Emergence Boxed Set, page 121
part #1 of Emergence Series
That was the second worst day of his life.
When the monsters returned.
And he and the others once again became the hunted.
Chapter 5
“Stop, the others will see us,” said Connelly in a half-hearted tone as Murph grabbed her hand, pulling her to the side of the food crates in the hangar.
She peered back over her right shoulder, seeing Ivins and the other SEALs tossing their packs into the jeep by the entrance.
Murph pulled her hips in close to his, pressing his lips along her tan neckline. “Since when did you get so prudish?”
“Not prudish—just would rather give you a proper homecoming later…in my room.” She flung her head back, muffling a giggle as he traced his lips up towards her ear. “Besides, you smell like this warehouse, only worse.”
“Yeah, well, ten days in the field will do that to you.”
She slid her hand up to his bristly cheeks. “Plus, you keep sandpapering me with your scruff. I’ll have to wear a ski-mask for the next week so people don’t wonder why I have a rash.”
During the past few years, Connelly had little time for romantic entanglements, all of her energy focused on either her recruitment phase at the agency or the intensive training and later fieldwork abroad with Reisner and his team. Then the virus struck, unraveling the world overnight and erasing any hopes for a lasting relationship. Her family was gone, many of her colleagues killed, and then came the countless horrors she’d witnessed during their harrowing operations across the country.
Now, at last, it seemed like there was a respite from the constant grind of missions and a chance to hold on to someone whom she had felt a burgeoning connection with for many months.
Though Connelly didn’t always show it through her stoic exterior, she had always found her eyes lingering on Murph’s trim physique, but the past few months bunking in a room across from the blond-haired SEAL in their team’s shared barracks had slowly caused her feelings for him to simmer.
He brushed his fingers through her blond hair, pulling back a lock from her forehead. “Somewhere behind all your honey-sweet words, I’m sensing you missed me,” he said with a hint of sarcasm.
A wolfish smile crept over her face. She leaned forward, kissing him as they melted into each other’s arms. “Like I said, come by this evening and I’ll show you how glad I am you’re back.”
“You can count on it.” He reached into his shirt pocket, removing a silver necklace with a dolphin figurine, dangling it before her.
Connelly blushed, her smile widening. “Does this mean we’re BFFs?”
He unclasped it and slid it around her neck as she lifted her shoulder-length hair. “Darlin’, you are more than my BFF—trust me.”
Murph slid on the necklace, letting his hands linger on her shoulders as he looked into her eyes. “I love you, Jess.”
She felt her pulse quicken, scrunching her eyebrows together. Connelly felt like echoing his sentiment, but the words seemed wedged in her throat. Her feelings for him had intensified in his absence, but she needed to feel close to him. To hold him. To feel his arms around her again.
They heard Ivins shout in the distance, “Hey, Murph, we’re rolling out. You hitchhiking back to the barracks or you two gonna set up home in the back corner there?”
She slid her arms around his neck, kissing him before he could reply. Murph responded enthusiastically then reluctantly pulled away, pivoting around and grabbing his pack off the ground.
“Gotta debrief with Runa, then I’ll shower and be over in a few hours—promise.”
She bit her lower lip. “You better, or I’ll track you down.”
Connelly watched him trot off, stroking the dolphin pendant between her fingers. She ran her other hand through her tussled hair then stepped out from behind the crates just in time to see Ivins speeding off in the jeep, her eyes fixed on the smiling figure in back, who pointed to his wristwatch before giving a thumbs-up. She let out a sigh then slid on her sunglasses before exiting the hangar, heading towards her own jeep.
Alexa had just finished loading up a milk crate full of water bottles and MREs in the rear beside two fully loaded combat vests.
“What’s with the gear? We’re not due for another training group until tomorrow,” Connelly said, glancing down at her radio-mic on the dash.
“Orders from Runa. Just radioed in that you and the rest of our team are to saddle up and meet on the east airfield in sixty minutes.”
Connelly narrowed her eyes, her face tightening. “You’re kidding me. For what?”
“Something about a recon trip up north in the dead zone—we’re to rendezvous with the Reagan first. Runa said to gear up for a three-day op.”
Fuck! Connelly felt like her boots had melted into the asphalt, her stomach tightening as she tried to force herself towards the driver’s door. She wanted to race down to HQ and chew out Runa, Hemmings—anyone at command who was depriving her of the precious homecoming she had planned with Murph.
Why now? Why couldn’t this fucking wait for one more day?
She trudged forward, climbing inside the jeep. Starting the engine, she jammed her left foot down on the clutch like she was kicking in a door then slammed the stick into first, her right hand white-knuckling the knob.
We’ve been at this base for months and now, all of a sudden, something urgent has reared its head just as Murph returns? This is bullshit.
She sped off down the road, tucking the pendant securely beneath her shirt, feeling like she was on a raft that had just been cast adrift again on the unforgiving sea.
Chapter 6
Downtown Philadelphia
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
The intense sunlight never penetrated the blacked-out windows of the second floor, and the air-conditioning prevented the room from exceeding seventy degrees. The cool air was the only respite from the muggy weather outside, though Nick preferred the colder subterranean passages below the downtown region, where most of his brood was located.
Nick watched the elementary-age children playing in the pediatrics playroom, all of them oblivious to the fact that he was standing behind the one-sided observation window next door. Overhead, the corner TV monitors played an endless loop of animated movies while the two-dozen children entertained themselves with video and board games, though a few reclined in beanbag chairs, reading. All of them had full cheeks and a healthy shine to their eyes, and Nick made sure they received as much nourishment as they needed.
Twice a week, their parents were permitted to visit for an hour. The adults had been selected by Davio for their backgrounds in medicine and science or their mechanical skills, all of which served to keep the hospital operational.
The most motivated humans who served the brood were those with children in this wing. Davio and Nick both knew that coercion by itself would never be enough to bend a person’s will. The adults’ commitment to fulfilling their daily duties was fueled by the leverage present in this room, and once the new social system was established, there had been little resistance by the Others.
Nick stood in silence, his eyes settling upon an auburn-haired girl who appeared no more than eight years old. He watched as Lena slid a red checker across the board as she played with the ten-year-old boy opposite her, both of them sitting on circular blue pillows on the floor.
Her slender fingers had long, unusually dense nails that could use trimming.
Her green eyes resembled creamy jade and had a light of their own.
Her pale neckline was smooth and unblemished, in need of sunlight.
He watched her giggle as she removed three of the boy’s black checkers after a tactical move that opened up the board in her favor. The girl glanced over in Nick’s direction, her lips parting in a wolfish smile before returning to the boy as they continued their board game.
If Nick closed his eyes and listened to their banter, he would have a hard time determining which one was human. And, despite Lena’s constant pleading to defeat the beings in her midst at every game, he needed her to stay focused on directing her considerable mental energy towards studying the speech patterns of the children to further refine her verbal skills. The shrill sound of the alphas was something that was interspliced into her speaking voice, and she had worked hard over the summer months to dial down its presence.
The seven organisms born from the union between Nick and Abby had emerged from their embryonic sacks in June. The creatures grew at an astonishing rate, initially requiring triple the amount of hormonal intake of an adult alpha.
As of six weeks ago, four of the creatures had stopped growing, and Nick believed their present size was to be the extent of their maturation. What they lacked in intellect they made up for in strength, despite their enormous deformities. The creatures appeared to be a melding of insect and human features, as if nature itself was uncertain how to create an entity from two drastically opposed lifeforms. Most of their time was spent in the tunnels below the hospital, where the cooler temperatures and lack of light assisted their mutated bodies with thermoregulation.
The sight of the gangly, spider-like creepers instilled terror amongst the human staff at the hospital, and while Nick had found the creatures to be an effective inducement for the Others to perform their jobs, the monstrosities were also unruly and maniacal outside of Nick’s presence, and he couldn’t afford to lose any more humans skilled in the operation of the hospital.
However, their minds weren’t nearly as developed as Lena’s and those of her two identical sisters, who had sharp mental abilities that were beginning to rival Nick’s. Lena’s greatest shortcoming in Nick’s mind was that she was too focused on her own desires and unconcerned with the future of the brood, despite his constant efforts to direct her energy in that direction.
As Nick watched the girl delight in constantly defeating the other children at their games, he thought back to the time of his own transformation at the hands of Roland Whitmore.
The sense of absolute power and the expansion of his mind into the other members of their brood was an ecstatic feeling, like the universe itself had opened its soul to him. In time, Nick found that his powers and psychic reach to the other alphas far exceeded the abilities of his creator, not to mention the fact that he possessed a purer vision of how to promulgate their new species.
The psychic amputation that he had inflicted upon Roland had enabled Nick to gain complete control over the brood throughout the world, but it had also divided his energy. With the large-scale deaths occurring amongst his alphas from a mysterious mosquito-borne virus during the summer months, his mental faculties were constantly crippled to the point that he feared losing control of his brood.
Summoning his psychic energy, he had infused his mind completely into the remaining alphas throughout the world, enabling him to immediately sense one of them succumbing to the virus so he could eliminate them, reducing his mental impotence during their lingering deaths. While his alphas could still relay information to him through their eyes, he no longer needed to transmit his orders to them. Instead, his mind was theirs, their consciousness inseparably intertwined with the master of their species.
He realized in the jungles of Mexico that he needed a permanent base of operations to begin the next phase in their evolution, one in which the reach of the U.S. military was limited or non-existent, and the blacked-out cities along the East Coast rose to the forefront of his plans. The dead zone would provide a secure location that would allow him to propagate humans for food and adrenal fluid and most importantly would enable his offspring to flourish.
To this end, Davio Siemel, the ruthless Argentinian arms-dealer who had flown them from Paraiso, Mexico to this location, had made an excellent human conspirator—as long as his own need for power was fed, which involved little more than satiating his need for the finest lodging, food, and female companions.
Following the initial weeks of developing the work infrastructure at the hospital, thousands of drones had marched through the remaining survivor strongholds along the eastern U.S. in a wave of orchestrated attacks that rivalled anything seen during the first month of the virus.
Those with pertinent skillsets were weeded out and driven in semi-trucks to the hospital. Everyone was herded into the underground encampments, where they were kept in holding cells obtained from the Philadelphia Zoo.
There, in three separate wings, humans were divided into their distinct roles in the paras’ world: workers, drone nourishment, and hormone providers for the alphas, the latter being fed the best quality rations and receiving regular medical attention until they entered the depletion ward on the third floor.
Nick had determined that ten days of calorie-dense enrichment provided the adrenal captives with the best hormone output. However, the constant drainings eventually collapsed the adrenal glands, and it was rare that a human provider lasted more than three weeks.
Operating and maintaining the underground encampment and the hospital above required a fourth category of specialists, and Davio had forcefully recruited captives from overrun outposts in central Pennsylvania and upstate New York to provide mechanically skilled personnel to keep the system running smoothly. Once this experimental site had fulfilled its role, he and Davio, along with his alphas, would relocate to a newer facility outside of Salt Lake City.
If the underground network was the arms and legs, then Thomas Jefferson Hospital above was the backbone of the entire operation. The third floor remained as it had been—used as a maternity ward for the three-dozen women in various stages of their pregnancies, who would be pivotal in Nick’s coming plans.
The fourth and fifth floors housed the service and medical staff, Davio having cultivated this group of fifty people through extensive interrogations. The sixth through ninth floors were used as coma stations, where sedated humans with B-positive blood were partially drained every other day by alphas while attendant nurses ensured the regulation of their vitals.
While Davio had calculated the number of captives to maintain a particular size prison camp, Nick determined the precise number of humans necessary to nourish his alphas.
That number had changed during the past four months due to the mosquito-borne virus, which had decimated his ranks throughout North and South America. Since mid-June, his contingent of three hundred and forty alphas in the surrounding states had been reduced to sixty-one creatures, many of whom were concentrated in the Philadelphia area, along with their drones. In other parts of the country, the brood had suffered catastrophic losses. Only Asia and Europe had survived the staggering death toll.
Precautions had been taken to mitigate the deaths, but not before a considerable reduction in the ferocious legions of his alphas. All-out war with the humans was now out of the question, and Nick had been slowly gathering his forces in preparation for an attack of a different nature that would make the battle at MacDill seem like a petty skirmish.
The plan he had formulated with Davio’s assistance would soon deliver a devastating blow to the human race that would ensure that the Others’ military forces would no longer be a threat to the future of his brood.
The surrogate eyes of the alpha bodyguard assigned to Davio relayed their visual message to Nick. He saw the wiry man exiting his jet at the small airfield north of the city. Nick felt his cervical region flutter with excitement as he watched two metallic suitcases being unloaded from the cargo hatch, the Pakistani writing unknown to him.
But if Davio returned early from his trip, he had clearly met with success.
Nick smiled, his vision returning to his present whereabouts as he summoned the girl.
Lena, we must go now.
As she looked over at the observation window towards Nick, the boy made an advance on one of her red checkers, laughing.
Lena swung her head back, her gaze predatory. She grabbed the boy’s wrist, wavering between seeming like she wanted to crush his bones and wanting to be done with him.
“What’s wrong with you? That was a fair move,” he said, yanking his hand away.
“Fair moves are what make this a flawed game.”
Nick sensed the fury pulsing in her veins as her fingers trembled. Lena, do not hurt him. I bring you here so you can learn their ways—their weaknesses as well as their strengths.
He is a fragile insect.
But there is much to learn from observing our enemies.
You keep saying that, but all I do each day is wander among them, watching them complain of how difficult their lives are here despite having all of their physical needs met. She stood up, directing her gaze at the observation window. I have seen your memories of the wars our kind have fought, yet we hide out here in this city from the Others while you keep hinting at subjugating them for good.
The time for us to advance will come shortly…in fact, much sooner than I had hoped now that Davio has returned.
He is unlike the rest of the humans—decisive and cunning in a way I’ve not seen in the Others.
Do not mistake his lack of humanity for adherence to what drives us. He is a clever opportunist, nothing more.
She lowered her head, her expression becoming timid. I wish my two sisters were still alive. She looked up at Nick. Sometimes, I still hear their voices in my head. I wish the mosquitos hadn’t killed them.
I know.
She glanced around the room at the other children then walked to the observation window, pressing her back against the glass while continuing to probe Nick’s mind as much as he would allow. Has Davio brought back what you need to end the war?
What we need.
This is your plan. I have other thoughts on how we should live, but you never want to discuss them.
I’ve seen your ideas: to go back to the old ways, with each alpha acting independently, separate from me—that would only bring disaster. We have been successful up to this point because we banded together and shared information about the weaknesses and tactical capabilities of our enemy. Reverting back to each alpha acting independently would eliminate all of our gains.
