Rich stood perfectly rigid as he answered the call. Sidney actually saw a brief glimmer of joy on her best friend’s face.
“Mom?” he said softly.
Before his mind was taken.
And his eyes clouded over and went to silver.
Sidney didn’t even know she was screaming.
She found herself running to him, stumbling and nearly falling on her face to reach her friend whom she loved so much, even before what they’d experienced together over these last two days.
“Rich, no!” she was screaming—pleading with him as the tunnel area gradually returned to chaos.
The bugs and the rats and monsters were returning to the control of the organism, her hold upon them loosening in her turmoil.
Sidney fell against him, grabbing him by the front of his shirt as she looked into his eyes.
Those horrible silver eyes.
“Please, no,” she said, and started to cry, everything starting to crumble. “This can’t have happened . . . please.”
And he looked at her then, those shiny orbs that once held the most mischievous of twinkles now showing something far more sinister.
Rich smiled at her, but there wasn’t any Rich there anymore.
The blow came fast, a vicious slap that sent her flying to the ground . . . a ground covered with crawling life eager to steal hers away.
Sidney felt their teeth and their pincers as they threatened to tear away her flesh—to burrow deep inside her body and consume her precious organs. And there was a very sad part of her that almost wanted this to happen, to finally give up, to stop fighting, and to accept the weariness of it all.
She was so very tired, and so very sad.
It was Snowy’s frantic barking that pulled her back.
Her dog was there, running toward the voracious swarm of life that threatened to take her, Snowy voicing her concern frantically as she ran around where Sidney lay, on the verge of giving up.
She could practically hear the message in Snowy’s bark. What the hell are you doing? Get up. You’re not going to leave me. You’re going to fight. Get up!
And Snowy was right. That’s exactly what she was going to do.
She was going to fight.
Sidney flexed the new muscle inside her brain, noticing that it was far less painful now to do so.
Instantly she was inside the minds of all the things that were trying to kill her—to kill her friends.
It was a struggle, but she moved them away.
Snowy came to her; even amid the insanity of the situation, the dog was there at her side showing her loyalty and love. Sidney took a moment to reach down to pet her girl, telling the dog with her eyes that she loved her with everything that she had, as she held the monsters at bay.
Which was why she was going to do what she was going to do.
* * *
Cody was terrified, not of the rats and bugs and monsters that threatened his life—he was terrified of losing her.
They had all been changed by this . . . experience, and Sidney Moore—the girl he had never stopped loving—had been changed most of all.
And as he watched her wade through the chaos, he wondered if she had changed so much, if there was a chance he could ever win her back.
* * *
Langridge knew that this was it, that this was their last stand. Something had happened, something involving some new sort of signal—something to do with their phones.
Deep in her gut she knew that things were now worse, that they were losing their struggle, losing the war.
And something drastic needed to be done.
Across the tunnel—across a sea of life determined to see them all dead—she watched the alien organism continue to move and writhe, and taunt her with its alien-ness.
You think that you’ve won, you ugly son of a bitch, she thought as she reached behind to her pocket. You think you’ve beaten us.
Removing the sticks of dynamite.
You haven’t won shit.
* * *
The spike-tipped tentacle entered Dr. Sayid’s shoulder, missing his heart by no more than six inches.
That’s what you get, he thought in the throes of excruciating pain, for shooting the alien organism.
It was trying to pull him in, to draw him toward its soft, jellylike mass, to do with him God only knew what. Most likely consume him in some fashion, or maybe do something similar to what was being done to those still confined within the cocoons on the tunnel floor.
As the creature drew him in, his eyes fell upon the fleshy cocoons. He could see things moving around within, slowly coming awake—getting ready to be born.
More tentacles had emerged from beneath the fleshy skirt of the organism, slowly slithering across the ground toward his legs. Sayid tried to stop his progress, to plant his feet and fight against the pull, but the pain was too great, threatening to drag him down into unconsciousness. He wished that he hadn’t fired all his bullets, disappointed that he hadn’t saved one for himself, as the threat of being eaten became more of a reality with each passing second.
He’d just about given up all hope, praying that whatever he was about to go through would be quick, when she appeared.
Sayid had no idea who the woman was, grabbing hold of the tentacle just before his shoulder and using a jagged piece of rock to cut the fleshy appendage away as the alien organism screamed its fury.
* * *
“Help me,” Delilah ordered the man she had just saved. His shoulder was bleeding, but it didn’t look too bad.
He looked at her, sort of dazed, as she knelt down beside the cocoon that she’d seen Mason placed in. He eventually got the idea, bending down to help her peel away the fleshy covering.
“Thank you,” the man said to her, pulling the flesh of the pod apart to reveal the sleeping form of her friend.
“Do you think he’s dead?” Delilah asked the man.
He shoved his hands into the pod, near Mason’s neck, searching for a pulse.
“He’s alive,” the man said. “Just unconscious.”
And with those words, Mason’s eye snapped open, and he gasped for air.
He looked at Delilah, his eyes wide in terror. She wished that she could tell him that it was all a dream, a terrible, terrible nightmare, but . . .
“It’s all right,” she told him, helping him to squirm free of the cocoon. “We’re going to get you out of here . . . we’re going to be safe.”
And as she helped him to rise, her eyes locked with the stranger’s—her gaze daring him to tell her otherwise.
* * *
One of her best friends was trying to kill her.
It made her want to cry to see Rich like this. He was completely engulfed in vermin, floating in a sea of rats, dogs, cats, and bugs of every conceivable variety.
It was like he was the pilot of some strange, living machine, his face sticking out from the center of a serpentine body composed entirely of living things.
A serpentine body that was trying to kill her.
It moved with incredible speed, diving down, attempting to engulf her in its amorphous mass, but she would not let it touch her.
Sidney flexed the muscle inside her skull, pushing the swarm away, attempting to disassemble the mass, to reduce it to its simplest parts. She knew that using the muscle was bad for her, even though it was getting easier with every use.
The blood from her nose was flowing again, warm and salty as it dribbled onto her lips and into her mouth. She was used to it by now, not even bothering to wipe the steady flow away.
There were more important things to concern herself with than her appearance.
The serpent with Rich’s face towered above her, swaying menacingly as she again tried to take control. The alien organism within the tunnel was fighting back, blocking her attempts, making her strain in the use of her newfound abilities in an attempt to . . .
What?
She had no idea what the outcome might be. For all she
knew her brain just might explode, and that would be that.
But it wasn’t enough to stop her from trying to help her friend.
Rich fell upon her, arms flailing, fingers clawing as they searched for a way to hurt her. His hands closed around her throat, squeezing tighter by the second. Sidney flexed her mind, reaching inside Rich’s head, searching for the alien presence controlling him.
It was there, like a spider in the center of some enormous web, and she tried everything that she could to stop it—to eject the presence and somehow shut down the growth of the organism inside her friend’s head, but it would not leave.
The mass fought her with all it had, and her physical body began to die as she was strangled.
Sidney thought that she might be close, but it wasn’t enough, and by the time she realized this . . .
* * *
Cody wanted to kill Rich for trying to hurt Sidney, but he knew the guy was no longer in his right mind. He didn’t know what had actually happened but guessed that it had something to do with the signal from his phone.
He and Snowy had fought their way over, stomping, biting, punching, and smashing through wave after wave of creatures trying to stop them.
But they couldn’t be stopped, not when Sidney was involved.
They loved her too much for that.
Cody had to stop himself from using the sledgehammer, instead grabbing Rich around the throat and pulling him off her. But Rich’s hands remained tightly about her throat, and for a moment Cody feared that he might be too late, when . . .
* * *
Sidney realized that her physical body was dying. While she had been trying to destroy the alien presence in Rich’s brain, the organism had been using Rich to kill her.
And it had almost succeeded.
Almost.
Sidney opened her bleary eyes, struggling for air. She saw that Cody and Snowy were there by her side, fighting to get Rich’s hands from around her throat.
Rich bore down upon her, the shiny silver orbs inside his skull reminding her of two moons hanging in the night sky. As a last-ditch effort she pulled back her hand, made a fist, and drove it upward into her best friend’s chin. She felt his jawbone slide, watched as his head snapped back, and felt his grip loosen ever so slightly upon her throat.
It was enough.
Enough for her to break free of his clutches, gasping for air as Cody dragged him backward to the bug-carpeted ground.
“Are you all right?” Cody asked, looking deeply into her eyes, the question encompassing far more than the present situation.
She never got the chance to answer him but was okay with that because she wasn’t sure how she would have responded.
The tunnel became filled with the sound of thunder.
The awful sound was all encompassing, and all that she could think of was that it had happened—that she was too late, and this was the end of the world.
Sidney looked toward the source of the sound, seeing the alien organism in all its repulsive glory, and stared in awe at what was happening above it.
The air was moving, particles of dust and dirt floating there caught up in the cyclonic spin, moving faster and faster until the center of the vortex collapsed inward with a horrible sucking sound. It was getting larger.
A hole in the fabric of reality hanging in the air of the tunnel.
Sidney instantly knew what it was that she was looking at. A passage . . .
An opening to another world.
A passage from there . . . to here.
* * *
The bomb was almost done.
Langridge squatted down as the world seemed to explode around her, the opening in time and space growing in size.
Just another reason why it all had to be blown up.
She had all the ingredients she would need and a pretty good memory of stuff that she’d read on the Internet, as well as what she had seen over in Iraq with her troops. The improvised explosive was crude, but it should be more than enough to do some serious damage to the alien organism, as well as the opening in the air.
Langridge was just about done, wedging the two sticks of dynamite into the gas can, but not far enough in that they would become saturated, and attaching the detonation wires. She was going to have to move quick, carefully lifting the makeshift bomb from the ground and starting to carry it toward her target when . . .
Sidney was standing in front of her. The girl looked like hell, her face pale and filthy, her nose and chin crusted with blood.
“Is that a bomb?” Sidney asked her. “It looks like a bomb. Give it to me.”
Langridge was taken aback by her demands. “I’ve got this,” she said. “Help me get the others wrangled together and moving toward the exit before—”
“Give it to me,” Sidney demanded, reaching down to take hold of the gas can’s handle.
Langridge was about to argue when Sidney made her point.
“I’m dying,” she said. “I can feel the thing inside my head growing stronger and more powerful, but at the same time . . . it’s killing me.”
“You don’t know that,” Langridge said, attempting to pull the bomb away, but Sidney held fast.
“I do know that,” she said. “Let me do this,” she begged. “Get my friends out of here . . . get them to safety. The world is going to need to know everything that we’ve discovered if we’re going to survive.”
“Sidney, I . . .”
“The thing inside my head is angry . . . and it’s trying to take control.” She yanked hard then, and Langridge released the sloshing container to Sidney’s control. “Let me do this . . . let me take it out before you have to put a bullet in my head.”
Langridge was shocked by her words but also knew that there was truth in them.
“Save my friends, and save the world,” Sidney said, turning abruptly away to walk toward the throbbing alien organism and the hole punched in the air. She stopped suddenly, turning back to her.
“How does this work?” Sidney asked, holding up the bomb for her to see.
“That button right there,” Langridge said, making reference to the detonator taped to the side of the gas can. “Push it and . . .”
“Boom,” Sidney said, a new trickle of blood running down her face from her nostril.
“Boom,” Langridge agreed with a nod.
* * *
The organism knew she was coming, putting all its influence into driving her away. The animals came at her in a tidal wave of impending violence.
She faced it all, flexing the muscle in her head repeatedly, even though it hurt, even though the blood continued to pour from her nose.
The wave would pounce upon her but break apart, the animals and insects that comprised it no longer held together by one intelligence. The monsters came at her as well, those things twisted biologically by the alien organism.
They were stopped just as easily, turned against one another, allowing her to pass.
She was close to her destination and could feel a strange kind of pull from the swirling vortex in the air. She stopped and turned around to see if her friends were safe.
Langridge had indeed done what Sidney had asked, wrangling them all even though they protested. Snowy was the worst, her baby girl fighting Cody, even trying to bite him as she fought to get away and come to her side.
Sidney was turning away, her eyes filled with tears, when she was hit from the side. She had been distracted just enough not to have seen or heard them.
Rich had rejoined the serpent, bearing down on her as she struggled to regain control—to use her muscle to—
The serpent struck again, knocking her violently to the ground. The bomb dropped from her grip, clattering to the floor of the tunnel.
She was hurt, but still she continued to fight.
The serpent surged up into the air and directed its entire mass down upon her.
Sidney cried out, the intensity of her pain making it nearly impossible for her to concentrate, to use he
r ability. Lying on her back, and feeling something inside her grind, broken bones painfully rubbing together, she rolled onto her side, trying to crawl toward where the bomb had fallen.
The serpent drew near, its living mass swirling around her, lifting her up from the ground. Her body screamed as she was bitten and pinched and clawed in rapid succession.
Sidney looked into Rich’s face, the eyes of something inhuman looking back at her. Although the pain was something unimaginable, she still tried to live—to fight—again reaching into Rich’s skull to disrupt the alien’s influence.
Rich cried out as she wrapped her mind around his, squeezing with all her might before—
The serpent went wild, lashing out and flinging her body away from its mass. Sidney flew through the air, landing in a broken heap before the organism.
The thing from another world throbbed and shook, knowing that this was the little thing that had caused it and its species so many problems.
This tired and broken little thing.
From the swirling vortex in the air she saw movement, something coming through from the other side, and she felt the horrible sensation of failure take hold of her.
Sidney knew she was broken, she could feel the pain both physically and psychically, and she knew that there was nothing more that she could do—the enemy had won.
Or had it?
Footsteps close by caused her to look up just as the red gas canister and all its explosive trappings clattered to the ground in front of her.
Sidney saw Rich standing there, blood streaming from his nose as he swayed in the grip of what looked to be some great internal battle.
He looked down at her, one of his eyes still shrouded in a covering of silver, the other bloody yet clear of the alien influence.
“Sid,” he said, his voice so weak from struggle. “Sorry,” he managed to croak. “So, so sorry.”
And she watched as he tumbled backward, his body convulsing upon the ground.
Without another thought, Sidney grabbed the canister and charged at the organism, her eyes on the sucking black hole swirling in the air, catching a glimpse of the alien world beyond before . . .