Apolonia

Tennison laughed at my response.

I pulled my hand away from Rendlesham. “What do you plan to do once that ship blows this place to hell? You’re going to need more than a flash drive to preserve the data you’ve acquired in here.”

“We know he’s here for her,” Tennison said, looking up. “She’s already gone to stop him. We’ve already seen signs of life in the specimen. By the time they come to get it—”

“It’ll already be too late?” I said.

“Precisely.”

“For them or for us?”

“Them, of course.”

“You can’t control the organism that’s in that rock, Doctor. It’s a fast-growing parasite that has to be destroyed. It consumed every inhabitant of Cy’s neighboring planet in less than forty-eight hours before Hamech incinerated everything but that one piece,” I said, nodding to the rock.

The specimen looked different than it did in Dr. Zorba’s lab. More porous, more worn down. Maybe they’d been scraping it, but the air in that room was definitely different—warmer, stuffier, thinner. They were tampering with the rock’s environment, trying to reanimate the parasites, just as Cy said they would.

The timid scientist pulled off his hood. “Who told you this?”

My mouth fell open. “Dr. Brahmberger? You’re…working for Majestic?”

He looked ashamed.

I shook my head. “Dr. Z’s been looking for you for months,” I said, glaring at him in disgust. “I’m glad he didn’t stay here to be heartbroken over what you’ve become.”

“Byron was here? Where is he? Did something happen to him?” Brahmberger asked.

“He went back to the campus to try to save whomever he could. You remember what that’s like, don’t you, Doctor? To be on the good side?”

Dr. Brahmberger only let that wound him for a moment. “Who told you about the organism?”

“It’s a parasite.”

“Says who?” Rendlesham asked.

“Cyrus. The signal you heard almost two years ago, Brahmberger? The parasites, via their hosts, directed that here. They were luring us.”

“Where are these hosts now? What happened to them?” Tennison asked.

“They lost contact with them within ten minutes of touchdown.”

“Scary story,” Rendlesham said, insincerity dripping from his voice.

I looked to Brahmberger. “It’s true.”

He paused and then shook his head. “It will be contained here.”

“Your curiosity is going to result in the same end,” I said, looking to Brahmberger. “Do you want to be responsible for helping that thing eradicate our existence?”

“If it means I finally get the notoriety I deserve, I can live with that,” Tennison said, situating the girl’s arm closer to the rock.

Without missing a beat, I grabbed a pen out of his pocket and stabbed him in the eye. He cried out in pain and bent in half, clutching his face.

Brahmberger held out his hands but didn’t try to stop me. Rendlesham started to grab for me, but a gun cocked, and all movement stopped.

Benji was on the other side of the barrel.

“Where is Cy?” I asked over Tennison’s wails. I began to take a step toward Benji but hesitated.

Cy stepped out from behind Benji. “He convinced me.”

“With a gun?” I asked, eyeing Benji.

His eyes were pleading, desperate for me to believe him.

“Quite the opposite actually,” Cy said. “He freed himself and didn’t attack me. Instead, he begged me to help him help you.”

The building shook again, this time more violently, nearly throwing us all to the floor. Benji grabbed for me and kept me from falling headfirst into one of the tables.

I pulled away from his grip.

“Rory,” he whispered, his eyebrows pulling together. Before he could speak again, Rendlesham moved toward us, and once more, Benji trained his gun on the doctor.

“Please try,” Benji said, his eyes glossing over. His grip was so tight on his weapon that his hand was shaking, and the veins in his arm bulged. “I would love to shoot you in the face.”

Cy recognized Tsavi and rushed over to her. “What? Tsavi? Tsavi!” He lifted her in his arms and then looked at me with wet eyes. “Hamech is three miles east of here. Where is Apolonia?”

“The roof.”

Cy eyed the rock and laid Tsavi down gently. Then, he dashed out through a slit in the plastic walls and up the stairs.

Benji scanned the room, sickened by what he saw, until his eyes fell on the middle-aged man on the table. His eyes bulged. “Dad?” he cried. He immediately began disconnecting the man from the attached IVs and wires.

Bryn rounded the corner and rushed to her dad’s table, her wrists still bound together. “Daddy?” she shrieked. “What did you do?” she screamed at Brahmberger.

He began to cry and backed away, sitting on a nearby stool. “What I thought…what I thought was right in the name of science.”

“Dad?” Benji said, slapping the man’s face lightly a few times. “Dad!”

Brahmberger went to a tray and picked up a syringe. “Here,” he said, flicking the tube twice.

“Don’t touch him!” Benji said, pointing Bryn’s gun at him.

Brahmberger ignored him, pushing whatever liquid was inside the syringe into the hep-lock IV still taped to the man’s hand.

We watched for a few seconds, waiting for whatever Brahmberger had done to him to be revealed.

The man blinked.

“Daddy?” Bryn said.

The building shook again, this time causing a bit of the ceiling to crumble to the floor. The steel frame creaked and moaned.

Benji helped his father from the table.

“C’mon! Bryn, help me!” Benji said.

I took a scalpel and cut the cords around Bryn’s wrists.

Together, she and Benji lifted their father to his wobbly feet. Benji wrapped his father’s arms around Bryn. “Get him out of here!”

“Benji?” he said, reaching for his son.

“I’m here, Dad, but you have to go.” Benji hugged him once and then signaled for Bryn to go on without him. “Take him south, Bryn! Don’t stop until you can’t see the fires anymore!”

Bryn pulled her dad’s arm tighter around her neck and bore most of his weight as she walked him out as quickly as she could.

Another explosion. This one rattled my teeth and sent me to my knees.