JASPER NUDGED US AWAKE A bit later. “Hey,” he said softly, his face shadowed in the fluorescent lights. “The jeeps are charged. We should get moving.”
I rolled my neck and stirred. Cage’s arms tightened around me, and he groaned, demonstrating his usual reluctance to wake up. “What time is it?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, but it’s getting dark.”
I gently extricated myself from Cage’s grasp and clambered to my feet. Everyone else was gathered around the vehicles, and I frowned. “You should have woken us sooner.”
“We thought you needed the sleep.”
He wasn’t wrong. I closed my eyes and checked in on the alien presence, but it was dimmer now. I hoped I wasn’t losing my connection. It seemed like a strange thing to hope for, that a weird alien presence would linger in my brain, but without it I didn’t know how we would find the creatures at all. Or how they would find us. That was the key. Karoch had been on its way to deal with us personally, I was sure of that. It was my job to make sure it found us.
Cage stirred and got to his feet, scrubbing at his face. I smiled in spite of myself.
“We have three working jeeps,” Priya announced, “and I’m going to suggest Legion drive them.”
“Why Legion?” Mia demanded.
“Do you know how to drive?”
An awkward silence met her question. “I do,” I said defiantly. It was part of Omnistellar training.
“Yes, but you also have aliens in your brain,” Hallam pointed out. I decided maybe I didn’t like him so much after all.
“So that’s settled. Matt, Hallam, and I will each take a jeep. The rest of you pile in where you see fit.”
Rune instantly hopped into the passenger seat next to Matt, and Cage and I settled in behind them. Mia and Jasper rode with Priya, Reed and Imani with Hallam. We redistributed the comm units to the drivers, giving us a means of communication between vehicles, and we were off, our car in the lead, Rune directing Matt in her soft, soothing voice.
It was getting dark, and the interior of the jeep was climate controlled, and before long I’d sagged against Cage and gone back to sleep.
I didn’t know how much time passed before I found myself blinking against the darkness, somehow aware that I was not myself, that I’d slipped through my dreams and into the alien hive mind. Maybe it was my dream state, but it wasn’t overwhelming like direct contact was, not a nightmare of conflicting shapes and ideas and fears. I was less of a participant and more of an observer, although the slow, insidious crawl of the hive still called to me.
It was scary how a part of me wanted to turn to it, yield to it, open myself and let the group sweep me away, devour any loneliness or self-doubt or grief. It was the part that wanted to fall and not get up, the part that had curled into a ball when my mom betrayed me, when she died, when Dad died, when Alexei died …
But I was stronger than that part of me.
I’d pushed it aside all of those times, and I did it again now. I was stronger than I’d been when I was merely an Omnistellar guard. Back then I’d thought pretty highly of myself. I’d excelled in my training and I figured it made me better than everyone else. Now I saw myself for what I’d really been: successfully brainwashed, desperately striving for the approval of the people who controlled me. Becoming a wanted criminal had, ironically, freed me.
The aliens offered just another kind of imprisonment. There was no danger of me returning to that.
I took a step into the darkness, and the world shimmered around me. I couldn’t see anything, exactly, not with my eyes, but I sensed them all around me: the writhing collective, the creatures sludging forward, and behind them, driving them all, the massive thing called Karoch. I sensed the force of the aliens, their power, their strength.
A shudder went through me. In my mind Karoch was a black hole of compulsion, drawing me in and repelling me at the same time. I steeled myself to stay focused. The creatures were tunneling belowground. But they weren’t where I expected to find them. In fact, now that I really paid attention, they weren’t moving at all. Had they stopped for a break? Did they need breaks?
My mind brushed the edge of an important awareness, something critical. I turned to it reluctantly. It was further into the collective, further past the safe distance I currently stood at. My heart clamored for me to turn back, but instead I pressed forward, the collective swirling and enveloping and—
“Kenzie?”
I jolted awake, shaking my head as the jeep rumbled over a bump in the desert.
Cage was bent over me, his hand on my arm, and Rune was staring at me in the rearview mirror.
“What’s going on?” I managed. My mouth felt fuzzy.
“You were mumbling in your sleep,” said Matt. “We couldn’t understand it, but you sounded … wrong. We thought we’d better wake you up.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying to spin my mind back to the dream, or whatever it had been. The predominant image was one of darkness and cold.
“Is something wrong?” Rune asked.
“No. The creatures are tunneling underground, just like we suspected. They really don’t like the surface. I guess we’re lucky that wasn’t bred out of them somehow. Otherwise they’d be stalking around up here all the time.” But something was wrong. They’d stopped, hadn’t they? I searched for an explanation, then shook my head. “Having these creatures in your head isn’t as useful as you might think.”
“Cheer up, alien girl,” Matt replied. “We’re almost there.”
“How much longer?”
“Just a few minutes. Look, you can see the facility ahead.”
Cage and I scrambled forward, peering between the seats at the shadowy shape in the distance. “Doesn’t look like much,” Cage said dubiously.
Rune tipped her head back to roll her eyes at him. “It’s dark, dummy. Of course it doesn’t look like much. Besides, what did you expect? Flashing neon signs reading WE STORE OUR EXPLOSIVES HERE?”
Cage fidgeted with the edge of the seat. “Are we sure about this?” he asked quietly. He regarded each of us in turn. “I know it’s our only option. I understand. But … this is so much more than anything we’ve ever done. And that’s saying something.”
“Let’s see.” Rune ticked off each statement on her fingers. “We escaped a supposedly inescapable prison. We defeated a horde of alien invaders and stole their spaceship. We escaped another prison on Mars. We survived a team of nasty bounty hunters.” She slapped Matt’s arm when she said this, and a slow smile spread over his face, although his eyes remained fixed on the desert ahead. “We escaped another exploding ship to travel to an alternate dimension, and then we survived a plot to kill us.”
“Some of us survived,” corrected Cage quietly.
Rune’s face fell. “Some of us,” she repeated.
I hated to see the joy drain from her like that. I nudged her arm. “What’s your point?”
She smiled softly, although a touch of her spirit was gone. “My point is, every time we top ourselves, we come out ahead. This won’t be any different.”
Well, you had to admire her confidence. Even Cage relaxed a bit, his face sinking into the affectionate smile he reserved solely for his twin. “I’m most worried about you, meimei. You’re the one who’s going to have to power those explosives. Are you sure you can handle it?”
For just a second Rune’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, and something sparked in her expression, a fierce determination that would have been unthinkable in her just a few weeks ago. “I’m stronger than you think,” she informed her brother.
“I’m not calling you weak, for the love of God. I’m worried. I’m still allowed to be that, right?”
“Yes, you are. Just like I have been every time you charged into danger to protect me, or Kenzie, or any one of us.” Rune twisted in her seat, and now that momentary resolution was gone, leaving only her calm, gentle smile. “I love you, Cage. So much. You too, Kenzie. And I’ll do what it takes to protect you.”
What did she mean by that? I narrowed my gaze at her suspiciously, and she ducked her head, avoiding my eyes. Something was up. But before I could question her further, Cage sighed. “I love you too, meimei,” he said, almost teasingly. “And since there’s apparently no way to stop you, I guess I’ll have to trust you.”
“We’re here,” Matt announced, steering the jeep around the edge of the facility. The headlights of the other vehicles shifted over us in sliding shadows as they passed. “Kenzie, you have no idea where those things are?”
I frowned, setting aside my concerns about Rune for the time being. I had to trust that she knew what she was doing. “They’re close. I know that. But I can’t be more specific. It’s hard to tell when they’re underground, and …” And something else, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Not yet. I’d been almost there when they woke me up. “I’m sorry,” I finished helplessly.
“Don’t be.” Cage gave me a quick half hug. “You’re doing great. This isn’t easy.”
Priya’s voice crackled in my ear. “Okay, everyone. Grab your gear and let’s regroup outside. If we’re going to breach this facility, we’re going to have to do it fast and careful.”
“On our way,” I said, and relayed her instructions to the others.
As we got out of the vehicle, the cold desert night instantly swept over my skin, raising goose bumps. I pulled my flak jacket more tightly around myself and zipped it shut. The others were spilling from the jeeps, and we started toward them, weapons clutched in the pitch-black, utterly silent night.
Suddenly, a sharp, familiar howl split the air from somewhere in the distance.
We pivoted as one.
Barely twenty feet away from us the sand erupted in a spray of stone and dirt as one of the creatures launched itself to the surface. As if on cue, more eruptions triggered on our left, on our right, behind us, until we were standing in a circle of maybe twenty aliens, all of them curling and writhing and sniffing the air, chirping to one another in their horrible sharp voices.
My heart sank.
We were surrounded.