Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 Read online

  Morena let the curtains fall back into place, blocking off Thera’s view of the road. Something had changed at the door, and something else changed when Bryan said those words.

  24

  Present Day

  Will held his gun at eye level, his right arm straight and his elbow locked. He looked to his left and right, seeing the two scouts in the exact same position. All the technology in the world didn’t add up to much without the ability to pull a trigger accurately, but these two looked like they had done it before. They looked like trained killers.

  “It almost blew up,” Lane had said, referring to the tracker. “Whatever’s in that house is exactly what we’re looking for.”

  It took them thirty minutes to show up, all their SUVs pulling as close to the house as they could. The lights were still on inside, everything looking exactly as it had when Will ‘left’, though he only pulled down the street where he could still see the driveway in case anyone decided to leave. He made the call to Rigley (who sounded like she was losing it, but there wasn’t any time to deal with that now), and then waited on the scouts to arrive.

  This would end right here; that’s what Will was sure about. They were going to march in this house and first try to capture, and if that looked like it might fail, they’d kill everyone inside. A house full of dead people was better than a city full of the burnt.

  Will nodded, and the three started walking forward. Lane went to the left and Andrew to the right, Will straight up the middle to the door. Lane was to go to the back, and Andrew through the open garage. Systematic.

  Will reached the front door and placed his hand carefully on the doorknob, remembering that it hadn’t needed unlocking when that thing opened it earlier. He placed his ear to the door, listening for any movement, but heard none. He opened the door quickly and silently, leveling his gun out as he did in one smooth motion. He scanned the foyer, seeing nothing but furniture and burning lights. He moved forward, his feet sure and his gun scanning thoroughly, his eyes following exactly where the barrel led. He cleared the living room, saw Andrew coming through the kitchen. Will went to the left, down a darkened hall.

  First room cleared.

  Second room cleared.

  Master cleared.

  He turned around his gun still held at eye level and saw Andrew and Lane walking into the room, their weapons the same.

  “What the fuck?” Will asked, his eyes finding theirs. “All the rooms are cleared?”

  “Every inch.”

  He lowered his gun without taking his eyes away from the scouts.

  “Both cars are in the garage?” Will asked, knowing that he had looked when he pulled in, knowing that no one had driven out of the goddamn driveway besides him in the past hour, but wanting confirmation.

  “Yes,” Andrew said.

  “Pull the tracker up, now.”

  Lane did, reaching to his belt where a walky-talky looking instrument hung. He pulled it off.

  “Nothing. Just radiation levels, picking up the past, but nothing in the present,” Lane said.

  “It’s gone?” Will asked, not believing the words as they sprang from his mouth.

  “There’s nothing here,” Lane said, still looking at the tracker. “We’re the only things in this house.”

  * * *

  Will didn’t bother calling Rigley. A year ago, he would have let her know every update he had, but something was happening in DC that he didn’t understand, and to update her about a vanishing teenager—a vanishing family—would be disastrous. Will thought he would probably die before this was over, but that didn’t mean he wanted to. He wanted to goddamn find whatever he saw in that house and eliminate it, thus sparing him and everyone else in this God-forsaken town Rigley’s wrath. And it was coming, that’s what Will felt more and more sure about each time he spoke with her. That she wasn’t able to think around this problem, wasn’t able to assess it from any other way besides annihilation due to the sheer numbers she was seeing.

  Instead of calling her, Will acted. They stripped the house, the entire thing—flipping everything from lamps to beds. Nothing stood in the same place it had when they arrived, even breaking the walls, plaster and molding lying across the hardwood floors.

  They found cellphones and computers, which seemed to be the most valuable things in the entire house with regards to Will’s needs. The girl’s cellphone, he went through it himself, seeing her most dialed numbers. A kid named Michael. They cross-referenced the name with the list Will got from the school, and within an hour were driving to the kid’s house. Will didn’t know what he would find there, didn’t have a clue, but it was the only option left. There was literally nothing in Thera’s house, as if the fucking rapture had just come down and taken everyone up. The Baptists would finally be able to run around screaming how they had been right.

  The three SUVs pulled up and parked on the road. Will’s car was barely off before he was walking up the gravel driveway, heading to a trailer that looked like every redneck from now to the beginning of redneckdom had probably moved through it at some point. He didn’t look behind him for Lane or Andrew, just marched straight up the small wooden stoop and banged on the door.

  A few seconds passed and Will heard nothing from inside. He banged again, already mentally preparing himself to just break down the door.

  Right before he was going to step back and kick, the door opened. The room inside was dark, making it hard for Will to see exactly who stood there, but the smell of alcohol wafted out immediately. He heard the other two men coming up the driveway, their boots grinding against the gravel.

  “My name is Dennis Gable, I’m a member of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and I need to speak with Michael Hems.” Will took a step back, his hand hovering close to his gun, his eyes adjusting to the man in front of him, making out his face now.

  “What do you want with him?” the man asked, the smell of booze radiating from his mouth. He sounded stern though, sure of himself, not sloppy.

  “I need to ask him some questions about his school. Is he here?”

  The man stepped out on the stoop, the yellow light illuminating his face more. Will saw his eyes were rimmed red and bloodshot. The word drunk fit accurately, perhaps bordering on wasted, yet he somehow didn’t waver as he stood in front of Will. The man was fragile, held no weapons, and looked like a decade of drinking had finally taken its toll on him—but he still wasn’t wavering.

  “I’m his father and you’re not talking to him without a warrant,” the man said, raising his voice to a point that was uncomfortable for Will. He knew what was happening though, what people in areas like this did. It didn’t matter if it was a black ghetto or a white trailer park, the people inhabiting them didn’t trust police. More than that, though—they hated police. This man was alerting anyone that might be listening, anyone surrounding him in the tin thin trailers, that people were here who didn’t belong. This motherfucker in front of Will probably couldn’t remember his son’s middle name right now, but he wouldn’t let any cop talk to him.

  Will didn’t move his hand to his gun completely, but he thought about it. There wasn’t a silencer on it, and if he killed this man to get inside his home, people would hear.

  “Boss,” Lane said from behind him, not daring mention his name in the open. Will didn’t need to turn around to know what the word meant, he heard the door to the trailer next to this one open and knew that some redneck fuck was standing there looking at him.

  “Everything okay, Wren?” the redneck fuck said.

  “Oh yeah, everything’s fine,” Wren said, his glazed eyes not leaving Will’s. “Isn’t it?”

  Will said nothing, knowing that unless he was prepared to kill this whole neighborhood, he had lost. He looked on a second longer, truly remembering the man’s face, then turned around and walked back to his vehicle.

  * * *

  Wren closed the door after he made sure the three SUVs were down the road, nodding at his neighbor just b
efore. They both went back inside at about the same time without saying anything.

  Georgia Bureau of Investigation? That didn’t add up to Wren, not in the slightest. The GBI didn’t show up to doors at almost eleven at night, demanding to speak to someone still in high school. Not over something that happened in school. Michael wasn’t here, and thank God for that. Had he been here, Wren probably wouldn’t have been able to keep the man from speaking with him, or at least knowing where Michael was. Right now, the prick didn’t know if his son was inside the trailer or on the moon.

  Wren needed to know, though. That wasn’t the GBI at his door and he had no idea what the hell Michael was into, but if Wren was going to be able to help at all, he had to find Michael. Wren hadn’t felt this in a long time, mainly because there hadn’t been a reason to. Paternal instinct? Maybe. Or maybe it was just the need to protect those you loved. He hadn’t needed to protect anyone since Linda died. He hadn’t been able to protect her, not from death’s grasp, and he’d been at his best then. Was he going to try and protect Michael, now that his best was dead and buried?

  He turned around and walked back into the darkness of the living room, the only light from the television’s illumination. He sat down on his recliner, leaning back as he normally did. This time though, he didn’t reach for the cup next to him, but instead found the remote and muted the television. Wren sat there for a long time, his brain slowly gearing up to a level of thinking that he hadn’t done in some time. The cogs and wheels were all loose, made so both by nonuse and the alcohol coursing through his system. That man at the door had been willing to kill Wren. He saw it in the man’s eyes, saw it in the way the man’s hand lived close to his weapon. If Wren hadn’t raised his voice and Terry not come to the door, he’d probably be dead right now.

  That wasn’t the GBI. That was a murderer looking for Michael.

  25

  Present Day

  No one was answering their phone.

  That’s when Michael really understood how wrong things had become. He couldn’t fully grasp how quickly it had all occurred, in a matter of days both Bryan and Thera were missing. Off the map. Michael had called and called since school ended, and each time it rang until he reached their voicemails—the recording was beginning to make him sick, hearing it again and again, knowing each time he called that is all he would get.

  He called Julie at nine, and was more than happy to hear relief in her voice. Terror rested there too, but relief that Michael was calling, that Michael felt something wrong too.

  “Have you called Bryan’s house?” he asked.

  “Yes, no answer.”

  “Can you come get me?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  She showed up at nine-thirty and he’d walked past his father without saying anything. The television was on, and Michael didn’t even glance to see if his dad was sleeping.

  “What’s happening?” Julie asked, her hands shaking and tears filling her eyes and voice.

  Michael didn’t know what was happening now, but he knew what had happened, and he told her. He told her about going back out to the crash site a few days ago, told her about Bryan’s near run to the center, where that glowing orb sat. She now knew about everything since that. Because everything that happened since began once Michael and he went out there.

  “We’ve got to call the police,” she said. “Now. We have to tell my parents and call the police. Bryan’s parents too. This is out of control, just far, far out of control.”

  Michael didn’t look over at her as she spoke, and she wasn’t looking at him—both staring straight ahead, sitting in his driveway.

  “You’re right,” he said, pulling his cellphone from his pocket. He didn’t know what to dial besides nine-one-one. Maybe they could connect him with the local police department, or maybe they would send the cops directly to him. He didn’t want to be here when it happened, though, didn’t want to be anywhere near his father if he had to talk to cops. “Let’s drive. My dad isn’t gonna be happy if police show up here.”

  Julie didn’t say anything; she didn’t need to, everyone knew what Wren was like. She probably wanted to call every parent they knew besides Michael’s, and he didn’t blame her in the slightest. The car started rolling down the road and Michael hit the numbers on the phone.

  It rang and a woman answered. “Emergency dispatch, what’s the nature of your call?”

  Michael paused, or froze rather. What was the nature of his call? He hadn’t thought about the answer to that question. All of his communications had been with people that knew the situation, or at least had some insight into it. How did he begin to tell someone who hadn’t been here, who hadn’t seen that thing drop from the sky?

  “I’m worried about my friend,” he said, unable to think of how else to term it. “I think he’s in danger.”

  “What’s your friend’s name?” the lady asked.

  “Bryan Yetzer.”

  “And what’s going on? Is he in danger right now?”

  Michael started talking as Julie drove down the road, heading to Bryan’s.

  * * *

  Will’s speaker relayed the kid’s voice to the entire SUV.

  The first break since he arrived; the first bit of luck that had the word good in front of it.

  This was Michael Hems, the kid he wanted back at that trailer, and luck was also giving them a girl named Julie. Andrew cross-checked the name and in doing so found their entire posse. Four people that had all been there the night of the crash.

  Anyone calling nine-one-one in Grayson was routed to Will’s service, one that mimicked the emergency call center, one that would dispatch in the exact same manner if needed. But, if an ambulance wasn’t needed, or police services, if the call was something Will might like to hear, it was routed to him instead.

  And that’s how the three of them listened to Michael Hems tell a story that they partly knew, but a story that gave them a lot more information too.

  Will hit the end button on the call and let the phone sit on the console, its screen black.

  “No one’s at Bryan’s house, right?” he asked the other two in the car.

  “Right. The cops we sent out radioed back in; the place is as empty as the girl’s.”

  The good luck was that they finally knew who had been out there; but bad luck interwove itself through that news like cancer in a human body. It wasn’t one person they had to worry about. Indeed, Michael Hems was more worried about Bryan than the girl, Thera—and both were missing.

  “How long until the two of them are at the meeting site?”

  Andrew looked down at the computer in his lap, a red dot moving across a digital map. “Probably ten more minutes.”

  Was he going to call Rigley about this now? Let her know the break but also that he couldn’t locate the infected? After he talked to the two kids, he would call Rigley. He needed more information from the two of them first, needed to know everything they knew, and needed them for leverage if it was possible. He didn’t know how he would use two high school kids who were scared out of their minds for leverage, not yet anyway.

  “Alright,” he said. “Let’s go talk to them.”

  He turned the key in the ignition and drove the car forward, the term leverage rolling over and over in his head. You could use people for a lot of things when no one knew where those people were.

  26

  A Long Time Ago, in Another Place

  Morena hovered over the floor, her eyes closed and her mind seeing only the numbers that Briten created. The room was empty, but had someone entered, she wouldn’t have known. She had been lying in this position, her arms out to her side and her feet together, for hours. A stream of data moved up from the floor, invisible to the eye, but if someone were to get in between the floor and Morena, their body would have been eviscerated in a torrent of holes created by the forces flowing into Morena. None of it left her, none of it floated through her green aura to the ceiling above. She took every p
iece of it in, every number, every note, and that in itself was impressive. For hours and hours she lay in that position, taking in more than nearly anyone else on her planet would be capable of. Not missing anything.

  Briten had presented all of this to The Council, but none of them had lived it, as she was now. She was watching his entire process, watching every step of his calculations, seeing his thoughts and feeling his feelings. It was her second time going through it, from the very beginning when he first understood that the core was cooling to the very end where he was basically shouted out of the room by The Council.

  Morena turned the flow of data off but she didn’t move.

  There was no way around Briten’s conclusion. That’s what she had been hoping for as she sifted through his every step, hoping that he had missed something, hoping that somewhere in all of that data was a solution he hadn’t seen. There wasn’t. If Chilras managed to do what Morena had just done, she would see it too—clearly. There were no ulterior motives from Briten, there was no lazy thinking. The end result stared at them all with dark eyes that only knew death, and everyone besides Briten had looked the other way, not wanting to meet that stare.

  Morena’s world was dying and they couldn’t stop it. They couldn’t save it.

  The only way that her people lived was through expansion, exploration. And that most likely would mean war, would mean that Bynums killed for the first time. How many Vars had lived without having to resort to something like this? How many Bynums were born and died without ever committing violence? And would she be the first Var, the first Bynum, to throw that away? To take a society that knew peace, that thrived in peace, and introduce them to that foreign concept that they so long avoided? Did she have a choice?