Extinction (8 page)

“Hey!” Clara said. “I can hear you, you know.”

“Sorry,” Nick said. “It’s just that … ” Images followed, all about Heaven’s Veil and her grandfather, none flattering.
 

“It’s not true. My grandpa is a good man. Kindred, too.”
 

“Who’s Kindred?”

Clara tried what Nick had done, using her mind to push out a string of images and feelings. It was easier than she’d imagined, once she offered her full attention. Just being around these two for five minutes had fortified her. She felt her eyes opening, her mind getting stronger. They were right; she
had
been isolated — in one shielded palace, then in the desert away from other Lightborns, followed by yet another palace. She’d heard there were plenty others like her in the world, but she’d never met any face to face. Being around them felt powerful, like one plus one making five. Or ten.
 

“He’s the … clone? … they made to replace my grandpa when they had my grandpa prisoner up in their ship. Actually the second. The first replacement was killed.” Clara stepped hard on the following thought, suddenly sure she didn’t want Nick and Ella to know it was her own father who’d killed that first doppelgänger. It felt shameful, like something best relegated as a skeleton in the family closet. “Kindred came after that. Nobody realized he wasn’t really ‘Viceroy Dempsey.’ Not any of us. Not even himself. But then he figured it out and saved my grandpa from the ship, and now they’re kind of like twins but not really.”

Nick and Ella traded a glance, a stream of communication moving between them like a whisper that Clara couldn’t catch.
 

“Saved him, huh?” Nick said.
 

Clara nodded.
 

“But he’s an alien?”
 

“Was. I think he’s stuck as a human now.”
 

“So it really
is
like there are two Viceroy Dempseys. Like on the broadcast.”
 

Clara tuned her mind and saw what they were talking about: something she’d missed while with the Mullah. But one of the children had seen it, or someone they were mentally linked to. A full record of the broadcast, complete with many emotional interpretations, seemed to be right there in the middle of some sort of shared Lightborn archive.
 

In that archive, Clara saw something else about the broadcast. She leaped upon it.
 

“And it really is like they said. Astrals destroyed the city because they were looking for the Ark. It was still hidden back when I was little, but still sorta listening to the world’s feelings. I was there when they blew up the city, and then they just listened to the sounds of all those people dying, and followed the screams so they could figure out where the Ark was. That’s why they did it, I swear. It wasn’t Grandpa’s fault.”
 

Nick was nodding. “It’s true. You’re right.” Clara could feel him rooting around inside her mind, sifting through memories of the event. Clara’s words weren’t convincing him. It was her personal firsthand account, which Nick and Ella now seemed able to see.
 

“And he’s your grandpa?” Ella said.
 

“Uh huh.”
 

“What are you doing out here? You stuck out to all of us like you’d set the house on fire. It sounded like you were in here crying.”
 

Clara wasn’t sure if Ella meant it literally or metaphorically, but her agreement didn’t seem necessary, so she kept her mouth shut and answered the question instead.
 

“You know the Mullah?”
 

“Mullah?”
 

“They’re — ”
 

But then all of a sudden, inside Clara’s mind, everything was strobing red. A mental klaxon blared, and all three children slapped their hands over their ears. It wasn’t a literal alarm that anyone could hear, but it was
something
, all right. A decision being made, perhaps. Something horrible about to begin.

“Tell us later,” Nick said. “Right now, I’m thinking we’d better get the heck out of here.”
 

CHAPTER 8

“Did you hear that?” Peers asked.
 

Lila turned to look at Peers. He wouldn’t stop pacing the bunker. The room reminded Lila of so many places she’d hoped to never think of again: her father’s Axis Mundi, Derinkuyu, their hidey-hole in Roman Sands, even Mount Sinai, where they overnighted in a cave once before seeking the Ark’s original location. Life, it seemed, had become one long series of dark holes. Although the alternative — the viceroy’s palace above — wasn’t much better. It was plush but reminded Lila of their mansion in Heaven’s Veil. And that had its own horrible memories.
 

“Stop it, Peers,” said Meyer.
 

“Stop what?”
 

“I don’t want to be here any more than you do. But we made our decision, as a group.”

“I just asked if anyone heard anything.”
 

“Stop it, Peers,” Jabari said.
 

“Jesus fucking Christ! What’s wrong with you people?”
 

Peers shouted too loud. His accented voice echoed in the concrete chamber. But it also proved Meyer and Jabari’s point: Peers was pacing because he was agitated and angry, not because he was stir-crazy. There was something going on with their fearless desert wanderer that he wasn’t saying, and ultimately that had been the nail in his otherwise reasonable plan’s coffin: too much unknown, too many frayed nerves, too many secrets that Peers obviously held and refused to divulge.
 

There are tunnels below Jabari’s mansion that even Jabari doesn’t know about? How do you know that, Peers?
 

How can you possibly know how to get into those supposed tunnels, Peers? And what makes you think you have any idea where they go … if they can get us to the Cradle to escape or not?
 

Why are you so sweaty, Peers? Why so jittery?
 

What are you hiding, Peers?

Lila stayed quiet, not liking the bunker more than anyone else (although she liked the decision to stay where Clara had gone missing an awful lot more), taking it all in. She didn’t feel as timid as she probably appeared. She was actually feeling bold, now that they’d made the decision to stay. She was turning over what Peers had said about Ravi: how he — not the Mullah at large — had written the note demanding the Ark be opened. It meant that Ravi was rogue, and that there was an outside chance that the enemy of her enemy might turn out to be her friend. Could she approach the Mullah, if she found a way to contact them? What was she willing to do if it meant getting her baby girl back?
 

Just about anything, really.
 

If action had to be taken — if someone needed to push Peers into danger so that no more of her people would fall to harm — Lila thought she could do it. Same for Jabari, if worse came to worst. She didn’t trust either of them. They both announced that things were done after they’d happened and nobody could verify anything one way or the other.
 

Oh, Clara was kidnapped? Sure, I’ll believe you weren’t involved even though you benefitted. And oh, the Astrals always just kind of paved the way for you despite your claiming not to be in league with them? Sure, no problem — I trust you.
 

Peers especially irked her. She didn’t have the deductive genius that her father and Kindred had with their blended minds, but she had her mother’s intuition. For some reason, everyone was taking Peers at his word. They’d
always
taken the man at his word. He’d shown them his Den full of Astral technology, but everyone believed that he and Aubrey had simply stumbled upon it. The Astrals didn’t chase Peers’s big, obvious bus through the desert, but everyone believed it was luck. Peers could yammer on and on that it happened because the Astrals
wanted
Cameron to use his key all along, but who was left to corroborate his story? Not Cameron, who was dead. Not Charlie, who knew all the Ancient Aliens lore — also dead. No. Their only expert was Mara Jabari, a woman whom — let’s not forget — Peers came to kill because her troops had murdered his son. And everyone sort of ignored that the conflict had vanished with their arrival.
 

Peers, Lila felt sure, was hiding something.
 

Something
big
. And
bad
. He’d been sneaking around most of the time like a teenage boy hiding porn. The fact that nobody had called him on his late arrivals, wild eyes, or flimsy excuses seemed ridiculous to Lila. He’d been around the night Clara had vanished, but nobody wondered if he’d been in any way responsible. Oh, it was the Mullah, Peers? I believe you. And yet the man seemed to know a
lot
about the Mullah.
 

He had plenty of reasons for them to hightail it to these alleged tunnels: The ship above was the “Dark Rider” and would “bring plagues.” It was the last in a long string of Astral dominoes. He seemed to feel it was his duty to protect Meyer and Kindred, but not really anyone else. He talked about those two as if they were men of legend then forgot about Lila, Piper, and Clara. Like they were all pawns in some big plan that everyone was turning away from and pretending not to see.
 

Sure, Peers argued to leave. But who stopped them? Who convinced the group to stay? Why, Jabari, of course. An admirable ploy: Peers got to look like he was against staying, when their secret partnership would keep them where they were. Perhaps so aliens could eat them.
 

Stop it, Lila
.
You’re being paranoid. And besides, you got your way. You
wanted
to stay
.
 

The thought reminded her of Peers and his incessant pacing and mumbling, the way he kept saying things that implied the situation was turning bad (like “Did you hear that?” when there was nothing to hear). At least the others were calling him on his transparent protests — or, in the case of his maybe-partner-in-crime Jabari, kept
pretending
to.
 

“Look,” Peers said after taking a long few minutes to calm himself. “At the risk of being shouted at again, I’m telling you, I actually did hear something.”

“And? What do you want us to do about it?” Meyer glanced at Kindred, but his twin seemed to be stewing even more deeply than Lila. Kindred had been strange lately. Angrier. A shorter fuse. More bent on logic and intolerant of any emotion-based decision — which was ironic, considering his own ramped-up emotion (anger) was half the problem.
 

“Check to see what it was,” Peers answered.
 

“No point,” said Jabari. “Whatever happens, this is still the safest place.”
 

Peers looked like he might reiterate his supposed opinion that
the Cradle
was the safest place, accessible through these tunnels he’d have to be a Mullah spy to know about. Instead, he said, “If we wait until their plagues are too far along, we’ll never escape in time. You can’t flee natural disasters and disease by hiding out in the epicenter.”
 

“You’re free to leave if you want,” Meyer said.
 

“You have to go with me.”
 

But even as another round of mumbling circled the group, only Lila seemed to see the subtext. That
you
wasn’t a collective. He didn’t need to take the entire group. Only Meyer and maybe Kindred. Why? And why was nobody questioning him?
 

She watched him, eyes narrow. He’d been the last person to see Jeanine alive. The last person to see Charlie, other than possibly Jeanine. He might have been the last person to see Clara before she disappeared. And now he had all sorts of insider knowledge about what was happening that even Jabari — who had credentials at a bona-fide alien think tank — didn’t.
 

“We’re staying here,” Kindred mumbled.
 

Peers stopped pacing. He perked up then put his hand behind his ear as if listening. His posturing was so annoying, Lila came close to standing up and punching him to the floor.
 

But she paused when Piper’s head cocked, too.
 

“You hear it, don’t you?” Peers said, eager.
 

“Maybe.”
 

“It could be anything. The big ship opening and sending something down. Shuttles flattening the city.”
 

“Well, if shuttles are flattening the city, let’s definitely run right out there.”
 

Peers’s head flicked toward Lila. She’d been a quiet hole in the group, so her speaking now — and with such vitriol — was like a knife.

“We have to get out of here. Trust me. I know! If we stay, things will be so much worse!”
 

“How
do you know, Peers?” Meyer asked.
 

Piper stood. Touched her temples. Seemed to listen.
 

“She knows. She can feel it,” Peers said, pointing at Piper.