Nemesis: Book Five (20 page)

"
I
don't know
what we can do," Michael said. "I mean, attacking isn't even an option, and everything I learn from him shows no way to beat them."

The three still remained in the bedroom, no one wanting to venture out. The grays were arriving, slowly, but coming all the same. Bryan could look out the window and see a scattering of ten, with two more appearing on the horizon. The voices brought them, perhaps the vibrations created through this silent world, or perhaps they just had some kind of super hearing. Either way, they were coming, and Bryan certainly had no interest in seeing them again.

Looking at Michael now, he saw something close enough.

Gray, transparent, with eyes like golf balls.

Michael would be okay. He had to be. It didn't matter what he looked like right now, Bryan could help. Even if he couldn't beat Morena, that didn't mean he couldn't keep Michael from turning into one of them.

They just needed a plan, something that would free him from the other creature's grasp.

And yet, no one had a clue.

"Are you okay?" Wren asked. "We've been here for a while, and I … I guess I don't know what is happening with you. Is it getting worse?"

"I feel alright," Michael said. "But I really don't know anymore than you do. I don't know how long I can stay over here; I don't even know if time is the same."

"It's not," Bryan said. "It can't be. I feel like we've been here for at least a day, but the sun has barely moved outside."

Bryan watched as Wren turned to the window; he might have glanced out it a few times before, but his attention was mostly focused on Michael.

"A full day and nothing gained," Michael said, looking out as well.

Which was true, and frightening. Bryan came here because he thought that seeing Michael would bring some insight, but he found nothing here besides reunion. And reunion wasn't enough.

"He's dying," Michael said. "Her husband or whatever. He doesn't know it yet, but it's happening."

"Why?" Bryan asked.

"No idea. I found him over here after you left. I don't know if it was here or what happened on their home planet, but he's being eaten alive. Not my body, but his … I don't know, soul, maybe?"

"What happens when he dies?" Wren said.

Michael said nothing, only looked out the window.

"It'll take you, too?" Bryan said. "If it takes him, you'll go down with it?"

"I think."

Bryan watched as the delicate mirror he had placed together shattered. He could feel the pieces of glass breaking into even tinier shards. He couldn't save anyone. Not Thera. Not Michael. And what did he give up to be here? His parents. His girlfriend. All of it for nothing if Michael died.

"You can't," he whispered. "You can't die."

Michael smiled absently, not looking around. "I wish that were true."

"How long does he have?" Wren said.

"I don't know. He's sleeping more, and I think it's because of the sickness. He'll notice soon, probably—when it gets bad enough."

"Can she heal him?" Wren said.

"I don't know. I'm not sure this is like what she did with my body and yours. I think it might be too deep for her."

"How are you able to come here?" Bryan said, realizing he was changing the subject, but the thought sprung up in his mind. Something obvious, not yet no one had asked it. "How do you get over here like they do?"

Michael looked at him. "There's a curtain." His eyes glazed over a bit, as if remembering what he saw. "I reach for it, but I can't pull it back, instead, my hand moves through it, and when I keep going, I end up here. Like, it's a curtain in my mind, separating reality from here."

"Before, before you found
him
—how did you get here?" Bryan asked, following a thread that he couldn't see the end of.

"He brought me. He brought me the whole way, from your house, to this world, and then all the way across this world."

"He?" Wren said.

"Yes, her husband. He felt me somehow." Michael's eyes regained focus, and he turned to Wren. "I got lost in everything that happened. Holy shit. I didn't even think about how it was all possible. The colors. That's what it was; that's how he saw me."

"Michael, slow down," Wren said. "Just slow down—we don't know what you're talking about."

"Look, before we found Bryan, I started to see these colors everywhere. I didn't know what they were, but they were alive, Dad. And now … Jesus Christ, I think they were souls."

"No," Bryan said. "Auras. They're called auras."

Michael snapped around. "Yes! That's what they were. I saw them, more than I could count. And one of them, I breathed it in. I took it into me, and then woke up over here."

"You what?" Wren said.

"It went through my nose and filled my lungs. That's when he felt me. It had to be, and then he started pulling me to him because he needed someone he could inhabit. That aura, it changed me. It allowed him to see me."

"And now you come and go through this place as you please …,” Bryan said, seeing the thread's end. A way that Michael might live.

"Not as I please. Something about being here is destroying me; it's turning me into them."

Bryan didn't say anything. He stared at his shoes, assuring himself that the next words he spoke were words he actually wanted to say. It might work, but it meant everything from the first time might happen again.

Was it worth it?

If Michael lived? Was Bryan ready to go through all of that again? He could think of no other way, nothing else that might separate him from Morena's dying husband.

He saw Thera's face, then. A white mess of strands moving through her eyeballs, eating her intestines the same as a bacteria. He saw her lying in that forgotten ditch, braver than he, and dead for it. He did nothing while she went after Morena, only watched. And would he do that again? Would he shy away from possible pain, let fear dictate his actions?

He looked up at Michael, whose eyes still shone with the knowledge he just discovered. "I want you to try something."

* * *

B
riten remembered almost nothing
.

He had never felt something so strange, almost as if he'd been born only hours before. He lay on the couch, staring up at the ceiling but unable to make himself move.

The boy was gone, and with him, all his memories. Briten had his own, everything from his childhood until his and Morena's near execution, but everything that he knew from this world was gone. The boy took everything with him, and Briten sat in a body he didn't know, with a history he couldn't access.

Where had he gone? And more importantly, what did it mean? Briten still controlled the body, but the mind? Yes, that was his alone now too. Could he use it as well as Michael, or had Briten relied on him the entire time?

"Morena!" he shouted from the couch.

"She's not here," a woman's voice came back.

Briten looked to his right; Rigley stood at the living room's entrance. Unannounced and for how long? He didn't have time to consider it, though. This psychotic woman didn't really matter.

"Where is she?" he said.

"Outside, I think."

Briten sat up, but didn't stand. He looked around the room, making sure he understood where he was and what he saw. The boy hadn't taken the present moment from him, thank The Makers.

He stood and passed by the woman without looking at her. He walked through the parlor and out the door, where chilly air met his body. He only wore a … but he didn't know what to call the garment on his chest any longer. When he went to sleep, he could have used the boy's memory to find out what he wanted to know. Now, he only knew he was cold and not even the word to ask for something that might warm him up.

"Makers," he said as he looked out at the endless white yard. "Morena!" He didn't see her anywhere, not even above, in the sky. He turned back to the door, seeing that Rigley had followed him. "Where did she go?"

"I don't know."

The woman stared at him with accusing eyes. Her pale, thin skin filled up her whole face as her eyes squinted down on him. She wasn't manic, though. She was focused right now. She could stare all she wanted—he didn't care. He needed to speak with Morena, and whatever this woman wanted could wait.

He broke eye contact with Rigley and walked across the porch and into the yard, letting the strands touch his bare feet. They would know what he wanted once they touched him, and hopefully they would send it to Morena, because he certainly couldn't scream loud enough for her to hear.

Briten stood, not moving, and waited—searching his own head for any clues about what happened. He found none. Everything that once decorated the inside of his head was gone: the library, the creature glancing over all his own thoughts. Empty, except for memories created by a dead body.

He saw her eventually—her green carrying her through the air. Even now, with this stress weighing down on him, his heart filled at seeing her. It didn't matter the distance, she would come. Always.

She landed and they embraced, briefly, before Briten pulled back. "He's gone. The boy."

"Which one?"

"The one inside me."

Morena's mouth opened slightly, the shock he felt transferring to her.

"And you're here? You're not dead?" she asked.

“No … I don't know. Should I be?" He smiled at her question—as if he should understand what happened when the human left. As if this wasn't all completely new.

"Yes," Morena said, not smiling back. "When I was with them, if they died, I died." She reached up and touched his face, moving her head closer as well. "You're here. That's all that matters." She leaned her forehead to his, closing her eyes, and he understood how worried she had been—even if only for a moment, that he might die right here in front of her.

After a moment she pulled away.

"Where did he go, do you know?"

Briten shook his head. "No. I woke up, and he wasn't here. Just me."

Neither spoke for a few seconds.

"I want to show you something," she said. "I want you to see it while it's happening."

"You're not worried about this?"

"I just want you to see this before it's too late. We'll find him if we need to, but if we don't, we may not get another chance to watch."

Briten went with this wife into the air, leaving the question of Michael and survival back on the ground—as she would always come, he would always follow.

* * *

"
L
ook at him
."

Morena's eyes shone bright as they looked down at the world below. It took them time to get here, and neither spoke during their flight. Morena normally didn't process new information for long, and while this might take longer than usual, she didn't pull him away because of it. She truly wanted Briten to see this, to see the son that he never had doing what he was bred to do. Briten was alive—sick, but alive—and she could be okay with that right now. Just for a bit, while they watched.

She didn't know the name of the city they hovered above, looking down as if they were The Makers. The name of the city wasn't important, only what Junior did below.

Fire roared beneath, covering buildings that reached to a hundred feet from them. He wasn't flying, but walking, a mere speck except for his pale blue aura that consumed all around him almost like the flames. People tried to oppose him briefly, but then they fled, all of them running for a safety they would never find. Not from him; not from Bynimian. Her son ruled down there, and if Morena ever doubted Bynimian's ability to conquer this planet, it faded as she watched him.

Morena wouldn't go closer though. She wouldn't venture down to where Junior walked.

She would watch from this vantage point, but to go closer? To watch the things he did from an arm's length distance? Even from here, she saw the difference in Junior. The same one that Briten spoke about. Morena did things that were cruel; she understood that, but she hadn't done them out of
cruelty
. Junior …

He was frightening.

She couldn't think of any other word to describe it. His actions …