Текст книги "Arrival"

Автор книги: A.G. Wilde

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter Nine

ADIRA

The alien clutches me as he heads through the trees.

If I lift my head, I can see where he’s going but that doesn’t help much.

I thought darkness was my ally.

I was wrong.

It’s his.

His suit melds seamlessly into the night. Even if I’d be fast and silent, I wouldn’t have spotted him before he caught me.

This had been his plan all along.

I shudder, my gaze flicking around through the darkness, as I try to think of a plan.

My senses are overloading and the more the seconds pass the more fear overcomes me.

I’m so terrified, my body is shaking and I cannot stop it.

The alien stops abruptly and I hear when he inhales. The intake of air sound loud in the stillness of the night.

I stop moving, desperately trying to prevent myself from shaking when the alien makes a sound that sends a new wave of terror down my spine.

It is a hiss, one like an alligator would make.

I know enough about animals to recognize it’s obviously a warning sound, though I don’t know what I’ve done to cause him to respond in such a way.

He has me at his mercy.

There’s not much I can do.

For what feels like painfully long seconds, the alien remains rooted in the spot.

His lack of motion doesn’t calm me in one bit.

“W—What do you want from me? From us?” I whisper.

There’s a lot of vibration in his chest and he clicks a few words.

I lift my head and squint. My eyesight isn’t the greatest but I don’t see any of his kind around.

He is talking to me.

Despite the hiss, his words don’t sound hostile, but I could be wrong.

I’m no good with languages. Especially, ones I’ve never heard before. Alien ones.

Abruptly, the alien starts walking again and we break through the tree line. Lifting my head, I strain as to look over his shoulder. He’s heading toward the water.

I can see it shimmer in the light of the moon.

Movement catches my eye and another surge of fear envelops me.

There’s more of his kind waiting there.

Like shadows in the night, I barely make out their shapes in the darkness as we pass them.

I count at least six and one thing is evident in the way the alien moves. He can see much better than I can in the dark.

From my position, I can’t make out much, but the others seem to be moving around.

There are a few thrums and clicks from the alien and some of the others respond.

He turns and my head flashes around as I try to get a sense of what he is doing.

I do not dare to speak, as if doing so will somehow alert the others to my presence.

I’m confused as to what’s happening when I’m suddenly moving again.

The alien hoists my body as if I weigh nothing and sets me down.

I scramble backward immediately, my eyes on the huge alien before me.

I don’t know where he’s set me down, I’m dimly aware of the hard dirt, pebbles, and twigs beneath me, but I don’t stop scrambling away till my back hits a tree and I can go no farther.

There’s a small fire here and…two bodies resting at the roots of the trees.

Human bodies.

“Sam!”

The word is barely out of my mouth before Sam darts a glance in my direction.

She’s lying on her belly but her gaze is on me. It’s obvious she’s been alert the whole time, watching us.

Watching him.

She doesn’t reply. Her gaze only flies back to Lava Eyes.

There’s tension in her shoulders and slowly, cautiously, she rises and moves over to me.

She grips my hand, her gaze still on the alien.

“Adira…” she whispers. “You’re alive.” She’s gripping my hand so hard, it disturbs the wounds already there. But I don’t push her away.

There is a bigger problem in our midst.

All through this, neither of us move our gaze from the alien before us.

He stands across the fire and light chases shadows across his face.

Those strange eyes of his move over us both before landing at where we’re gripping each other.

I don’t understand.

Sam is alive.

But the scream I heard…

“Is Mina…” I swallow hard.

“No,” Sam whispers. “She’s alive. She’s just… Her energy…”

Sam stops speaking but she doesn’t need to continue.

The parasite within her…that’s why Mina sleeps. She wouldn’t be asleep otherwise.

Our gazes remain locked on the alien and those pointed ears of his twitch a little.

He’s standing with his hands at his sides, but even without doing anything, he looks intimidating.

Firelight flicks over his chest, his torso…

With us on the ground, I can see he is more than a bit over six feet.

I’m thinking seven feet. Seven feet and a bit?

“What do you want?” The words come from my lips in a whisper but I know he hears. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink, but those ears of his twitch again.

“What do you want?” I repeat, louder this time.

No response except for a sudden thrum that he begins in his chest.

I’ve worked with a lot of creatures, and to me that sound he’s making is almost like a cat’s purr.

Just…deeper and with a second low tone that I almost cannot hear because of how deep it is.

Why is he purring at me?

“Where did you come from?” I whisper.

At the sound of my voice a third time, the thrumming suddenly stops and the alien’s ears twitch again.

I don’t know how I’m able to pull my gaze away from him but I somehow do.

Sam’s gaze doesn’t falter though and as I look her over and then glance toward Mina, her eyes remain trained on him.

She’s a bit less dirty than before. I am too.

Almost drowning must have cleaned us a little.

“Are you ok? Did they hurt you? Has Mina…has she woken since…” My voice sounds so weak, I almost don’t recognize that it’s me that’s speaking.

“She’ll be…fine. It’s…like usual,” Sam whispers. “They revived us when they took us from the water.” Her hands tighten against mine as the other moves to her throat.

I assume they revived her the same strange way he revived me.

“Adira, I thought they’d killed you.” Sam sobs and my gaze darts back to the alien close by.

As she sobs and I reach for her, tears rising into my own eyes, I notice the alien’s ears are perked so much now, they are almost pointing in our direction.

His gaze flicks over our faces but I don’t let my tears fall.

I hold them back as I lean my forehead to rest against Sam’s.

I don’t have any words.

I thought she and Mina had died.

The coldness of it all. How I’d accepted it so easily. It chills me.

But that is life now.

You don’t get attached to things…anything. Nothing is permanent. Everything is temporary.

“They didn’t kill me,” I whisper as I stare into the red gaze of the alien who could’ve killed me so many times in the last few hours. “I’m still here.”

“I’m relieved.” Sam releases a breath that makes her shoulders rise and fall.

The alien doesn’t look away and apart from the slight twitching of his ears, you wouldn’t know he isn’t a statue.

His chest doesn’t even rise and fall like he is breathing.

He’s so silent, if I wasn’t looking in his direction I’d have thought he wasn’t there.

He’s just…observing us and I get the sense he is listening to every word we are saying.

“Have they hurt you?” I ask her again. I’m still confused as to what these aliens want with us.

The machines had made it clear.

Whether you were a Feeder or a Breeder, it didn’t wait around to put you in the group it wanted—or to make you cease to exist if it wanted.

But these aliens…what do they want?

Sam eases off me, wipes a stray tear from her eyes, and glances toward Mina.

“No,” she whispers. “They haven’t hurt us yet.”

Yet.

One of his kind clicks something down near the water and Lava Eyes turns toward the sound.

I take the moment to let my gaze rove over him. The suit he wears clings to him like it is a second skin.

Even as I stare at him, his back turned, I get the sense that he is aware of my every move even though his eyes aren’t on me.

That’s a ridiculous thought.

But I’m staring at him when something catches the corner of my eye.

There’s a spike in it…in his suit. A spike at his wrist.

Almost as if the suit is…stretching toward me?

But that’s…

The alien clicks, the sound snapping me back to reality and I blink.

But he’s not looking at me, his gaze is on the water, and when my eyes drop back to his wrist, there is nothing wrong with his suit.

The spike is gone.

I’m imagining things.

As he heads toward the water, I can only stare.

“Adira, are you okay? Where were you?” Sam’s gaze is searching my face and I blink again a few times.

“I—I’m fine.” I shake my head. “I was hiding. Or trying to. But…he found me.”

Sam’s gaze flicks toward the alien. “They took us from the machine. I think…I think they destroyed it.” Her voice drops as if she is exposing some secret.

No one has ever been able to destroy an orb.

“So you saw it too. I didn’t just dream about all of this.”

Sam nods, her eyes still wide as she looks at the aliens moving near the water. “They saved us.”

I want to believe that with every inch of my heart.

I want to believe these aliens came to destroy the other ones and as I stare at this strange being’s back, I want to think that Sam is right.

Off to the side, Mina makes a sound, pulling my attention away.

There’s light perspiration on her brow and her lids are low but she smiles at me.

She smiles.

I gulp as I move to squeeze her hand.

“Mina,” I whisper. I thought she’d been sleeping.

That’s what usually happens to the women that are bred.

The parasite takes everything from them.

They simply become a host.

As I touch her hand, Mina gives me another faint smile.

She’s fighting it. She’s strong.

I want to tell her it will be all right but I don’t know if I dare to believe that myself.

So instead, I move closer to her.

That’s when my gaze catches something in the trees nearby.

A form that moves in the darkness.

My heart skips a beat as it materializes into one of the aliens and I freeze.

He’s hovering among the trees behind us and his eyes are so dark that, coupled with his suit, he almost completely blends into the night itself.

Unease crawls up my spine.

How long has he been there?

I didn’t even notice him.

The fact that he is so close by and I had no idea…

Alarm shoots through me as my gaze darts around the darkness behind and around him, but I do not sense any others.

He looks at me for a mere second before his gaze lands on Mina again where his focus latches.

I swear I hear a hiss, much like the one Lava Eyes did, but the dark-eyed alien doesn’t move from where he is standing. I’m not sure if his intent was to conceal himself from us or if it is just an effect of the darkness.

“What are they?” I whisper.

“Very, very alien,” Sam replies.

“What do you think they want?”

Sam shrugs and moves closer to me and Mina.

Her gaze suddenly finds the one with the dark eyes and I hear when her breath catches.

“You didn’t see him there, did you?”

She shakes her head, her eyes wide.

“I don’t know what they want, Adira, but they scare the shit out of me.”

I settle back against the mound of dirt at the root of one of the trees and force some of the tension to leave my body.

They haven’t attacked us yet.

They aren’t even coming close to us.

I take a moment to allow myself to feel the extent of damage to my physical being.

Everywhere aches and the amount of energy I’m releasing just trying to stay this alert is quickly taking its toll.

It’s not as cold as it should be here out in the open. The fire helps.

And then it hits me that there is a fire.

I jerk back upright, staring at it.

“They made it after I commented that Mina was cold.”

My eyes widen a little, my gaze flying back to Sam.

“They can understand us?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. They haven’t spoken to us. They only stare.”

Even as she says this, I look down toward the water and I can see Lava Eyes.

He is walking back toward the shore and his eyes are focused this way.

Correction. They’re focused on me.

“They’ve just been in and out of the water. Bringing things up. I think…” Sam pauses, her voice falling low. “I think they’re dismantling that thing.”

My gaze shoots back to her. “The machine?”

She nods hesitantly.

For a few moments, we just stare at each other, afraid to even hope.

I swallow hard.

“Maybe they’re different from the other aliens,” she whispers. “Maybe they were sent here to help us.”

I stare at her. “If so, sent by whom?”

Sam shrugs.

I stare at her for a few moments, the implications flying through my brain.

“We don’t know,” I finally say. “They could still be our enemy.”

There’s a sharp click and a growl that makes me jerk in surprise and my head snaps up.

Lava Eyes isn’t even close to us, he’s several feet away and my voice was low.

There’s no way he heard me…

But those eyes are definitely locked with mine.

And I get the distinct impression that what I just said pissed him the hell off.

The night grows ever darker. But I remain awake.

I cannot sleep.

Even when Sam dozes off and Mina’s eyes close, my eyes remain open.

Around us, the aliens have kept their distance. Yet, they watch us with an intensity that keeps me alert.

There isn’t a second where a set of strange, slitted eyes aren’t directed our way.

They’re different colors, their eyes, but all are mostly dark or some variation of red.

The more I look at them too, I realize I’m differentiating between them.

It’s not only their eyes that are different. Some of them are bigger than the others.

But they all do one thing…

They watch us.

How Sam sleeps while being observed is beyond me.

Mina, I can understand.

As the minutes tick by, her body’s resources are slowly being depleted.

The parasite will keep her barely alive until it is ready to be extracted…and then what?

If these new aliens are really enemies of the machines, I shudder to think what they will do when they find out Mina is carrying a spawn.

This beats on my mind, along with the fact that we are once again in a precarious situation, and I fight sleep.

More than once, I doze only to jerk awake to find Lava Eyes looking my way.

His gaze doesn’t startle me anymore and I wonder if it is a good or bad thing that I am getting used to them.

To him.

Chapter Ten

ADIRA

My body jerks as I come awake and the first thing that shoots to my mind is the fact that I fell asleep.

I fly to an upright position, ignoring the aches in my body as I squint.

It’s morning…and we are safe.

We’re still alive?

But…

Every hair at the back of my neck stands on end as my eyes rise.

My gaze moves up dark legs, higher, higher, as if in slow motion, my eyes wide, my heart hammering against my chest.

They are standing all around us, some crouching, but all looking at us intently.

I pull my legs toward me as I scramble back, and the trunk of a tree slams against my spine.

Sam grunts and rises slowly, blinking the sleep from her eyes.

“Sam…” I whisper, my eyes moving around the aliens surrounding us.

Mina is still asleep, but I know it wouldn’t have mattered if she was awake or not.

I doubt she can run in her condition.

“Sam!” I hiss as my gaze darts around the group.

It is morning.

The sun is rising and the light only makes these beings look more intimidating.

Humanoid but not human at all. I cannot think of a human, bar The Rock and The Mountain, who would stand a chance against them.

The alien’s gazes are intent. So intent, a sick feeling begins to develop in my stomach and I find myself searching for…him.

The one with the lava eyes.

Why? I do not know.

But…he is not here.

Panic floods my soul and almost as if in unison, I hear the aliens sniff.

One of them hisses and immediately steps away from the circle.

Others stiffen and I can almost see the tension in their shoulders.

Their response confuses and frightens me a bit.

“Sam!” I put some urgency in my voice this time.

That’s when the circle around us parts.

For a moment, I am confused.

That’s when I see him.

He’s walking toward us from the lake and I do not know how I know it is him. I just do.

The morning sun reflects off his suit in a strange way. Almost as if the rays disappear into the fibers themselves, sucked into the ultimate dark void that is his suit.

His head is bent and my gaze moves to where he is looking.

He is carrying something and I can’t make out what it is.

It looks almost like a dead jellyfish.

Whatever it is though, it’s creating an unexpected response from the aliens surrounding us.

Another hiss begins and it rises, thrumming from each and every one of the aliens.

Their lips pull back, showing their fangs and their muscles tense.

Sharp blades, just as I’d seen the night before, appear on each and every one of their arms like magic.

Blades appear even along their backs as well.

“Shit!” Sam is suddenly by my side, gripping my arm as we both stare up at the beings in front of us.

“What—why are they acting like that?” Sam asks. She is suddenly fully awake, her eyes wide.

“I…don’t know.” But as my gaze falls back to the strange thing Lava Eyes is carrying, I get the sense the aliens aren’t acting so strangely because of us.

That thing Lava Eyes is carrying. It is the reason why.

As if he knows I am looking his way, his head lifts and his gaze finds me like a homing beacon.

The intensity of his stare makes my breath hitch in my throat.

He walks with purpose, heading in our direction and the aliens around us move out of his way.

Their hissing is now interjected with clicks and snarls that vibrate the air around us.

Lava Eyes comes to a stop a few feet away from us, his gaze still on me as he drops the thing he is carrying before me.

I stare up at him, trying to read those slitted eyes of his, but I have no idea what he wants—what they want.

The look on his face is identical to that of the others.

His lips are pulled back, his eyes even more fiery than the night before.

He stares at me before his gaze drops to the thing on the ground and I finally look at it.

My mind cannot comprehend what I am seeing.

It’s not a jellyfish.

It’s more like a…dead octopus?

Gray. Fleshy. Several arms.

It’s about three feet long from the top of its head to where its legs begin and it is obviously an aquatic species.

I frown as I stare at it, barely aware of Sam’s questioning whisper.

She has no idea what the hell the thing is either.

But it can’t be an octopus.

Octopi don’t live in lakes.

“Do they want us to eat it?” Sam asks and I can hear the horror in her voice.

I hope the hell not.

But when I glance at Lava Eyes, I still do not know what he expects of me.

What is this thing he brought?

What am I supposed to do with it?

A trembling arm stretches toward the thing, my trembling arm, and I hear an even louder hiss begin around us.

My gaze darts up and I freeze again.

I am speechless.

The utter rage on Lava Eye’s face is evident. The ridges that mark his features are even more defined and his arms…there are sharp spikes coming out of his arms now too.

They look like long dark blades capable of slicing anything they come in contact with.

“Doh-n’t. Toh-ch.”

I blink.

I didn’t imagine it. Did I?

He just spoke.

He spoke English.

Don’t touch.

The inflection is strange, as if his tongue isn’t used to forming such syllables and the words are almost unrecognizable.

“You…” My heart does a big thump, hitting my chest hard. “You can speak?” My whisper is near to being inaudible.

As I retract my hand, I watch in awe as the blades in his arms slowly lower.

“Noh-t…yoh-r…eh-nih-mee,” he growls.

Fuck.

His voice is so deep it is almost terrifying.

My mouth falls open as my gaze darts to the other aliens then back to him.

He is communicating with me but his words don’t register.

All that hits me is that he can talk.

“They can speak…” Sam’s voice reflects my shock.

“Noh-t yoh-r eh-nih-mee,” the alien repeats and I note how much surer the words sound on his tongue. “We are not your enemy.”

Lifting a leg, he kicks the octopus thing and it rolls closer to me on the ground. “They are.”

His words register but they don’t make sense till my gaze falls and I shriek.

The octopus has a face.

And I don’t mean a face belonging to an octopus.

This face is all wrong.

Large dark eyes look up at nothing. They’re placed above two dark holes, which must be the nostrils, but I see no mouth.

Lava Eyes kicks the thing again and it flips over to reveal three rows of sharp teeth in its center.

I shriek and scramble back. Sam follows.

Yea…this doesn’t look like any octopus I’ve ever seen.

And then it all becomes clear.

His meaning becomes clear.

This thing that I’m looking at…this thing isn’t from here.

What I’m looking at is another species of alien.

This thing is what has enslaved us all.

“That’s…” My eyes widen as I stare at it.

It starts with disbelief…then I feel fear…then…anger.

Hatred. Anger. They both fill me as I stare at the thing.

Somehow, I unwrap Sam’s arms from around my own as I crawl on my hands and knees., moving closer to the gray, fleshy being in the dirt.

I hear the hisses of the aliens around me. In the corner of my eye, I see Lava Eyes’ blades rise once more and I pause.

My gaze meets his but he does not stop me. So I slowly move forward again, closer to the gray blob.

I stare down at it when I get near.

This…this thing.

This is what was in that machine?

“Your enemy…” Lava Eyes speaks. “Our enemy…”

I can feel my heart thumping in my throat at his words.

I am understanding now.

Maybe Sam is right. Maybe these new aliens are on our side.

I look up at Lava Eyes and take some courage in the fact that not one of his kind has interacted with us…yet.

They certainly look like a hostile race…not the saviors we prayed for.

But why would this alien lie to me?

Him and his kind have the upper hand.

They can do whatever they want…

Which leads me to the conclusion that…Lava Eyes is telling the truth.

As the thought settles, my gaze falls back on the crude face and strange body of the dead alien before us.

What I thought were octopi-like limbs turn out not to be so.

It had about six arms and they aren’t boneless. Its limbs have more joints than I can count and they are pretty long.

A shiver runs through me.

I cannot imagine what this species looks like alive and walking.

But what catches my attention the most is the face.

The dark eyes look back at me and even though there is no life within them, I can feel the soullessness of the creature’s gaze.

This thing has sucked our blood? Destroyed my world?

Impregnated us?

This what I’m looking at is responsible for so much?

I stare at it without breaking focus.

It is taking some time for my mind to comprehend that what I’m looking at is responsible for all the death and destruction I have witnessed.

My whole world is gone because of this creature. The machines hadn’t been some sort of advanced AI race. This creature had been its pilot.

They’d come here and taken everything.

Everything I’d known.

My whole family.

My friends.

My world.

“Why?” I whisper, the word almost inaudible before my voice rises. “WHY?!”

The word tears from my throat with as much emotion as I’m suddenly feeling.

My body shakes with the heartbreak of what I’ve witnessed over the past few months. Pain racks through my body, shaking my frail form.

I don’t know when I reach for it, but there’s a rock in my good hand.

I raise it and slam it down on the dead alien.

Once.

Twice.

Three times my arm rises and falls as I scream.

“Why?!”

Tears choke me as everything I have lost comes pouring out.

Sam appears beside me, her eyes wide. She doesn’t stop me but tears are streaming down her face too and only when my arm rises and doesn’t fall once more do I stop.

Someone is holding my arm and I know it is him even without looking up.

His suit writhes against my skin a little but the strangeness of it is dim compared to the heartbreak killing my soul.

I stare at the battered being in front of me, still choking on my own emotions.

All my family is dead.

Humanity is hanging by a thread.

And this thing is responsible for it all.

I hear some clicks and thrums and the alien’s body is kicked so hard, it sails toward the water.

I look up, my eyes clouded with tears to meet the unreadable lava eyes of the alien above me.

I cannot read emotions in that alien gaze of his. His red eyes…dark skin… He looks like the exact thing I am taught to fear.

The world has really turned upside down.

Nothing is the same. Nothing will ever be the same again.

Because I am torn.

Destroyed.

Speechless.

And the devil is holding my hand.