The ancient ark cleared the atmosphere, and Ares targeted the floating beacon. He fired a single shot, destroying it. Now the vulnerable little world would be exposed for the serpent to see. It would be here soon, and then the final war would begin.
Ares keyed his destination into the ark and opened a hyperspace tunnel. For a second, he stood on the ship’s bridge, watching the blue, white, and green waves flow by on the screen. They were like a countdown to his destiny.
Finally, he marched out of the bridge, through the dark, metal corridors to the chamber where he had spent most of his time during the last few weeks.
Lykos hung from the straps on the wall. Dried blood was caked on his face and chest. He didn’t look up at Ares.
“I want to thank you for your help.” Ares said.
Lykos stared straight forward, making no reaction.
Ares activated the wall screen and played the video he had tortured Lykos into making—a false distress signal to the Exile fleet.
Lykos lifted his head just enough to see it.
“It’s fitting,” Ares said. “You and Isis unwittingly destroyed both our civilizations. Now you’ll help me make it right. It won’t be long now.”
Ares moved to the door, but Lykos stopped him. “You underestimate us.”
“No. I underestimated you once. It will be the last time. I should have annihilated you on our homeworld when your kind began killing our own citizens. That was our mistake: making peace, resettling you. We left you alone, and you repaid us by returning home and slaughtering us.”
“We had no choice. We only wanted to stop the sentinels.”
Ares changed the screen to show the hyperspace window, which disappeared a few seconds later. A massive factory in space and a fleet of sentinels took its place.
Lykos couldn’t hide his horror.
“I haven’t underestimated your people. I’ve been building a new sentinel army for forty thousand years. The new sentinels are adapted to fight your ships. And I’ve pulled everything from the sentinel line. Every sentinel in existence will soon descend on the Exile fleet. You won’t win. I just transmitted your distress signal.”
On the screen, large groups of sentinel ships jumped away.
“This will be over in a matter of hours,” Ares said.
“The Serpentine Army—”
“I’ve made plans for them. I just wanted you to know what was happening. I’ve kept you alive so you can watch. I’m going to show you the wreckage when it’s done.”
Ares walked out, ignoring Lykos’ screams. The hour he had planned for was at hand. He had anticipated an overwhelming sense of victory, of fulfillment. But he felt as dark and cold as the corridors he marched through.
In the chamber that held the tubes and the last of his people, he paused. For years, he had blamed Isis and Lykos, but Ares had killed Isis and taken his revenge on Lykos. Soon he would complete his retribution on all Lykos’ people. Yet the emptiness remained.
When the docking procedure was complete, Ares exited the ark and began moving through the ancient sentinel factory. At the observation deck, he paused, instantly alert. Someone had been here. Was here. Wrappers from Atlantean rations lay strewn across the floor. Blood stains, dry.
Ares stepped around the corner, following the blood trail. It ended at the communications bay. He opened it.
Dorian lay in the corner, his eyes half open. Blood was caked on his face just like Lykos. Ares glanced at the conference booth. Dorian had accessed the memories. Had he seen it all? It didn’t matter. He had kept Kate Warner from contacting the Serpentine Army before Ares could make his escape. He had performed his role one last time. Now he truly was useless.
“You lied to me,” Dorian said, his voice faint. “Betrayed me. All of us.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it, Dorian?”
Dorian opened his palm. A metallic device rolled out, stopping under the table, out of Ares’ sight. He stepped forward and realized what it was a second before it went off. A grenade.
CHAPTER 50
The last thing David remembered was the ship with the serpent insignia arriving at the battlefield in space and it pulling in his escape pod from the military beacon. He must have passed out after that. Or they had gassed him.
He awoke in a soft bed, in a well-lit room with bare white walls. He wasn’t sure if it was a prison cell or a hospital room, but it felt somewhere in between. The room’s only feature was a small picture window that looked out onto space. The scene stopped him cold. Ring after ring of ships spread out to the horizon. It reminded him of Saturn’s rings, but these circles were made of linked ships. Serpentine ships. How many were there? Millions? Billions? He stood in the ship at the center of the rings, in the belly of the beast so to speak.
The door slid open, and to David’s surprise, someone who looked human glided in, a mild expression on his face. His hair was blond, and he wore it in a tight ponytail. His features were youthful, and David put his age at around forty.
“You’re up,” his visitor said.
“I am.” David hesitated, not sure where to start. Had they rescued him? Or captured him? He would start with a neutral question and go from there. “Where am I?”
“Inside the first ring.”
“First ring?”
“We’ll get to that. Our understanding of your communication customs is limited, but you’re probably wondering what to call me.”
“Yeah…”
“247.” The man held out his hand, and David shook it reluctantly. “Yes, it’s a weird name, but we don’t need names, so we just have to make something up when we come across someone like you. I was link number 247 in the first ring, and now it’s about all I have, uh, name-wise.”
“Right. Well, I’m David Vale.”
247 reeled back, holding his hands up. “I know. I know all about you. And your people. You’ve caused quite a stir around here.”
David squinted, unsure what to say.
“You see, we found you at an ancient battlefield, where we once came into contact with the race you call the Atlanteans. The bizarre part is that you have some of their DNA, some of our DNA, and you also have some new DNA, some very exotic genetic components, sequences we’ve never seen before.” 247 smiled. “And we thought we had seen it all.”
David remained silent, but inside him, alarm bells went off. Something was very wrong here. This creature wasn’t what it seemed. David’s training kicked in. He knew what this was: an interrogation.
247 raised his eyebrows. “Oh, don’t think that way. I’m not interrogating you—Oh, right, let me explain. Your body emits radiation we can read, so I’m not reading your mind per se. Your mind is broadcasting to me.” He smiled again. “I can’t help it.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. We actually want to help you.”
“Help me do what?”
“Join the ring.”
“I’m not a joiner.”
“I know,” 247 said brightly. “Again, I know all about you. I’ve seen your memories. But you don’t know anything about the ring. We’re offering you a chance to save millions, maybe billions of your people.” 247 paused. “But let’s face it, you only really care about one person.”
The opposite wall transformed into a video, seen from David’s perspective. It showed a bedroom with French doors that opened onto a small veranda overlooking the sea. Gibraltar. Kate lay in the bed, looking up at him, her eyes soft, inviting, staring up at him.
“We can save her,” 247 said.
David heard himself ask how, the words almost an involuntary reaction.
“Her body is broken, but it doesn’t matter in the ring. The ring exists outside of space and time. Every link is eternal. We’ve transcended primitive biology and so can she. So can you. You can be together forever, living a never-ending life. And you can be even more. We created the ring to access a quantum fabric that we call the Origin Entity. We believe
that when we’ve harnessed every life form in the universe, every link to the Origin Entity, we will have full control of the entity, making us truly eternal, all powerful. We are the ring that circles space and time, and we are unstoppable. Join us.”
“You need me.”
“We want you. We want to help you.”
The opposite wall transformed again, showing the Serpentine battlefield where the last shards of the beacon were crashing into the plane of debris. Rings of ships rotated before the sun, generating portals of blue and white. An endless flow of ships moved between them.
“This fleet of ships is heading to your world. It’s one of many hidden worlds we’ve been trying to find for a very long time. Similar ships are headed for every world inside the sentinel line. The line itself is an artifact from my own civilization, the world that created the first ring. Our world fractured. Some people clung to the past, to their primitive, mortal existence, just as you do now. They created the sentinels to buy time for the other human worlds, but the sentinels are obsolete now. They’re retreating. They’ve been retreating for a long time now. Each time they form a new sentinel line, smaller than the last, and each time we break through.”
“Your fleet intends to attack my world?”
“We prefer the term liberate.”
David studied the man, or thing, or whatever it was. “What will happen to my people?”
“That depends on you. You can’t fight us. Your world is in shambles. Look at the suffering, what your people have done to themselves. Their suffering. We can end all that. Think about your life.”
The wall changed again. David saw a montage of scenes from his life form and fade, a march of memories, most of them sad. He was a child, at his father’s funeral, running to his room and the peace of isolation in that dark time. A graduate student running toward the buildings on 9/11; them falling, burying him. His agonizing recovery. Joining the CIA. Almost being killed and setting out again, joining Clocktower. His battles with Dorian. His takeover of the Immari base in Ceuta. The flooding of Earth. And finally, his retreat into the lander and his journey to the beacon.
“You’ve always been on the losing side, David. You’ve always fought a futile battle based on your heart. Use your head for once. Join us. Kate needs you.”
“And you need me?”
“We don’t. We don’t need anyone. The ring is inevitable. But if you join, it will help us assimilate your people. As I said, we’ve never seen anything like you. Yours is a completely new species, and we believe you have some sort of special connection to the Origin Entity. We think it could even change how we do business around here.” 247 grinned. “Let me explain. Your body is composed of atoms that are quantum entangled with the atoms of everyone you’ve ever come into contact with. All of those atoms are also tied to the quantum force we call the Origin Entity. Our technology is past your understanding, but if you accept your role as a link in the ring, we can access your connection to the Origin Entity, and then we can access those you’re connected to. Kate. The rest of your people. It’s a domino effect. If our theory is correct, the ring will spread instantly via your quantum entanglements.”
“That’s what you’re after: my connection to this universal entity? My soul.”
247 looked disgusted. “Your terminology is crude—”
“But it’s the truth.”
“Yes.”
“And if I refuse?”
“We always try it the easy way, David. We’ve been doing this a very long time. If you refuse, we’ll try to assimilate you anyway. If we can’t, we’ll kill you. Then, when our ships arrive at your world, they’ll kill everyone else. We kill anything we can’t assimilate. There’s only room for one advanced species in this universe, and the ring is that race. Be smart, David. Think about Kate. What she would want. If you join the ring, those ships will be picking up links when they arrive. Otherwise, it will be a massacre. Kate will die too. So will you.”
“So it’s join or be killed?”
“That’s the way of this universe, David. Whether you can admit it or not. Now what’s it going to be?”
David glanced out the window at the almost endless rows of rings. There was no escape from this place. For David, the decision was a reflection of the beliefs that had driven his whole life. He believed every person deserved the freedom to be different. Freedom, in a word, was what he had been fighting for his whole life. On one hand lay freedom and death, on the other lay Kate and assimilation, and on both, the fate of his entire world. But David believed his world had fought too hard to accept assimilation. Humanity hadn’t fought so hard just to become a few links in an endless chain. The decision was easy. “My answer is no.”
The room’s white walls dissolved to black. The comfortable bed morphed into a hard metal table. David was strapped in. 247’s human exterior faded to gray skin that crawled with tiny machines under the surface.
“So be it.”
David felt a needle jab into his neck.
CHAPTER 51
Mary was pacing the dark metallic floors of the medical lab on the Beta Lander, deep in thought, when the wall screen flashed a notification in red block letters.
“It’s ready,” she mumbled. She realized then that she had been dreading the moment the ship finished building the retrovirus from the signal she had received a few days ago. Why? This was the crowning achievement of her career. If the virus was a means of communication with an alien civilization, this breakthrough would validate her entire career, her every choice.
Paul lifted his head up from his arm. He had been somewhere between sleep and daydreaming. Mary grinned at him, seeing what he couldn’t.
“What?”
She licked her thumb and rubbed his forehead. “You were marking on your face.”
Paul tossed the pen on the table. “Oh. Thanks.” He focused on the screen. “So it’s ready.”
“How does this work?” Mary asked.
“You enter the medical pod, and Beta administers the therapy. It’s similar to the way the other bay operated on Kate. If something goes wrong, it will try to save you.”
“You’re not taking the therapy?” Mary asked.
“No. Well, I hadn’t planned to. It’s your discovery. I assumed you’d want to be the first.”
“I would have—a few days ago. I would have leapt at the opportunity. First contact, the culmination of all my work. But I’ve realized something. I threw myself into my work after we… went our separate ways. I was obsessed with my work because it was all I had left. I’ve been looking for something, and it has nothing to do with aliens or signals on radio telescopes.”
“I know exactly what you mean. But if Kate doesn’t wake up from that vat, this is our only option for getting out of here. We’ll be trapped otherwise.”
“I know. What do you think? Talk to me, Paul. What do your instincts tell you about this?”
Paul looked away. “I know what this signal represents to you, Mary, how much you’ve sacrificed over the years for your career. If you ask me what my gut instinct is, I just don’t believe a friendly species would beam a retrovirus into space. I know we’re out of options, but I think we should wait.”
Mary smiled. She was worn out, scared out of her mind, and strangely, the happiest she had been in a very long time. “I agree. And there’s no one I would rather wait with.”
Paul’s eyes met hers. “Same here.”
“I’m sure we can find something to do while we wait.”
Paul didn’t know how long he and Mary had been in their room, and he didn’t care. He had figured out how to lock the door and turn the lights out, and that’s all that mattered.
Mary was sleeping beside him, the sheet hanging halfway off of her. He stared at the ceiling, his usually busy mind blank, a feeling of complete contentment.
A knock on the metallic door echoed in the dark, and Paul sat up. Mary was awake a few seconds later, and they dressed quickly and opened the door, where Milo stood. r />
“Dr. Kate. She’s awake. She’s sick.”
In the adaptive research lab, Kate again lay on the stiff table that stuck out of the oval medical pod. The screen on the adjacent wall revealed her vitals.
She didn’t have long. Paul scanned the surgical log. Milo had put her in the pod after her last session in the vat. The ship had done all it could, but it was hopeless. She had an hour at most.
“Paul…” Her voice was faint.
Paul moved to her bedside.
“The retrovirus.”
“What is it?”
“The Serpentine virus.”
Mary and Paul shared an expression that said, That was close.
Kate closed her eyes, and the screen changed to show the communications log. She had sent a message to a planet, apparently using her neural link with the ship. Paul wondered if she had learned the location in the memory simulations.
“The Exiles,” Kate said. “They’re our only hope. I can save them.”
Exiles? Paul was about to ask what she was talking about, but Kate explained quickly, her voice still a whisper. She described the fracturing of the Atlantean civilization, how the scientist, Isis, had genetically altered the Exiles, making them a target for the sentinel’s anti-Serpentine programming.
“They’ll be here soon,” Kate said. “I hope. If I’m gone, you have to complete my work, Paul.”
Paul glanced at the DNA sequences on the screen, trying to catch up. “Kate, I… there’s no way. I can’t understand half of this.”
The ship shook, and the screen changed to show the scene outside. A hundred sentinel spheres hung in orbit. They were firing on the planet. On the Beta Lander.
CHAPTER 52
Paul felt Mary’s hand slide inside of his. On the viewscreen in the Beta Lander’s adaptive research lab, they watched the falling objects burn in the atmosphere as they crashed down toward them.
The strange calm he had felt in the bedroom came again. There was nothing he could do, but there was also a feeling of utter peace, of having fixed something broken inside of him.