”
I expected Priya to argue, if only on principle. But she sank into her chair and slowly so did the others. Those of us along the back wall remained standing. Without comment, Eden pulled something out of her pocket and slapped it onto the table. It resembled a half dome, but then she pressed a button and a shape emerged.
Rune sucked in her breath. “It’s a holoprojector,” she said. “Way nicer than any I’ve ever seen, though. How’s it still running?”
“Rechargeable batteries,” Eden explained. “We have someone who can power them.” She frowned. “It was meant to be a temporary measure, but at this point we’re almost totally dependent on him. That’s another reason I need to find new solutions.” She pressed a second button, and the light billowing from the dome took on a familiar shape: one of the aliens we’d seen on Sanctuary.
It wasn’t my first chance to examine one in detail. I’d seen them sleeping in the dark. But somehow the holographic image removed some of the threat, and I took a step closer, allowing my curiosity to drive me.
The creature was precisely what I remembered from Sanctuary: somewhat reptilian, with a long tail and milky-white, unseeing eyes. Its fangs curved over its bottom lip, and even its image seemed to twitch with unearthly intelligence. “We call these harvesters,” Eden announced. “They’re the first zemdyut we encountered. I gather you’ve run into them too. They’re the least dangerous of the lot, because they’re mostly aiming to incapacitate.”
“Wait,” said Alexei. “Least dangerous … you mean there are other types?”
“We thought there might be,” I reminded him. “On Obsidian. The aliens seemed different, somehow.”
Eden nodded and pressed against the dome. The hologram shifted into another form, similar to the first. But now the differences stood out more starkly than on Obsidian. There, I’d been working from memory; now, having just seen the harvesters, I realized these aliens were taller, more sinewy. They had longer, sharper claws and more teeth. “These are hunters,” said Eden. “They have a much more singular purpose: to seek, to kill, and to destroy. They’re the ones who decimated our world. They tear through cities like tranol—predatory fish,” she added, catching our confused expressions. I nodded, committing the word to memory. “They leave nothing behind but destruction.”
“We saw these,” said Imani. She drew closer to the table, a fascinated expression on her face. “On Obsidian. And on the ship.”
“Hard to forget that face,” Hallam agreed in his slow drawl.
“Please tell me that’s the end of it.” There was an edge to Cage’s voice, a tension radiating off him, and anxiety stirred in my stomach.
Because the look in Eden’s eyes told us no, that wasn’t the end of it.
“There’s one more type,” she said. “We don’t see it very often, but when we do, well … I’m going to leave the hunter active so you have a size comparison.”
She hit a button, and a collective gasp went up around the room.
The … thing that appeared was easily three times the height of the hunter, which was already a good five feet tall, even hunched over with its spine bent. It appeared less reptilian than its compatriots and more human, although it was still a pretty far cry from anything I’d try to have a conversation with. But its skull seemed more mammalian, its claws extended from some sort of fingers, and its eyes held an eerie intelligence.
“If a Sasquatch had a baby with a T. rex,” said Reed dryly, “this thing is what you’d get.”
Jasper snorted. No one else responded, not even Hallam. We were too busy gawking in horrified fascination at the hologram dominating the room.
“That …” I swallowed. “Where did it come from?”
Eden shrugged. She stepped back and studied the hologram appraisingly, and I got the sense it wasn’t the first time she’d stood and stared at the thing. Hardening herself to the horror of it, maybe? Or hoping to find a weakness? “It appeared after the initial attack,” she said. “For all I know, it’s the only one of its kind. To be honest, I’ve only ever seen it twice. The first time was in the aftermath of the city’s destruction, when we were herding the survivors into the store. Suddenly this thing just … appeared. I mean, it must have come from somewhere, but for something so big it was intensely silent. And did you notice its eyes?”
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
Milky-white cataracts blinded the aliens. It was our only advantage over them, the only reason we’d ever escaped with our lives.
But this creature’s eyes peered ahead with dark, menacing intelligence.
“They can see,” Rune whispered, a tremor in her voice. “Oh my God, they can see.”
“It came straight for us.” Eden tugged on her braid, then tossed it behind her as if throwing it away. “Gideon and I and a few other soldiers led it on a chase to give the others time to escape, then dove into a sewage drain it couldn’t fit through. Within seconds, it sent hunters after us, but by then we’d managed to hide. We spent a whole night in that damn sewer. By the time we emerged, we were filthy and disgusting … but we were alive. The creature had vanished and we didn’t see it again for two years. Then we were out scouting one day and again it just … appeared. This time we were able to hide before it spotted us. I don’t know what it was doing, but it wasn’t rampaging the way the hunters do. It was searching for something. Us, maybe. I don’t know. It pulled buildings apart like it was cracking eggs.”
“Why did it leave?” Matt leaned back, stroking his chin.
Eden shrugged. “Hell if I know. Eventually we snuck back to the store, went belowground, turned off the lights, and barred the doors. We didn’t dare move for days. When hunger drove us to the surface, the creature was gone. We’ve never seen it again.”
Hope flickered in Matt’s eyes. “Maybe it, I don’t know … went somewhere else. Died, even.”
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Eden continued to glare at the creature. “We call this one Karoch.”
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“It’s from a story we have about a giant who ravaged the towns around a famous mountain. A kids’ story, but … the name fit.”
“And you don’t know where this thing is?” Priya shook her head in disbelief. “Which means it’s probably hiding out with the other aliens. Lady, I’ve been doing this job for a long time. No one’s ever accused me of being a coward. But this?” She shook her head and turned to me and Cage. “We aren’t doing this. If you kids want to take it on, you’re on your own.”
“Wait a second,” said Matt.
Priya spun on him. “Shut your mouth, boy. You might be a dumbass kid, but you’re still part of my crew, and I’m damned if I’ll let you get yourself killed by that thing. These people abandoned you for dead. Remember that.”
Matt scowled. “That’s not exactly what happened.” Our eyes met briefly, and we both looked away. “And it’s not the point. Eden said she could help us if we helped her. Don’t you think we should at least hear what she has in mind?”
Priya hesitated, and it was clear she had forgotten—not that you could blame her with the specter of Karoch still looming over us like an anime movie mech.
As one, we turned to Eden, who seemed to be waiting for precisely such a moment. “I need that intel. I need to know what the zemdyut have planned, why they’re still in this … well, why they’re still here. You’re the only ones who might be able to help me get the information I need. And if you do …” She reached out and squeezed the sides of the dome. Karoch and the hunter vanished, replaced by a small, sleek model of a spaceship, rotating lazily in place. “I can help you get home.”