CHAPTER 17

Gunfire wakes me.

I roll from my cot, knives in my hands before my feet hit the floor. I blink, trying to adjust to the dark room. I barrel into Robyn as she springs from her bed at the next volley of shots.

“What the fuck is that?” she yells as I flip the light switch and squint, sweeping the room. Evie sits up, blanket pulled to her chest and eyes wide with fright. A cold knot of dread tightens in my gut as I see the empty cot on the other side of her.

“Where’s Amy?” My voice is shrill with panic.

All I get from Evie is a wide eyed, confused look.

More shots and yelling.

“I gotta find her.” Pulling on my boots in two seconds, I head for the door, Robyn at my back.

The hallway is a mass of confusion. The residents of the facility have abandoned their rooms and cower in the hall like frightened children trying to understand. Shouts of “What’s happening?” and “Are we under attack” filters up and down the narrow corridor. I push a couple of them out of my way as I spot Luke and the boys rushing from their room, guns already slung over their shoulders.

“Amy’s missing,” I say to him as we fall in line, heading for the doors. “Is she with Sam?”

“No idea. I haven’t seen him all night.”

“Fuck.”

“She probably went to the kitchen hoping to find something to eat. You know how she loves her nighttime snacks.” Gordo tries to appease me as he hurries by my side, but it does nothing to ease my fear.

We make our way into the frigid darkness outside the door. Another couple of shots echo in the night air.

“It’s coming from the gates,” Luke throws over his shoulder as he breaks into a run. I do the same, my fear for Amy materializing as a sheen of cold sweat despite the wind pummeling my skin. Where the hell is she?

Barclay and his men emerge from the shadows, joining the rest of us.

“What’s happening?” Luke demands. “Is it an attack?”

“Don’t know. Lost contact with my guys. We’re going into this blind. Be prepared”

Crap. Barclay’s words do nothing to reassure me. To make matters worse, the shooting has stopped. The nights gone silent other than the crunching of the frozen ground under our running feet. Or maybe that’s just the snapping of my frazzled nerves.

As we get closer, we see the gates standing wide open in the moonlight. We approach with caution, guns tight to our shoulders, ready to take down the unknown enemy, but nothing seems to be moving from the black void beyond the gate. No stinking ghouls with stretching, hungry mouths and chomping teeth running our way. There’s no sign of anything. Not even the guards.

“Shut the gate, and check the perimeter,” Barclay orders his men as he lowers his weapon and flips on a flashlight, scouring the stone walls.

“Dexter? Phillips? Sound off.”

“Over here.” A feeble call emerges from the bushes along the eastern wall of the gate. Barclay’s light picks up movement. A hand waving.

The first thing I see as we get closer is the busted-up legs of the man lying in the bush where he fell. The flashlight beam reflects the glistening black blood and bits of white bone sticking through his pants leg. My stomach churns, and I move my eyes up to his face. I recognize the long beard and red cheeks. One of the guards I nicknamed gnome one and two on our first visit here.

“Get a doc and stretcher. And check for Phillips,” Barclay yells over his shoulder as he bends to his man. “What happened?”

The man grimaces. “He took us by surprise. We had no idea he was a threat. He was in one of the golf carts. He told me you were sending him on a mission to pick up supplies from the truck they left back on the road.”

Nausea boils in my gut, and I start to feel lightheaded.

What he?

The man grunts in pain but continues talking. “The story was pure shit. We didn’t believe him. Especially when we saw he had the disabled girl with him. So I started to radio you to check.”

No. No. No.

“He tried to ram the gate. Pulled my weapon on him and told him to stop. He fucking shot at me. Busted up my legs.” The man takes a shallow breath like he’s about to pass out.

“Hold on, Dex. The doc is on the way. Who shot you?”

A whistle of panic starts in my ears. A sharp pain that throws me off balance. I stumble, and Gordo reaches out to catch me. I want to run. I don’t want to hear him say the name. My heart tells me it can’t be true, even as my head tells me it already knows.

“That one with the connection to the leeches. The black-haired guy. Sam.”

# # #

“We need to go after him now.” Robyn stares after Luke as he paces the floor. “He has the girl with him. And he’s in a golf cart. Not like he’s exactly tearing up the highways.”

“No. He made sure we couldn’t follow him. The guard that went to check told us he busted up all the other carts good. He doesn’t want to be followed. Golf cart or not, we don’t have the endurance to catch up with it, not on foot.”

“I fucking told you.” Dom’s voice whips about the room, and I wince at the venom in his tone. “I told you he wasn’t to be trusted. But did you listen? Of course not. Instead you took her word for it. The one whose decision making comes from between her legs instead of her head.”

I want to rip Dom’s fucking eyes out, but I don’t have the energy. I feel like a deflated balloon. Empty. Flat. Broken. How could Sam do this? How could he put Amy in danger? I can’t wrap my head around it. I press on my eyes with the heels of my hands, trying to stop the tears looming under the surface. I refuse to let Dom see me cry.

“You’re right, Dom, but I’m only going to say this once. Shut up before I shut you up.” Luke’s tone leaves no room for argument. “Your ‘I told you so’s’ are not helping. If you have anything to offer to help with a solution, I’m all ears. Otherwise, don’t speak. Got it?”

Dom bristles under Luke’s gaze but clamps his mouth shut, even though I know he’s itching to say more. Doesn’t matter. There’s nothing he can say about me that isn’t already running through my head.

“Why would he do this?” Robyn’s voice is tinged with the frustration we’re all feeling. “And why take Amy? It doesn’t make a bit of sense.”

“None of this makes sense.” Unlike me, Gordo’s not the least bit ashamed to cry out his anger. His red-rimmed eyes bounce about the room. “Sam would never do this. He wouldn’t hurt anyone or put Amy in danger.”

“Who was it then, idiot?” Dom’s not finished it seems. Even with Luke’s warning. “His doppelganger? The guards named him for Christ’s sake. The two guards he shot, by the way.”

I startle. I’d forgotten about the guards. Thankfully both were still alive, but Sam shot our allies. This is no misunderstanding. He’s gone to the dark side.

“It was Sam, no doubt.” Luke takes control again. “Question is why? He’s been with us for weeks. The docs say he showed no sign of infection. He’s fought by our side, killing as many leeches as we have. He saved our asses in the subway by taking out those two hybrids. What happened to change him? Where’s he going? And why take Amy?”

The room fills up with the buzz of theories and suggestions. My crew, the docs, Barclay and his men, all have something to say. So do I.

“That’s not our Sam anymore.”

My voice is quiet. Broken. But they fall silent and stare at me like I screamed it at the top of my lungs.

“Explain. What do you know?” Luke pins me with his hard stare.

I take a shaky breath and dive in, expelling the thoughts in my head.

“Our Sam fought by our side these past few weeks. He watched our backs, ready to protect us and his sister at all costs, even at the expense of his own safety. He was connected mentally to those hybrids in the tunnel. He knew that by killing them he’d break the connection without knowing how it would affect him. But he did it anyway to save me, and it nearly tore his brain apart. That was my Sam.” I suck in air, trying to stop my trembling. “But since yesterday, since the hypnosis, he’s been off. Different. I didn’t recognize it at first, but I think even Scruff noticed. Last night in the garden, Scruff started growling at me and Sam. We thought he was growling at something in the woods behind us, but now I think otherwise. I think the super mind was there. I think it was in Sam’s head, watching, listening, without him even knowing. But Scruff sensed it, and it scared him enough to run away. That thing controlled Sam into doing what he did this morning. There’s no other explanation for his behavior.”

“But how?” Badger’s face is a mask of puzzlement. “Sam said by killing those hybrids he broke the connection. They couldn’t get back into his head.”

I glance over at Kasina. “Doc, you want to add to this theory?”

She flushes and glances away from me, unable to meet my eyes. She knows exactly what I’m thinking. She takes a couple of deep breaths, licking her lips before addressing the rest of us in the room.

“Possibly by placing Sam in his hypnotic state, it opened up his subconscious mind and made him susceptible to outside control.”

Robyn places her hands on her hip and barks a laugh of disbelief. “For fuck’s sake. So what you’re saying is you opened up the door and let the big bad boss in?”

“As I said, possibly. There’s no way to be sure.”

“I’m sure,” I say, trying to control my temper at her confession. “Sam would never do this in a million years. Something is controlling him.”

“If that’s the case, question is what does it want?” Luke glances back and forth between me and Kasina. “Why have Sam leave? It had ears and eyes inside our compound. Why make Sam take Amy and go? What does she have to do with this?”

“I think I may have an answer to that.” Doc H steps forward, and all attention turns to him. “The girl understands them. Their communication. Can you imagine the ramifications that could have on this war? By understanding their language, their organizational network, we could learn so much about where they’ve come from, why they’re—"

Luke pinches the bridge of his nose and blinks hard. “Doc, get to the point.”

He coughs. “Yes, well, I have a theory. I discussed it with Bixby since she told me about the girl’s run in with the aliens. The girl said she felt as well as heard the words. That got me thinking. Maybe we were wrong about the way they communicate.”

“You think the hive mind theory is wrong?” Luke asks the doc. “But if that’s the case, how is the super mind controlling Sam? That blows our whole theory out of the water.”

“No, no, I truly believe in the super mind theory. There is a supreme being in control and ordering all these minions around. While I believe this telepathy to be their fundamental form of communication, it is not their only form anymore. I theorize they’ve stolen enough of our genome to communicate on our level as well, albeit more along the lines of infrasonic frequency. Something around 20Hz or lower. Most humans hear around 20Hz to 20,000Hz. Only a rare few can hear anything lower. I think the girl is one of these rare types that can hear infrasonic sounds, so she can hear their transmissions.”

“But that doesn’t explain how she understands what they’re saying. How does she understand their language?”

Doc H stares at Luke in surprise. “Their language? Simple really. This species is stealing our DNA and evolving into humanoids. Their language is developing from us as well, an English-speaking food supply. They’ve assimilated what they’ve stolen.”

“So you’re saying that a super mind in Russia would probably assimilate and communicate in Russian?” Gordo asks.

“Most likely, yes.”

“That’s just messed up,” Gordo whispers. I have to agree.

“What about Scruff?” I ask. “He freaked out at the house, and in the garden last night. Can he hear them too?”

Doc H shakes his head. “The dog probably can’t hear it, but he can possibly feel the vibrations associated with infrasonic frequency, and it would totally unnerve him. If my theory is correct, that gurgling we associate with them? I think it’s a throat vibration with their actual speech hidden within.”

The silence that follows is broken by Dom’s laughter. “Seriously, doc? You expect us to believe that? That sounds like something straight out of The Twilight Zone.”

“And invading aliens that take over human bodies to drink our blood and steal our DNA doesn’t?” I snap back.

Dom raises a brow at me. “Good point,” he concedes.

“Well, how do we prove it?” Luke gets us back on track.

“I was going to test the girl today. I worked all night building us a basic resonant-reed type frequency generator. A bit barbaric, but useable. I wanted to test her hearing capacity. If she could hear below 20Hz, then my theory would have legs to stand on. But—”

“But he took her,” Luke finishes for him and Doc H nods. “It’s almost as if the super mind knew that. He wanted her out of here, so you couldn’t test her. But how would it know? You didn’t mention any of this to Sam, right?”

“No, but I did,” I supply. “Last night in the garden right before Scruff freaked out, I told him Doc H had a theory about frequency. I guess the big bad didn’t want us proving that theory.”

I wait for Luke or Dom to call me an idiot again, but I get off lightly.

“So, it killed two birds with one stone. Not only by taking Amy did it stop the testing, but it also knows we’ll go after Sam to get Amy back. It’s luring us into its trap.” Luke runs a hand over the back of his neck. He glances back at the doc. “What’s your frequency theory, doc?”

“Ah, yes. I have a hypothesis that our alien friends have evolved to hear and communicate at very low frequencies, much like whales. It’s a proven fact that the noise from mid to high-frequency sonar systems, used by the military, shipping, and research vessels can cause whales to become totally disoriented and to swim into the wrong areas, even leading to beaching. The whistle story confirms I may be on the right track. We need to figure out the leeches hearing threshold and work from that. If they can’t hear the frequency, then it won’t affect them, but if I’m correct, assaulting the leeches with the correct frequency may be disabling to them. Cause wide-spread confusion or even paralysis, enough so to keep them from being a viable threat to us.”

Luke stares at the doc like he’s grown two heads. “Jesus, doc. If that’s the case, we could practically walk straight into this warehouse and take out the super mind with no confrontation whatsoever.”

“Exactly. We’d need to find the correct frequency and decibels required. Since we no longer have the girl to test, I suggest we go straight for the jugular and wake up the more difficult test subject. If the theory is correct, then we have all the necessary equipment here to build the ultrasonic weapon we need.”

The doc’s mumbo jumbo is confusing as hell, but one thing catches my attention. Another test subject?

Doc H coughs at the mass of questioning looks coming from us.

Doc Roger breaks the awkward silence. “Now’s not the time to keep secrets, Jules. Spill it.”

The white-haired doc purses his lips. “We may have lied to you when we said our hybrid died. It’s still very much alive and as nasty as ever.”

“Jesus,” I mutter as I run a hand over my head in frustration. “Maybe that’s something we should have known about?”

Kasina stares at me unapologetically. “Maybe. But be that as it may, we now have a test subject vital to this theory.”

“But Sam didn’t detect it. He can always feel when one is around.” I direct my question to Doc H, but it’s Kasina who answers me again.

“We keep it sedated. It was becoming very volatile. Without it being awake, Sam couldn’t detect the connection, even with being this close to it.”

Doc H glances around the room wearily, expecting a backlash from this confession I’m sure. Instead, Luke grins for the first time since the shit hit the fan this morning.

“You’re telling me you have a hybrid we can test this theory on, and the big bad doesn’t know about it? Brilliant.”

Doc H nods.

“But once you wake it up, won’t it be able to connect to the super mind?” My head starts hurting from all the varying aspects of this whole plan, competing with my guilt and fear. I’m a fucking mess.

Doc Roger answers this one. “The lab being encased in metal coated glass and steel and reinforced concrete distorts their communication. Kind of like a Faraday cage. We can only send and receive radio transmissions from outside the lab. That’s probably why its brethren have never come for it all this time. It can’t communicate with them to let them know its here.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Luke asks. “Time is of the essence. Let’s get this show on the road.” He switches his attention to the bald army guy. “Barclay have your men managed to recharge the battery for our truck?”

“Done. They’re en route back to the truck as we speak. It should arrive here shortly.”

The mood in the room shifts a little. With the doc’s theory comes a degree of hope. But my mood is still as desolate as ever as questions ricochet in my head, ripping me apart.

What about Sam and Amy? What happens to them? Did Sam take his sister to it? To that thing? What if Doc H’s theory doesn’t work? What if it takes too long, and we’re too late to save them? So many questions. I feel like I’m losing my mind.

I push the questions to the back of my head and lock them down. I can’t think that way. Not now. I need to focus on the task at hand. Help get this plan in motion, otherwise I’ll completely and utterly lose my shit.