Yesterday's Gone (Season 5): Episodes 25-30 (39 page)

Mary stared at him, barely able to breathe. Words were impossible.

Brent sat beside her on the bed as Mary gasped for air, her heart racing, fairly certain she was having a panic attack.

“Relax.” Brent set a hand on her back, rubbing it as if Mary were a child. “We’ll get through this.”

She closed her eyes, focusing on her breath until she was able to stop gasping for air. She found a deep breath then held it as if it could keep her floating in an ocean of insanity.

Calmly, Brent said, “Paola is OK, that’s all that matters. We’ll find a way to get her out of there and take care of this.”

Mary had a million more questions, such as how the hell they could break her daughter out of a top secret government installation? Why did Desmond do this? And whom
did
she see die?

But she had to focus on her breathing, in, count to five, then out, long exhale.

Once slightly calmer, Mary launched her questions, too many at once, bombarding Brent like a reporter at a press conference assailing a senator. 

“Paola wasn’t sure why he’d done it. And she didn’t know anything about the girl we saw die. My guess it was an alien. Desmond’s infected. She thinks he probably has been since his return. Now he’s controlling The Darkness, and planning something big. Paola was standing in his way, so he’s keeping her hidden underground.”

Mary’s lone bite of apple rolled in the acid and started to rise. She raced to the bathroom, landed on her knees in front of the toilet, and retched up the only thing she’d swallowed other than spit in God knew how long.

How could I not have seen it?

I trusted him.

I loved him.

I … slept with him … with
It
!

Her skin felt clammy, and itchy, corrupted by the alien’s touch. Mary wondered if he’d somehow infected her with The Darkness as well.

A horrifying thought surged to the front of her mind, demanding her full attention.

Oh God, no.

She retched again, this time nothing but water.

“Oh God,” she said, over and over.

Brent opened the door. “What?”

Mary shook her head, wiping vomit from her chin, and stood. She went to the sink and started to wash, unable to meet Brent’s eyes in the reflection. 

She couldn’t tell him what she was thinking. Voicing the thought might make it come true.

Mary had to steer her mind back to Paola, and figuring a way to get her daughter back. The last thing she could think about now was that the thing posing as Desmond may have gotten her pregnant.

* * * *

CHAPTER 10 — BORICIO WOLFE

Boricio screamed as flames licked his insides.

Luca had laid both of his hands on Boricio’s arm. The fire had started there, then spread outward in every direction, waking numb flesh in its path. At first, the fire hurt. But then it felt strangely …
good.

Luca was shaking, too, his whole body trembling so fast it was barely more than a blur. 

But Boricio couldn’t tend to the boy, not while his brain was getting beaten by a barrage of memories shaking him free of the fog and confusion that had settled on him since waking up paralyzed. 

Boricio watched as hundreds of memories unspooled at once, playing like a dozen screaming IMAX screens, with none of them making a cumdrop of sense … at first. But then shit started to click into place, and Boricio was putting two and two together like he had a goddamned Beautiful Mind. 

Boricio remembered everything.

Remembered Guard Tard, the prison, the weeks of running away, and then the cause of his running — the horror that had happened to his Morning Rose. The alien infecting her.

Fire slowly receded, and time seemed to drip back to normal. The Boy Wonder slipped away from Boricio’s bed and collapsed, spent on the floor.

Rose stepped through the door and looked down at Luca. “What’s going on?”

The boy had aged nearly a decade, a ball’s hair over twenty. Luca didn’t seem to realize what had happened just yet, looking down at his Hulked-out outfit, pawing his body in confusion.

Luca looked up at Rose. “I healed him.”

She turned to Boricio, but it wasn’t his Morning Rose. 

And it
hadn’t
been. 

Some motherfucker had been pretending, wearing her body like it was goddamned Halloween. 

It
had lied to him.

Had made him feel safe. Loved. 

Boricio wanted to do more than kill it. He wanted to destroy it down to the molecule, dig a ditch, and shit on its remains. 

He looked down at Luca. “Can you give us a second, Hulk Junior?”

Luca, still clearly dazed, looked up at Boricio, then nodded and left the room.

The door closed, and Boricio sat up, moving his body for the first time since his arrival. His muscles were stiff, and pain prickled like a village of tiny needles, but at least he could move. Like the Boy Wonder said, he’d been healed, and now he remembered. 

Boricio looked at the soon-to-be-dead thing pretending to be his Morning Rose, looking at him with her artificial loving eyes, and that sad smile she sometimes had when he fell into one his darker moods that he couldn’t explain.

“You’re healed.” She tried to smile, but Boricio saw right through it. He flinched and pulled back on her way to a hug.

“
You
… stay the fuck away from me.”

She stopped, her eyes wide. “What’s wrong, honey?”

Boricio swallowed, trying to keep his rage from making him do something stupid. 

He cast his eyes around the room, taking inventory of all the shit he could use to send this monster into oblivion. He could gouge
Its
eyes and puncture
Its
throat with the pen on his nightstand. A brush on the dresser could be snapped in half and used as a blade. He could shatter the mirror and use its shards to slice the alien wide.

But the fucker didn’t deserve anything so pleasant, and Boricio longed to take his time, snaking his fingers into
Its
throat, then choking the fucker dead with his bare hands.

“I remember,” he said staring into the alien’s widening eyes.

He leaped on the creature, hands around
Its
neck, falling on top of it, straddling Rose’s body, staring into her eyes as he choked the impostor.

“Wait!” Rose’s voice cried out in a rasping gasp.

Boricio loosened his grip, just enough to tease it with mercy. “What?”

“I’m still in here, Boricio! It’s me, Rose!” 

“Bullshit!” Boricio screamed, squeezing tighter.

“I am!” it insisted again. “We’re both in here. Just like with Luca. We can coexist with them, Boricio.”

“Stop it!” He pushed his fingers harder into her flesh, not wanting to know what the hell she,
It
, meant about Luca.

Rose’s eyes welled with tears as she vented an anemic, “Please.”

Boricio closed his eyes. 

He couldn’t look his old Rose in the eyes as he killed her. 

No, not a her,
It!

He kept squeezing, tight, telling himself that his Morning Rose would prefer death to this corruption of body and soul.

But even as Boricio thought it, a large part of him longed for his Rose so much to maybe believe there
was
something left of her in the puppet. Maybe the alien was telling the truth. And maybe she could have her body back again. 

No. 

There’s nothing left of my Rosebud.

Don’t believe its lies.

She tried to say something.

“Die,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut, despite their will to open. “Fucking die.”

“Stop!” a voice yelled.

Boricio looked up, saw the old man, Art, aiming a shotgun at his head. “Get off of her.”

Boricio looked down at Rose’s face, her crying eyes, and couldn’t help but feel like a monster. Another part of him felt like he was being worked by the alien, being made to feel guilty. Using his love for her against him.

“Let go of her or I
will
kill you,” Art said.

Boricio let go, slowly, then stood, eyes on the old fucker, trying to figure the best way to get his gun. 

The thing that wasn’t Rose stood, swallowing, wiping tears from her eyes, still playing victim.

Art turned to
It.
“What do you want me to do? Shoot him?”

“No,”
It
said. “Please, leave us alone.”

“He just tried to kill you.”

“I said leave us!” 

Art shrank back like a dog being scolded then gave
It
the shotgun.

It
took the weapon, training it on Boricio until the door shut and they were back to being alone. 

It
lowered the gun, meeting his eyes.

“I don’t want to kill you.” 

“Well, I
do
want to kill you,” Boricio said. No reason to pretend, or try and outsmart an alien. This would only end with one of them dying.

“I wasn’t lying when I said she’s in here.”

“So, who am I talking to now, Rose or the alien? You said ‘she’s in here,’ meaning you were pretending to be her before.”

“No, now we are one. She and I. But the Rose you love is still in here. We’ve done nothing to her.”

“Yeah, is that so? Well, how about you just get out of her body. Find someone else to live in.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that. But I have another proposal. Why don’t
you
join us?”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” He chuckled. “Boricio is the quarterback, and he aint’ throwing for Team Nasty-Ass Alien Goo!”

Not Rose
smiled. Boricio wasn’t sure if it was some part of
her
smiling or if the alien was a condescending cunt. Boricio had had enough artificial mirth, of fuckers looking down at him like he was half-retard. People always thought they were better than him and smiled when, in fact, they were writing him off. 

But nobody writes Boricio off. No. Body.

“Please, Boricio, don’t you want more than this? I know you. I know you’re so much better than most of these filthy, lazy, and supremely ignorant humans. You realized this early. That’s why you culled them from the planet.”

“OK, you can stop blowing smoke up my dirthole, because I wasn’t doing anyone no favors by killin’ folks. That was all about me. No need to shine shit and tell me it’s gold.”

“Perhaps, but still you know what I say is true. We can change humanity, once and for all, evolve it into what it was meant to be.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Boricio asked, eager to bitch slap the foreplay and get back to killing this fucking thing.

“All species evolve. Humans evolved. We, our species, are evolving. We can evolve together, create something new from the best of our species.”

“I saw what your species did on ole Bizarro Earth, so forgive me if that don’t exactly sound like a roomful of titties.”

“We have changed. Though I should warn you that there is another force out there, trying to do what we did to that other world.”

“What do you mean ‘another force?’”

“Our species is a collective, operating as one. But we’ve since split, parts of us wanting to seize power for itself, disagreeing with our notions of how to evolve your species. They want to enslave most of you, use you as nothing more than fuel.”

“Let me get this straight, E.T. — you’re claiming to be this great, advanced alien species working as a collective and wanting to evolve us. Yet your own fucking species is subject to the same whims as ours, wanting to gobble more than its share of the pie?”

“I never said we were perfect. But
together
we can be as close as possible. We can offer you power, Boricio. We can cure your kind’s diseases. We can allow you to live forever. Just say yes.”

He looked at the shotgun, again trained on him.

“So join the Dark Side or die, right, Darth?”

He met
Its
eyes, but
Not Rose
refused to flinch.

It
nodded.

Boricio clenched his fists, glared
It
in the eyes, and said, “I got an idea. How ‘bout we play of game of rock, paper, you’re dead. You first!” 

* * * *

CHAPTER 11 — THOMAS ACEVEDO

“You’re really going to do this?” Marina asked, pestering him as if he had chosen his path, or worse, was deluded.

“The vessel has to die. There is no other way.” Acevedo continued loading up on weapons from the agents’ van. He had an assault rifle, a pistol, and four of the weird-looking grenades, which he hoped were explosive. Once Acevedo ended the vessel, he’d have to burn the alien before it could leave the host and infect another. There were two more in there with the vessel, Acevedo had seen in his vision. One, a woman named Rose, who was strong and maybe the smartest of the aliens. Then there was an old man, Art, who was still new to infection and had not yet worked out his abilities. He would be the easiest to kill, and Rose the toughest. Luca was probably the most powerful, even if he didn’t yet know it. But if Acevedo only had a single shot, he’d have to take out the boy. He was the one in the dreams, after all. 

It all revolved around Luca.

Without Luca, the prophecy failed, and the world would be safe. At least, that’s what his visions kept swearing.

Yeah, but what if the visions aren’t real? What if he
is
just a boy?

Acevedo shook his head to silence the doubt he couldn’t afford. That was why Marina couldn’t come with him. Sure, he could use the backup, but couldn’t afford to have her doubts as infection. 

He had to stay strong and keep his mind clear of the alien influence.

Marina, still cuffed to the back seat, begged, “At least set me free before you go. If something happens to you, I’m screwed.”

“I don’t have anything to set you free.”

“Use that mind thing you did on yours.”

“Sorry, Marina. I don’t have time. But don’t worry, I will return.”