Nemesis: Book Four (3 page)

H
elos opened
her eyes and saw the space around her. To open one's eyes without a body was a shocking experience, though Helos couldn't deny that was what happened. She looked around but didn't see herself anywhere, she saw only… the universe.

It stretched open before her, black space littered with tiny dots of light. She saw no massive planets, no asteroids, only
space
in every direction.

Who am I?
she wondered.

A long, long time had passed since Helos took any form, and—regardless of whether or not she had form now—she certainly was more now than she was a moment before. What she looked at now might be real, but was she? Did one live without a body? Did one live without any substance at all? Only her thoughts said she existed, but no one else could hear them.

Helos stared out into space for a long time, a deep search happening inside and outside of her. She searched for herself, for her past, though both seemed far away—if they ever existed at all. Still, she felt that she had once been something besides this current ghost. What had she been, besides the name Helos? Where had she come from, and why was she here now?

Mother
.

The word came to her from a deep cavern inside her consciousness. A single word, but something that fit. Helos once had a mother, and she once had been a mother.

To whom?

She was close now, or rather much closer than when she first opened her eyes.

She saw nowhere to travel, nowhere to go. She could only remain and think, remain and search for what the word mother meant, to try and understand why it fit so well.

Where had she been before this? Understanding that was the key to understanding everything. If she could remember then she could follow whatever trail put her here, in this ever expanding space. Things—beings, maybe—had moved around her, and yet, they were part of her as well. She had been them. Where was that? What was that? What happened to it? The questions went on and on, the answers elusive.

Go back to the word. Go back to mother. That will be your starting point and everything else will expand from there.

So she did, focusing on that single idea.

A tiny field of rocks floated by her, so close that she could have reached out and touched them had she possessed limbs.

Had you possessed an aura.

The thought floated by, the same as the rocks before her, unbidden, but containing a force she didn’t expect.

An aura. You did have an aura, once. A color that surrounded you and did your bidding and you did its. You were one with it, the same as you were one with the beings before. You were a mother with an aura, and there were others like you, and when it came time for your life to end, you went to the rest of them, to those like you.

Where are they now?

Memories came to Helos.

She remembered her daughter, Morena. She remembered her own mother, Graci. She remembered The Tower, remembered going to it at the end, remembered being united with the other….

Vars.

Mothers.

Var.

Mother.

Where are they?
Panic didn't rise, but the question was the most pertinent question she might have ever asked. Because she existed in deep space instead of The Tower; her sisters, the other Vars, no longer surrounded her. Because no planet existed, and she realized now that it should have. The place she inhabited was once owned by a rock that the inhabitants called Bynimian. She once watched over Bynimian, watched over the inhabitants, just as a mother would her children. She protected them and led them, and they had been right here, in this very spot that now contained nothing but her singular consciousness and cold space.

Bynimian had been her home.

The home of all the Vars and all their children. And it was gone. Everything that should have been here was gone.

A dark, all pervasive sadness rolled across Helos' consciousness. Everyone she ever knew, everything that her kind ever built. Destroyed. She was alone for the first time in her life, and she looked out at desolation, nothing but uninhabited space and rock.

And then, as she realized whatever life she once lived, or planned to live inside The Tower, was over, a light appeared in the distance. It outshone everything else, brighter than any of the other stars dotting the universe. A singular, magnificent dot that reached Helos from endless light years.

Morena
. The thought was simple, full of longing and love. The light was Morena and the thought brooked no argument. Her daughter lived—across the universe, but alive. How was that possible? How was any of what Helos now felt and saw possible? The whole of it stretched her ability to comprehend.

Just as she realized who she now saw, that perhaps everything she once knew hadn't ended, the world around Helos turned black, and she saw nothing.

M
ichael walked among the grays
.

He didn't know what else to call them, though he knew the name was normally reserved for aliens. Gray men that came and abducted people, performing experiments. The aliens were supposedly intelligent creatures that traveled across space.

The grays that Michael saw didn't appear to be anything like that. Michael walked amongst a group of still, quiet, and perhaps mindless creatures—lacking any intelligence. They all stood staring at the house behind him, as if waiting on something, though Michael didn't know what. He hadn't spoken since he left Bryan and the house, hadn't dared say anything now that he walked out here in their midst. He traveled through them rather than around them, moving straight through their bodies as if his was only air. He wasn't though, and neither were they; two forces somehow coalescing for a single moment, separating again the instant Michael's feet took him through.

He left the house because of what he felt, what he told Bryan about. Something lived here besides these grays. They appeared endless; no matter how many steps Michael took, he couldn't see the end of the sea they made. Still, he felt something
else
much different than these things.

Michael knew he could go back whenever he wanted, that crossing back over would be easy, but he didn't know if he could ever return here. Once back in reality, on the other side of this gray place, he might be stuck there, and might lose whatever was here. He didn't question or worry about his need to figure out the mystery of this place—it pulled him as naturally as the colors on the other side had grabbed his attention.

Michael saw the creature turn its face from the corner of his eye.

He stopped walking, but didn't turn to look. He didn't want to move because if he looked toward the gray, toward the one that now faced him, he thought that they would all turn to him. They would all see him and fall upon him like lions on an antelope. He would die out here, in this wilderness of no color.

He couldn’t do anything else, though. Walking or turning to look was all the same—moving. He hadn't felt fear the entire time this… change... occurred. Until now. Something about this place and these grays was different than reality. Yet, here he stood and if they ripped him apart, then he could do nothing about it. His whole life had been the same, his father’s unpredictable sea of vodka instead of gray, but still, he had come to realize that he controlled very little, and the only way to ride the sea was to not fight it.

He turned and looked at the gray. It faced him fully, the only being not looking toward the house (though Michael was too far away to see it now). The thing's eyes were white, and were the only truly solid part of it, like smooth golf balls sitting inside an ephemeral head. Its face was emotionless, its skin with no blemishes or wrinkles.

"Why are you here?"

The words came out like a cat's screech, loud and echoing across the entire expanse of its brothers. They sliced through the air like blades, attacking everything that they touched, making Michael wince as his eardrums vibrated from the noise. No one moved though; no one turned to see either the creature screaming or the person it screamed at.

Michael swallowed but didn't drop his eyes.

"I'm looking for something." His own words sounded weak, pathetic, in response. He felt certain that they reached the gray, but he sounded like a child talking to a god. It was the truth, though, even if he didn't know what he was looking for, or why.

The creature said nothing, only stood staring.

And then it started walking, its feet moving across the pavement just as Michael's had moments before. It didn't need to pass through the other grays, though, because they moved out of its way. Stepping forward and backward without averting their eyes from the direction of Bryan's house.

Run!
The thought flooded his mind.

No
, another came, a calmer one.

Michael didn't move, not even when the gray reached him, its face a mere inch away from his own. No breath moved from the thing's mouth; the body was completely still, like that of the dead.

"You need to stay," it said, its voice now a whisper, but still somehow holding on to the scream’s edge—like metal being dragged across concrete.

Michael stared at it, unsure what to do or say.

The gray turned, facing Bryan's house. Michael kept on looking for a few seconds, sure that it would speak again, that something else had to happen.

The gray made no more noise, said no more words. It took Michael a few minutes to gather himself, to find the strength in his legs to keep moving forward, to turn his back on the goddamn thing. The pull, though; it was too great, and eventually, he did start walking.

T
ime passed
, though Michael didn't know how much. Time existed here, but not the way it did in reality. Michael was miles from Bryan's house, a distance which normally would take an hour to walk, but yet he didn’t know whether he started a minute or a decade ago. He wasn't tired and not a drop of sweat appeared on his body. Perhaps he was already dead, walking forever because forever was the time he had left.

No
, he thought.
That's the panic again. It's not real.

He wasn't dead and if he needed to remember, he only had to think back to the gray that told him he needed to stay. He could think back to Bryan and the conversation they had in the house. He was alive and here because he wanted to be. He wasn't lost; hell, how could he get lost in this place, he grew up here, if only a much more colorful version of
here
.

You can still cross back over.
He could feel the the statement’s truth, but an unsaid portion was there as well. That time was running short. He would have to cross back soon, or live here forever. Like everything else, he shouldn’t know this, but he did. He could try to deny it, walking through this land of the non-living, but it wouldn't matter—this place's end was coming toward him whether he believed it or not.

It's close, though. Much closer than when I started.

And it was. He could see markers that told him where he was, but the further he walked, the more the world seemed to change. White, semi-soft cords were underfoot now, and getting thicker the further he walked, covering more and more of the ground beneath his feet. That, combined with the innumerable grays, stole much of his surroundings’ relevance. He wasn't following any known path, but only the draw of the other. He felt it growing too, like a magnet getting closer and closer to its opposite. He could leave right now, and was beginning to think that if he didn't leave soon, he wouldn't be able to—but the pull kept him moving.

Michael reached the crest of a hill, the road no longer asphalt beneath him, just white cords covering everything now. Michael looked down the hill and saw what he had searched for, maybe fifty feet from him. He paused for only a second, and then started walking again, heading directly for it, crossing through the gray shapes like water through a cloth bag.

He stopped just outside the outer ring, and that's what it was, without a doubt. A ring of grays, of the non-living as Michael had come to think of them. They created a circle with a circumference of maybe thirty to forty feet, all of them facing the direction of Bryan’s house, as if they didn't recognize the beauty of what they stood around.

Michael had never seen anything like it before.

The creature was male, though definitely not a man. He hovered in the air, perhaps three feet off the ground. His arms were out to his side, as if on an invisible cross. His eyes were closed and his face looked completely at peace, not like death, but only a dreamless sleep.

And around him, in air containing no wind, the color red rippled to the creature's right. Color wasn't the exact word though, because it held some substance as well, had even more depth than the colors Michael saw on the other side of this world—and it emanated from the creature, as if attached to him.

Michael stood just outside the ring, looking on at the being’s majesty.

After a minute or two of watching the red whip around the creature, Michael stepped inside the ring of grays.

They all turned and watched as he approached the creature hanging like Christ.

B
ryan held Julie’s hand
, but only because she wouldn't let go. His mother sat to his left and his father in the front passenger seat. Wren drove and Michael lay in the back. Bryan knew all this only because his senses brought it to him. He didn't actually care about any of it in the slightest. To him, the people in this car were little more than dolls that someone had shoved into his life. He couldn't find the energy, the emotion to reach out to them in any meaningful way.

Bryan had been able to come back—for just a bit—when he saw Michael in the Ether, as (
don'tsayhername
) that other being thought of it. For a moment, he was himself. Bryan had focused, perhaps out of fear or perhaps because Michael was there. It didn't matter now. That part of him, one of those broken shards, had fallen away and back into the pile with the rest of the glass.

He stared ahead as the car rolled forward, all of them trying to exit this death-trap. Only white lay behind them now, a growth that they barely missed. Bryan saw it, but didn't care. He knew that it would most likely cover the house he grew up in just as it did the one's he watched through the car windows. He didn't care.

Thera.

That's what he cared about.

Because he thought that white substance most likely covered her now, too. It had found the hole and grown into it, then found Thera and probably filled her open mouth with its perfect white. She was lying out there all alone, buried beneath a substance that no one understood.

And he was alive.

He was riding in the car next to his family.

Bryan swallowed, but no tears rose to his eyes.

You have to go get her,
he thought.
Once Michael is safe, you have to go back in and you have to get her out of there. No matter what it takes.

The thought was as much him as any of the other pieces, just another shard of glass reflecting light for a single second. And still, the light it reflected caught in his mind—because he made a promise, and now he was running from it.

Michael, then Thera
. He needed to see Michael safely back here; he needed to make sure that Michael would make it out of this alive, if anyone could. Once that was done, or as done as Bryan could hope to make it, then he would go back to Thera. Go back and lie down next to her, and let the white that consumed her consume him as well. They had been one for a little while, and they could be one again.

"That's him!" Julie said.

Bryan's mind snapped away from the shards of glass reflecting thoughts into his mind, coming to the present. Fear rose up in him like some great monster from a deep ocean.

Julie finally let go of his hand and was reaching over the back of the seat, pointing.

Bryan turned around and looked, seeing a man walking as stiff as he and Thera had just a couple days ago.

"That's the man. The one that held us!" Julie shouted.

Bryan let out a sigh and turned back to the front of the car.

"No. That's not a man any longer."

T
he first coherent
thought from Will was,
It's a female.

It didn't take long for him to have that thought, but for a few moments, fear the size of planets gripped him. The creature, the
she
, had entered him and taken control. As colloquial as it sounded, there wasn't any other way to put it. Will felt her enter, felt her grab hold—not slowly, not gently, but with a raw strength that said simply his wishes had no place inside his body any longer. He tracked her entering, tracked her beginning to take over, and then the fear of rape grabbed him, shook his whole core.

His training brought him back. The training always brought him back, wherever he was and whatever happened. God Bless the USA and God Bless the Training.

It's a female
, he thought with not just a little awe. He realized it when he stared at her, when she spoke with him and then with Marks, but to have her enter him relayed even more information about her. She… she was a monster and at the same time, something different too.

Will knew he wasn't safe. That regardless of this thing's gender, normal stereotypes didn't apply to her. She would murder him, was
going to
murder him the moment she finished what she set out to do—and there wasn’t any doubt about what she wanted, either. Her focus was singular, a bright light that honed in on only one thing. She wanted Kenneth Marks.

And part of that made Will happy.

Because this thing, this
she
, didn't want to sit down and converse with the man. Will couldn't tell with any specificity what she wanted, but he knew it wasn't a chat. She was dangerous, and if she could hurt Marks, that would be just fine in Will's book.

He could still feel the poisoned capsule in his mouth, though he couldn’t control his muscles. He hadn't even thought about using it, mainly because he had been so enraptured with her. And now, he really didn't want to. He would die before this was over, and though he had thought that for much of this ordeal, perhaps he had also hoped that he wouldn't. He saw that wasn't a possibility any longer, that however this creature had taken him, when she was done, she would dispose of him the same as Marks.

She didn't hate Marks; Will didn't feel that from her, but she wanted something from him, just as she did Will. He was the vehicle that she would use to get to Marks. The same end for both though, yet Will would open his doors and let her ride if it meant he got to watch Marks get what he deserved.

The creature,
Mona? Maureen?
He was close to knowing her name, but still couldn't quite grasp it—she figured everything out easily enough. She searched through his head with an efficiency that Will envied. She had done it before though, hadn't she? Yes, she had experience in this matter.

And a thought broke through the dirt of Will's mind, like the first piece of green a flower shows as it pushes from its seed out into the sunlight.

How had he forgotten about her? The girl that looked out at him from the door, staring with dead eyes and not a single thought of panic running through her head.

Yeah, I forgot,
he thought.
I forgot because I was going to kill her anyway. I was going to kill everyone in the town if it stopped this infection.

But what happened to her? Where is she now, because she certainly wasn't flying in those clouds.

Morena knew where to go because she searched through his mind to find out exactly how he got here and how he planned to get back. She would take him back to Knox and Marks would show up to meet this creature.

But what about that girl?

Will had been so content with stopping this thing that it really didn't matter who got in the way. Collateral damage.

Her name was Thera.

He remembered that.

I was going to kill her. But
she
did instead.

Did anyone else remember her? What about her parents? Were they alive or had this creature gotten them to? What about the boy and girl he kept in the motel room? Did they remember, or was Will the only one alive, the only one that her memory still lived with?

The world moved in front of Will, much like it might move before a paraplegic being pushed in a wheelchair, yet he didn't panic. Maybe the training kept it at bay, or maybe the thought of the girl he saw briefly at the door. The girl that he had been willing to kill, and yet the creature that now controlled him did it instead.