The Intellect stopped walking and began to turn slowly around.

  67

  Caleb

  They’re going to die.

  Caleb was accustomed to listening to Ishek’s statements. Sadly, this was the first time he had considered one of them optimistic because the Advocate had said them instead of we or we’re all.

  Things had gone from bad to worse in a hurry.

  He could hear the gunfire outside the chamber as he walked toward Nyarlath. The Relyeh ancient still hadn’t stirred, though he was sure she knew he was there.

  The thought was confirmed a moment later when the first of her blue eyes began to glow, rising from the darkness of her mound and focusing directly on his face.

  Caleb Card.

  Her voice was weak. Tired. The fight he had heard before was gone.

  You shouldn’t have come.

  “I had to. I made a promise.”

  To set me free.

  “Yes.”

  You cannot. It’s too late.

  “How can it be too late when I’m standing right here?”

  Vyte has won. My mind is broken. My will the same. I no longer desire freedom.

  “You didn’t fight him this long only to give up the moment I arrive. That’s not how this works.”

  He will use me to fight you, Caleb. He will use me to kill you.

  “Only if you let him.”

  I have no choice. I hunger.

  “We always have a choice.”

  Not this time.

  Another of her eyes began to glow. Then another. Her tentacles started to shift, unwinding from around her body.

  You can’t escape. I’m in here. The Guardian is out there. And you can’t defeat either of us.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” He pulled the power from the Skin, building it in his hands. “I came here knowing I might need to fight you.”

  A sound like laughter echoed in his head. She began to rise from the ground, her tentacles lifting her over his head. She was nearly five times his size, terrifying to most.

  But not him. He had killed a giant xaxkluth in Sanisco. He had finished off Hanson in Seattle. He had been intentionally shot in the stomach and barely survived. He had no fear of this moment. This situation. He was eager to see it end.

  He held his hands apart, leaving them crackling with energy. He would only have one chance to win this fight. One attack to land a fatal blow. A microspear rested in the small of his back, hidden from sight and waiting for his use. He just needed to get close enough to stab her main body and the Axon weapon would do the rest.

  He wants me to kill you.

  “I bet he does.”

  A sound of pain replaced the laughter as Vyte tightened his grip on Nyarlath through the Collective. The rest of her eyes activated, the blue light from the group shining into Caleb’s face. He remained still, watching her tentacles maneuver in his peripheral vision, waiting for her to strike.

  She did.

  Two of the limbs snapped toward him and he jumped forward, ascending over them. Another tentacle nearly caught him in the side, but he bent back to avoid it, twisting in mid-air to dodge a fourth arm. He landed on his knees, sliding past the next limb and then grabbing one and vaulting off it.

  He came down again, this time within a meter of her face. Her eyes glowed more brightly, the teeth in her mouth grinding together in anticipation. Caleb hoped Ishek was ready for this.

  I am.

  He lunged toward her with his glowing hand. Sudden pressure flooded his mind through the Collective as she tried to freeze him in place by overwhelming his senses. It vanished in an instant, Ishek straining against her effort to erect a wall of his own. Ishek wasn’t strong enough to hold it for more than a few seconds, but a few seconds was all it would take.

  Caleb faked her out with his hand, her teeth lashing out for it and nearly taking it off. His other hand grabbed the microspear from behind his back. He ducked and spun sideways as the light from her eyes turned into a weapon, blasting the floor where he had been a moment earlier.

  Caleb, hurry.

  He was exactly where he wanted to be, his prior observations of xaxkluth guiding him past the tentacles. He wound up with his back pressed against her thick black hide. He jabbed the microspear into her, punching it through her flesh.

  He expected her to cry out. He expected her to collapse. Instead, the laughter returned.

  So close, Caleb Card.

  A tentacle whipped across his stomach, quickly wrapping itself around him and pinning his arms to his sides.

  Once, that might have been a successful attack. But Vyte changed me. He made me better. Stronger. More capable. He took away my weaknesses. There’s no vital part of me that is still organic, and the weapon doesn’t work on machines.

  She lifted Caleb in her arm, carrying him to her front, where all her eyes focused on him.

  Now I can taste your fear. Now you know you’re beaten. So is Sheriff Duke. Your fight is over, Caleb. You’ve lost. But let me feed on your fear. Let me revel in your defeat. I will satiate my hunger for your pheromones. And then I will satisfy my bodily hunger for your flesh.

  Nyarlath’s teeth continued to grind as the tentacle eased him to her mouth.

  And there was nothing he could do to break free.

  68

  Hayden

  Hayden stood in pitch black emptiness, turning in a slow circle and searching for something.

  Anything.

  But there was nothing. No shape or form of any kind. It was as if he had been thrown out into the abyss of space and all the stars had died long ago, leaving him in the black with no hope of escape.

  His hand was still raised as if he were holding his gun. He mimed pulling the trigger. Once. Twice. Three times. Nothing happened. Not here, anyway...wherever here was.

  He noticed his arm wasn’t covered in the thin plates and bodysuit of the Centurion combat armor he’d been wearing. He used his other hand to touch his face. No helmet.

  Was he hallucinating?

  Nyla hadn’t warned him about this. Had she fooled him? Betrayed him? Was everything she’d said part of her manipulation?

  He gritted his teeth. If she had used Nat to gain his trust…it was an empty thought. An empty threat. He was lost in this place. If it were a hallucination, if he had taken off his helmet, he would have died within minutes.

  “Welcome to the Q-net, Sheriff Hayden Duke.”

  Hayden turned around again. He wasn’t alone anymore.

  Vyte was with him.

  He knew it had to be Vyte. The alien was both organic and machine, but not human. Taller, leaner, more delicate. Most of his outsides were grayish-brown flesh, though he could see flecks of purple and black metals in the skin. He wore a long black robe with a hood and ornate gold and silver patterns along the fringe. He didn’t look menacing. He didn’t look dangerous. The opposite, really.

  “This is the Q-net?” Hayden asked. “It’s not much to look at.”

  Vyte wasn’t amused. “There’s more than this. Much more. Your mind isn’t capable of processing it.” Hayden was sure the alien wasn’t speaking English. The system was translating for him, the same way the Skins did.

  “How did you get me here?”

  “I didn’t. You brought yourself here. The room where you found me is the portal to this place, not the wires in the back of my head. Those amplify the signal and assist me in exerting greater control over the Q-net. And other things.”

  “Like the interlink?”

  Now Vyte smiled, revealing a mouth like Nyla’s. A single, uninterrupted block of enamel top and bottom. The structure of his alien face made it look more like a sneer. “Precisely. Only without the efficiency in its connection to the Collective. That’s what brought me here, Hayden. True, learning the location of humankind’s second planet was valuable, and you will be useful to me. But when I noticed the irregularities...when I traced the visitor through the Collective and realized how easily she had broken through to Shub-Nigu...when I watched her meek will destroy thousands of Relyeh, I knew I had to come. I had to stop you before you destroyed everything.”

  “You didn’t have to kill them.”

  “I made you an offer, Hayden. A generous one. Not only did you refuse it, you practically spat in my face. You acted as if I were some minor criminal like the murderers and thieves you hunt on your world. You received what you earned.”

  Hayden’s teeth clenched tight, and he lunged at Vyte, only to find himself floating off the floor, his momentum out of control. He drifted over Vyte’s head, smacking into an invisible wall and dropping back to the invisible ground.

  “You don’t have the mental capacity to understand this place,” Vyte said. “You put yourself in here and you have no idea how to get out. You can’t even control your movements. I know you came here to distract me. I want to show you something. I would recreate it all for you, but your mind can’t handle it.”

  The blackness changed. Hayden drew in a sharp breath as Nyarlath appeared. Her eyes were glowing blue, and she had Caleb clutched tightly in one of her tentacles, drawing him toward her mouth.

  “This is what your distraction has gained you,” Vyte said. “And that.”

  Hayden looked over. Tora was out of her armor, knife and microspear in hand. Her face was bloody, her breathing ragged. An Intellect unlike anything Hayden had ever seen stood over her. Stacker was nearby, his neck twisted at an impossible angle.

  “And that.”

  Hayden turned the other way. A line of Marines were dead along an invisible passageway, energy blasts burned through their combat armor. Sergeant Gray was at the front of the line, slumped against the bulkhead.

  “You came here because you thought you could win. But you could never win. The Relyeh and Axon are ancient compared to humankind. Separate, we have been beset by war and held stagnant. Together, we’re unstoppable.”

  Hayden’s heart ached to see their entire effort about to come to an end. Everything they had fought so hard for was dying. All hope fading.

  He wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “So you can go off and conquer the universe,” Hayden said. “Big deal. You think there’s any fulfillment in destruction and control? The tighter you try to hold onto things, the more slippery they become. That’s why your own offspring brought me here. That’s why she turned against you. No matter what you do, there will always be the ones with heart and hope, who know what’s good and who fight to uphold it. I might not be smart enough to process this place, but I understand what you in all of your advanced intellect seem incapable of getting.”

  “Do you?”

  Hayden nodded. “Nyla said she wouldn’t help us fight you.”

  “Even she has a limit to her betrayal.”

  Hayden was glad to hear that Nyla hadn’t set him up. He could deal with losing to the Axon if he had fought as hard as he could. He couldn’t bear thinking the piece of Natalia that Nyla had given him had been a lie.

  And there was another reason he was glad. He was banking on his gut instinct that she was watching the events unfold and would respond to help him.

  The world started gaining hard edges that defined a real three-dimensional space, placing them in a mirror image of the actual room Hayden had entered. Only the Construct left Vyte standing two meters in front of Hayden, an unmistakable expression of confusion crossing his alien face.

  “That doesn’t mean she’ll let the fight be an unfair one,” Hayden said, jumping backward toward the exit at the same time Vyte raised his hand.

  A beam of black energy shot from it, stretching toward Hayden as the darkness vanished. Reality returned in a mind-bending, painful jolt that nearly sent him tumbling off the side of the platform. He stumbled and fell onto his back, suddenly lightheaded and struggling to breathe.

  His helmet really was off. He had removed it as part of the illusion Vyte had surrounded him with, where the Q-net and reality were mapped to one another. Vyte was able to hide that truth from him.

  Nyla had chosen to reveal it.

  He struggled to his knees. Vyte was pulling at the wire in the back of his head, trying to work himself free. Hayden raised his hand. His revolver was gone, but that was okay.

  He had another.

  He yanked it from its holster and took aim at the same time Vyte finally freed himself, spinning to face Hayden. The Axon’s eyes widened in surprise.

  Then the eyes vanished as two high-caliber rounds punched through them, shattering Vyte’s skull and everything inside it. He dropped to the ground dead.

  “I hope you rot in hell, you son of a bitch,” Hayden spat.

  His world blurred, and a different darkness took him.

  69

  Caleb

  Caleb’s efforts to free himself intensified as Nyarlath’s mouth closed on him. Together, her thousands of teeth coated with green saliva and the decaying remains of sacrificial Relyeh stuck between them produced a stench that made him want to vomit. And he knew his fear was making her stronger, but he couldn’t help it. Trained Marine or not, he wasn’t impervious to fear.

  But he did know how to control it and use it to his advantage. He wasn’t panicked the way the Norg had panicked in the Relyeh ancient’s clutches. He still had his wits, though they seemed equally ineffective at the moment.

  Think. He had to think. There had to be some way out of this. He wasn’t giving up.

  Ishek was strangely silent, the Advocate surprising him by not hurling negative thoughts about their current predicament. He seemed almost contemplative, as if he too were working on a solution to get them free.

  Whatever we do, we need to do it now.

  Caleb agreed. They had seconds to stop Nyarlath from...

  Something’s wrong.

  Caleb felt it a split-second later, interrupting his thoughts. A coldness washed through Ishek, causing him to shiver beneath Nyarlath’s tentacle. She felt it too, her grip loosening slightly, her mouth flinching back, her glowing blue eyes dimming. Something had passed through the Collective. Something he didn’t understand.

  What he did understand was that Nyarlath was distracted, and whoever recovered first would have the edge. He just needed Ishek to hit…

  Already done.

  Nyarlath flinched again as Ishek threw every ounce of his strength into her through the Collective. Under normal circumstances, the effort would be wholly ineffective. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Her grip loosened even more, and Caleb managed to shove the tentacle away, falling to the floor right in front of her.

  He was free, but now what? She would recover from Ishek’s attack in moments. The microspear couldn’t hurt her because she was as much machine now as she was organic. He had only one option.

  He drew power from the Skin, pulling it to his hands as he jumped, using the trunks of her tentacles as steps to agilely climb up her torso. Nyarlath jerked suddenly, recovering from Ishek’s attack. Her surprisingly weak voice, entered his mind.

  Caleb wait. Vyte is dead. I can be free. We had an agreement.

  “The agreement was that I would set you free in exchange for your help,” Caleb said. “You tried to eat me.”

  He lunged forward, locking his hands on top of her eyes and sending the gathered energy through them. A loud, high-pitched wail escaped her mouth and her pain rippled through Caleb’s mind. It was intense, and Caleb struggled to keep his grip, to keep pouring every last bit of energy the Skin had into her Axon parts. He didn’t know if it would be enough to overload them. If she didn’t die from the attack, he would.

  Her tentacle whipped up and hit him, knocking him off her. He hit hard, smashing into the wall. He tried to get his feet under him before he landed on the deck, but he fell on his shoulder and turned into a roll to get back on his feet in time to dodge her wildly swinging tentacles. He ducked beneath one and was hit by another and thrown across the room, smacking again into the wall, this time near the membrane door.

  Caleb got up, ready to run through it.

  No. You aren’t escaping. You can’t defeat me. I am Nyarlath, second-made, Queen of the Relyeh. I will not fall to a mere human.

  She reached out, grabbing his leg and tugging him back toward her. He rolled over and grabbed onto the tentacle wrapped around him with both hands. His Skin was nearly out of power, but he managed to burn through the flesh and pull loose. He hit the deck on his knees and tried to scramble away.

  Nyarlath’s entire mass moved forward, more tentacles reaching for him. He turned around, ready to defend himself even though he couldn’t possibly fend off all her limbs. He noticed Nyarlath’s eyes had lost their blue glow. They were unfocused and hazy.

  Blind...she was blind! She could only sense him.

  Her Axon half was dying. He was halfway to his goal.

  Halfway wasn’t good enough.

  Four tentacles shot out at him at once. He jumped away from two of them, but one caught hold of his arm.

  Got you.

  A loud crackle echoed around them, and Caleb watched the tentacle explode a meter down its length, flesh and muscle splattering everywhere. He was free once more.

  Tora pushed through the hole in the membrane, She was out of her armor, out of her helmet, her face pale, her skin slick with sweat and blood. But she had her HRG, the big gun spitting fire and flechettes into Nyarlath.

  “Colonel,” she said, tossing him a microspear as she continued to shoot.

  Caleb caught it, rushing forward while Tora kept him covered, dodging Nyarlath’s wild swings. “Let’s try this again,” he said, stabbing the spear into the side of her face next to her mouth. He had no idea if it would end her in her weakened state, but he’d had to give it a try.