And It Arose from the Deepest Black (John Black Book 2) (30 page)

14

I couldn’t help but stare. It was as if Jake’s face had decided to take a holiday and jump off his skull for a while. Needless to say, it was disturbing. You know how some people say that skin can be
smooth as a baby’s bottom
? Well, Jake’s was nothing like that. Which, oddly, sounds like a compliment.

He eyed us. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re a jerk and the only reason we haven’t slapped that stupid look off your face yet is that you’ve got a really big dog,” Bobby said, cheeks flushed. The bully Bobby was making an appearance.
Good
, I thought.
We might need a little brute force here.

Jake scoffed. Above the helicopters must have been having a field day.
Showdown in Downtown!
I imagined the news-channel graphic artists were selecting dramatic fonts as we spoke.

Alpha hunched above us, looking down, her breath coming out in long pulls, a deep bass tone echoing everywhere, threateningly, with each exhale. Her tail wrapped around all three of us, almost like a protective mother.
MOTHER
.

I knew one thing. We were in deep doo-doo. I had to come up with something, and fast.

“You’re so funny, Bobby,” Jake said, shaking his head. “I mean, what do you think of my work?”

“You gave her power,” I said, and Jake nodded with a smile. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Am I, John? Gorgol Alpha is here to save the world from humanity. All I did was make sure you two, and your red friend, can’t mess that up.”

“How are
you
any different?” I asked.

Idly, Jake scraped one hand along his cheek, and flecks of something I didn’t want to think about fell away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You say Alpha will save the world from the mess people have made of it. But you’re wrong. Alpha just wants to get home. Look inside her, you’ll see it’s true. My sister brought the Gorgols here, and Alpha thinks my sister is her ticket home.” Jake flinched, his face contorted, not believing. “But here’s the thing. Holly can’t do it. She can’t send them back. She doesn’t know how she brought them here in the first place, and has no idea how to send them back. Alpha is here for good. But she isn’t natural and doesn’t belong here. And even if she
did
, what have you done? If you’ve given this monster your powers — our powers — then you’ve
corrupted
nature. You’re as guilty as any of the humans you’re busy condemning. Maybe more so.”

Jake froze momentarily, then flicked his head dismissively and looked down. Something else was at play. I felt a shift that I couldn’t see.

His eyes were dark as they slowly looked up at me from sockets that appeared burned. “John, my friend, you talk a good game. You have always been a deceiver.”
Always?
How long does he think we’ve known one another?
He was using our names out loud. Obviously Jake had no concern about our private identities. He was only feet away, speaking conversationally, not shouting. But if any of the helicopters above could hear his words… “As I am certain you’re aware, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The collective actions of all of mankind have brought us to where we now find ourselves, with such a force of inevitability that no man could stand in the way. Then you, John…” Jake’s eyes met mine again, and I shivered. “You made a mess of things. You killed the life forces of the world, Omicron and Sigma. I don’t know how to explain such a thing other than to say you are evil. I saw you in action. I saw your anger and brutality. You even attacked your own friend, simply for the right to kill one of these creatures. What makes you think, after all this, that you’re really on the side of
good
?”

His accusations floored me. Even if the Gorgols were from somewhere else, weren’t Jake’s words true? Hadn’t I been angry and brutal? Was it possible that I was evil?
If he threatens you or our family, don’t hold back, John
, I heard my mother say in my head.
Kill
.

My mind reeled. I’d chased down Sol, destroying the lives of Petrus and Margrethe in the process, blowing Sol into a billion tiny pieces. I did it to save my sister, but in the grand scheme, was that an act of
good
or an act of supreme selfishness? I remembered the near-glee I felt, driving my weapon deep into the Gorgols, killing both of them.

I’m not who I think I am
.

That very idea, the very concept, rising as a serious possibility in my mind, staggered me. 

“I see you admit the truth at last, John,” Jake said. “And now you know why I
had
to do what I did.” I thought of the mosquito. How my blood had changed it. How I had only just barely stopped it from getting away. What would have happened then? I’d heard of invasive species before, but never considered that
I
might be the ultimate example.

I felt like I might faint or black out. Everything was wrong.

“Johnny, you okay?” Bobby said from my side.

I was dizzy. The blood rushed to my head, filling my ears with deafening noise.

“Johnny?” I could barely hear Bobby anymore.

“I gave of myself, so that Gorgol Alpha could be
more
. So that the likes of
you
could not stop her ever again.” As I blinked stars from my eyes, Jake stood triumphant. “I have given nature the upper hand.” He glared at me, and my focus blurred.

I was going to fall, but I knew that if I did, it was over. I would die, and so would Bobby. I had to do something.

Was I good or bad? In the end, do any of us truly know? The good you do, might it harm someone else? Does that make you evil? Or if you willfully commit evil, and that benefits someone, do you accidentally become good?

Perspective was all that mattered. Sometimes you stood above it all, looking down with the sun shining on you. And sometimes you got punched in the face and had to lie down in the dirt. How you felt about things differed based on where you were, how you looked at them. The black eye of the beholder.

Instinctively, I reached out a subtle tendril of my mind. Jake hadn’t noticed the last time I’d done it. I prayed he wouldn’t again. And inside Jake’s mind I found static. A phone call that wasn’t quite right. I heard voices. Something reminded me of flapping, leather wings.

“So now we come to the end of you,” Jake said. “I would offer you a choice, live in peace or die as enemies, but the simple fact of the matter is that
I don’t trust yo
u
.
You’ll plead for life and peace, and then work the rest of your days to bring me down. To bring Alpha down. And I can’t let that happen.”

Jake looked up at the creature above him, and like a remote-controlled toy, Alpha fired up, inhaling and rising to her full height. “So instead, you die here.”

15

I felt the pulse of Jake’s mind, as it wavered back and forth, between two sides I couldn’t understand.

One side.

Then the other.

Not switching regularly, like a metronome. More like a fight. One side would get the upper hand, then the other would. And in the brief transitions, the connection went dead, like a disconnected phone. Not a dial tone, ready to make a call. Just that peculiar emptiness of a dead line.

I’d pushed a lot of minds in the time that I’d had my powers. None of them had felt like Jake. Then again, I’d never tried to connect to someone dealing with schizophrenia. But was that what I was dealing with? Was I peering into that sort of fractured mind? Knowing nothing but working off intuition, I thought it was something else entirely. Something unnatural.

Jake had given his powers to Alpha. Well,
given
wasn’t the right word.
Shared
was more accurate. Then I remembered working my microscope, seeing the alien thorns in my cells.

No, he’s
infected
her with what we have. This disease.

A disease without a cure.

How had he done it? I thought again of that little mosquito, slurping up my spilled blood, then sluicing away from me. My blood. Jake’s blood. Sharing his blood, Jake could infect others, just as I had done to that bug. And the idea of Jake sharing blood with Alpha didn’t seem all that far-fetched. I mean, Gorgol Alpha was a bloodletting machine.

I hadn’t seen any human, any machine, that was able to stop me with my powers. Or Bobby, or Pip, or Sol, or Jake. And now, this giant animal, this Gorgol, had the same abilities.

And she wanted to reach my sister. What possibly could keep that from happening?

Good? Evil?

It didn’t matter what I was. Alpha had to be stopped.

But how? She’d clearly taken to the physical aspects of the power quickly. No doubt Jake’s control of her mind helped tremendously.

If I were facing her as an equal, normal human creature to normal Gorgol creature, I would lose. She was simply too much for me. Now I faced her as another equal, powered human to powered Gorgol. The outcome looked to be identical — that is, bad for me.

Unless…

Single point of failure
. It was something my dad and I had talked about, once in a while. The place where everything, even something terribly large and complex, could fail if only one thing happened.

Jake controlled Alpha, but what controlled Jake?

The alternating battle inside Jake pulsed again. To the nothing. The nothingness in the middle.

The disconnected phone.

And I pushed, hard.

Like mirror images, the tiny figure of Jake and the massive figure of Alpha staggered backward. Alpha’s tail slid through the air, uncoiling from around us.

“Run, Bobby!” I yelled, and he didn’t argue. We ducked around a corner, down several streets, as fast as we could, putting ground between us and the dual threat of a powered Gorgol Alpha and Jake.

Of course, the monster was 200 feet tall, so for a long time, even though we ran, Alpha’s shadow hovered over us. Still, she wavered. Like a computer rebooting, she seemed to be going through the motions, trying to come back to reality, but not quite there yet.

I must have hit Jake pretty damn hard. Or maybe it was just
when
I hit him. At the most vulnerable moment. Like Alpha, he looked like he was rebooting.

After a few turns, we figured distance was our only hope. We ran on, as directly away from the Alpha as possible. Our masks were still on, as were the mental silencers of our beacons. We were doing everything we could to disappear.

Did I mention I hate helicopters?

I mean, did they
want
us to get killed?

Several of them followed us, high enough up that they were out of physical or mental reach. See? I told you I’d only get to do that
put ’em to sleep
trick once.

But they might as well have been broadcasting
JOHN AND BOBBY ARE HERE!
and pointing down at us with giant neon arrows.

Behind us, Alpha roared, and I figured the reboot must be complete. There was a crashing, smashing sound as buildings seemed to tear themselves apart simply to make way for her.

A car flashed by, some straggler from the evacuation, rushing to get away from the destruction.
Is that Carrie?

“I hope she got out,” I whispered to myself. I wanted to find her, make sure she was okay. But at the moment, running from imminent death was my only option.

We turned down a narrow alley, passing the entrance to a parking garage, and for a moment the helicopters couldn’t see us.

A female voice called out from inside the garage. “Lucky timing, boys. You better come with me.”

My only thought was,
Oh, good. Does Pip want to help me or kill me?