Earth Undefeated (Forgotten Earth Book 4) Read online

  They had every right. If not for that, then for what he was allowing to happen to Hayden. He had been questioning whether or not he was one of the bad guys since he had arrived in Edenrise, and now he felt like he had the answer.

  He was.

  And it wasn’t sitting well. As much as he wanted to deny it, he did feel guilty. He did feel responsible. Doc was right. He couldn’t serve two masters, and James had gone out of his way to make him part of Edenrise’s future. He should be grateful for that. He should be loyal.

  He stopped walking, turning his head back to the stairwell down to the station. He was tempted to go back. To stop Shun. To help Hayden. Just thinking about what had been done to him, what was being done to him right now twisted his gut in knots.

  He didn’t go back. He couldn’t. He took a deep breath and continued toward the exit. Hayden would be dead soon, and then he could put their whole fucked up history behind him.

  Loyalty had a price, and this was his.

  “Murderer,” one of the officers said behind him as he reached the front doors.

  He didn’t know which one, and he didn’t turn around to see. He froze for a moment, fighting to control the sudden anger that rose in him. He had seen how James failed to resist the fury, and it made him more determined to keep it under control.

  The doors slid open ahead of him, at the same time someone screamed.

  Nathan’s head snapped in the direction of the sound, immediately finding a pair of civilians near the middle of the street. A man had gotten a woman on the ground and straddled her, about to start throwing heavy punches at her face.

  The officers reacted to the sound too, but he responded faster, dashing from the building and across to the scene. He tackled the man, throwing him away from the frightened woman.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  The man growled and tried to hit him. He took the blow off his shoulder, grabbing the hand and holding it. He looked at the man’s face. It was wild and frightened, eyes wide and teeth bared.

  “Get away from me!” the man shouted, kicking at Nathan.

  The officers arrived on the scene, stunners drawn.

  “What do you see?” Nathan asked the man. There was something about the look on his face and the violence of his reaction. There was something about the terror in his words. “Damn it, what do you see?”

  “Trife,” the man said. “Trife everywhere. They’re coming. Let me go. Let me go!” He threw his head forward, slamming it into Nathan’s chest. The blow hurt, but not enough for him to let go.

  “Move aside, Colonel,” one of the officers said. “We’ll take it from here.”

  Nathan didn’t let go. He shifted his grip, locking the man’s arms behind him. “No. Don’t shoot him. He’s not right.” He shifted his jaw, activating his comm.

  “Doc, we’ve got a situation here.”

  “Colonel? Are you hallucinating?”

  “Not me. One of the residents.”

  “Shit.”

  Chapter 10

  Nathan refused to let the officers take control of the man, which only served to make them angrier with him. Too bad. The resident was hallucinating, convinced a trife had him in its grip and was dragging him back to its nest.

  He didn’t argue with the man. He didn’t try to convince him what he was seeing wasn’t real. He didn’t want to do anything that would break him out of the state before Doc had a chance to look at him.

  It was challenging to get the man all the way back to the hospital. He had to drag him through the police station, back to the underground stop, into the pod, and then across the hospital’s station to the lift. Doc met him there, and one of the officers helped them get the man onto a gurney and strapped down.

  The man screamed and cried the entire time, kicking and fighting and trying to escape. He kept muttering about being trife food, and about Edenrise coming under attack.

  “How many officers are on duty?” Nathan asked the one who had come with him, Sergeant Jacks.

  “Across the entire city? About three dozen, Colonel,” Jacks replied. “More than enough to handle the population.”

  “When the population is acting normally,” Nathan said. “How many men can you bring in?”

  “On our active roster? Nearly two hundred.”

  “Get all of them.”

  “Colonel?”

  “Just do it,” Doc said. “This may be the end of it. It also might be the beginning.”

  Jacks face paled. He nodded. “Roger.”

  “I’ll inform Lieutenant General Neill,” Doc said. “If you need more manpower, he’ll be standing by to provide military resources.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jacks paused and looked at Nathan. “We thought you went crazy.”

  Was that an apology? He didn’t need it. “Let’s hope the whole city doesn’t go crazy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jacks ran back to the pod, which pulled out of the station as the lift doors closed and Doc, Nathan, and the sick man started to ascend. “Lieutenant General Neill?” Nathan asked, glancing at Doc.

  “He’s in charge while James is gone.”

  “I haven’t met him.”

  “He’s not like James. He’s more of a planner, less of a hands-on soldier.”

  The man continued to struggle at his bonds.

  “I wish I could give him something,” Doc said.

  “I don’t. I want to know what the hell is happening here.”

  The lift stopped, the doors opening. Doc guided Nathan through the halls at a run, pushing the man on the gurney to an examination room.

  “Get him out of his clothes,” Doc said, handing him a knife.

  Nathan started cutting away the man’s clothing. It was simple cloth, a t-shirt and a pair of cotton pants produced by the city’s replicator.

  “Uh, Doc,” Nathan said as he tore the shirt away from the man’s chest.

  Doc turned around and gasped.

  There was a black spot the size of a needle point on his chest, right between his pecs. A web of blue discoloration branched off from it.

  “What the fuck?” she said. She grabbed something from a table and held it over the apparent injury, lowering it toward his chest.

  The device started to spark and smoke, and she threw it to the side, cursing and grabbing at her hands.

  “Fuck!”

  “This isn’t normal,” Nathan said.

  “You think?” Doc replied.

  He looked back at the man, who had stopped convulsing. He had stopped breathing too.

  “Nathan, take off your shirt,” Doc said.

  Nathan didn’t argue. He pulled his shirt off, while Doc moved in close. She put her warms hands on it, spreading his skin tight with her fingers. He knew what she was looking for.

  “It’s a good thing I’m familiar with Stacker bodies,” she said, shifting her hands across him. She continued for nearly a minute before stopping. “Fuck me.”

  ‘What?” Nathan looked down. He couldn’t see anything from his angle, but her reaction told her all he needed to know. “Someone shot me.”

  “It looks that way, but with what?”

  “You didn’t see the wound before?”

  “It was too small, and you heal too fast. I only found it now because I knew what I was looking for.” She grabbed a marker and circled the spot on his skin before backing away and looking at the dead man. “I think if you weren’t a replica, you would have died before you ever made it back here.”

  Nathan eyed the dead man too. “It’s not a disease then.”

  “Not any disease I’ve ever seen.”

  He was silent for a moment, thinking. If the hallucinations were the effect of some kind of weapon, that meant… “Something got on the Pulse while we were recovering the mainframe. Nathan and I brought it back to Edenrise, and now it’s in the city.”

  Doc nodded, her face turning white. “It sure seems that way.”

  He tried to go over the events in his mind. T
he hangar filled with dead soldiers. The man with the knife who had attacked him. Hearing Niobe’s voice and seeing her murder. The supposed Other in the containment tank, and the figure he had seen watching them as they lifted off to head home.

  Had any of those been real?

  Or had he been hit with the weapon almost as soon as they arrived? Maybe after they had opened the seal? Whatever the weapon fired, the ammunition had pierced his armor without leaving a mark. His replica-enhanced healing factor was the only reason he was still alive.

  Of course, it had shot him a second time here in Edenrise, and it had shot the dead man right outside the police office, directly in front of him.

  “Why the fuck is it following me?” he said, looking back toward the closed door to the examination room. “And is it invisible? Is it here right now? I didn’t see anything attack me.”

  “You saw Hayden on your balcony,” Doc said. “That’s what you told me.”

  “I was already hallucinating by then.”

  “Were you facing the balcony the entire time?”

  “No. I was talking to Ebion.”

  “What about outside just now. What did you see?”

  “I saw the man attacking a woman. He thought she was a trife.”

  “So you were too concerned with the man to notice anything out of the ordinary.”

  Nathan nodded. “Good point. But let’s say something did get out of the military base. The complex was sealed tight. It’s probably been that way for close to two hundred years. You’re saying it survived in there all of that time?”

  “You could potentially live two hundred years.”

  “Another good point. You think it was just waiting to get out?”

  “If it were trapped, what else would it do?”

  “Try to find a way out?”

  “And if it couldn’t?”

  “Hope something came along and be ready when it got there. If I had come through a door to another planet and gotten trapped, I would try to learn as much about my new situation as I could. That base was a good place to learn. It probably knows how to understand our speech, even if it isn’t capable of speaking. It probably knows about our tech, about the war, about a hell of a lot of things. But that doesn’t answer my first question. Why is it following me instead of going on a killing spree like it did back west?”

  “Why are you assuming it went on a killing spree?”

  “I saw the base. The people were attacking one another and themselves. And somebody sealed the place up tight. You don’t think it was to keep whatever it is in?”

  “It could be. But we have to look at the whole picture, not just a slice. We know the USSF was running a lot of different genetic engineering studies, which means we can’t rule out that this thing isn’t an alien at all. It could be a modified human, not unlike you. We also know people died, and the visual evidence points to hallucinations. But how do we know the USSF didn’t invent the weapon that was used against you and James and this man? Maybe the Other came through in peace and wound up being attacked? Maybe the base was sealed before it got pissed? We don’t really know anything.”

  “I know that whatever it is, it’s still running around shooting at me and the people around me. That’s a good enough start.”

  “Is it?”

  “It has to be. At least for now. We can’t let this thing stay out there unchecked. We need to find a way to find it. We can figure out whether to shoot it or talk to it once we know what it is.”

  “Tinker unlocked the base’s mainframe. He was only searching for information about the artifact, but maybe we can find something useful there. Something that might tell us what we’re up against.”

  “Where is the mainframe?”

  “In his lab. Without him or James here, we can’t get in.”

  Nathan smiled and held up his hand. The biometric security was keyed to James, which meant it was also keyed to him. “I can.”

  Chapter 11

  “It isn’t enough to go to Tinker’s lab and look at the mainframe,” Nathan said. “The data we want may not be out in the open or it might be corrupted. How are you with old computers?”

  “I’m a doctor, Nathan. Not an engineer.”

  “Then we need an engineer. Who do we have besides Tinker?”

  “That’s experienced with two-hundred-year-old interfaces?” She paused for a moment before shaking her head. “I don’t know of anyone.”

  “What about his assistants?”

  “They know how to use the tools they need for their jobs and that’s about it.”

  “Somebody has to be responsible for fixing things around here when they break.”

  “Tinker always takes care of it himself. He isn’t very good with trust, and the fewer people know about certain things, the more control he maintains.”

  “That’s a dangerous way to maintain a city.”

  “This is the first time Tinker’s left Edenrise in almost fifty years. I think that speaks to how important finding the artifact is to him.”

  “Or maybe he just saw himself doing it in one of his daydreams.”

  “Screw you.”

  Nathan had forgotten Doc believed in the old man’s visions. He decided not to push the issue. “There has to be somebody.”

  Doc considered for a few more seconds. “There’s Chandra.”

  “Who?”

  “The botter Tinker brought back with Sheriff. I’ve heard she’s pretty damn good at fixing stuff, and botters use old tech to maintain the replacements. She might be able to help.”

  “Where is she?”

  “West Wing. First floor.”

  “She’s in the hospital?”

  “Botters are sort of like doctors. They replace human parts with machine parts.”

  “Okay. I’m heading down there.”

  “Roger that. I’ll meet you there. I need to brief General Neill on the situation.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t. Right now, we need to keep this quiet. If you bring this to anyone else, it might escalate in ways we aren’t prepared to handle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Soldiers are people too. If word gets out that there’s an alien running around the city killing residents, what do you think is going to happen?”

  “Fair enough. We’ll do this one together. But if things start to get further out of hand, we need to inform Neill.”

  “Fine.” Nathan paused, looking at the dead man again. “What do you suppose the weapon does?”

  “I would need to do a deeper examination,” Doc replied. “But based on what we know, my guess is that the payload delivers an electrical charge that stimulates the brain and leads to the hallucinations. It would seem as if it can be dialed up and down in output, which might be why it was traceable the first time and not the second. Either that or you just recovered from it more quickly the second time. Your body might be adjusting to the effects. I’m not an authority on replicas, so I don’t know.”

  “At least it makes some kind of sense.”

  “I’ll run some more tests on him later,” Doc said.

  Nathan grabbed his shirt and pulled it back on. Then they left the examination room. Doc closed and locked the door behind her, and they made their way down to the first floor, passing the lobby and crossing a long corridor to a set of doors with a sign beside them, announcing the area as the west wing of the building. They went through the doors and down another empty hallway. Nathan noticed the hospital was losing some of its sparkle as they got further away from the central area. The tiles hadn’t been replaced. The walls weren’t as thoroughly scrubbed. More of the overhead lights had gone out.

  They stopped at a door halfway down the corridor. Doc opened it and led him inside.

  The room was filled with mechanical copies of human parts, arms and legs, hands and feet, as well as other pieces that went in the abdomen or the chest, or replaced smaller sections of the body. They all had wires dangling out of them and were arranged around the ro
om on shelves and tables and hanging from the walls. There were hundreds of parts of various shapes and sizes and apparent age. Some were bulky and blocky and primitive. Others were almost identical to the real thing.

  A woman was sitting at a desk in the center of it all, her face hidden by a large display. She was tapping on a control pad, using the terminal for something. Nathan noticed a hand on the table beside her, watching in fascination as the fingers curled and opened, and then pressed down on the tabletop and pushed the hand a few centimeters into the air, as though it were an oddly-shaped spider.

  “Chandra,” Doc said, walking to the corner of the desk.

  The woman looked up. She was small, slender and plain, and seemed too young to be a trained expert. She was dressed in a dark jumpsuit with a USSF patch on the left shoulder. Nathan was surprised to see the uniform ended early on the right side, cut short to allow an oversized replacement limb to hang from a metal ring above the elbow.

  “It’s Doc, right?” Chandra said. “You were there when General Stacker grabbed Sheriff Duke and me.”

  “That’s right,” Doc confirmed. “How are you settling in?”

  Chandra smiled. “I’m great. I feel like I belong somewhere for the first time in my entire life.” She motioned to the replacements around her. “This is the biggest collection I’ve ever seen. A lot of them are in disrepair, but I’m working on that. It’s a challenge; it keeps me busy And it beats the hell out of Crosston and dealing with Loki. I just wish Gus had made it here too.” She paused and sighed. “Anyway, if you’re looking for Luther, he’s probably at his apartment. I wanted the extra shift.”

  For the first time, she seemed to notice Nathan standing there. Her face paled, and she jumped to her feet. “Oh. General Stacker. I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t…” She trailed off when she noticed his hands. “Wait a second.” She stared at them, trying to figure out why they suddenly looked so organic. “I’m confused.”

  “I’m Nathan Stacker, not James Stacker.”

  “Colonel Nathan Stacker,” Doc said for him.

  “Oh. Colonel Stacker, sir.” She snapped a tight salute, smiling sheepishly. “My apologies. I didn’t know he had a twin.”