Captives (37 page)

"It
isn't
just friendly advice. So how about we get to the point, then? Sir."

"A proposition." He smiled, eyes disappearing in the folds of his face. "An age-old arrangement between those with power and those at its mercy. Yield to me, and you'll never have to yield to anyone else."

"That's where I thought this was headed," she said. "And your wife?"

"Understands."

Mia snorted. "She does? What exactly does she understand?"

He drank, pulling his lips back from his teeth. "That she's not as young as she feels."

"How sad. As am I. Because I must regretfully decline."

"Who says it's a choice?"

A hot line burned along her backbone. She glanced across the table, but all the cutlery had been cleared. "You don't want to do this."

"I don't?" He ran his eyes up and down her body. "Strip down."

"With all due respect, sir," she said. "Fuck you."

His face went red. His free hand bunched into a club. She braced herself. He raised his glass and took a long drink.

"You spent too much time with the savages," he spat. "Delusions of independence. You forget that things are done a certain way. That there's no shame in tying yourself to someone with the strength to make sure your life stays your own. You know what their attempt to stand alone will get them?" He cut his hand across the air. "Destroyed."

"By who? Anson? He's a man of peace."

"You don't know a god damn thing about him." He chuckled fiercely. "Starting with the fact he's not in charge."

"Is it you, then? The power behind the throne?"

The humor drained from his face, leaving bitter precipitate behind. "They should be so lucky. When the aliens come, they won't leave one of the savages alive. We're nothing but puppets dancing at the end of their tentacles."

23

The alien scuttled forward on its collection of legs. Walt fell back a step. The fetters stopped him short; he stumbled, reeling. The alien shot forth a tentacle and grabbed his wrist. Its grip was as strong as a python's. He pulled against it, righting himself. The alien released him and shuffled back a step, opening a small gap between them.

They were alone in an oval room twenty-five feet long and twenty across at its widest. At one side, two low-slung chairs sat before something that was obviously a computer work station, if one completely inoperable by humans: flat screens, control sticks, sense-pads that captured gestures and translated them into commands.

"What's up?" Walt said.

It produced a device that looked like a less-cool iPad, gesturing above the flat surface. It held the device up to him. In white letters on a black screen, it read, "WHAT IS NAME"

For a moment, all Walt could do was blink. Between what Harry had told him and what he'd seen in the Heart—his leg bracelets, the blue posts that seemed to mark every spot the Stars wanted to keep eyes on—he'd pieced together the gist of things. The Stars were working with the aliens. Feeding them captives in exchange for technology. It was quite possible there was more to it than that, other parts of the bargain he wasn't privy to, but that much was clear. The tech would give the Stars an advantage over everyone else in the area. Meanwhile, by using middlemen to deliver them their humans, the aliens could stay out of sight. Safe from the attacks that had whittled their numbers over the years since the invasion.

As for
why
the aliens needed human deliveries? He had no damn idea. Slaves. Test subjects. Punching bags. Incubators for chest-bursters. The fact the Stars sent over the most useful people implied the aliens were getting some concrete value out of them. Most likely, Carrie was here.

Being deposited in front of an alien, then? Upsetting, but one of the risks of his plan. The fact it was communicating to him in written English, though?
That
was enough to reduce his brains to an overcooked slice of bacon.

The alien waved the pad at him, gesturing senselessly.

"What is name?" Walt said out loud. The alien produced another pad and thrust it into Walt's hands. Walt gazed down at it as if it were a fairy or a dragon's egg. Hesitantly, he dragged his finger across the screen, writing, "A name is what we use to identify ourselves."

It gestured over its pad. "NO THE NAME OF YOURS"

"My name?" he said. On the pad, he wrote, "Dalton Patrick."

The alien bent over this. It looked up and lashed him across the face with a whip-thin tentacle. While he was still reeling, it wrote, "NO YOUR TRUE NAME"

"That
is
my name," he wrote. "What do you want?"

"THE NAME YOU GAVE ANSON"

"What name did I give him?"

The alien struck him again. "WALT LAWSON WALT LAWSON WALT LAWSON"

Walt rubbed his stinging face and wrote, "The dude who blew you guys up?"

"WHO BROUGHT THE SHIP FROM SKY TO SEA"

"Yeah. Well, I'm not him."

The creature stared at him, its fist-sized eyes unblinking. "YOU SAID YOU ARE"

"It's true," he wrote. "But that was a lie. I was a slave. I wanted out."

"HOW DOES THIS GET YOU OUT"

"You might not like hearing this, but to humans, that guy's like the biggest hero in history. If Anson thought I was Walt, he wouldn't dare keep me imprisoned."

"BUT YOU LIE"

"That's right. I lied. Wouldn't you?"

It pointed a claw in his face, clacking its points together. "NO YOU LIE TO ME"

"What do you want, a birth certificate? My name is Dalton Patrick!"

"THE LIES OF YOUR HEART ARE SICKNESS WITH NO CURE"

The alien whirled and clattered across to the computer station. Limbs flew across the controls. The screen came to life, flashing through its abstract operating system. An image filled the screen: an arena-like arrangement of stadium seating. Dozens of aliens at computers. Up front, a gigantic window; it was night, the landscape dark, but Walt recognized the long sweep of Santa Monica Bay, the towers of Los Angeles climbing from the mist.

The video began. Its point of view was fixed, security cam-style. There was no sound. There wouldn't be; they had no sense of hearing. The footage was indistinct. "Grainy" would be the wrong word. It wasn't pixellated. More like smeary. Impressionistic. At points, it hung up, or jumped forward in gaps as long as a second or two, the aliens on the screen seeming to teleport from one place to the next. Even if he'd spent enough time with the aliens to differentiate them, the quality was low enough that he would have had a hard time identifying one from another.

Yet when the two men charged into view, firing their lasers at anything that moved, he recognized them on the spot. He fought so hard not to grin he nearly broke his jaw.

It was incredible how fast it played out. Within a minute, every alien on the bridge was dead. He and Otto departed. The only motion was the view outside the window as the coastline grew nearer. The alien stopped the video and began to replay it.

"Can you zoom in?" Walt wrote. The alien stared. "Blow it up?" he tried. "Make it bigger and easier to see?"

It made a spinning gesture, then turned to the computer. The image paused and zoomed in on the smaller of the two men. Rather than sharpening, or maintaining its resolution, the closer it got, the less distinct it became. The man on the screen could have been Walt—there was the beard, the build; his features appeared to have the same general arrangement—but it was too indistinct to pass a police lineup.

Then again, to the alien's eyes, it probably looked like a perfect match.

Walt tapped on the screen, indicating the man's arm, then motioned an expanding gesture. The alien zoomed in further. Walt gestured again. Another zoom made the arm on the screen nearly life-sized.

Walt pointed to the arm on the screen, then to his own. On the pad, he wrote, "Do you see?"

"SEE WHAT"

"This man. Look at how pale his arm is. How white. Now, look at mine."

The man on the screen was visibly lighter—it had been the end of winter, L.A.'s rainy season, and Walt had spent much of it hiding inside buildings. By contrast, over the last few weeks of his life, he'd gotten nothing but sun: biking along the coast; fleeing up and down the agricultural inland; accompanying Mia to Vandenberg; traveling down the shore to L.A. As if that weren't enough, it had been capped off by a week of boat fishing and a second week pulling weeds in the farms of the Heart. He was the most tan he'd ever been.

Compared to the man on the screen, he looked like a different ethnicity. He was no expert on alien physiology, but aside from some mottling and such to their skin, they were all pretty much the same shade of gray. He was pretty sure they didn't have melanin. He was damn certain they didn't tan.

The alien spent a long time gazing between the two arms. Eventually, it drew its claws tight to its body and straightened, facing him as it conjured letters onto its pad. "YES BUT THIS IS YOU"

"How do you know that?" Walt wrote. "Were you there? Did you witness it?"

"NO WITNESS"

"Did one of your friends? Are there
any
witnesses?"

"NO NO WITNESS"

"Why not?"

"EVERYONE ON SHIP DEAD FROM CRASH"

"Then if I'm Walt Lawson," Walt wrote, "how did
I
survive?"

The alien stared. Its two thick sense-pods lifted, as if hunting for answers, then retracted. Without another word, the alien pivoted and raced from the room, closing the door behind it.

Walt stood there, waiting. The screen continued to show the not-so-telltale arm. The forearm bore two spots that might have been moles. Worrying, except that his arm currently had
three
moles on it. Then again, skin cancer wasn't exactly a comforting thought either.

He was just about ready to start trying the doors when the one the alien had gone through opened up. A person stepped inside dressed in loose-fitting clothes leeched of all color. Between that and the short dark hair, it took Walt a moment to decide it was a woman.

"This way," she said.

"Not to be a rude guest," he said, "but do you mind telling me where we're headed?"

"Your hole."

"Sounds charming. At least it's not an incinerator." He followed her out into a dim tunnel that smelled faintly of salt. Recessed lights burned at irregular intervals along the walls. Still had power, then, but not exactly ship shape. The whole thing was curious, though. Granted, it had been a couple years since he'd last been down here, but on his last visit, they'd done their best to eradicate every single alien taking refuge in the downed vessel. Either they'd missed a spot, or others had come back. "What is this place?"

"Zone Zero," the woman said without looking back.

"I've heard of that." Wouldn't hurt to play dumb. If the Dead Stars were in bed with the aliens, there was no telling how the people here felt about Anson's gang. "But where
are
we?"

"Don't you recognize it? If you're from the city, you've seen it every time you look out to sea."

"Is this… the ship?"

She smiled over her shoulder. "Looks a little more impressive from the outside, doesn't it?"

"What are we doing here?"

"Me? Whatever they tell me to. You? I don't have the foggiest idea."

She turned a corner, then opened a door into a chamber that smelled like a gym mat drenched in salt water. The walls were studded with orange disks like vertical manhole covers. She gestured above a pad set into the wall beside one of the disks and the door opened with a slurp.

"In you go," she said.

"Hang on. I just got here and I'm dealing with a little culture shock. Would you mind explaining what humans are doing on an alien-controlled vessel?"

The woman shook her head. "Whatever they ask. Sometimes we clean things. Tend their food vats. When there's a breach, we're the ones who pump out the water." She gazed back toward the hall. "It's big and it's broken. Something's always going wrong somewhere."

"Then why are they here? Why not hole up on a deserted island instead?"

She laughed mockingly. "I'm still waiting to hear back from them on that one."

"Strange question," he said. "But do you know a woman here named Carrie? My age, about your size, dark hair?"

"No," she said. "But like I said, it's a big place. Now hop inside."

The hole was too dark to see inside. Somehow, he doubted it had room service. "I've got another idea. How about you close your eyes and count to fifty?"

"Don't make this any harder than it has to be."

"Okay, you don't have to count."

"What do you think is going to happen? You're going to fight your way through the tunnels and make a run for the surface?"

"Something like that. Really, exactly like that."

"There's no getting out of here." She leveled something sleek and black. "Now get in the hole before I drag you into it."

He was tempted to try a flying tackle. Wrestle the weapon away from her, stuff
her
in the hole, and make a go of it. Problem was, that would be it. He'd have to locate Carrie on the run. Doing as he was told would mean running the risk of facing alien justice, but it was the only chance he had to have time to find her.

The hole was at chest level. That meant his only option was to climb in face-first. He sighed and did so, entering a nook lined with something rubbery and slightly damp. At least there was enough room to turn around. He did so just in time to see the door slurp shut behind him.

After her footfalls faded, he was left in not-quite silence, the white noise his ears created in the absence of all other sound. He didn't feel any engines running or even the wash of the tides.

So the aliens were back. Using humans to interface with L.A. The ship itself was beyond repair—he and Otto had exploded the fuck out of it, and the crash had cracked the hull like a pistachio. Unless it was more modular than it looked, they couldn't be here to try to get it back in the air. So what was the deal? Were they here for their jets? To turn the remnants into an ocean fortress, like it had been before he helped that dork Karslaw get inside? With a sympathetic human force on land—a group that seemed intent on taking the entire Los Angeles Basin for themselves—the ruins of the ship might well be the safest haven the aliens could find.