Extinction (2 page)

“All right,” Sadeem said as Clara held her assessing look, “it is because they are not games for children.”
 

“They’re for grown-ups?”
 

Sadeem nodded.
 

“Is it okay for kids to play them?”
 

“It depends on the child.”
 

“Me, I mean.”
 

“Obviously,” Sadeem said.

“But why … ” Clara trailed off, hearing an argument down one of the tunnels, in Arabic. She’d probably have been able to understand if the speaker came closer. She didn’t speak Arabic, but languages felt to Clara like these puzzles. You just needed to see how the parts fit together.

“What is it?” Clara asked of the commotion.

“Nothing to worry about. You were asking about the toys.”

“Why do you want me to play with them?”
 

“Because you wanted to play with them.”
 

Clara watched him, considering. It was chicken and egg. She liked to play with them because the Mullah, for some reason, took such joy in her doing so. But without their interest, they barely held her attention. Not the games made of physical things, not the games on the tablets and the computer in what the Mullah (jokingly, Clara thought) called the Nerve Center. The Nerve Center was an interesting place, filled with screens of places both seen and unseen. Clara saw views of the palace (including the occasional shot of her family and friends), but also cities she’d never been to. A place of lush green, of ancient ruins so different from Egypt’s and yet so similar. There was one man, Quaid, who monitored the Nerve Center. Once she’d heard him mention Ravi, the boy she’d met up top and who, Clara gathered, had broken contact with the others. And in that conversation — too whispered to be helpful — she’d heard Quaid mention Peers.

Clara, watching Sadeem, called him on his crap. “C’mon.”
 

“What? You do not believe me?”
 

Another booming from above, much larger than the last, came rolling down one of the longest tunnels. If Clara’s sense of direction was intact, it was coming from the palace. In the other direction, Mullah tunnels seemed to yawn far into the desert beyond the wall. She’d considered following them the way she’d once followed what she’d thought was Peers Basara’s dog, but there were always polite guards barring her in the central area. Keeping her with the toys, playing with apparent purpose.

Shouts — urgent but distant enough to dismiss — followed the boom. A big one, enough to sift dust from the tunnel ceiling.
 

“What’s going on?” Clara asked.
 

“Nothing unanticipated.”
 

“They sound like something’s really wrong.”
 

“The fact that it was anticipated does not mean it is pleasant. Or that it will be.”
 

“What is it?”
 

“Tell me about the games.”

Behind Sadeem, someone ran by, shouting. A woman, yelling as if giving commands, gone before Clara could try and translate.
 

“I think I’m done for now.”
 

“Then just explain. How do you see the solutions?”
 

“What’s going on, Sadeem?”

“Let the others worry about that. We will be moving, but nothing should concern you.”
 

Quaid rushed into the room, white robes rustling, shouting at Sadeem in Arabic. Clara focused. Saw the words in her head. Rewound her memory, hearing the syllables that had eluded her. She played forward, listening to Quaid at different speeds. She turned the words like blocks. A cypher formed. Unlocked a corner of the language — enough for Clara to get an alarming glimpse.
 

“
Explode
?
What
exploded?”
 

“It’s not your concern,” Sadeem said.
 

“You said, ‘Charles.’ Are you talking about Charlie?”
 

Quaid ignored her. This time Clara heard “Coffey.” A word with no translation, said in English.
 

“Mr. Sadeem?”
Clara said, her voice closer to demanding than concerned. Almost righteous. She heard it herself, and wondered.
 

“Return to your games, Clara.”
 

But this irritated Quaid further. He raised his voice, and with a greater sample of the language to twist and turn, Clara found herself able to understand even more. She disengaged part of her mind and allowed herself to drift — toward her mother, toward Piper, toward Mr. Cameron. And when she pulled back and spoke again, her objection came in a shout.
 

“What happened to Cameron?”
 

“Calm yourself,” Quaid snapped. “We said nothing of Mr. Bannister.”
 

But Clara hadn’t drawn only from their discussion. She’d plucked that right from Piper’s distraught mind, from Cameron’s absent — or distantly altered — one.
 

Quaid continued. Clara didn’t bother to try understanding; his clipped Arabic came out in a string of rapid-fire nonsense. At the end, Quaid’s eyes were huge and waiting. Sadeem’s were wide and worried. Almost frightened.
 

“Clara. Gather your belongings. Hurry.”
 

“I don’t have any belongings down here.”
 

“All the games. Anything you’ve touched. Anything there.” He gestured toward the collection in front of her then kicked a bag , his message clear. “Hurry. Please.”
 

Clara wanted to ask but did as instructed. Thirty seconds later she had a bag full of Mullah puzzles plus a cup she’d been drinking from, now drained. Sadeem was behind her, practically shoving, his urgency clear.
 

“What is it?” Clara demanded.
 

“They cannot see your mind. It is important that they do not see your body down here, either.”
 

“Who?”
 

Sadeem’s hand was on her back, shoving Clara into a small, cunningly concealed door. He’d shown it to her before with a wink — a man conveying something he wasn’t supposed to. Behind the door was a closet beneath a subterranean set of stairs, but without a special key, you’d never know the closet was there. The place was full of secrets. Mullah tunnels reminded Clara of Derinkuyu. No wonder the Mullah had pursued their group so handily there. They were treading familiar turf.
 

“Stay inside until someone comes for you. Do you understand me?”

Clara nodded. He pushed the door, but she spoke again before it was fully seated.
 

“Sadeem?”
 

“We must hurry, Clara.”
 

“I’m scared.”
 

He looked for a moment like he might shut the door in his rush, but Sadeem paused long enough to meet her eyes. His look was soft. Sympathetic.
 

“Now is not the time for fear,” he said. “That comes later.”
 

The door shut. Clara was suddenly in full dark, the obsidian curtain pierced only by a tiny sliver of light at the short door’s upper corner.

She heard a growing hum. She put her eye to the slit, squinting, trying to see through the minuscule crack as the sound mounted, buzzing like a massive swarm of angry hornets.

She saw Sadeem. She saw Quaid.
 

She saw them pause their rushing about then turn to face something unseen, hands raised as if facing policemen.
 

Then Clara saw nothing more as the chamber filled with tiny buckshot-sized metal balls, the entire mass surging like a swarm — buzzing, frenzied, and furious.

CHAPTER 2

Chaos reigned beyond the glass as Ember Flats tore itself apart.
 

The Ark was open. Every human soul could feel the psychic buzz as judgment began and ended, as the Astral verdict was decided, as humanity failed its biggest test. Reptars prowled the streets. Shuttles obliterated any who crossed their path. There was a hum in the air, resonating between every human mind and the stone repeaters beyond the city: citizens all looking inward, seeing their faults, realizing the betrayal of Heaven’s Veil with its phony viceroy and the city’s ensuing destruction. Knowing they would die betrayed and could do nothing to stop it. Gulping each breath in fear and outright panic. Seeing, finally, that the time had come for the human race to be decimated so the few who remained could start all over again.
 

It had happened in the past, and it was happening now: an extinction-level event, unfolding before them. Kindred, standing beside Mara Jabari, gazed furiously up at the massive ship hovering above Ember Flats, hands balled into fists at his sides.
 

How hadn’t he known the Deathbringer was on its way? He must have seen it at some point, before the change. But more and more, Kindred found it hard to tap into his Astral side. Ever since he’d woken to his true identity back in Heaven’s Veil (an Astral in human form, somewhere between the Titan he’d once been and the man Meyer Dempsey still was), he’d been an intruder in an odd middle ground, able to touch the planet’s human and alien halves. He’d sensed nearby motherships; he’d felt the collective and Divinity inside it; he’d always been able to operate his old species’ technologies when he encountered them. Yet at the same time, he’d been as human as Meyer, complete with all his old memories.
 

But over the past months, Kindred had begun to feel his two halves like water and dye. The two wouldn’t stay separate; eventually, the dye claimed everything. Humanity’s imperfections had swirled throughout Kindred until there was no Astral left within him. And so now, standing before the big window, Kindred could still sense the Ember Flats mothership — but he couldn’t feel the colossus. Whatever the huge ship was, he was as clueless as the humans.
 

And it made him livid.
 

“What is it?”
Piper asked, looking upward, her voice full of dread.
 

Kindred looked over, realizing that his anger extended to Piper. She suddenly struck him as an idiot. Cameron was dead, pitched right into the Ark’s fucking abyss. Cameron’s humanity had polluted it the way humanity had soiled Kindred — and now he was barely Astral while the Ark was coughing, choking on mankind the way Divinity had retched on Meyer’s emotions. If he’d not infected the collective, it wouldn’t have squeezed out the Pall like pus from a zit. And if Cameron hadn’t died in some vain attempt to confuse the archive’s judgment — or at least
bias
it, making it emotional rather than objective — then Piper wouldn’t suddenly be an obvious, shining, white-hot empath. The answers were all so obvious. And yet here she was, gaping as if her mind could see nothing despite her new gifts, asking the stupidest questions.
 

“It’s a ship,” Kindred snapped.
 

Piper didn’t look over. Instead she said another dumb thing: “It’s bigger than the city.”
 

Kindred clenched his fists harder. He felt the very human sensation of pain, fingernails cutting tiny moons into the heel of his palm. Piper sounded like this was all a big surprise — and yet it was obvious that if she’d just get out of her own way, she could see much more than him.

But
Kindred
was supposed to be the knowledgeable one, the man in charge. But now he was as low on the totem pole as his daughter — if that’s what Lila was. The panic and fury he felt at the loss of control was …
 

Well, it was very
human
.
 

“You said you had a plan,” Kindred said to Mara Jabari, ignoring Piper.

“It’s too late.”
 

He felt his control slip another notch. “What do you mean
it’s too fucking late?”
 

“I didn’t know this was coming. None of us did.”

Goddammit
. Kindred didn’t like standing still, motionless by the big windows with the others, lined up like targets in a shooting gallery. Beyond the palace wall, the city was killing itself. Every human was suddenly for himself as Titans pursued them, becoming black creatures with teeth and claws. But it was all shock and awe. The Astrals wouldn’t carry out their extermination hand-to-hand or one-by-one. You didn’t need to be an empath to see that.

This was about creating fear.
 

This was about preparing the city — and likely the planet — for whatever the ship would soon unleash.

“What
was
the plan?” Kindred asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”
 

“What was the plan?”
 

Jabari looked over at Kindred’s raised voice. For a moment she looked dumbstruck, but then she sobered and answered him straight.

“There’s an escape vehicle.”
 

“Great.”
 

“But we’ll never reach it now.”

“Why not?”
 

“We weren’t counting on something like this.” Her eyes ticked toward the window, and Kindred knew she had to mean the enormous ship, which looked like a moon in low orbit. “Every projection we ran at the Da Vinci Initiate only considered motherships and shuttles. This is unprecedented. All the historical records mentioned ships of two sizes, never three.”