The Exodus Towers #2

The subhuman still roared, and Skyler’s mind snapped back into focus. He saw bared teeth, head and neck coiled back, then snapping forward to bite at his thigh. Skyler reacted on pure instinct and thrust his knee up as the teeth bore down.

His knee met the creature’s jaw with a sickening crunch that Skyler felt as much as heard. The sub’s jawbone cracked. Its eyes rolled back in abject pain.

Only when Skyler’s hands suddenly slipped on the rope did he realize his mistake. The leg he’d thrust to block the attack had been the one in the ascender. Without a foothold, his already burning hands and arms had to support all of his combined weight. Weight he hadn’t the strength to bear.

Nor, it turned out, did the grappling hook. He heard it pull free and scrape across the pedestal before he registered the fact that he was falling.

Skyler cried out, held the rope out of sheer survival instinct, as they fell away from the spire toward the humming red forms below and the rattle of Vanessa’s weapon.
Melville Station

4.DEC.2284

THE HULKING FORM of Platz Station appeared on proximity radar a day earlier, approaching in an orbit equal to what its altitude had been above Darwin.

All attempts at contact failed, though Tim never stopped trying. With a full day to prepare, Tania took the precaution to move all nonessential staff down to Belém, or up to Space-Ag 1. If the incoming station showed signs of altering course, turning itself into a giant battering ram, they’d have plenty of time to evacuate the remaining people.

A larger concern was if the goal was to ram the thin cord of the Elevator itself. The facility was too big and moving too slow to sever the cable like a knife, assuming such an action was even possible. But no one knew what would happen if it simply crashed into the alien cord. The mass of an entire space station pushing against the cable might fold it in half, pull it loose of its anchors, or send reverberations along the entire length that would wreak havoc on everything from Black Level down to the climber port in Belém.

Just in case, Tania had all stations on standing alert to detach and clear. Technically, none of them actually touched the cord. Attached was simply the term used when they were positioned with their center ring around the thread. Attaching or detaching required the retraction of special movable bulkheads aligned in a slice along one edge of the station. For most this meant that a gap five meters in width would be created, then closed again once the facility was centered on the Elevator.

Platz Station, like all others, could do this. A key design feature that allowed the stations to be manufactured and assembled in a central location, then moved into place as a whole. Even rearranged later.

Tania sat in front of a widescreen monitor and watched the facility grow ever larger. A half-consumed avocado lay on a dish beside her, along with a cup of water. She sipped the cool liquid and set it back down, her eyes never leaving the screen, even when she wiped sweat from her brow.

“You can hit the showers if you want,” Tim said behind her. “I’ll monitor this.”

Tania turned and smirked at him. She’d come straight from her sparring session, part of the training regimen Karl insisted she begin if she intended to make any more forays outside of Camp Exodus. Her instructor, one of Karl’s old “cleaning crew,” taught in the Krav Maga style and had no problem pushing her to the limit.

Tim shrank at her look. “Never mind,” he said. “No, really, you smell great.”

She turned back to the screen and tried to ignore him. Platz Station moved closer with every passing second. She wondered when their location had been discovered, and how. A spy? Some kind of tracking beacon? Both had always been a possibility, and precautions had been taken.

There were lights on in the few porthole windows she could see, and the station spun at its usual speed, which implied it wasn’t empty. There’d be no point in spinning up after detachment if it had been vacated. Black Level had been left in null gravity during its entire transit from Darwin to Belém, just to conserve fuel.

Why now? she wondered. The answer seemed obvious. Figuring out the Builders’ schedule didn’t take much imagination once one had three data points to chart. She thought of the massive ship that grew nearer every day. At six kilometers long, according to visual estimates, the scale simply defied belief. Speculation as to its purpose dominated every conversation from Belém to Black Level, with Greg and Marcus offering some particularly inventive, even hilarious, ideas on their nightly “Broadcast to Skyler.” The transmission-turned-show continued despite the successful contact months ago. They’d been inside the dome since, according to the immune Pablo. No sign of them, no way to know if they were okay.

The lights in Platz Station’s windows tugged at the corner of her mind. She toyed with the idea that Neil himself had stood at one of those portals. That the rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated, and he’d been hiding out in the bowels of that structure until the moment arrived when he could commandeer it.

Then a different scenario hit her, the one she’d expected since the moment she’d heard of the object’s approach. Blackfield is in there, she thought. And when the station arrives, climber cars full of soldiers are going to stream out in both directions until the Elevator is in his control. That wouldn’t be easy; Tania had seen to that. All the climber controls and dock codes had been changed long ago, just in case. No, the best Blackfield could hope to do is reach the ground, and even then his cars would be suspended well off the ground. The colony would give them ample reason to wish they’d never attempted such an assault.

A change occurred on the screen. Tania squinted and leaned forward, the haze of her daydream fading. “The spin is slowing,” she said.

“Hmm?” Tim asked from behind her, in his place at the comm.

“They’re drifting now. And—oh, there we go.” Plumes of gas erupted from hundreds of ventilation nozzles distributed evenly across one side of the rings. “Braking thrust.”

Tim loomed at her shoulder now, watching. “I guess it’s going to latch on to the cord.”

“Yup.”

“What if they packed it with bombs or something?”

A chill shot through Tania. Partly from the picture of that station turning into a small sun and vaporizing the cord, and partly from her lack of imagination for such scenarios.

The comm behind them chimed, an incoming transmission.

“It’s them,” Tim said. “You want to take it?”

She nodded to him and turned her chair around to face the terminal’s screen. “Record it? Thanks.” Tania settled herself, took a deep breath, and tapped the icon to answer the call.

Russell Blackfield’s face appeared before her. He looked pale, haggard.

“I never thought I’d say this,” he said, “but it’s good to see you, Tania.”

She looked at his face and kept repeating one word in her mind: liar. Yet for all her distaste for the man, he sounded sincere. “What is your purpose here, Russell? I must ask that you refrain from connecting to the Elevator, and back off to a distance of one hundred kilometers.”

“We can’t,” he said. “We left in a hurry; air is already scrubbed to the limit.”

Tania regarded him with what she hoped looked like cold disbelief. “Again, what are you doing here?”

Russell ran a hand over his face. Something drifted by the camera behind him. A wastebasket, she realized. Seconds later a person drifted into frame, grabbed the basket, and vanished off the other side of the screen. Tania could see other loose items floating around in the background, now that she knew to look for it. They did leave in a hurry. Or it’s a clever detail to sell the ruse.

“You know me a little,” Russell said. “So I think you’ll appreciate how hard this is for me to say. You’ll understand how dire the situation is.”

She swallowed hard, despite herself.

“Tania Sharma,” he said, “I humbly ask for asylum. Sanctuary, for myself and the crew of Platz Station. I … ask for mercy. Throw me in a cell if you must, I don’t care, just don’t tell us to turn around. We can’t go back now, any more than you can.”

Tim, in the corner of Tania’s field of view, shook his head vehemently. If Zane were up and about, he’d be doing the same, she knew. “What’s in it for us?” Tania asked.

She’d hoped the question would take Russell off guard. That’d he’d be surprised she’d do anything except agree based on humanitarian reasons. He took the question in stride, though.

“People. You keep asking for people. Well, here’s a few thousand, all skilled Orbitals. Plus this station, it’s yours. It’s the crown jewel of Neil’s empire, you know.”

“What else?”

Now he showed a flicker of desperation. A quick dart of his eyes to hers, searching some sign of her sincerity. “Um,” he said. “Well … there’s four climbers aboard and twenty or so cars, most of them rated for personnel transport. Soldiers. We lost some in departure, but there’s plenty still here. Weapons. Six medical doctors and as many nurses, plus a fully outfitted infirmary.”

“Any of our missing friends? Samantha Rinn or Kelly Adelaide, for example? Former council members?”

He shook his head. “We didn’t plan to leave. I haven’t seen your friends in a long time.”

Tania nodded slowly. The station was an incredible addition to the colony, she had no doubt. Everything sounded too good to be true, with the exception of Blackfield’s presence. She pondered the idea of sending him back and keeping the rest.

“Please,” Russell said. “At least provision us with air and water. Food. Our departure was, well, let’s say it was unplanned.”

“Something’s happened,” Tania said. “In Darwin. Something forced you to leave. What was it? Did the aura fail? Did you leave everyone else to die?”

Russell held up his hands. “Whoa, hold on. I’m the victim here, okay?”

Like hell you are.

He went on. “Our station was attacked. They were going to destroy it when their assault failed. We had no choice but to flee.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“Grillo,” he said. Noting her confusion, he added, “The f*cking Jacobites. They run everything now. Darwin. Orbit. All of it. And once they find out there’s another Elevator here, there’s no telling what they’ll do.”

She fixed him with a gaze she hoped looked menacing. “They don’t know where we are? Where you went?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think so, but they have Alex Warthen. He might talk, if Grillo suspects he has information. I doubt it, though; he’s honorable to a fault.”

Tania’s mind raced. Most of it still screamed “trick.”

“By letting us stay,” Russell said, “you also earn my silence. I could get Nightcliff on the line right now and report our location.”

“Fine then,” Tania said, harsher than she’d intended. If there was a chance to capture Russell Blackfield, lock him up, and toss the key out an airlock, she had to take it. “Attach and await our instructions.”

Against Tim’s protests, and her own better judgment, Tania allowed Platz Station to attach to the Elevator.

Within two hours a team of four guards, all volunteers, slid into the station’s main cargo bay and took Russell Blackfield into custody. He waited there for them, alone and unarmed as agreed. They reported that the cargo bay showed signs of combat. She had Russell brought down to Melville Station and placed in a cabin under watch. For the moment she thought it best not to meet with him directly.

Instead, Tania boarded a climber herself, along with more guards and her night shift operations team from Melville.

The main cargo bay at the heart of Platz Station indeed appeared to have been the scene of an intense battle. Globules of blood still drifted and pooled near the air vents and exit doors. A shell casing floated past her. Sweeping lines and speckled clusters of bullet impacts decorated the walls, floor, and ceiling. There were no bodies, though. Either the dead had been pushed out an airlock, or they’d been tucked away somewhere within.

A greeting party awaited her. No guards, per the instructions, and no one appeared to be armed. She ordered her people to search them anyway, if anything just to establish authority. Her recent combat and weapons training gave her a confidence she’d not expected, as if she held a secret that would forevermore give her a slight upper hand. No one complained, and no weapons were found. Tania thought she saw relief on their faces. She hoped so, at least. They’d been living under Russell Blackfield’s command, and though that had surely generated some bad seeds, Tania decided to make sure the rest saw her as a marked improvement in their lives.

“Who’s in charge?” Tania asked.

Most of the group turned to face one woman near the center. She seemed to remember herself, and raised a hand. “Jenny Abrath,” she said. “I guess it’s me.”

“Nice to meet you,” Tania said.

“The station is yours, Dr. Sharma.”

Goose bumps rose on Tania’s arms. “What’s your role here, Jenny?”

“I run the operations room,” she said. “I could take you there now, if you like.”

“Thanks,” Tania said, “but no. I want to speak with your doctors first. We have someone in critical condition who could use attention.”

The station crew she passed on the journey all had the same look on their faces. Confusion, bewilderment. Hope. Even, she thought, a little respect.

On the way to operations she spied the hallway that led to the apartments Neil Platz used to occupy, as well as the adjacent set where Zane had lived. “Hold on,” she said to Jenny. “I want to see something.”

Alone, Tania walked down the hall and let a flood of childhood memories fill her mind. She’d run down this hallway many times, intent to share some scholastic achievement or chess victory story with Neil when her own parents were away. Her parents were always away.

Tania opened the door to Neil’s apartment and took a few tentative steps inside. The living space appeared used. It made sense that Russell would claim the space, but still it surprised her for some reason. For all Russell’s banter against Neil, he sure seemed quick to stand in the man’s shoes.

The bedroom door was partly opened and Tania stepped in, not sure exactly what she hoped to find. Neil’s scent, or his clothing. Anything to give her a clear and bright memory of him again.

Instead she saw a mess. Clothing strewn about, a towel tossed carelessly on the floor. Two bottles of alcohol sat on the bedside table; a third lay on the ground. Russell, she thought. Of course he’d take this room for himself.

She retreated into the entrance hall and started back toward the rest of the group. Lush red carpet softened her footfalls.

Halfway back she spied the door to Zane’s suite of rooms. She paused there and pushed the door open, half-expecting to find another bedchamber for Russell Blackfield. But the room appeared to be left alone. Debris littered the floor. Pillows from the couch, a slate terminal, a bouquet of fake plastic roses. All, Tania thought, due to the hasty switch to zero-g, not from searchers or looters.

As she pulled the door closed an idea formed. A faint smile crept onto her face as she returned to Jenny and the others.

The infirmary bustled with doctors, nurses, and injured. Half the patients were in beds or on stretchers, wearing bandages with faint splotches of blood seeping through. Bullet wounds, she guessed. The rest of the patients all had minor injuries: bruises, lacerations, the odd broken bone. More evidence that the flight from Darwin had been in haste. A switch to zero-g without preparation would have filled the station with every item not stowed or bolted.

Tania asked to speak to the most senior doctor and pulled the woman aside. She introduced herself as Dr. Volk, and Tania shook her hand. The statuesque woman had elegant dark skin and tightly curled black hair showing a bit of gray at the roots.

“One of our people is in a coma,” Tania said to her, and explained the history.

The doctor nodded politely throughout and asked a few questions. “I’m not sure what we can do for him,” she said, “after so much time. Keep him comfortable, monitor him, and wait. It sounds like you’ve got the same equipment we do, more or less, but I’d be happy to compare notes with the doctor on your side.”

Tania thanked her and left her to tend to the wounded. She felt as if the doctor could be trusted, something about her manner gave all the right signals, but time would tell. For now, Tania decided she would put Dr. Brooks in charge here, and have Zane Platz transferred back to his old apartment on the station. Perhaps his own room, his own bed amid familiar smells and noises, would trigger something in his mind.

It can’t hurt.

She nodded to Jenny in a way that conveyed “let’s go,” and fell in with her as they moved through the station’s wide hallways toward operations.

Logistics and problem scenarios began to fill Tania’s thoughts. The station would have to be searched, weapons confiscated until the inhabitants could be interviewed. Russell’s small private army would need to be detained until they could figure out a way to integrate them. Perhaps a heartfelt speech from Russell would do the trick.

Despite the mountain of issues to deal with, her mind kept returning to Zane Platz. She envisioned him resting quietly in his own room, the ghost of his older brother at his side.

Time to come home, Zane.
Cappagh, Ireland

Date imprecise

THE SAFETY LINE swung Skyler and his savage companion into the meat of the earthen spire. Somehow, through luck or subconscious movement, he managed to turn so that the subhuman took the brunt of the impact.

He grunted in unison with the creature, but with far less pain. The being cushioned the impact, went limp as its head was sandwiched between Skyler’s leg and the rock-strewn wall. Both of its hands released at once, and it fell away, tumbling down the column and rolling to a stop at its base, lifeless and contorted.

Skyler flailed for a moment. He inhaled a lungful of air and forced himself back from a panic mindset. He released his death grip on the rope, trusting the climbing gear to hold his weight. It did.

He righted himself against the spire’s sheer surface and found hand- and footholds with more expertise than he knew he had. Finally stable, he glanced down to assess the situation around him.

His eyes found Ana first, just a few meters away. She stared at him with wide eyes, her face drained of color, mouth agape.

“I’m okay,” he said to her.

She blinked in response.

Skyler glanced farther down, to the floor of the dome. Vanessa stood roughly where she’d been when the dome began to vibrate. She was reloading her gun and, as if sensing he was looking at her, glanced up and met his eyes. Her face showed determination and utter, complete confusion.

The red shapes flittered around her, moving between the clumps of rock and around the craters. They were closing in, as if working together like a pack of wolves.

One red shape, just a few meters from Vanessa, had stopped completely. Its edges were somehow stable, and Skyler thought it resembled a human body lying prone.

The vibration of the dome itself suddenly ramped up in intensity. Through his hands and feet, Skyler felt the earthen column shift, and he saw a crack form diagonally along its length.

“Go!” he roared at Ana. “It’s shaking apart!”

Above, the pedestal at the top cracked into a hundred pieces and shattered. Chunks of earth fell away, passing just centimeters from Skyler’s body. He didn’t even have time to cover his head or warn Ana to do so. All he could do was watch, dumbly, and hope he was far enough in under the lip to be protected.

With dreamlike slowness, the hourglass-shaped alien object tumbled past Skyler amid the rest of the fractured debris. He watched it fall to the tapered base of the spire and tumble away into the chaos below.

Then he saw Vanessa, still fumbling to reload, as one of the darting red forms suddenly changed angle and came right at her.

She didn’t have time to even raise her weapon as the shape slammed into her.

Vanessa cried out, enveloped in the red field.

It moved through her, and for the briefest of instants Skyler thought he saw another entity within, a humanoid loping on all fours.

And then the red amorphous stain moved past her, leaving nothing but empty air behind.
Platz Station

20.JAN.2285

ZANE PLATZ OPENED his eyes after eight months in a coma, sat bolt upright, and laughed.

The laugh faded as he took in his surroundings. His old bed, his room on Platz Station. “It was a dream, then,” he said, and passed out again.

Tania had been in the middle of explaining what she’d had for breakfast. She spent an hour here, every morning, recounting the mundane details of the previous day’s activity to the comatose man. At first it had been difficult to talk to him, but the comfort of the normal room, and the privacy it afforded, gradually eroded her reluctance.

In all the time she’d been visiting him he’d never done more than breathed in and out. A flicker beneath the eyelids at best.

To see him sit up, to hear him speak, left her slack-jawed.

The man slumped back down into his unconscious state, as if nothing had happened.

“Zane?” she finally asked. “Zane?!”

Tania was half out of her chair, ready to run for the doctor, when Zane stirred. His eyes flickered, then opened. “Tania?” he called, not looking toward her, his voice impossibly hoarse.

“I’m here,” she said. She took his hand and gripped it. He still did not move.

“Can you turn the lights on, Tania dear?”

A knot in her gut twisted. “Excuse me, Zane? The lights?”

He blinked, hard. Then his head swiveled toward her. His eyes were open and unseeing. He looked vaguely past her. “I think I’m blind, dear girl. I must have fallen.”

“You’ve …” She paused. “I’ll go fetch the doctor. Don’t move.”

Hours later, after the doctors and nurses had come and gone many times, and Zane’s visitors stopped in to deliver well wishes, she found herself alone with him again.

Zane could not see. The doctor had said chances were good he’d never regain his vision, news Zane took in stride. He’d said something polite, even pleasant, that Tania had heard but not heard.

They sat in silence for some time. Earlier Tania had explained how he’d come to be back in his room on Platz Station, and she’d given him a high-level summary of everything that had happened during his long slumber.

“Russell is still confined to quarters on Melville,” she said. “He hasn’t complained once. Everything he’s asked for has been related to the safety and comfort of his crew.”

“He’s saying all the right things,” Zane said.

“Exactly.” Tania sighed. “At what point does he cross from saying them to meaning them?”

Zane stared in her direction through drooped eyelids, his eyes wandering in unsettling vagueness. “Who says he will? We gain nothing by believing him and letting him out into the colony. Can you imagine him among our people?”

“No, not really,” Tania admitted. “Still, it seems untenable to hold him in a single cabin for the rest of his life.”

“So … have a trial.”

“For what crime?” Tania stood and began to pace at the end of Zane’s bed. “A coup against Neil after Neil resigned from the council? For the death of Natalie? That was my fault, I’m afraid, and Natalie was arguably on his side anyway.” The words tasted like ash. Strangely enough, when she thought about everything that had happened, it was hard to find anything Russell had actually done wrong. A lot of bravado, and certainly some questionable morals, but in the end the man had been trying to put down an uprising and find the information that drove the traitors.

I just called myself a traitor, she realized. Why am I letting that pervert plant such seeds? She wondered for the hundredth time what Skyler would have done had he been the one to receive Russell. Shoot him on the spot, probably. That would have been a crime worth imprisonment, she thought, and hated herself for it.

“Offer him a job on one of the farm platforms, picking apples. Tell him if he lasts … I’m tired, Tania. Let’s talk about something else; this is making me agitated.”

She ran through all the mundane colony details, with him saying little. She knew she had his full attention, but so many months lying almost motionless had left him atrophied and easily exhausted.

“Keep talking,” he said after a period of awkward silence. “It helps to hear you. Hear anything, really.”

“I’ve run out of things to say,” she said. “I could read to you, maybe?”

Zane shook his head. “Uh, no, that would only make me feel more like an invalid. Describe the station. This room. I like to think I remember it, but since I can only see it in my mind now …”

She nodded, realized he couldn’t see that, and said, “Sure. Of course.” Tania glanced around. “The carpet is a lush red,” she said.

“Neil’s fingerprint.”

“Yes, he did love his red floors.”

Zane chuckled. “Sorry, go on.”

“You’ve two paintings hung on either side of the door. I’m not familiar with either, but they’re both lovely. One depicts a mountain pass with a caravan crossing it. Elephants and footmen, that sort of thing. Forgive me, I’m terrible at this.”

“No, no. Go on, please.”

Sighing, Tania described the second painting, the doors themselves. She avoided the topic of his desk as long as possible, covered in gifts as it was. Eventually it was the only thing left. “A number of people stopped by with well-wishes for you and left tokens on your desk. Flowers, mostly artificial, of course. Someone even left chocolates well within their Preservall date.”

“Oh, now we’re getting somewhere. Crack them open, will you?”

Tania could imagine the doctor’s reaction if she came in to find Zane eating anything, but she found herself moving across the room. The red box of candies was heart-shaped, with some Portuguese written on it that she assumed professed undying love on Valentine’s Day. A scavenged object, of course.

Zane’s terminal slate lay under the red box. A tiny LED on the surface of it winked on and off, an indication of waiting messages. “Looks like you have electronic well-wishes, too,” Tania said as she tucked the red parcel under one arm and picked up the slate.

“Oh?”

“I could read those to you,” she said. “Zane the invalid.”

He grunted a laugh. “All right then. Bring it over here so I can thumb it.”

She set the chocolates on his bedside table and guided his cold hand to the slate, placing his thumb on the small scanner.

Zane waited for the chime and spoke a word, “Byzantine.”

The slate unlocked.

“Chocolate first,” Zane said.

She opened the box by feel alone as she scanned the message list. At least fifty people had sent get-well messages since the day Platz Station arrived. Mixed with those were hundreds of automated messages the station had filled his inbox with despite his long absence. No one had had time to turn them off. The realization made Tania wonder if Zane’s access to the station computers still worked. If so, they could access archived footage from the security cameras and check out Russell’s story.

They could go back further than that, she realized, and watch the assault that killed Neil. Or even further, and simply watch the man go about his daily routine.

She handed Zane a chocolate and he popped it into his mouth like an eleven-year-old would. Tania couldn’t help but giggle at the expression of pure joy on the man’s face as he chewed.

When her attention returned to the screen, the list of messages had scrolled back to the first one in the list, the oldest message there.

From Neil Platz.

Tania sucked in a sharp breath. The tablet dropped from her hands and slapped against Zane’s leg.

“What is it, Tania? Is someone here?”

“No,” she said, fetching the slate. “It’s … there’s a message from Neil in here.”

“From Neil?”

“Dated the same day he …”

Zane grew still. “Read it to me, would you?”

Tania swallowed. “The subject is ‘A secret I can’t take to the grave.’ Still want me to—”

“Yes,” Zane said. “It’s not like I can do it.”

He knew as well as she did that the terminal could be set to audio mode, and handle the task and even be controlled by vocal commands. Zane wanted her to hear whatever it said.

Tania cleared her throat, and read.

no time - enemy @ door

builders came before darwin el. sandeep and i found ship 2238. he destroyed it before we could truly learn. spare tania of that—

She froze, staring at her father’s name, the ramifications of the words falling on her like an avalanche. They knew? Neil and her father knew of the Builders and kept it secret?

“Keep reading, dear,” Zane said quietly, placing a reaffirming hand on her arm.

His voice broke her trance, and she read on, her hands shaking.

spare tania of that. sandeep had noble intent, died for it. u need to know: 6 builder events total. incoming is 4, not 3 as others think.

goodbye brother

Tania set the slate down on the bed and wept.

With each racking sob a new revelation hit her like a hammer.

She felt Zane’s hand reach for her shoulder, pull her down to lie next to him. He held her as tight as his frail state allowed, and she buried her face against him to cry.

Her mind blotted out the stream of implications that popped like brazen fireworks. She focused on the face of her father, his easy smile and bright eyes. During her childhood he’d been absent more often than not, always off on some mission for the Platz family, for Neil. Despite his frequent and long ventures, however, he never failed to make her feel loved.

She’d been nine years old when the Darwin Elevator arrived. Until now it had never seemed odd that her family lived in the fledgling city at the time, that Neil’s vast estate encompassed Nightcliff, where the cord would make landfall. Neil and her father had been working there for years, building an empire together. Desalination plants, aerospace engineering, manufacturing. All the things they shared passion for, all based in Neil’s beloved Australia.

Neil used to tell a story in interviews. She remembered the first time she’d heard it. Neil and Sandeep, sitting together, opposite an interviewer. The woman had asked why they chose Darwin to base the massive expansion of Platz Industries, the company Neil’s father had built into an empire. “We flipped a coin, actually,” Neil had said. “Heads, Australia. Tails, India. I won, obviously, and thought the Northern Territory would be perfect. Close to Malaysia, close to China beyond. We needed materials and brainpower.”

“Why not just build in Kuala Lumpur, or Singapore?” the interviewer had asked.

Neil sat forward. Her father, Sandeep, had been uncharacteristically blank during the exchange. She’d always assumed it was because he’d lost the coin flip, the chance to base their family in his homeland.

“Money,” Neil had quipped. “You wouldn’t believe the tax breaks we were given.” Then he’d laughed with the interviewer. Sandeep had only smiled.

He’d only smiled because he knew the real reason Darwin had been chosen.

“All that time,” Tania said to the ceiling. “They knew about Darwin the whole time. Forty years. They must have … God, they must have found the Builder ship when they were practically kids. On their first mission together.”

Zane said nothing. He’d hardly reacted at all, in fact.

She whirled on him. The vagueness of his gaze still made her uncomfortable. “Did you know about this, Zane?”

“No,” he said, numb. “I always chalked it up to incredible luck. Neil had always been lucky. A gene I didn’t inherit, or so I thought.”

Somewhere deep within Tania a coldness began to grow. She tried to ignore it, then to willingly banish it, but the cold festered and grew. Neil knew all along. “He knew the whole time,” Tania said aloud. “Neil. He knew about Darwin, he knew about the disease.”

“Hold on—”

“He knew that billions would die and yet he did nothing.”

“No,” Zane said. “No, I refuse to believe that. Neil was a ruthless entrepreneur, granted, but he could not have stood by and let something like that happen.”

Tania barely heard him. “My mother went to India to fight the disease. My father went, too. Neil could have stopped them.”

“Stop that, Tania. Stop it now.”

“He let them die to protect … to protect …”

Zane gripped her arm. “We don’t know what happened, Tania. We don’t know what they knew. You’re speculating.” He practically spat the last word, and began to cough.

She thought back to her conversations with Neil in the years after the disease. He’d encouraged her to explore the theory of more Builder events to come. In fact, the more she thought about it, all the key ideas on how to approach the problem had come from him, though he’d always voiced them as offhand comments or random musings. He’d left it to her to form the theory to the point where she felt like it had been her own.

Of course. He had to. If he’d admitted to knowing the Builders’ timetable, he admitted to prior knowledge of the space elevator in Darwin. Worse—far, far worse—the disease. Without knowing how much Neil knew it would be unfair to assume he could have done anything to save lives. In hindsight he’d clearly known to buy the land in Nightcliff, to form the vast Spaceworks division of Platz Industries. It stood to reason, then, that he’d known something about the disease. And yet Tania couldn’t think of anything Neil had done, overt or covert, to save his friends, his family. He’d allowed her mom to go to India to study the illness. And her father …

The lack of details around the circumstances of his death hung in her mind like a black hole.

… He destroyed it….

He’d gone on a mission to one of the old, pre-Elevator space stations. Emergency repair work in a time when half the world had died or gone mad. And then the station had been destroyed. An explosion, a freak accident. No survivors.

… He destroyed it….

Why? Why not tell the world, Father?

Tania could think of only one reason why her father would destroy the first evidence of alien intelligence: guilt. He and Neil had sat on the information for decades, judging by when the Platz operations began to expand into the Northern Territory. They’d profited immensely. They’d hidden the greatest discovery in history from all of mankind.

… He destroyed it….

“What are you thinking, dear girl?” Zane asked, his voice a whisper full of gravel.

She squeezed her eyes closed to wring out the last of her tears. The mental hurdle cleared her mind. I’m thinking what I’d say to Neil, and my father, if they were still here. She decided Zane didn’t need to know that, after all he’d been through. “Six events,” she said. “This ship approaching is the fifth. Which means …”

Zane gripped her shoulder, then patted it. “One to go.”

“One to go,” she agreed. Her dreams of late were of skies filled with thousands of Builder shells, encircling the Earth like Jupiter’s rings, arriving yearly, then monthly. Daily. Hourly. Long after she’d died of old age they kept coming, until they blotted out the sun.

One to go, she thought. At least this will all be over soon. A year from now, give or take.

“You won’t,” Zane said, then paused. “You won’t tell anyone, will you? About Neil, I mean.”

“I’m not sure yet,” Tania said honestly.
Cappagh, Ireland

Date imprecise

“GO NOW!”

His second shout broke through Ana’s daze so completely that he could see the transformation occur. In the time it took to blink her eyes, Ana hardened. A level of concentration, of intent, absent an instant before, flared into her eyes and the set of her jaw. She took one glance down, pivoted, and leapt down to a ledge a meter below her. Then again to another.

Skyler followed, grinding his teeth with each ache and complaint his body threw at him, unable to match Ana’s pace. Below, he saw her reach the point of the sloped column base where she could half-run, half-fall the rest of the way, and then she pulled to a halt, suddenly unsure where to focus her wrath. The shifting red shapes reacted to her presence, fanning out again, darting with dizzying speed across her field of view.

The one prone red smear had still not moved since Vanessa fired into it. The object that had snatched up Vanessa, at least the one Skyler guessed had done so—they all looked the same to him—moved differently than the others. Erratic, as if broken or maimed.

Skyler reached the slope and bounded down the incline. He yanked his ice axe from its belt loop and hefted it in his right hand, making a straight line toward the object that had struck Vanessa. In the corner of his eye he saw Ana glance toward him and begin to move his way.

The red object loomed in front of Skyler, still dancing about in impossible, abrupt movements. Suddenly it was right in front of him. He roared and swung down.

Skyler’s axe hit the shape with no result at first, as if he’d hit nothing but air. Then a resistance slowed the axe blade, and he felt as if he’d just swung down on a giant pillow. At the point his blade stopped and should have rebounded, Skyler saw the red-hued morass curl and conform around him. With an alien pop, the field surrounded and then consumed him, just as the dome had done when he entered.

Just before becoming enveloped, Skyler saw the red shape bulge and something dart out. He saw enough to register Vanessa tumbling away before he was inside.

And then he understood. These were pockets of time, or, rather, fields identical to the dome itself, only much smaller and on a different clock.

A subhuman stood scant centimeters away. Blood trailed from the corner of its mouth, and it held a patch of Vanessa’s shirtsleeve in one clenched, black-coated fist. And though his former opponent had just dived aside, the creature already had turned itself toward Skyler, coiled, and swung.

Unfortunately for the creature, it had aimed its attack based on Skyler’s speed before he’d entered the faster-moving pocket. Skyler entered to see the fist, black to the wrist, swing wide past his head. The being’s upper arm smacked against Skyler’s head with no real force behind it.

Their eyes were inches apart. Skyler smelled the foul stench on its breath, saw the individual capillaries in its bloodshot eyes.

Movement behind it caught Skyler’s attention. Vanessa, or so he assumed, for the red blob that surrounded him made everything beyond murky. She bounded toward the creature’s back in slow motion, constrained by the slower time scale just outside the red pocket that seemed to cling to the subhuman.

“Deaaaattthhhh,” the creature hissed, whipping Skyler’s attention back.

“You first.” He swung up with his axe, intending to spike the sub’s abdomen. But it bounded back in the same instant. The head of the axe sailed upward, slicing the creature’s chin open in a spray of blood.

The being howled. It swiped one hand in reflexive counterattack while Skyler’s arm still extended upward from his swing. The black-coated fist caught him in the side just above the waist, a solid blow that drove Skyler to one knee.

Blood dripping from its chin, the subhuman reeled back and lifted its other arm to swing down on Skyler’s head.

Then Vanessa’s form pressed into the border of the red aura and she popped through. She came in low, barreled into the back of the creature’s legs, and lifted upward all in one motion. The surprised subhuman vaulted into the air and flipped completely over, landing face-first in the churned earth.

Twenty years of jujitsu, Skyler had time to think.

Vanessa wasted no time. She spun and jumped simultaneously, twisting in midair. She landed on the creature’s back with both knees and Skyler heard the air rush from the subhuman’s lungs just before Vanessa gripped its head with both hands and twisted savagely.

The animal went limp.

“Thanks,” Skyler croaked.

“You okay?” Vanessa asked.

“Where’s Ana?”

She shook her head, didn’t know.

“Where’s your gun?”

Vanessa shook her head again, standing up. “Dropped it somewhere.”

The ground beneath their feet rumbled. Around them vague shapes moved around the dome floor. Some slow, some at what felt more like real time. All were too obscure to make out from within their own time-shifted pocket. Skyler glanced down at his axe, stood, and hefted it. He looked at Vanessa.

She had no axe, but when she saw him ready his she seemed to suddenly understand the situation they were in. She reached to her calf and unholstered a hunting knife. The carbon-coated blade took on the color of blood inside the red field.

“Find Ana,” Skyler said, “and find that Builder object. Then we go.”

“Agreed.” Then, “Hey. Move with your axe held out before you. Use their speed against them.”

He nodded.

Again the floor of the dome trembled. A crack shot across the ground just centimeters from Skyler’s feet. He leapt back on instinct as the fracture widened. It went on, the gap as wide as a hand, then almost a full meter in places. Rock and clumps of soil tumbled in.

Skyler felt a pressure against his back and realized too late that he’d come to the edge of the red pocket, which seemed …

“The red blob,” Skyler blurted. “It’s attached to them somehow.”

It seemed patently obvious when he said it, but up until that moment he’d hoped that perhaps it would move with him as he went after the others. No such luck.

Vanessa looked down at the creature by her feet, then back at him. He had enough time to see her grin before he popped through the shifting edge of the red space and back into the “normal” time frame of the dome.

His mind scrambled again, but the effect was starting to become something he could manage now, like a pilot learning to handle the press of g-forces. He hunkered, forcing himself to stop and focus on everything and nothing until the neurons in his brain started to fire in synchronicity again.

Ana was nowhere to be seen. All about him the reddish smears of time flowed between the chunks of upthrust earth and rock. He saw one misjudge its path and drop into a crevice formed in the last jolt the dome experienced. There were some purple auras among the red now, moving at a speed closer to reality. In a few places, blue-hued shapes were just starting to lift out of their craters, implying that the color and rate of time’s passage were linked. He filed that and swung his attention to the red fields again. A few were close by, and from what he knew of being inside the accelerated pocket, the world outside was not much more clear than shadows and hazy forms. If he stayed far enough away, they’d miss him. That explained, he thought, their erratic movement. They were searching, and as far as he could tell none were moving outside the dome and the aura towers that encircled it.

He heard movement behind and spun about too late. A red was speeding past diagonally to him, and when it came within a few meters the shape’s lead tendrils seemed to flow down invisible channels that led straight to Skyler.

Unaware he’d been doing so, he found he held the axe in front of him as Vanessa had suggested. The red blob hit him, enveloped him, forcing his mind to snap once again between two clocks. He shuddered and put all his thought into holding on to the axe as the creature within the ruby cavity slammed into him.

The tactic did not work.

For all Skyler’s effort, the subhuman’s accelerated viewpoint gave it plenty of time to see his outstretched weapon and shift its position just enough to avoid impaling itself. The sub hit him shoulder to shoulder, a glancing impact that sent them both into a spin. The creature couldn’t handle its own momentum and continued past, its body twisting over in midair as it fell away.

Skyler lost his grip on the axe and spun in place, his right leg twisting painfully beneath him. Before he could fall himself the creature moved far enough away that it took its red aura with it, and Skyler found himself thrust back into the slower reality of the dome one more time.

“Stop f*cking doing that!” he shouted as he landed painfully on his right knee. He forced himself up in time to see the pocket of red racing toward him again.

And to his left, another came.

Skyler had no time to even look for his axe. He did the only thing he could think of and dove forward into a tucked roll. He felt the painful yet gratifying smack of kneecaps against his back as the charging creature toppled over him, moving too fast within its own frame of reference to stop itself.

Entry into another red aura made Skyler feel more and more like he’d gulped down a bottle of Darwin’s worst cider and then twirled in circles for half a goddamn century. He fought to concentrate, felt a momentary panic that he’d truly lost track of time. Struggling to his feet, Skyler took an unsteady step toward his enemy if only just to stay within its portable time field. The sub flailed on the ground near him and sprang to its feet just as Skyler approached.

Skyler swung, missed badly. The creature lashed out with a splay of ragged, black-clad fingers and clipped him across the chest.

Something moved to his left and Skyler glanced just in time to see another red shape merging with his. This creature stood smaller than the first, using all fours to run. When it came inside, the two subhumans grunted at each other and fanned out slightly. Sensing the flanking tactic, Skyler stepped back as well, intent to keep both in front of him somehow. He toyed with the idea of running but knew he’d only step outside their time frame and appear as a comically slow jogger from their point of view. They could stroll after him and lick their lips before pouncing.

Terror gripped his heart and squeezed when a third red shape began to push inside the boundary, and Skyler had all but resigned himself to death when he saw—

—her.

Ana.

Ana, with a submachine gun that barked thunder and spat fire.

Ana, with two severed black hands tied to her belt, still dripping blood.

Ana, screaming. An incoherent war cry that Skyler felt sure would have given the subhumans pause had they lived to hear it. Her bullets ripped across the chest of the first and the face of the second. Both toppled to the ground before they could even turn to face her.

Ana.

Skyler couldn’t take his eyes off the two dismembered hands hanging from her belt. His mouth opened, the question forming and dying, self-evident.

A third creature ventured into the dome within the dome and she shot it, too: a burst that took the being in its heart and sent it toppling backward. The gun clicked, empty.

Then a fourth enemy raced in. In one smooth motion, Ana flipped the gun around in her hands and clubbed the creature so hard in the face that teeth, maybe bone, maybe both, sprayed out.

Lovely Ana. Blood-spattered and full of rage and the best thing Skyler had ever seen.

“Holy shit,” Skyler managed to say.

“Are you just going to sit there?” she shot back between a quick gasp for air. “Get a pair of hands, they—”

The fifth subhuman to enter blindsided her. It came in fast and low, galloping on hands and feet, and plowed hard into Ana’s lower back. She shrieked and went down hard, her face smacking into the ground without the benefit of raised hands to break her fall.

Her attacker rolled past, got up, and turned to finish its work.

“Hey!” Skyler shouted at it. “Over here!”

Ana hadn’t moved. The creature decided she was no threat and turned to Skyler. He had no weapon other than a small utility knife in his back pocket, too hard to fish out and deploy. Vanessa’s spent rifle lay in the dirt off to Skyler’s left where Ana had dropped it. He stepped toward it and the subhuman matched his motion plus a half step forward, closing the gap. It reared up to walk on just its legs now.

“Right,” Skyler said, and moved in with clenched fists. He jabbed first with his left then threw a haymaker with his right that caught the being on its ear. It staggered, recovered, stepped in, and shoved unexpectedly with both hands, pushing Skyler back a few steps. He almost fell, one foot brushing the edge of a deep gash in the ground.

Nowhere to retreat, he realized.

Ana still lay prone.

The creature howled and came at him again. Skyler saw movement behind it and knew what to do. Oldest trick in the book.

He dropped to his knees and turned.

Vanessa, racing through the edge of the red space and up behind the creature, leapt and kicked with both legs. She hit it perfectly, right between the shoulder blades. With a yelp of surprise and primal understanding the subhuman toppled over Skyler and into the freshly formed ravine behind him. It fell four meters before smashing against the bottom of the cleft, one leg splayed out at an impossible angle. The sub cried out once in pain and then went still.

“Is that all of them?” he asked. He was breathing hard, blood pounding in his ears, the mother of all headaches looming like a storm on the horizon.

“Not even close,” Vanessa said. She wiped sweat from her brow and took in the space around them, her breath catching in her throat at the sight of Ana’s limp body.

Skyler was already moving. “Cover me.”

“Sure.”

He slid to his knees at Ana’s side and felt for a pulse. He had to press hard on her neck to filter out his own pounding blood and the near-constant vibration of the dome itself, and as he did, Ana groaned slightly. Ever so slightly, but it was enough.

“Skyler,” Vanessa said, sounding suddenly far away.

He glanced up. Vanessa stood a few meters off to his side, crouched down and back on her heels. She stared through narrow eyes and Skyler followed the gaze.

The reddish time field associated with the hands Ana had on her belt had faded to almost nothing, dissipating even as Skyler watched until it was gone.

Then he stood as well and took a step back from Ana. Around them loomed the reddish-hued pockets of death of a half-dozen subhumans. As they converged their auras merged like droplets of blood coalescing.

The creature in the middle of the line of enemies was enormous. A head taller than even Samantha and half again as wide. A wall of corded muscle, scars, and filth, all pulled forward by a wide grin of violent ecstasy.

Skyler glanced around. He had no weapon at all, and Ana to protect as much as himself. He looked for anything. A rock, a stick, anything at all, and saw nothing save for the earth at his feet and the edge of the dome itself a few meters away.