Defenders (5 page)

Dad shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Lila dropped it. It clattered off a long-obsolete medical diagnostic fMRI kit and wedged against an old TV screen.

“Find something productive to do,” Dad said, not unkindly, shooing with his hands as if she were a puppy. “If there’s nothing around here you can think of, go down to Civil Defense and volunteer. They’ll find something for you.”

Lila didn’t want to go to Civil Defense. She didn’t want to be around a lot of people, have whispered conversations about which city the starfish had overrun, what human weapon they’d figured out how to convert for their own use. She picked up another piece of junk, an old solar panel, and turned it over, looking for a date. There was none.

If only the war were taking place in the virtual world instead of the real one. She’d probably be in Washington, D.C., right now, designing weapons systems, or sabotaging the enemy’s capabilities. She knew VR tech inside and out. This hard tech—Lila turned the panel on its end, ran her thumb along its thin edge. It was a mystery.

“So what’s it going to be?” Dad asked.

Lila set the solar panel down, leaned over the fence, and fished an identical panel out of the pile. If she had to do something productive, maybe she should take a crack at this old shit, see if she could make it useful again. There must be similarities between tinkering inside the feed and tinkering with actual chips and circuits. The technology was fifteen years old—how complicated could it be?

Lila spotted a bunch of solar panels, shoved aside a stuffed penguin doll she’d gotten for Christmas when she was six, and started stacking them along the fence. The satellites might be down, but they still had the standard home library downloaded on the handheld. Surely there were all sorts of old tech manuals available.

Her father was waiting for some sort of reply.

“Go away,” she said. “I’m working.”

Dad walked away, shaking his head.

There was nothing to do except read, watch movies, or talk to Five. If Oliver was home, he could at least be working on his comic collection.
Spider-Man
was complete, save for issue fourteen, the first appearance of Green Goblin. It was the early issues of
The Hulk
that were proving most difficult to locate.

It was insane, utterly insane, to be seeking out old comic books with the world on the brink, but it was the only thing in his life that wasn’t depressing and seemingly hopeless.

Oliver started when Five began to speak aloud. He still wasn’t used to the gurgling, hissing sound of his voice, so unlike the telepathic version.

“All of that effort, just to move paper with colorful pictures into closer proximity to you. That’s all you’re doing, really.”

“I’m not going to argue with you. I honestly don’t care what you think of my behavior.”

“Of course you do,” the Luyten said. “You used to play online poker. You were very good, weren’t you?”

“I was very good.” Oliver tried to control his rising impatience.

“Now you collect comics. Why is that, do you think?”

“Because poker takes other people, and without satellites I don’t have access to other good players.” He rubbed his eyes; he was tired, even though he was getting plenty of sleep. “Besides that, it takes energy. It taxes your cognitive resources. When I’m not working, I’m too tired, mentally and emotionally, for poker. There’s no thinking involved in collecting comic books.”

“No, there’s certainly not. A child could do it.”

Oliver poked at something caught between his teeth. “A child could do it. Yes. Provided he had a decent income.”

The comment made him think of Kai, of the decision awaiting him when he got home. If he adopted Kai, they could collect comics together. He could teach Kai to play poker; that might inject him with fresh enthusiasm for the game.

Was it foolish, to consider adopting a thirteen-year-old boy? He couldn’t imagine sitting Kai down to talk about sex, or disciplining him if he did something wrong. How did you even discipline a thirteen-year-old? His own upbringing would be no help on that front; his parents had met at an Asperger’s clinic, where they were both undergoing outpatient treatment.

Maybe all of it was moot. How much time did they have left, realistically? A year? He should adopt Kai, and let the kid eat ice cream for dinner every night, if that’s what he wanted to do.

“Do you want to know why you really collect comic books?”

Oliver groaned. “I’m not the one who tortured you. I have been nothing but civil to you. Why are you so hostile?

“I’m not being hostile. I’m just passing time.”

Until that night, when the people in charge had tired of Oliver’s inability to get Five to tell him anything useful, their conversations had been relatively polite. Certainly not warm, but polite. Two emissaries, on opposite sides of their species’ struggle to the death, discussing the situation in even tones.

“Do you want to know?” Five asked.

Oliver didn’t answer. Five knew he didn’t want to know, that he was sick to death of having his mind cut open and pinned to a piece of cardboard, but Oliver knew Five would ignore this, because that was the game.

“You collect comic books because you harbor an infantile desire for the superheroes to be real. You want the Hulk, Spider-Man, and the Silver Surfer to come and save you. To save your kind. Even a cowboy on a white horse would do.”

Go ahead, Oliver thought, pluck the name of the cowboy on the white horse out of my head. Only it’s not a white horse, it’s a silver horse. The hat is white.

“The Lone Ranger,” Five said.

“Yes, I’m waiting for the Lone Ranger to save me.” Oliver had never actually
watched
that ancient show, but that was beside the point.

“No one is coming to save you.”

Oliver looked at his fingernails. Had he remembered to pack nail clippers when the security contingent showed up at his house and told him to pack? Hopefully they’d been in his shaving kit when he packed it. He went to the bathroom to look.

“You have no hope left,” Five said. “I respect that. You’re realistic, for one of your kind.”

He stared into the mirror. Was that true? Did he have no hope?

It was almost true. Not 100 percent true, but it wasn’t a lie.

Oliver looked into his own tired, watery eyes and realized he was letting this creature beat him. If he had no hope, if he’d given up in his heart, he was useless. He was betraying President Wood, his country, his kind, who were trusting him with a crucial task. Maybe he was here primarily because all of the men and women more capable of doing this job were dead. Maybe that was true.

It is true.

“Shut up!” he shouted.

Even if it was true, he had assets and abilities those people lacked. He needed to better utilize his assets.

Maybe he could turn Five’s humiliating insights around to his advantage. Five was good at exposing his weaknesses. Fine, now he knew what his weaknesses were. As any decent psychologist knew, if you’re not aware of your weaknesses, they control you; if you’re aware of them, if you face up to them, you control them.

Based on Five’s attacks, his weaknesses were Vanessa, and his lack of confidence in himself.

They’re just the tip of the iceberg.

“Shut up.”

As Five had so aptly observed, he was waiting for superheroes to show up and save him. Since all the superheroes—all of the CIA’s action people—were dead, he needed to get himself a cape. Even if, inside, he didn’t feel it, even if he felt like a fraud, it was time to play the part of the big, strong CIA agent. It was time to lock out his doubts and fears, put his head down, and take bullets until he couldn’t get up anymore.

“You’re wrong,” he said aloud, because to humans speaking something aloud held a certain power, made the words real in a way thinking them did not. “I’m realistic; I recognize that we’re losing. Badly. But I still have hope. We haven’t lost yet. We’re headed somewhere, and I’m pretty sure we’re not going there to surrender.”

The little speech sounded canned even to his ears; they were the sort of words Batman might speak in a comic book. But Oliver had to admit, it still felt good to say them.

Kai pried the flagstone loose from the walk that meandered through the church’s walled garden. The small, square key was underneath, just as the Luyten said it would be. He plucked it from its hiding spot, headed for the back door of the church.

Not there. Back the other way. Walk along the wall.

Kai did as he was told, his mouth watering with anticipation despite the wild guilt he felt. A
church
.

There was a small graveyard set inside a low, ornamental fence. Ivy covered the fence and crawled along the ground.

There. Behind the statue.

Behind a mold-stricken statue of an angel with spread wings was a raised concrete circle with a steel cover. Looking around first, though it was probably unnecessary, Kai approached the cover, inserted the key into the hole, and pulled the hatch open.

The cover lifted fairly easily, revealing a dark hole, a ladder leading down. Kai climbed to the bottom, a dozen or so feet below the ground. He was surrounded by shelves of food—dried, packaged meals, like the ones soldiers ate.

Whose are these?
he thought. It was confusing, to speak to it without speaking. There was no line dividing what he wanted to say and what he just wanted to think.

The pastor. Speak out loud if you prefer, but quietly.

“Why is this food down here?” Kai whispered, relieved.

Because he doesn’t want to share it. Take six.

Hands shaking with anticipation, Kai grabbed the meals, struggled up the ladder one-handed, and headed for the gate.

Not yet. Go toward the church.

“I don’t want to get caught,” Kai whispered.

I know where everyone is. Go.

Kai went. The voice directed him along the back of the church, to a dirt- and leaf-covered black steel grate in the ground along the back wall.

Open the grate. Drop four down.

Drop
them. Why on Earth would he do that?

Realization swept over him with an icy chill. It was down there. Hiding. Probably hurt.

I’m in trouble, just like you. I’m alone and afraid, just like you.

It was difficult for Kai to imagine one of those big, ugly monsters being afraid, and lonely. “Why are you lonely? I thought you could talk to other Luyten in your head.”

They’re all too far away.

They had an eight-mile range. Kai remembered hearing that.

That’s right.

As Kai knocked on the door, he told himself he had no choice but to do what the Luyten told him. It hadn’t made any threats, but it was huge, and powerful, and he was just a kid.

A woman answered the door. She was Asian like him, a streak of gray running through her long hair. More important, the aroma of fish and rice wafted through the door from a nearby kitchen.

Her name is Mrs. Boey. Tell her you have a message from her daughter. Valerie.

“Mrs. Boey? My name is Kai. I have a message from your daughter Valerie.”

The woman’s expression transformed. “You heard from my baby?” She opened the door, put a hand on Kai’s shoulder, and led him inside.

Valerie is outside Richmond, alive. She helped you escape. She asked you to tell her mother she’s sorry about the argument they had before she left.

Is Valerie alive, Kai thought.

Probably not.

With a crippling knot of guilt in his stomach, Kai told Mrs. Boey her daughter was alive and well, as a dozen people sitting elbow to elbow around a kitchen table looked on. Food was already on the table, and after Kai delivered his news the woman had little choice but to invite him to share their meal. The food was delicious; Kai ate voraciously, every chopstick-full sticking in his throat on the way down as he watched Mrs. Boey across the table, smiling, probably eating more easily than she had at any time since her sixteen-year-old daughter left to battle the Luyten four months earlier.

He should tell them, he thought. He should blurt out that there was a Luyten hiding under the church. Once it was out, there was nothing it could do. It was the enemy. It and its kind wanted to wipe out everyone on Earth, and they were
succeeding
—

If you tell her, you’ll go back to being cold and hungry.

Kai didn’t want to be hungry again. More than that, he didn’t want to be alone in the dark, stumbling through places where there might be dead bodies.

“Do you have family nearby?” an old, bent woman asked Kai.

“No. I have an aunt and uncle in Connecticut, but it’s too far.”

I’m not a soldier. I haven’t killed anyone.

It was not the first time the Luyten had told him this.

It claimed it had been shot out of the sky, part of a small contingent of Luyten on a night reconnaissance mission over D.C. The military knew a Luyten had been shot down in the area and they were hunting for it. For
Five
, he reminded himself. It had asked Kai to call it Five. It must have been injured in the crash, but it wouldn’t say.

After the meal, Mrs. Boey said, “I’d ask you to stay, but as you can see, there’s just no room.” She gestured toward her relatives, most of them young or very old.

Kai told her he understood, and followed her to the door carrying the leftover food she had given him.

As he headed toward the back of the church, Kai wondered if Five had purposely chosen a house where Kai was likely to get food, but not a place to sleep. If someone took Kai in, he would have less incentive to protect Five’s secret.

Yes
, Five said.
I don’t want to die. I’m just as afraid to die as you are.

“Why are you doing this to us?” Kai whispered, although there was no one to hear him—the street was cold and empty, the orange glowlights along the sidewalk his only guide in the darkness. “Can’t we share the world? Why do you have to have it all to yourselves?”