Luna, whats going on? Cub demanded, dodging back from another blow. Luna saw him stare at her. Oh no. No!
Luna charged at him and the others with all the speed of her kind, breathing out vapor even though she knew it would do nothing to people already inoculated against the danger. A man got in her way and she cut him down with her shard of metal, shoving another man out of her path.
Shes transformed! Cub yelled above the sudden chaos.
Then he did the unthinkable, and reached for a gun.
Luna was already lunging for him, shoving him back and knocking the gun from his hand so fast she could barely believe how quickly she was moving.
Grab her! Ignatius yelled above the chaos.
Luna struck out toward him, the need to obey the Hive besting any attempt to resist. Inside, she was screaming, but it only came out as a dull hiss. A dozen other people were on her in that moment. Luna shook one of them off, throwing him away with more force than she could have believed, and lashed out at another.
Even so, more people piled in, and for all her strength, all her ferocity, Luna found herself pinned between them. There were too many of them to fight. She breathed out vapor in what seemed like the futile hope that it would turn some of these creatures, these humans and even as she thought it, Luna caught herself. She wasnt what the aliens wanted her to be. She wouldnt lose track of who she was.
Shes changed, Cub said, shaking his head. Shes gone. Lunas gone.
He still had the gun in his hand, and his hand seemed to be shaking now, as if he were wrestling with a decision. Luna could guess exactly what that decision was, and she hated it.
Dont say that, Leon said. She might still be in there.
Luna wanted to scream that she was still in there. She wanted Cub to see that she was still there, that well, she didnt know what happened after that.
Instead, she saw Cub lift his gun.
I know what its like as one of those things. Even if Luna is in there, she wont be for long. It sucks away who you are.
But shes there now, Leon said. We can still save her. The blast
The blast converted people all around it during the battle, but it didnt save Luna, Cub said. Luna could see tears in his eyes now. Shes gone, and now I have to do I have to do the only thing that can be done.
Luna could guess what he was thinking: that this was the same as with his father, Bear; that there wasnt another choice; that he was sparing her from a fate worse than death. Even so, he was pointing a gun at her, and she hated it. How could he do that to her? How could he think, even for a moment, that it was the right thing to do?
Wait! Ignatius yelled, and he was the last person Luna would have expected to step between her and a gun. The chemist and former drug maker was nothing if not a coward.
Get out of the way, Cub snapped back.
We can still save her, Ignatius insisted.
If she wasnt saved when the blast went out
Because she was at its center. The eye of the storm! Ignatius said. He didnt move aside. Luna hadnt expected him of all people to stand in the face of that kind of danger. It doesnt mean that she cant be saved. We just need
What? To recreate the blast? Cub demanded, and Luna might have wanted to dry the tears in his eyes if not for the reason for them. Recreate a random burst of alien energy tuned to just the right frequency when it hit the crystals? Do you think I wasnt paying attention to what youve been saying, Ignatius? If I thought there was a way
He pulled the trigger on his gun and Luna saw the dust at her feet kick up. Her controlled body didnt flinch, didnt even react.
That was a warning, Ignatius, Cub said, and Luna could hear the certainty in his voice now. Move.
Luna tried to get her body to move so that Ignatius wouldnt be in the line of fire, but she was imprisoned both within her own flesh and by the hands of those who held her. They wanted this. They wanted to make sure that the most people were hurt.
The blast let us overwhelm the nanites involved in the change for hundreds, Ignatius said, but we can still come up with a cure for one person at a time. We just need to process it.
Luna saw Cub hesitate at that. It seemed to be the only thing that was enough to do it.
You can really do it? he asked.
Not here, Ignatius admitted. The damage from the battle is severe, but all I need is a lab with the right equipment, and a few specific pieces of machinery.
And in the meantime, we all have to hold onto Luna to stop her killing us? Cub asked.
We can build something to contain her, Barnaby said. He already seemed to be working on it, holding up rough pieces of metal to the remains of a motorcycle trailer as if he could already see the way it fit together in his head.
And shell pull in all the aliens from a hundred miles around, Cub said.
Luna knew what he meant. The creatures controlling her would see everything through her eyes. They would know where to send more.
Were going to do that all by ourselves, Ignatius said. We owe her this, Cub, and I promise we can get her back.
Cub stood there, but Luna could tell that hed made his mind up. Maybe she should have felt grateful that he wasnt going to kill her. Maybe she should have felt some pity for the tough decisions that hed had to take already. Instead, all she could think of as he stood there was that hed been going to kill her. Hed actually been going to kill her.
All right, Cub said. He backed away. All right.
Luna continued to snap and snarl, unable to help herself, while the people held her in place. She was everything that Cub feared she was, but she was more than that. She just didnt have any way to let people know. A little further over, Barnaby was working on the enclosure designed to hold her. It looked like a kind of cage, made out of parts scavenged from the wreckage of the battle.
It came together slowly, piece by carefully constructed piece. As quickly as it came together, Luna felt herself gradually falling apart. She could feel memories sliding away into the depths of her being in a way that felt all too familiar. Shed felt this before, the first time she had been transformed, fragments of herself lost whenever she looked away from them, impossible to grasp, impossible to hold onto, like darting fish slipping through her fingers.
The memories of her parents slid into a vague kind of knowledge, with Luna unable to recall a single moment with them, a single instant spent laughing at home or arguing about chores or even sitting down together to eat. Luna knew the facts of her life, but couldnt recall it. She couldnt truly remember what it had been like to be in school, or to sit and watch TV, or to be outside, or
Kevins face came into her mind so sharply and perfectly that it might have been a photograph, and Luna clung to that image as tightly as she might have held onto a metal post in a hurricane. She wouldnt lose Kevin, wouldnt lose a single fragment of him. She wouldnt lose the moments that shed spent with him. Those moments seemed etched into her, from being there with him at the NASA Institute, to fleeing to the bunker and hiding from the flow of the vapor, to trying to bring down the aliens together.
There was something brighter about those moments than the rest of it, somehow. They stood out in Lunas mind indelibly, and she managed to cling to them, holding onto thoughts of Kevin, and to all the things that she felt for him. That need, that love, seemed like a beacon in the dark that threatened to engulf her,
Bring her this way, Barnaby called out, and Luna looked up to see that he had completed his holding cell, so quickly that it stood as a reminder of just how talented he was when it came to building things. It looked roughly made, but the metal was thick, and the gaps between the bars were small enough that even Luna wouldnt be able to slip out.
They carried her toward it, and her body fought even if Lunas mind hoped that the cage would be strong enough to hold her. She felt her foot connect with a mans jaw, her elbow slam into someones stomach. She felt blows connect hard enough to bruise or break bones, and it didnt seem to make any difference. Most of the people carrying her now werent members of the Survivors, or at least, Luna didnt think they were. Instead, they had the ragged look of the people who had previously been transformed. They seemed willing to help her even when the others were afraid.
They picked her up and flung her into the cage. Luna didnt feel the landing. Instead, she rose and stormed for the door, but even her unbridled speed wasnt enough to make it there before the metal slammed into place and the Survivors managed to lock it shut.
Luna threw herself against the bars, testing the strength of them. The pulsing instructions of the Hive told her to tear her way free and kill, to do as much damage as she could before they cut her down, but the metal didnt give way under her hands, even when she tore at the bars hard enough to make her fingers bleed. That should have hurt, but like everything else as one of those transformed, it seemed to pass in a dream, almost happening to someone else.
The only problem was that the someone else was her, and this would really hurt if Ignatius was right about being able to change her back.
Where do we go to process what we found? Leon asked Ignatius and Barnaby. We just need a lab, right?
Luna tried to look away. She didnt think the aliens were dragging knowledge of the Survivors from her, but she had no way of knowing. Cub was right about that much: she was a threat to the rest of them with every moment that she was able to see and hear. She could draw in hordes of the controlled as surely as a beacon.
It cant just be any lab, Ignatius said. Were going to need specific pieces of equipment. The university would have had them, but with the attack, Im worried that they might be gone.
Where then? Leon asked.
Luna saw Ignatius shrug, and in that moment she knew that this was anything but certain. Ignatius had made the process of bringing her back seem so simple, but he obviously didnt actually know where to find what they were looking for. None of them did, and somehow, Luna suspected that she only had a limited amount of time before everything she was disappeared for good. Even now, she could feel the weight of the aliens infection pressing down on her, crushing everything that she was. It felt as though there was a hand behind it, closing slowly on her and making that happen.
There are spots that might have what we need, Barnaby said, pointing out over the city like a tour guide. There are industrial buildings that way, and if we can find a chemical plant, it will have everything we need. Or we can go that way and look at more academic buildings. Or we can go deeper into the university and hope that something survived.
Leon thought for a moment or two. Luna knew what she would have chosen, wanting to get to the nearest option, even if it was the least likely. She wanted this done as quickly as possible, and not just because she didnt want to spend any more time than she had to as the thing she was. She knew that every moment she was like this was a threat to all of the others.
It seemed that Leon disagreed, though, because he pointed to the factory buildings.
Theyre our best chance, he shouted to the Survivors around him. Ignatius and Barnaby will tell you exactly what theyre looking for. We need the right equipment to save Luna, and to save other transformed we find.
The group gathered around them. There were so many now; practically an army, although that would have implied that they all had some kind of discipline rather than just moving forward together because they wanted to. They marched forward in the direction of the waiting factories, going on foot now since the school bus wasnt going anywhere in the wake of the battle. They dragged Luna along on her trailer, its wheels squeaking with every turn, its frame bouncing with every jolt of uneven ground. She felt like an exhibit in a museum, or perhaps like a captive in some ancient war, put on display before her death.
Im not going to die, she told herself, trying to get herself to believe it. She clung to the thought of seeing Kevin again, the only point of certainty while more and more of her started to slip away.
Their procession set off toward the factories, and Luna just had to hope that they would be in time, before she lost even the parts of herself that managed to cling onto thoughts of Kevin.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kevin was walking through places he knew, places hed been. He was wandering around them in odd combinations that made no sense, drifting from one to another as smoothly as breathing. He was walking on the Hive world ship that hed been to, and the streets shifted so that they became the streets of Mountain View, where hed grown up. He walked through a door, and now he was in the Colombian rainforest, with military people all around him, ready to fight for the right to control the Hives capsule.
Each step brought a different moment, shifting and changing so that it was hard to keep track of them all. He moved from moments in the signal chamber, deciphering the messages sent to the Earth, to the first instant when hed seen people changing into monsters, knowing that they were too late to stop the invasion
to the instant when the doctor had told him he was dying.
Kevin became distantly aware of his body then, although it was so far away that he seemed to be floating above it. He could feel the pain in his head, so great that it felt as though it was exploding. The tremors in his body seemed to claim him so completely that it was impossible that he could be moving through any of these places.
He couldnt be, he knew. He was dreaming, he was remembering, and he was dying.
You shouldnt be told that you were dying when you were thirteen years old. He remembered thinking that, right back at the start of all this, in the office of the specialist. Now, nobody was telling him; he just knew it, as surely as he knew what a distant signal meant, or the sound of Lunas voice.
He could feel the progress of the disease within him. It had been halted for the brief period that he had been a part of the Hive, but it had been far too close to this moment when they had stopped it.
More moments slipped through his dreams: sailing along the coast with Chloe and Luna; being in the bunker, there together in one corner of the dormitory, for that one brief night when it had been safe. Kevin wasnt sure whether this was just a dream, or the thing hed heard of where peoples lives flashed before their eyes before they died, or something in between.
More pain flashed through him, this time seeming to clench around his heart and crush it, holding it still so Kevin couldnt feel it beat. It was the kind of pain he couldnt have believed existed; the kind of pain that seemed to encompass everything at once.