Genesis (6 page)

I am leviathan.

Frigid water washed over her now as she eased through the darkness of the deep ocean. Around her other creatures moved and swam, ever vigilant of her, careful not to move too close. Not afraid, but respectful of her power; they were aware of her position within the Grand Hierarchy at play around her.

I am insignificant.

Now she clung to a rock, her tiny red tendrils reaching out across the stark cold landscape, waiting for the sunlight to come again. She was small, inconsequential by human standards, but as aware of her irreplaceable position within the Grand Hierarchy of the world as any other part of the immense machine that was life on this small blue planet.

I am here.

And now she saw through almost human eyes again. An intense sense of inquisitiveness consumed her, flooding through every limb. She looked down at a tiny human figure sleeping peacefully beneath a blanket—a feeling of recognition pecked at her. She knew this being. The child moved, quietly repositioning itself within the crib. A powerful vitality flowed from the child, as though it was somehow able to amplify the natural energy surrounding it. An almost overwhelming mixture of desire, curiosity, and longing gripped her. It was an irresistible pull the likes of which she had never experienced before, not in the millennia of time she had existed. The tiny creature lying in the crib was fascinating.

Long slender arms reached down toward the child, a single nimble digit extended and caressed its cheek—
as if from a great depth the human facet began to struggle for control again
—then the finger traced the outline of the infant’s ear, lifting the thin blond hair. Contact only fueled the feeling of curiosity, the pleasure of newness. A second stick-thin arm reached down, the hands extended and gently grasped the child—
No! No! No! The human facet began to scream
—lifting him from within his blanket cocoon. The child’s eyes opened and stared back at her—
“Let him go!” the human facet screamed, forcing itself to the front.

I am Emily Baxter.

“Adam!”

Emily crashed into consciousness covered in sweat, her son’s name echoing in her ears, the dream—
No!
she corrected herself,
the nightmare
—still burning in her forebrain as her mind tried to grasp which reality she now found herself in. Her heartbeat a syncopated rhythm to the panic that gripped her. She was sitting upright, she realized, one leg swung out of the bed, the crumpled sweat-soaked covers thrown aside as though she had been about to run somewhere. The bedroom window was open and a full moon filled the room with corpse-gray light, casting long shadows across the floor and the bed.

She inhaled a deep breath of the now-cold night air, exhaling silently as she checked the time on her watch. It was just after two thirty in the morning.

Emily freed her other leg from the tangled sheet and sat on the edge of the bed listening, waiting for her eyes to adjust fully to the darkness. Beyond her window, the camp was silent, the apartment quieter still. Across the room, Adam slept peacefully, the raised outline of his blanket barely visible through the bars of the crib. On the floor at the end of the bed Thor stirred, looking up for a moment before easing on to his side and drifting back into sleep.

All was as it should be, but still . . .

Emily stood up, trying to shake the remnants of the nightmare from her mind, but it refused to leave her, clinging to her with taloned claws. It had seemed so real. Normally she was able to recognize even the most vivid dream for what it was, but this . . . this felt as though she had been there, as though she had just been dropped unceremoniously back into her body; it had the weight of memory, not fantasy. She could still taste the briny saltiness of the sea sweeping though her gills, the feel of the air washing across her body.

Emily exhaled a long sigh, trying to bring her thudding heart under control. There would be no rest for her until she checked on Adam, she knew. So, with a sigh of resignation, she stood and padded as quietly as possible across to the boy’s crib.

There he was, sound asleep, outlined within the shadows of the crib’s interior. She paused for a moment, listening for his breathing, just to be sure . . . and heard nothing. Not a sound.

“Adam?” she whispered, reaching toward the shape lying on the mattress. Pulling back the crumpled blanket revealed nothing but the mattress beneath it.

“Adam!” she called out again, panic beginning to rise now as she snatched the blanket from the crib and dumped it on the floor. The crib was empty.

“Oh shit!”

Thor lifted himself from his spot on the floor between the baby’s crib and her bed and stretched, then trotted to her side. He cocked his head to the side and stared at Emily as if to say
What’s wrong
?

Emily looked under the crib, then under her own bed. There was no sign of the child.

The panic was a twisting knot in her stomach now, pulling the breath from her lungs.

“Adam!” she said aloud. “Adam!”

Thor sat and stared at his mistress, then, recognizing the name of his other charge, pushed his nose through the bars of the crib and sniffed heavily. Then he sat again, with the same quizzical confused tilt to his head.

Emily registered all of this as if from a distance. Thor seemed not the least bit panicked. That meant she must be the one missing something. What was it?

A thought hit her mind, momentarily smothering the panic with relief: Rhiannon had him. Of course that was the only possibility. Emily knew she had been deeply asleep; Adam must have cried out and Rhiannon, asleep in the room on the opposite side of the wall, ever the alert and attentive aunt, had come in and taken him to her room to let Emily sleep. That had been translated into her dream as someone . . . some
thing
taking her child. Yes, that was it, of course that had to be it. She used that thought to quash the swirling fear collecting in her stomach like lava and rushed out of her bedroom to Rhiannon’s room next door. Easing open the door, she stepped inside. The room was pitch black, and she could hear Rhiannon’s steady breathing coming from her bed.

She flicked the light on without hesitation.

“Wha-What? Emily? What do you want? What’s going on?” Rhiannon’s voice was sleepy and confused as her face appeared from beneath the sheets, squinting hard at the light.

Apart from Rhiannon this room, too, was empty.

“Adam, where is he?” Emily demanded.

Rhiannon sat upright. “He’s with you, in your bedroom. Where else would he be?”

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Emily felt the surge of panic and fear burst free now. It engulfed her and she found herself fighting back the urge to vomit. Her bones felt as if they had been hollowed out and filled with lead. She slumped hard against the frame of the door for support, drawing in several rapid deep panicky breaths before sliding slowly to the floor. Her panic was being consumed by fear now—gut-churning, vomit-inducing, pinned-to-the-floor-like-a-butterfly terror.

Rhiannon was out of bed and by her side in an instant, a hand placed firmly on Emily’s back, the other taking her hand to steady her.

“He must be in the crib,” the girl said. “There’s no way he could get out. Wait here, I’ll go take a look.” Rhiannon disappeared into the master bedroom and Emily heard the sound of the light switch clicking on, her footsteps across the floor, and a pause, followed by a shocked “Oh!”

Emily took one last deep breath and forced herself away from the door, turning back toward her own bedroom just as Rhiannon reappeared in the doorway.

“Have you checked the rest of the apartment?” she asked, her voice high pitched and, Emily noted, both of her hands shaking.

“No, not yet. Come on, let’s look together.”

Their second-floor apartment was small, just two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. There really was nowhere for her child to hide, even if he had managed to somehow climb over or through the bars of his crib. The front door was still locked and bolted from the inside and all windows were secure . . . except for her bedroom window, Emily suddenly realized.

“Oh no! No, no, no,” she cried and rushed back to her room, Rhiannon on her heels.

The sill of the window reached Emily’s waist, a difficult but not impossible height for a determined child to maybe pull himself up to and then topple out of. Emily tried to steel herself for the worst as she leaned over the window ledge, gulping in cold air, and looked down: two stories below a concrete path ran along the side of the apartment building; beyond that was a single-lane access road, and beyond that a red-grass verge. Emily released the breath she had been holding. There was no sign of Adam, no pool of drying blood either. He had not gone through the window, which meant he had to be in the apartment
somewhere
. . . or someone had come in and taken him. But there was no possibility that could have happened. Even if somehow an intruder had managed to get inside without waking Emily or Rhiannon, there was just no way in hell they could have gotten past Thor. He had been asleep in the space between her bed and Adam’s cot. He would have torn them to shreds before Emily could have even grabbed her gun to finish the job.

As inconceivable as Emily thought it to be, there seemed to be only one totally illogical yet ultimately realistic answer: the dream,
her
dream, was not a dream. Something had taken her child—something not human.

Emily’s hand slowly rose to cover her mouth as the first sob erupted from her. Her heart thumped uncontrollably and erratically against her breast, and her legs would no longer consent to hold her up. Her head seemed to be floating away from her body as she felt herself topple backward into the bedroom wall and slide slowly down until she hit the floor.

By the time Rhiannon noticed and rushed to her side, Emily was an unconscious heap on the floor.

Emily sat slumped on the edge of her bed, staring at Adam’s empty crib.

“Ms. Baxter . . . Emily. I need your help.” The male voice was followed by a couple of finger snaps that dragged Emily’s attention to the man standing over her. It wasn’t clear to Emily if the camp provost had shown up minutes or hours after Rhiannon had summoned him via her personal radio. Not that it mattered, anyway; she knew there was nothing he could do to help.

Adam was gone.

Eric Fisher was a man about as vanilla as anyone could describe: medium height, medium build, medium looks, but he more than made up for his middle-of-the-roadness with a dedication to his job that was unsurpassed by any other member of the survivors’ encampment. Emily had always thought of him as just a little too serious, just a little too much in the moment for her liking, but she suspected this was his way of dealing with the events that had led all of them to this base on the coast of what had once been California. If she were assessing the man for one of her news articles, then she would have privately classified him as being someone who threw himself at his work as a distraction from the terrible history that lay in all of their pasts.

Fisher arrived a few months earlier on the USS
Michigan
, where he had acted as the submarine’s master-at-arms. A former Chicago cop, he had joined the navy not long after the 2001 World Trade Center attack. Now he officiated over the Point Loma survivors, enforcing the common laws they had set. Everyone simply called him “Sheriff.” The designation fit him well.

“Emily? Emily . . . can you look at me?” His voice was calm and unemotional. Flat.

Emily raised her eyes from her knees and looked up into Fisher’s face, a professional smile creasing his lips. “That’s it. That’s good.” He reached out and took her hand in his own, squeezed it gently.

Behind Fisher, Emily could see several other men and women who she recognized vaguely as they passed by her bedroom door. Fisher’s deputies. They milled around her apartment, moving back and forth through the rooms, talking on their walkie-talkies.

Rhiannon stood in the doorway, still in her pajamas, talking to one of the female deputies who was busy scribbling into a notebook. The girl had obviously been crying, her eyes puffy and red. Emily wanted to comfort her, but her limbs refused to move her from the bed. She felt as though she were a guest in her own body.

No, she would just sit here for a second or so and wait until she woke up from this obvious nightmare.

“Emily, I need you to tell me what happened. Can you do that for me?”

She looked up again and somehow managed to speak. “They took him,” she said.

“Who? Who took Adam, Emily?”

“The Caretakers. They came here and they took him.”

Despite the haze of loss that occupied the space where her mind used to be, Emily could still recognize the look of incredulity as it crossed Fisher’s face. It was there for a second before being replaced once again by his professional game face.

“You mean the aliens you talked about, right? They came and they abducted Adam. Is that right, Emily?”

She nodded.

“But how did they get inside the apartment, Emily? The doors are all locked and there’s no sign of forced entry. My people have checked everywhere.”

“I don’t know,” Emily said, her voice a low whisper, conspiratorial. “I don’t know how they did it, but I saw them take him. They made sure I saw them take him.”

“But if you saw them taking Adam, why didn’t you try and stop them? You have a gun, don’t you?”

“I saw it happening in a dream,” she said, and even as she spoke the words she knew they were the wrong ones to say, that this man would simply not understand. But that was okay. It did not matter what they thought. She knew the truth.

Fisher stood up. “A dream? You were asleep when this happened?”

Emily nodded again.

Fisher exhaled a long sigh. “Okay, Emily. Well, my people are talking with Rhiannon, and I’ve got teams sweeping the compound. So, if he’s here then we’ll find him, okay?”

“You won’t find him,” Emily said. “I know you won’t.”

Fisher regarded Emily for a few moments, his expression noncommittal.

“We’ll see,” he said eventually, and walked out of the room.

Two men stepped into view as Fisher arrived at the doorway. Fisher said something to them Emily could not hear and they both nodded. One, a large blond man with a permanent scowl, stepped inside her room and leaned against the wall; the other positioned himself outside the room.

Before Fisher could leave, Emily saw the unmistakable profile of Sylvia Valentine step into view. She took him by the elbow and he turned to talk to her. Their exchange of words was too low for Emily to hear what was being discussed, but it was obvious from Valentine’s occasional glance in her direction that Fisher was talking about her, probably relaying the conversation they had just had. Valentine nodded every few seconds, and when Fisher was done, she laid a hand on his shoulder and he turned and walked away.

Valentine lingered in the doorway of Emily’s bedroom for a few moments, looking at her with those cold, emotionless eyes. Emily held her gaze with equal ferocity. A few seconds passed, then Valentine leaned in close and whispered something to the blond man standing in her room before she turned and headed toward the apartment’s exit, but not before Emily saw a sly smile cross the woman’s lips.

The camp doctor showed up about ten minutes later. Wallace Hubbard was a big man. He sported a full beard, completely gray, and had always reminded Emily of the captain of the ill-fated
Titanic.

“Here, I want you to take these,” he said, pressing two pills into Emily’s right hand and a glass of water into the other.

Obediently she swallowed both pills in one gulp.

“Sedatives, they’ll help you sleep.” He rattled a brown prescription bottle. “Take another round this evening to get you through the night. They’re long past their expiration date, but they should still work okay. If you don’t need them, don’t take them. Medical resources are finite these days. I’m going to come back later and check on you, but right now I want you to get some rest.”

“I don’t need to sleep,” Emily said. “I need to get out of here and help them look for my son.” Her legs felt leaden, but she tried to stand anyway.

Hubbard pressed her gently back down onto the bed. “Rhiannon, can you come here, please?” he called over his shoulder. “Everyone else, please leave the bedroom.” The blond man who had been standing around the room—suspiciously like he was making sure she stayed where she was supposed to, rather than watching over her, Emily’s fogged mind suggested—grudgingly left as Rhiannon stepped into the bedroom.

“Close the door, please,” Hubbard told Rhiannon as the blond man joined the other guard in the corridor, both glowering back into the room.

Hubbard pulled back the sheets to the bed and lifted Emily’s legs under them and gently pushed her back until her head touched the pillow, pulling the sheets up to her chin as though he were tucking a child into bed.

“Rhiannon,” he said, “I want you to stay here with Emily. If you need anything, you can contact me via the emergency channel on the radio. Can you do that?”

Emily saw Rhiannon nod, her mind already slowing as the pills kicked in, forcing her toward sleep.

“Make sure she rests, okay?” The doctor smiled once at her and then left, closing the door behind him.

The last thing Emily saw before a wave of sleep pulled her under was Rhiannon’s worried face watching her from beside the bed.

Confusion.

That was the only feeling Emily’s mind could discriminate from the mass of sensory input playing through her head. It felt as though a billion different thoughts were elbowing each other to be heard, an infinite number of synapses firing within her mind at once, pummeling her, clamoring over each other for attention that she simply was not wired to provide. Images flashed across the screen of her mind, faster than she could process them, an impossible blur of superimposed pictures one on top of the other.

This must be what it feels like to experience time all at once,
she thought, not even sure she understood what the thought meant.

Every sensation possible played through her body at the same time: vertigo, love, indifference, repulsion, desire, death, fear, and some that she simply did not recognize, alien yet familiar in their strangeness. The feelings went on and on and on, burning through her body. Occasionally an image possessed enough power that it lingered long enough for her mind to register it: a strange, alien landscape, twin suns burning red in a purple sky; clouds, yellow and sulfurous floating below her; what could only be cities, but not the work of human hands; a blue world of mostly water seen from space, an archipelago of tiny islands cutting across it like a crescent moon. Millions of images flashed in front of her eyes every second, each one just a glimpse, a memory of some unknown mind, forgotten the instant they had been seen in the constant rush of new information, more information, information flooding through her as though she were at the very center of all existence.

A thread appeared; it began as a tiny blue dot, glowing within the mass of searing red confusion, then expanded and rose up through the chaos like a snake, elongating and moving, extending outward, a lifeline of coherence within chaos. The line began to expand outward and she focused on it, everything else fading to a blur around it.

Emily urged herself toward it, pushing through memories that were not hers, through times that could have been before or to come, the only sense of normalcy the steady pulse of the blue line.

She reached out with a hand, a paw, a claw, a twig, a cloud of light, for the oh, so
beautiful
blue line, inching over the infinite space that separated her from it
. . .
and touched it.

Abruptly, the cascade of metaexperience ceased, replaced by an infinitely loud silence. Pure white stretched outward all around her as a serenity unlike anything she had ever experienced descended over her. A sense of clarity and
. . .
love, unadulterated and redolent, as though she had somehow tapped into the very source of that purest of emotions. As overwhelming as the flood of experience had been for her, this single pure emotion destroyed her completely, disassembled her atom by atom, before reassembling her into a new form.

And when her reconstruction was finished she was left with a single thought that filled her mind, woven throughout her essence with that single blue thread
: Mommy.