Defenders (39 page)

Kai shook his head. “Honestly, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. If we decided this had to be done, I don’t think we can risk telling anyone—no one at all—until the altered defenders are in place. There are bound to be people dead set against allying with the Luyten—people who’ll give us up to the defenders in a heartbeat to stop us from exposing our throats to the Luyten.”

The weight of Kai’s words felt like a rope around her neck. “Kai, we can’t possibly make this decision by ourselves. If we went ahead with this, we’d be putting
everyone’s
life at risk—”

“If the Luyten is telling the truth, everyone’s life is
already
at risk. Four out of five, Lila. I don’t like those odds, not for us, not for Errol, not for anyone.”

Lila was about to scream at Kai to let her finish, but she caught herself. She wondered if it had been a mistake to tell him at all. She hated herself for wondering that. “This is all moot, because I’m one of those people who are dead set against allying with the Luyten. I don’t trust them. No way. If I discovered someone was doing what we’re talking about doing, I’d squeal to the defenders, too.”

Kai pulled out of their lane, cut in front of a car doing its best not to let them out. The driver leaned on his horn. Lila gave him the finger and glared until he looked away.

Tell me what we can do to prove we can be trusted
, the Luyten said in Lila’s head.

“It just said, ‘Tell me what—’”

“I heard it,” Kai said. He shuddered. “I forgot just how bad that feels.”

“There’s nothing they could do that would make me trust them.”

“They have no pinkies, so I guess a pinkie-swear is out.”

Lila burst out laughing. Maybe it was knowing the Luyten had heard Kai’s ridiculous remark that made it funny. Maybe she just needed an excuse to laugh, to release some of the tension building up inside her as it sank in that the Luyten might back her into a corner so she has no choice but to do this.
If
she could do it. She wasn’t even sure she could. It would be an incredible feat. “We don’t have the right to make this decision, either way.”

Kai chuckled humorlessly.

“What?” Lila asked.

“I’m the Boy Who Betrayed the World.” He waved a hand in the air. “This is what I do.”

Sometimes Lila forgot how heavily that weighed on Kai.

“What if we talk to my dad? We could get
his
opinion, at least,” Kai suggested.

“That sounds like a plan.” Anything to take the weight of this decision off Lila’s shoulders sounded good to her.

“Here they come,” Smythe said. The TV screen in front of Dominique’s seat sprang to life, giving her an aerial view of the compound that had been her home for the past eighteen months. The deep rumble of defender bombers dominated the audio feed.

Bright flashes lit the compound as the defenders’ bombs hit their targets. It reminded her of a Fourth of July finale—there was a cascade of intense explosions, followed by silence. She’d had no doubts the defenders would find their hiding place, but it was shocking to see it destroyed, unnerving that they’d located it so quickly.

“As soon as they discover there are no bodies in that rubble, they’ll be after us,” Forrest said.

“They’re already after us,” Dominique said. Forrest gave her a questioning look. “They’re thorough bastards. They’ll have launched two forces—one to bomb us, the other to hunt us down in case we run.”

Forrest only nodded.

Dominique appreciated that in all these months, no one had ever likened her to Dr. Frankenstein. It would be such an obvious connection to make. In fact, in all the time she’d been at CFS—and before that Colorado Springs—no one had ever made a snide comment about her role in creating the defenders.

“Do people ever say things behind my back, about my role in all this?” she asked Forrest in a whisper.

He leaned in close, whispered in her ear. “The president said if anyone ever criticized you, he’d have their head on a stick. They wouldn’t dare.”

That explained it.

Moments later, the little town of Gakona, Alaska, came into view a thousand feet below. After eighteen months at CFS Alert, Gakona seemed like a thriving metropolis. It consisted of maybe fifty buildings surrounded by nothing but wilderness. Not that they were going to be spending any time in Gakona. Their C-295 banked right, heading toward an airstrip at an air force atmospheric research compound six miles outside the town.

They descended quickly to minimize the risk of being spotted by a patrol, although they’d chosen the location because there seemed little reason for defenders to be in the area. The landing strip was set amid thousands of what looked to be windmills with rotors pointing skyward. Someone on board probably knew what they were, but at the moment Dominique wasn’t the least bit interested in them. They were in defender-controlled territory, and would only be going deeper in. They were the enemy, and if they were caught, they’d be killed.

When the plane came to rest, Dominique hustled outside with the rest and helped unload their supplies as Blake, Sheena, and a few others ran off to locate the BvS10 arctic transport vehicles they’d found in the base’s online inventory.

Before long, the vehicles rolled out from behind a lime-green aluminum building. They looked like oversized SUVs on tracks. As they pulled up, Dominique hefted a box of MREs to load into the flip-up storage compartment.

Two hours later, Blake’s portable radar picked up a squadron of defender fighters heading in their direction. They took the vehicles off-road, bouncing and jarring, weaving through the forest until, they hoped, they were hidden from view. They killed their lights and sat in the dark for twenty minutes before continuing.

With the sun sinking into the trees, they stopped for the night at a long-abandoned logging camp a hundred miles from the nearest paved road. A row of rectangular red clapboard cabins reminded Dominique too much of the barracks at CFS Alert. Rusting appliances—a meat locker, water cooler, washers, dryers—were piled by the weed-choked ruts that passed for a road in front of the cabins.

Dominique grabbed her gear and headed for one of the less decrepit bungalows. She glanced back, looking for Forrest. He was talking to Carmine Wood in front of the lead vehicle. Dominique didn’t want to invite him to share a cabin in front of an audience. She’d have to wait.

Between the cabins, she could see a rickety metal pier on a shallow river, with a contraption that reminded her of a giant sewing machine built into the pier. She pulled open the door, and stopped dead.

There was a Luyten nest in the cabin. Still clutching the doorknob, she watched as President Wood swung open the door of the next cabin. He paused as well, looked at Dominique.

“There’s one in there, too?”

Dominique nodded. She checked the next cabin down. Same thing. The Luyten must have used it as a safe base, back during the war. Normally you wouldn’t find this many nests together, so far from human targets.

“Chief? Look at this.” Forrest was squatting beside an abandoned truck. Dominique followed Wood over.

There was a Luyten tunnel entrance, camouflaged within a trash dump behind the truck. Forrest was kneeling amid the rotting paper, bottles, and cans, peering into the hole.

“They had quite a compound here,” Wood said.

“I wonder if there’s any chance they left weapons behind,” Forrest said. He pressed his face close to the ground, trying to get a better line of sight into the tunnel.

“You’re not thinking of climbing down in there, are you?” Dominique asked.

“I doubt you’d find much,” Wood added.

Forrest shifted left, then right, still trying to get a line of sight. “I don’t have anything else productive to do. I think I’ll grab a flashlight and take a look.”

Dominique resisted the urge to kick his leg, which was splayed beside her foot. She could think of something productive they could do.

“
Jesus!
” Forrest shouted, jerking back.

“What is it?” Wood asked.

He flattened onto his stomach and slid partway into the hole. “I thought I saw something. I swear, it looked like a baby Luyten. Then it was gone.”

A sharp cry of surprise startled Dominique. She whirled.

A Luyten was standing behind them. Dominique gaped at it, then noticed another standing between two of the cabins, fiddling with the exoskeletal battle suit it was wearing.

“They’re
armed
!” Dominique shouted.

She wasn’t the first to notice. Sheena stood unmoving, her rifle leveled at the Luyten closest to her.

“How the
fuck
did they get hold of weapons?” Wood hissed.

Dominique wasn’t concerned about where the weapons came from. If the Luyten chose to use them, they were all dead. But if the Luyten wanted to kill them, they would have done it by now.

“Sheena, put the rifle down,” Dominique said. “You know that’s not going to help us.”

Sheena lowered the muzzle, but held on to the rifle.

“They’re not killing us,” Wood said, half to himself. “Why aren’t they killing us?”

“You
did
sign a treaty with them,” Dominique pointed out.

Leave now.
The words blasted through Dominique’s mind. From Forrest and the president’s reactions, they’d received the same message.

“That’s the best offer I’ve gotten in a long time,” Wood said. He raised his voice. “Let’s go, into the transports.”

No one had to be told twice.

As they crawled along the logging road in the dark, intent on putting a substantial amount of distance between themselves and the Luyten before setting up a camp, Dominique had an epiphany.

“They never gave up those weapons,” she said aloud.

Everyone looked at her.

“How could we possibly verify that all of the Luyten turned themselves in after the war? They knew we couldn’t. Some of them retreated deep into the wilderness instead. They know we’re on the run ourselves and not a threat, so when Forrest started poking around in their tunnels, they decided to simply come up and tell us to get the hell out of Dodge.”

“If you’re right, there must be more than one of those compounds. They could have them all over the world,” Forrest said.

“I’ll bet you anything they do,” Dominique said. They were like fleas on a dog; every time you thought you were rid of them, there they were again.

From his parked car, Oliver watched kids shooting baskets, a couple playing tennis, joggers circling the track. He marveled at the mundane scene. There wasn’t a defender in sight, nothing to indicate that everything had changed.

He spotted Kai and Lila, pulling into a space at the other end of the parking lot. Oliver stayed in his car as they got out and headed across the soccer field, slipped through the gate, and headed down the hiking trail. He allowed three minutes to tick off on the car’s clock before he stepped out of his old Toyota and followed them into the woods.

They were waiting about a quarter mile in, Kai sitting on a fallen tree, Lila pacing.

Lila gave Oliver a fierce hug; Kai smiled and nodded, clearly in pain from the short hike. Every time Oliver saw Kai, he hoped to see some noticeable improvement, but they were more than two years removed from Kai being shot. This might be the best he was going to get. It was a depressing thought.

“So what’s going on?” Oliver asked. He’d been surprised to find the note in his mailbox.

“We were contacted by a Luyten yesterday,” Lila said.

“A Luyten?” Oliver clutched Lila’s arm. “A Luyten spoke to you?” He’d never expected to hear those words again.

As Lila laid out a horrific story of plans to exterminate most of the human race, of the offer of a Luyten alliance, Oliver’s insides roiled. He would need to find a bathroom as soon as their meeting was over. It was a familiar sensation, one he hadn’t missed in the least since he went into hiding.

“You can’t trust Luyten,” he said when Lila was finished. “If we did manage to wipe out the defenders, they’d turn around and wipe
us
out. I have no doubt of that.”

“So what you’re saying is, with or without the Luyten’s help, we can never revolt, because if we win, the Luyten will turn on us,” Kai said.

Oliver hadn’t really thought about it like that before. He wondered if Island Rain’s people had. “If we overthrew the defenders, we’d have to get them to surrender before their numbers were too badly compromised, so they would still be an effective deterrent on the Luyten.”

“That’s quite a balancing act.”

Oliver’s feet were getting tired. He sat on the log, stared off into the bare winter branches. As far as he was concerned, it was too dangerous to do anything the Luyten wanted them to do. They were too powerful, too clever; they’d find an utterly unexpected way to turn things to their advantage. “As soon as we create defenders the Luyten can read, we’ve ceded all control to the Luyten.”

“I agree,” Lila said. “It’s too dangerous.”

Movement among the trees caught Oliver’s eye. Gold patterns, shifting among the bramble and tree boughs in the woods. Oliver stood, straining to see.

Kai stood as well. “What?”

Oliver knew what it was. As it moved closer he could make out the limbs, the eyes. The real jolt of terror hit him when he saw that one of the eyes was nothing but a ruined mass of scar tissue.

“Did either of you bring a gun?” Oliver asked. Although a gun wasn’t much use against a Luyten.

“Holy shit,” Lila said. Five was clearly visible now, passing between trees, branches cracking as it pushed through the underbrush.

I’m not going to hurt you
, Five said. He stepped onto the path.

“Where did you come from?” Oliver said. “Of all the places in the world the defenders could have sent you, you ended up here?”

I ended up in San Antonio. I’ve been traveling for two days to get here.

“
Traveling?
How the hell can you travel?” Lila asked. “What, you told the defenders you had something you needed to do, and hopped on a bus?” So Five was speaking to all of them, not just to him. That was new.