Will McIntosh - Defenders

Oliver turned, watched the buildings pass outside his window. As they passed through the gate to the CIA compound, Vanessa said, “We did it.”

Oliver tried to think of what they’d done. “What did we do?”

She pulled over to the curb in front of his building. “We went a whole morning without once mentioning the war.” She held up her palm; Oliver gave her a high-five.

“That’s right. I forgot all about it.” They’d made the pact the night before; by morning it had gone out of his head, buried by a thousand thoughts and worries.

“In that case, you’re lucky.”

“What was the penalty again?” Oliver asked.

“Lip-synch to a song of my choice. In my underwear.”

“That’s right.” Oliver laughed. He leaned in, kissed her goodbye.

“It’s nice, getting a break from it. Almost like taking a vacation to the past, before it started.”

“It is. We should do it every morning.” They needed to come up with ways to hang on to at least some semblance of normal life.

“You’re on your own for dinner,” Vanessa said as he opened the door.

“Oh?”

Vanessa looked away, over his shoulder. “Paul and I are going to grab a bite after work.”

A surge of adrenaline hit him. “Why can’t you grab a bite at lunch?”

“Because then we’d have to hurry.” That familiar defensive tone leaked into her voice. “It’s not like I go out with friends often.”

Oliver clutched the door, wanting to think of something to say that would change her mind, but came up blank. “It’s not your going out at night that bothers me; it’s your going out with Paul. If he’s just a friend, why can’t I come?” Paul was a charming, handsome, muscular friend, the sort of man Vanessa would look very natural standing beside.

Vanessa leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, and sighed heavily. “Can we not have this argument now? Why can’t you trust me? Have I ever given you the slightest reason not to?”

“No.” His voice was low, his tone leaking the defeat he felt. “It’s just that—” What could he say, that he hadn’t already said a hundred times?

“I’ll see you when you get home.” Oliver turned and headed for the gate as Vanessa pulled off.

Her friendship with Paul was the one thing their marriage couldn’t seem to get past. Oliver wanted to trust her, and he did with anyone else, but she and Paul seemed to share an intimacy that Vanessa didn’t share with Oliver. One of these days he was afraid she’d realize she was with the wrong man, and he’d lose her. He didn’t think he could handle this without her; she brought out the best in him, gave him courage he wouldn’t otherwise possess.

The Luyten was exactly where he’d left it, lying flat in the center of the cell, looking remarkably like a beached starfish.

“Good morning.” There were five angry red abrasions on the Luyten’s side, just under one of its limbs. Oliver squinted, trying to see them better.

They were almost perfect circles, like burns. Oliver turned, waved the room’s comm awake, and connected to Ariel.

“Do you know how the Luyten sustained these injuries?”

“Yes, we took it through a session of enhanced interrogation last night.”

The answer threw Oliver. He’d half suspected that was the case, but Ariel’s matter-of-fact tone surprised him.

“All right. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Nothing,” Ariel said. “It was in obvious pain, but it didn’t communicate with anyone. We kept Kai in an adjoining room, in case it would only speak to him.”

It surely wasn’t the first time they’d tortured a Luyten. Oliver went back to the cage. “Why did you choose that spot on its body?”

“Autopsies show there’s a high concentration of nerve endings there.”

Oliver nodded, trying to act as blasé about it as Ariel clearly was, though the thought of torturing the creature made him queasy.

“Hi.” Kai was hovering in the doorway.

“Come on in. You doing all right?”

Kai nodded vaguely, looking uncomfortable. Oliver tried to think of something to say to put the kid at ease, one of those snappy things adults said that made kids laugh, let them know you weren’t so different from them. His mind was a fat blank.

He went back to studying the Luyten. He wasn’t surprised that torture was ineffective. They were tough bastards. Given their telepathic nature, Oliver guessed being cut off from communing with its own kind was more distressing than electric shocks. Maybe it drew some sustenance from tapping into human minds, the way an amphetamine addict might draw meager sustenance from a cup of coffee.

“Kai, when you and Five were communicating, did he seem, I don’t know, like he was glad to have you to talk to?”

Kai bit his bottom lip. “I guess. He told me we had a lot in common.”

“What did you have in common?”

Kai scrunched his face, thinking. “I don’t remember the exact words, but it was how we were both scared and lonely. Or something like that.”

“You haven’t mentioned that before.”

Kai looked at the floor. “I forgot about it until you asked. Sorry.”

“No, not a problem. Thank you for remembering.”

“You’re welcome.”

If loneliness was unpleasant for it, what would happen if it was completely isolated? If the Luyten reached out to Kai not only as a means of getting food, but for companionship, it meant it could fulfill some of its social needs through contact with humans.

“I think I may know a way to torture it for real,” Oliver said.

July 16, 2029. Savannah, Georgia.

Lila was in the backyard working on the solar array she hoped would soon power their house, when the emergency siren sounded.

It was a mournful sound, a giant dog who’d been put out on a cold night. Her terror found another gear, one she hadn’t known existed. There were no drills; if the siren was sounding, the Luyten were coming.

She raced inside to find out what was going on.

Her father met her inside the door, holding both of their emergency evacuation bags.

“Where are we going?” Lila asked.

Her father handed Lila her bag. “Atlanta.”

“ Atlanta? ” Atlanta was hundreds of miles from Savannah, all of it starfish territory. He might as well have said Mars.

Dad headed toward the front door. “They’re coming, Lila. Savannah is going to fall. Atlanta’s the closest place that’s safe.”

That couldn’t be right. “There’s nowhere between here and there?”

“No. There’s nothing left but the cities. Let’s go.”

“Can I—” She was going to ask if she could grab a few more things before they left, since they were never coming back, but the look on his face silenced her. He was terrified, his eyes wild.

She climbed into their Toyota, her knees shaking as her father set the gearshift to emergency, overriding the governor. They sped off.

Interstate 16 was packed, with everything from bicycles to militarized land yachts pressed into the six lanes, crawling along. They’d been on the road four or five hours and had gone maybe fifty miles.

“It’s going to take days to get there at this rate.” Lila peered out the window at a family of four perched on a scooter, bulky packs strapped across their shoulders, even the kids. “How many miles is it to Atlanta?”

Up ahead, a Luyten stepped out of the trees.

Lila screamed, the sound bursting from her. The Luyten crossed the high grass along the side of the highway, stopped on the shoulder, and pointed the blue-green, mushroom-shaped head of a heater at the nearest vehicles.

Through the sealed window Lila heard shrieks of agony as vehicles cooked, the exteriors warping and bubbling, black smoke pouring out at the seams. The air filled with the stench of burning rubber and steel.