1942664419 (S) (28 page)

David jumped to his feet, and a beam of light swirled and fired from his silver disk.

“Dammit!” Dad ducked as parts of the wall fell on us, crumbling like powder rather than dripping like liquid. A dusty haze filled the corridor.

David’s disk pulsed in the fog. “I can’t see!”

“Just fire,” Dad said.

Their weapons released a blast that echoed down the hall. Screams followed. So did scrambling footsteps. I tried to stand, but Nematali pulled me down until the fog dissipated, whooshing up and out as if being sucked away.

Nematali sprang to her feet. “The air is venting.”

“How long do we have?” Dad asked.

“Less than an hour, unless the auxiliary fortifications fail.”

A groan echoed through the chamber. Dad grabbed his weapon and pointed at the back of the cavernous space. Something moved beneath a pile of ooze sliding off the wall.

Dad stood, pointed at David, and then at the ground by Dad’s boot. David nodded and fell in beside him as they inched toward the smoking metal. Dad reached into the muck and growled as he pulled a person from the filth. Thick goo trailed off the unsteady man, dribbling down his long, brown locks, over his navy suit, and to the floor until only a speck of gray stained his cheek.

Poseidon. No way.

Dad poised his weapon at the Erescopian’s face. “Nice to see you again, Ambassador.” His voice reverberated, adding a big old “not” to the end of his sentence.

Poseidon’s eyes widened as his hands slowly rose, palms out. “Don’t you think that is a bit excessive, Major Tomás Martinez?”

“And beating the crap out of me wasn’t excessive?”

“I assure you, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

David elevated his disk, and a pinpoint of light shone on the ambassador’s face. “Liar. This is all your fault.”

Poseidon flinched. “My fault? They told me
you
did this to my ship. Why would you kill a ship Tirran Coud Sabbotaruo? What could you possibly gain by such senseless waste?”

David’s hand trembled. “How about the lives of a few billion people.”

“Once again, I have no idea what you are talking about.” He turned to me. “Jessica Natalie Martinez, please reason with them—in the name of peace.”

I sucked in my bottom lip. Something about his stance. Something about his voice. Come to think about it, there was something about his height, too.

Also his manners. He’d called me Jessica in the lower levels, and he’d called David Tirran, purposely dropping our mother’s names in insult. But this guy had used our full proper names.

“What were you doing before you got here?” I asked him.

He blinked. “Calling the final evacuation. Making sure all my people were safe.”

Well, that certainly didn’t sound like a genocidal maniac. I closed my eyes and listened.

“We were the last to leave,” he continued, “until you people destroyed what was left of the hanger holding my vessel and nearly murdered me.”

His voice seemed to pitch higher than it had earlier. Definitely not the same voice that had threatened us in the basement. I opened my eyes. It certainly looked like him, though.

The ambassador’s nose flared. “Three of my people pulled me away.” He scanned the mounds of debris. “Did you kill them?”

Wow. The set of his eyes—remorse. True, heartfelt remorse. The Erescopian standing before me wasn’t the same dude that attacked us.

“Don’t worry, I think your men got out. I heard footsteps.” I turned to David. “This isn’t who we think it is.”

Dad cocked his rifle-cylinder-thingy and pointed the barrel at the alien’s face.

“No!” I wedged between them. “I mean this is
the real
ambassador. The other guy was a fake.”

David lowered his weapon. “How do you know?”

“Look how short he is. When the other guy threatened us, I looked up into his eyes. He’s smaller, now.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Dad said. “Get out of the way.” He propped the cylinder on his good shoulder.

“No.” David eased my father’s weapon down. “She’s right. The man who did all this was taller, and his voice was deeper.”

Dad glanced at David. “That’s not possible. What did they do, clone him or something?”

David shrugged. “It’s actually not all that hard to make yourself look like someone else.”

“What. Are. You. Gentlemen. Talking. About?” The ambassador pounded his hand in his palm with each word.

“Someone stole your skin,” I said. “There’s two of you running around, and one of you isn’t all that nice.”

Dad groaned. “So we have another civilian to get out of here?”

“Apparently,” David said.

“All right. Let’s get to this other hanger. And keep your eyes open. We might not be the only ones still here.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “And you fill our new friend in on everything he’s missed in the last few days.”

36

The ambassador cradled his head as we rested beside the only wall that wasn’t oozing toward the floor. “I can’t believe I didn’t know what transpired on my own ship. Here I am, entrusted with Earth’s good will, and someone steals my visage and betrays all I’ve worked for.”

“How could you not know there was someone imitating you?” Nematali asked.

“After I left Earth, I was sequestered by the sixth Caretaker to facilitate dispersion of personnel. That was, of course, until the alarms started sounding.” His nose twitched. “I admit that much seemed out of order when I emerged, but the ship had been compromised, and by one of our most trusted scientific advisors.” He glanced at David. “Nothing was as it should be.”

David lowered his gaze. “Bruising the spine was the only thing I could think of doing to get away. It was wrong, but I didn’t have another option. I’m sorry.”

A chunk of the wall bubbled across the floor between David and the ambassador.

Dad stood, adjusting his weapon. “We can all make up later. Right now let’s concentrate on staying alive.” He peeked down the hall. “Masters, where are we going?”

“There.” David pointed down the hall.

The floor rumbled.

The ceiling creaked and moaned.

My father bolted through the corridor. “Move!”

A roar filled my ears. I sprang toward Dad, but David snatched my backpack, whipping me in reverse. The barriers on either side of us cracked and fell to our feet as pieces of the walls broke off and tumbled into the hallway.

David backed me away as the pile grew, cutting us off from Dad and the others.

“Masters! Colin, are you all right?” Dad’s voice called through the settling rubble.

“Yes!” David pulled me toward the top of the pile.

The walls had caved in like the sides of an old mineshaft.

I rubbed the dust on my hands, remembering the dry, dead pieces of the ship we’d found on the green planet. Liquid metal hardened when it died, just like this. We were out of time.

David inched up to a break in the debris near the ceiling. “We can’t get through,” he said. “Nematali Carash, take my ship. Get Jess’s father and the ambassador out of here.”

“You want me to leave you?” Nematali’s voice wavered.

“I’ll try to find another way around.”

“There is a passage,” the ambassador said, “about fifty strides behind you. If the bulwarks still function, it will bring you out beside the maintenance entrance to the hangar.”

David looked over his shoulder. “Okay. We’ll try.”

“Colin,” Dad’s voice said.

“Yes.” David glanced at me.

“That civilian is your responsibility, now. This is what you’ve trained for. You can do this.”

David’s neck tensed. “Yes, sir.” He worked his way back down to me. “Let’s go.”

37

David tapped his disk-shaped weapon and dropped it to the deck.

“Don’t we need that?”

“It’s not working. I think it got smashed in the cave in.”

Great.

At least it sounded like we weren’t too far from the hangar—if the ambassador was right about the side entrance.

The floor reverberated. David felt along the wall.

“Do you know what we’re looking for?”

“A place that isn’t solid.” The muscles in his neck seemed to tense with each part of the wall he tested. His lips tightened before his fist sank into one of the panels. Relief washed over his face. “This is it. Let’s go.”

David took my hand and we sunk into the wall. A familiar, cool sting abated to a warm, sticky pressure.

“Is this all right?” I asked, but bitter sand crept into my mouth. I tried to spit, but I couldn’t breathe. David’s grasp released, and I sank deeper into the wall. “David!”

He gripped my shoulders. I was blind, barraged by tiny, solid particles.

“Jess, you need to move your legs!” David’s voice seemed disembodied, lost.

I tried to dislodge my knee, but it didn’t budge. “I’m stuck.” The muffled words hung in the sandy darkness around me. The last of my breath escaped my lungs. That was it. No more air. I might as well have sunk into quicksand.

My heartbeat thumped in my temples. Fast at first, then slowing.

We weren’t going to make it.

Mom laughed beside me, spitting some of her drink onto the dashboard. “You said what to your father?”

“He was being a total jerk.”

She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, but as funny as that is, he’s your father. You should try to be more respectful.”

“But he was wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Thick, black blobs blotted out Mom’s beautiful face. My lungs burned.
I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry for every mean thing I ever said to you. I’m sorry I got you into this, and I’m sorry I won’t be there to make tacos anymore.

“Jess!” David tugged on my head. I thought it might rip off. “Jess, can you hear me?”

I opened my eyes as he brushed black goo off me.

“Breathe, Jess.”

I gulped down what little air surrounded us. I tried to reach for him, but I couldn’t move, almost as if the wall held me captive. “What happened?”

David dragged his fingers through his hair. “What do you think? The ship is dying. This wall is turning solid.”

Turning solid, with me inside it.

The pressure against my chest deepened.
Oh no!
“It hurts.”

David punched the wall beside my arm. The compression came from both sides, strangling my ribcage.

“David, hurry!”

Striking repeatedly, his fists turned deep lavender. Bits of his human skin hung from his hands. He roared. Inhuman, like in a Godzilla movie.

I took a deep breath and held it, afraid I wouldn’t have the strength to take another. The wall by my left arm cracked. I pulled and wiggled.

Nothing.

David stepped back, mouth open and eyes flashing in different shades of blue. The pressure against my right leg cut and burned. The walls on either side of David shrank toward him.

This was it. I could see it in his eyes.

At least the others got away.

“Leave me. Just save my dad, and don’t let anyone hurt Earth.”

His face twisted into a grimace. His ripped fingers formed shaking fists.

David’s howl echoed through the shrinking chamber as he sprang toward me. What was he doing? I recoiled as he hammered his shoulder against the wall. Again. And again.

“David, stop!”

Again.

He snarled and switched shoulders. Dark liquid seeped through his white shirt.

“Please stop, you’re hurting yourself!”

Both his fists crunched into the wall on either side of my face. “I. Am. Not. Leaving. You.”

His eyes swirled, the bright turquoise deepening closer to navy. His arms shook, rustling the hair at my temples. He closed his eyes and muttered before he pushed away from the wall.

The human covering on his right hand had completely ripped away. Dark blood dripped from his lavender fingers. His irises dimmed to black.

“David?”

He sprang toward me, howling. Pain tore through my left arm. My body jolted. The room blurred in a cloud of dust. Something sliced through my leg.

My cry echoed through my ears. I inhaled, and my lungs filled. Was I free?

A searing hot grip tightened around my arm and heaved. The strain on my other arm was nearly unbearable.

Until it popped.

I sprawled onto the ground atop David. He groaned and rolled me off him.

“Come on!” He hauled me to my feet.

Come on?
I cradled my head and stumbled. My left arm hung loose at my side. David pulled my right hand. Something touched both my shoulders.

The walls.
The walls still surged toward us.

David turned to the side, shimmying down the shrinking corridor. He howled as the partitions pressed against us, until we fell through the end of the corridor into another hallway.

Pain exploded through my shoulder as I gasped for air.

“I think it’s dislocated.” I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall.

David breathed heavily beside me. “Your shoulder structure is like mine. I know how to fix you.”

The walls rumbled around us. His brow furrowed. I wasn’t sure which scared me more: the deteriorating ship, living with the agony pulsing through my arm, or how much it was going to hurt to make the pain go away.

David eased me from the wall and turned me to the side. “Listen carefully. This is what I’m going to do.”

I took a deep breath. Whatever it was, I could live through it. I survived the scourge; I certainly could live through …

Wait. Why wasn’t he talking?

David slammed into me, driving my shoulder against the wall. My scream echoed through the corridor, drowning out the scratching of the shifting partitions around us.

Lights flashed before my eyes. I fell to the floor, my shoulder burning, stabbing, and searing.

I managed a short intake of breath hidden beneath a whimper.

David spun me toward him. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure. I was too afraid to try to move my arm. “I thought you were going to tell me what you were going to do.”