Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation (27 page)

She shook her head vigorously enough to make her hair fly. “No. Listen. He … thinks I’m … with Dad.”
 

“So you ran down here?”
 

“Raj … ” deep breath, “ … knows.”
 

“I know he knows. That’s why I’m here.”

“No. About Cameron … and Piper. About — ”

“They’re safe. I know where they are.”
 

She shook her head again, frustrated. “The Apex.”
 

“What about it?”
 

“Raj knows they’re … in the city. And the Apex is … something’s changing.”
 

Christopher didn’t like the sound of that. He straightened, his skin prickling.
 

“What do you mean?”

“They can’t … try for the Apex.” Finally, she sat on a bench, forcing her breath back to normal. “The Astrals are swarming it. They’ll … be caught. You need to get them a message.”
 

Christopher looked around the cell. “I can’t.”
 

“Then I have to,” she said. “Where are they?”
 

“You can’t. Raj will have you arrested.”
 

Lila’s frustration was boiling over. Her big eyes looked bloodshot. Her breath was calming but still not even. She was beaten, tired, emotionally wrecked. Terrence had told him that Meyer was acting strange, Heather was always strange, and Clara was strange with an exponent. Lila had married an asswipe, and now her lover was in jail. His simple statement seemed to be the breaking straw, and her eyes began to mist, threatening to spill.
 

“I have to! You have to tell me! The whole Astral army is on the Apex! Raj makes it sound like … they’ve pulled out all the stops to … find them! If they don’t stay put — ”
 

Christopher cut her off. An idea was forming. One that would keep Lila safe, protect Cameron and Piper, and maybe earn humanity a few disarming brownie points with the Astrals — all while getting their scattered eggs closer to sharing a basket, back where they belonged.

“Jons,” he said. “Go out into the other room, and ask Captain Jons to come in here. But first, tell him to call the house and ask for Raj. Tell him to have Raj haul his ass down here, post haste.”
 

Exasperated, near panic:
“Why?”
 

“I want the two of them to go get Cameron and Piper then arrest them.”

CHAPTER 50

Lila breathed.
 

She went to one of the hallway mirrors and tried to fluff her hair. With Raj called to the station, there was no rush. He wouldn’t have the mental bandwidth to think of Lila, and any possible delays she might have committed on her way to her assigned errand. Not with Cameron and Piper in his greedy little sights. She simply didn’t want to look like a pig — or to give her father, if he’d talk to her, reason to wonder why she looked so harried.
 

But when Lila was sufficiently composed and turned from the mirror to the office hallway, she heard the sounds of activity ahead. And when she arrived at Meyer’s office door, it was as her gut had promised: the door was open as usual, her father puttering around as if nothing was amiss.
 

Hearing her approach, he turned and said, “Hey, Pumpkin.”
 

Pumpkin?
When had he last called her that? The pet name felt a thousand years old. From a simpler time, before alien motherships hung from the sky like poisonous fruit.

“Dad?”
 

Meyer smiled. Seeing that felt strange, too.
 

“Do you need something?”
 

“I … ” She stopped. This was clearly a mistake. The house, being stone, was quiet even with all the Astral activity outside. The home was typically filled with Titans, but Raj had been right: They seemed to be massing on the Apex, bleeding them from their normal positions in the corridors. The way Lila and Meyer were now, they might have been any father and daughter, anywhere, any time other than here and now.
 

“You what?”
 

“Raj asked me to come see you.”
 

“Oh yeah?” He set down a stack of papers he’d been carrying. “About what?”
 

Lila almost said
It’s nothing
and left, but the abject normality of the situation was, in itself, unusual. Raj was right: The viceroy alone talked to Divinity and might have some clue as to what was happening outside — and having gone outside herself, Lila could say for sure that something was definitely afoot. Beyond the mansion grounds, Heaven’s Veil seemed under siege. And yet here was Meyer, all but holding a placid cup of morning coffee as he went about his paperwork.
 

“He said you had a visitor.” Lila looked around the room, seeing that they were alone.
 

“I did. He’s gone.”
 

“Who was it?”
 

“A friend.”
 

Lila wanted to ask but knew it would be prying. It could have been anyone. Viceroy business had never been her business and likely never would be. And besides, that wasn’t what mattered now.

“Raj thought you were still down here with him.”
 

“No. He’s gone.”
 

“Where?”
 

“Where he needs to be.”
 

“Dad, are you okay?” It was an absurd question. Of course he was.
 

“I’m great.”
 

“Have you seen what’s happening outside?”
 

“I have.”
 

“And?”
 

“What’s on your mind, Lila?”
 

“The second mothership,” she said, forcing the sentence out. The foreign words felt strange. How could she be talking about motherships and little green men who, it turned out, weren’t little or green? This was only an office. Just another day in logical paradise.
 

“What about it?”

“Why is it here?”
 

“It’s feeding us power. Because the network is out.”
 

Lila flicked the wall switch. Nothing happened.
 

“Not the house,” Meyer said.
 

“So, the city.”

“No. The power is for them.”
 

“Why?”
 

“Because they need power.”
 

“Why,
Dad?”
 

“Why do you want to know?”
 

Lila paused, resetting, wondering if she should try again from a new angle.

“I heard you and Raj got into a fight.”
 

He nodded, his lips pressed. “We did. That was unfortunate.”
 

“Why?”
 

“I’m not sure.”
 

“And Mom. Mom said you were all worked up over something.”

“Did she? Well, I’m not anymore.”
 

“Dad, I — ”
 

Meyer came forward, cutting her off. He took her by both shoulders. She wasn’t tall, and her father was. His large form eclipsed the window’s light, draping Lila in shadow. Without warning, he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed.
 

“Dad?”
 

“I haven’t told you lately how proud I am of you.”
 

Lila felt her brow crease.
 

“You should tell people things. There have been times, when I’ve been busy in the past, that I’ve forgotten that.” He half laughed. “It’s funny. This shouldn’t be a revelation, but it feels like one. Like I’m just figuring it out, though I know I’ve figured it out before. Ever since the Astrals came, it was rush-rush-rush. Even after we got to the Axis Mundi, I couldn’t relax because I kept waiting for the next thing. I was always
Dad the protector
, not
Dad the dad
. Then they sent me back, and it seemed I knew what to do as viceroy, and the whole world felt like a startup. Well, North America, anyway. So I worked it. And again, I forgot.”
 

He was still close. Lila could still only see his suit. She looked up to see his face. With this new demeanor, she could almost see Trevor in him, or vice-versa.

“But now you’ve remembered?”
 

“Seems so.”
 

“Did you … was it like a near-death experience?”
 

“Sometimes, we just need distance, Pumpkin. Maybe I just needed sleep.”

“Okay,” Lila said, unsure of her reply. After a quiet moment, she added, “Dad?”

“Yes, Li.”

“What are the Astrals doing? What’s going on outside?”

“It’s hard to say.”
 

“You have a line to Divinity. They talk right to you, don’t they?”
 

“They have, yes, in the past.”

In the corner, something seemed to move. An end table jostled as if something had run by its legs, but she saw nothing. At first, Lila thought she’d imagined it — spied something from the corner of her eye that wasn’t there because she was tired, or emotionally spent — but then Lila realized she could still see the minute movements of a vase as it wobbled side to side on the table.
 

“Dad?”
 

“Yes.”

“What’s going on with you?”
 

“Have I ever told you, Delilah,” Meyer said, embracing her anew, “that you were named after a song?”

CHAPTER 51

Heather’s head spun like a top. This time, she felt sure she wasn’t imagining things. There was nobody in her small house but Heather herself, and yet the shadows cast through the windows kept changing as if someone was passing on the grass. But the lawn was empty. The city beyond was another story. But royalty, in Heaven’s Veil, got its own slice of tranquility.
 

She moved to the window and looked up. But no, there were still two giant ships in the sky, their silver sides almost kissing, dangling above the city like almighty balls. They hadn’t moved. Hadn’t shifted the light. And the shuttles, which buzzed like a swarm of wasps between the pair and the city at large, were still avoiding mansion airspace. The angle was wrong. Whatever she’d seen, it hadn’t been shuttles.
 

A ticking, metronome-like noise from behind her. Heather turned to see a tiny figurine rocking back and forth. As if someone had brushed the table as they’d clumsily passed.
 

The figurine settled.
 

“Now, you’re finally losing your shit,” Heather told the room.
 

It had only been a matter of time. There was only so much a human brain could take — particularly if it was already damaged like Heather’s. She’d thought she was getting better. The last time she’d spoken with Meyer, she’d felt less her usual wiseass, walls-up self, and that had seemed like a good thing. Like she was finally facing issues and emotions rather than sarcastically deflecting. But maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe she was just losing her fucking gourd.

The door, which was ajar, squeaked slightly farther open. Because of a draft. Not because of some weird shit in Heather’s little house.
 

The widened door allowed a thicker sunbeam. It swallowed a lamp, which threw a shadow on the floor in the slanting morning light.
 

Except that on further inspection, the lamp wasn’t in the light at all.
 

On further inspection, the shadow was casting itself.
 

Heather blinked. Turned her head, explaining it away, refusing to look. But the strategy backfired; with her head turned, in her peripheral vision, she could see the enormous thing in her doorway plain as day.

Her breath caught. Heather’s hand jumped to her chest like a scared animal seeking solace. A half second later, she was staring at the doorway again, her pulse beating three times per second at her temples, her breath coming in a shambling intake of breath.
 

The doorway was empty. The shadow remained, but whatever had cast it was nowhere to be seen.
 

It was nothing. A trick of the eye. A strange slanting of light, bouncing off objects unseen, screwing with her already fragile mind. Her disbelieving, saw-her-husband-die-and-come-back-to-life mind.
 

Because of the breeze and nothing else, a tall vase filled with decorative rocks and sand tipped on its delicate end, fell to the floor, and shattered.
 

Heather stood, backing away.
 

An unseen hand wrote in the sand, slowly.
 

The message read,
Follow.
 

The shadow on the floor vanished, but if Heather turned her head to the side and watched the doorway from the corner of her eye, she realized she could see the huge black shape farther up, waiting for her like an oversized dog seeking its handler.