The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Sole Survivor

By Stub

mc mf ff md sf

Chapter 22 — Saved by Zero

There was no way to see what was happening. Leave it to Earth to be invaded by a race that didn’t have eyes, so they had no use for things like windows or vid displays.

I stood in the middle of a room, looking around at the bodies of three dead aliens, and banks of unfathomable equipment. Private Wright hovered over me like a protective dog, scanning the edges of the room for threats. At least three other Sentinels had come and gone from the room, but I had no idea who they were.

“Curtis, I need to know what’s going on,” I said.

“Just a moment, sir.” He stood up straighter as another Sentinel came into the room.

This one I recognized right away, because he’d gone to the trouble of painting silver eagles on his shoulders, and the name “Freeman” across the right side of his chest. To my surprise, he snapped to attention and saluted.

“Colonel Freeman,” I said. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

“Well I wouldn’t be, sir, if it weren’t for the Translators. They were just about to wipe my brain when the machine suddenly stopped working. Private Wright came in and got me free, and then set up a link with your group in the net. I have to say, son, I didn’t think you had it in you, but the plan you came up with...well...” He saluted me again.

“OK Colonel, I’m going to say thanks for the vote of confidence, but I’m also going to say that I have no idea what is going on. I know that the Translators worked through Curtis here to get me free, just before they converted me, but as far a plan, well, that wasn’t me.”

“Actually it was, sir,” Curtis said. It was his own voice at the moment, not the voice of Six-Luke, who had used the Sentinel to speak to me earlier. “The way I understand it, from the time that you first plugged into the net, and contacted the Eight, they’ve been recording and analyzing your brain. Like, all of it. And they made a...a kind of a map, that could take different inputs and predict what you would do in each situation. Supposedly Mateo gave them the idea, when they asked him how he made his decisions, and he said that he just followed your orders. They used your mind as a template, sir, to construct their own plan of action when the aliens captured you.”

“They’re using my brain to make decisions?”

“Yes, sir. Mostly. It’s like having you in the net, directing things, even though you’re not there. They came up with the plan to get Colonel Freeman and me on board, and then took over more of the cadre soldiers that were working on the ship. They’ve been telling us where to go through our helmets.”

“So, what’s the next step?” I asked. “Where do we go? Can we get off this ship?”

“I think the most imperative action is to get you hooked up to the alien net again,” Colonel Freeman said. “The Eights keep saying that there are holes in their template that can only be filled in with more data from the Zero. That’s you, son.”

“But I...I’d need the helmet, the one with the harness built in. And I’d need to be near one of those CPU egg things to get into the network. Can we do either of those?”

Curtis cocked his head like he was listening to something. “They say the helmet’s on-board, sir. It was sent to a...I guess you’d call it a lab, for them to study. I’ve sent someone to retrieve it.”

I saw the Colonel frown at that, and remembered that both Mateo and Curtis had an extra comm channel built into their helmets, meaning they were probably destined for command of some kind. Colonel Freeman didn’t have the same capability, even though he’d been an officer in the old military, and it looked like it still grated on him.

“OK, so that part’s taken care of. What about getting off the ship? Is there...I don’t know, a shuttle or something? Something that we could actually fly?” I didn’t relish the idea of falling through the atmosphere in an alien egg, but I also knew that I couldn’t stay up here forever. I didn’t know if they had enough air for me to last very long, not to mention food or water. Plus I really had to take a piss.

“The ships that they use to transport people and equipment are pretty automated,” Curtis said. “The Eight are working on getting us back to Earth, but they say it’s going to take little bit to get into the navigation system.”

“So, while they’re working on it, let’s take stock. Other than you two, how many friendlies are on board?”

“Seven other Sentinels, sir,” Curtis said. “No other regulars like you. Last count we’d killed seventy-three aliens, but at least one ship got away. We couldn’t track it, so there’s no way to know where it went.”

“What about the mission commander?” I asked. Both soldiers turned to look at me. “He was on board. Questioning me, just minutes before Private Wright busted in. Was he among the casualties?”

“No idea,” Colonel Freeman said. “We didn’t know he was here. You mean the leader of the entire invasion came to see you?”

I nodded. “Yup. He was offering me a job.” I chuckled at how absurd that sounded now. “Did you see an alien with an ugly brown bodysuit and three metal bands around his top?”

Both of them shook their heads. “I’ll have the others search the bodies,” Curtis said.

I had a feeling that Supremo was gone. He must have been on the ship that got away. But where would he go? Back to the transports probably.

“What’s happening on the other ships?” I asked. “The big transports with all the pods on them? I saw an image, when I was being questioned, and it looked like all the frozen soldiers were waking up.”

“That’s the plan,” Freeman said. “But that’s also as far as the Eight could control. They had the one or two active Sentinels on each ship send the open code to the pods, and then physically destroy the interface for commanding the soldiers.”

It took a minute for the implications of that to sink in. “So you mean every transport ship suddenly has seventy thousand super soldiers awake and on deck, with no one in charge? Jesus.”

“It’s the best we could come up with. The Translators can’t get into every system, only the ones that use their human interface abilities. The transport ships were mostly closed off from them, so they went for the maximum amount of disruption, trying to keep them from either leaving, or banding together to stop us.”

“But what about the soldiers?” I asked. “What’s happening on board those ships right now?”

“Well, I imagine when that many highly trained warriors wake up and realize that they’ve been enslaved by aliens, they’re going to do something pretty drastic, and pretty violent,” Freeman said.

“So, just general riots and chaos?” He nodded. “But what happens after?”

“What do you mean?”

“After they’ve killed all of the aliens on board, what do they do next? There’s probably not enough food, or water, or even air for them to survive for long, and none of them are rigged to control the alien technology. They might take over the ships, but they’re going to be stuck out in space, with no way to get back to the surface.”

“That’s what we’re hoping to figure out, before it’s too late.” The Colonel said. He must have seen my expression, because he puffed up with indignation. “All of the battle plans were constructed from your brain patterns, Alex. The Eight made their best guess of what you would have done in the same situation.”

Yeah, but all of the successes that my battle plans had seen over the past year had been a lie. They’d let me win, just so I could serve them later. I could see the reason that the Eight had opted to sacrifice eighteen million soldiers, even when billions had already died. But ever since we’d taken the offensive by knocking down the EM pulse drones, all of the human deaths had been directly linked to me. I was the one sending these people to their deaths, even when I wasn’t there to give the order.

“So we need to come up with ideas on how to get the soldiers back,” I said. “First of all though, we need to finish this fight. I need to get back to Earth.”

The shuttle egg hovered twenty meters above the ground, somewhere south and east of the Alameda Naval Air Station. Curtis and the Colonel stood next to me, looking down through the open hatch. There was very little turbulence, since the pods didn’t use any kind of rockets or jets.

“Anyone have a rope?” I asked.

“Hold on, sir,” Curtis said, picking me up in his arms and stepping out of the hatch. The drop through empty air was more frightening than the ride down in the alien ship had been. When we’d disengaged from the orbiting monitor, and put our lives in the hands of the Translators who’d programmed the automated flight systems, I’d been glad that the aliens didn’t put windows in their ships. But as bumpy as the ride had been, I had more trust in the shell of the ship, than I had in Curtis’s armor at the moment.

When the private’s feet hit the concrete, he bent his knees like a shock absorber, but also used his arms to redirect my inertia, spinning me in a half-circle that almost flung me back into the air. His hold on my shirt and my belt kept me from flying away, but my stomach threatened to rebel at the sudden change in direction.

He set me down, and I waited until the five other Sentinels had dropped before I stepped out of his shadow to look around. Above us, the ship, along with Colonel Freeman and two other Sentinels, headed off east, toward Cheyenne Mountain.

We were on a street that I didn’t recognize, but a block further up, I saw the sign for a freeway entrance. “Let’s scrounge up some transport, Private,” I said.

Before he could give the command, a loud horn sounded from down the block. A delivery truck accelerated toward us, and all of the soldiers aimed their weapons at the driver, before some silent command had them stand down. I stepped onto the sidewalk as the truck pulled up, and saw Cassandra’s trademark ponytail in the driver’s seat, and the bulk of Mateo’s armored body on the passenger side.

“Hey, Cassie!” I said, but she didn’t acknowledge me. She stared straight ahead as she stopped the truck next to us. I went around to the other side, and saw Sergeant Colon’s smiling half-face through the open window.

“Alex! Fuckin’ A, sir, it’s good to see you!”

“You too, Mateo,” I said. “I assume you’re my ride to the bunker?”

“Yup. Hop in, and we’ll talk while we drive.” He opened the door, and I handed him the bag with my Arbiter’s helmet, before scrambling into the cab. At the rear of the truck, Curtis was loading the other Sentinels into the cargo area. I climbed over Mateo’s paralyzed legs, and settled onto the bench seat between him and Cassie. She still hadn’t responded to me, and I turned to the Sergeant.

“Was she converted?” I asked, knowing the truth all ready, but needing him to confirm it.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “She was swept up by the team that hit the lab. All of the drones were left alone, but she was taken away for twenty-four hours. When the Eight told us where to find her the next day, she was all the way down in Palo Alto, at the Neuroscience Center. Actually we found all of them there, sitting quietly in a conference room. All newly converted.”

“Them who?” I asked.

“All of the women, sir. The former Arbiters—Kara, Elizabeth, Megan and Tammi. Plus Cassie, here, and Vivian Zaluski. And all of your ‘freed’ women were there—Amber, Scarlett, Jill, Erica, and Mei—all reconditioned. Everyone except Lani. The Eight can’t seem to find her. I’m sorry, Alex.”

My heart skipped when he said he couldn’t find Lani. For some reason that was the only thing I’d been looking forward to. I needed to find her, but I needed to get to Albert’s lair and get connected to my new allies as well.

“OK, then,” I said, “let’s go.”

Cassie pulled the truck onto the street and headed for the freeway onramp. I watched her normally expressive face as she stared straight ahead, and steered the truck with total concentration.

“Who’s at the facility?” I asked Mateo.

“All of them,” he said. “Actually, they’re all in a different building, until I could get there with the rest of the troops and sweep the rooms for traps. We also rounded up Anatoly, Param, and a few others from the science and computer groups.”

“Jesus, Mateo, you’ve been busy,” I said. “You got all this organized in just, what, three days?”

“Yes, sir. The Eight are pretty good at prioritizing.”

I smiled at the back-handed compliment, since the Eight were supposedly using my brain patterns to determine their behavior.

I was saddened by the empty streets, and shocked at the bodies lying here and there as we passed over the bridge onto the base. Normal behavior had run its course, and the survivors didn’t have much longer before all of the infrastructure started to fail. I was surprised that the power had stayed on, but I guessed that wind, geothermal, and hydro plants were all pretty automated. Still, once the energy grid collapsed, the number of dead would skyrocket.

I remembered the pictures of the compounds that the aliens were constructing around the world. They were supposed to be nothing but breeding camps for their new generations of human servants, but the idea of the self-sustaining habitats was something to consider if we didn’t get blown up in the next couple days. They wouldn’t support everyone—the aliens had planned on keeping a much lower population—but it could save a decent percentage of the human race if we couldn’t come up with something better.

The truck stopped outside a building just across the central square from the main admin building. I looked across at the place where the Eight were still alive and functioning. There was some banging from the back, as the Sentinels got out, and then Curtis was next to the cab, with Mateo’s chair.

The crippled Sergeant opened his door, and used his enhanced arms to fling himself out of the truck. He landed neatly on his chair, using the arms like a gymnast on a pommel horse to swing himself around and settle into the padded seat. I followed, a little less gracefully, and was about to walk away when I noticed that Cassie hadn’t moved. She was in basic zombie mode, and would need everything spelled out for her until we could adjust her normal behavior.

“Greetings, Cassandra,” I said, and her head turned toward me.

Her conditioned smile appeared. “Greetings Harmonious Brother.”

“I am Alex, and I have the power of command...”

Eventually I got her out of the truck, and she followed me through the doors of what turned out to be the officer’s mess. Sitting at the tables in the dining room, lost in their own thoughts, were the entire cast of this year-long drama. All except Lani.

“Start your sweep, Private Wright,” Mateo said to Curtis. The other troops surrounded him, and they headed out the door. Mateo rolled over to a small vid display set on a table. Anatoly and Param were in chairs nearby. “This is the only vid we’ve been able to rig so far, sir, but we’ve got comm at least.”

I was about to ask him who was left for us to communicate with, when the image of Colonel Freeman popped up. The audio was tinny and faint, but understandable.

“...just got in. Doesn’t look like they damaged anything. We’re getting the tracking systems back online now. I should have a better picture of what’s in orbit in about an hour.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” I said, and the picture winked out.

Mateo cocked his head to the side, listening. “Curtis has finished his sweep. No traps, and the equipment looks undamaged. Why don’t you decide who you want to bring, and we’ll head over.”

I looked around the room, seeing all of the people that I’d gathered around me during this fight. I wanted them all with me, all the time—I didn’t want to be separated from them again. But for now, most of them wouldn’t be any use in the bunker.

“Bring Anatoly, and his assistant to work the machines. And Param. Kara too, if she has her helmet with her.” That last was just a formality, since Kara wasn’t able to think for herself any more. But she was still one of the only people that could contact the female side of the Eight directly through her helmet, rather than through the bridge from the male side, like the Sentinels, or from a male brain through a female interface, like me. I didn’t know if she’d be able to help, but she couldn’t hurt.

Unfortunately, the rest of my women, and the other former Arbiters, couldn’t offer anything else at the moment. I wanted to talk to all of them, to tell them how sorry I was that they were in this state, but I knew how frustrating it would be—talking to them when they didn’t understand who I was, or what was happening. I turned away and grabbed my bag, while Mateo organized the four drones. I led the way out the door, and across the square.

The room that housed the Eight hadn’t changed. The mutilated bodies of the Translators still floated in their bubbling yellow goo. The egg-shaped CPU still hummed in the corner of the room, monitoring the life-support systems for the Eight and for the now-dead Albert. I saw a mattress leaning against the far wall, and glanced at Kara, wondering if she remembered getting naked with me in the past.

As I settled into the chair and took the familiar helmet in my hands, I felt that I was getting over the shock of the last three days, no longer just floating along in the wake of the Sentinels and the Translators. I had a handle on what had happened, and thoughts were racing through my mind—the most urgent among them being to get into the net and see what these Prime Eight had done.

“Are we ready?” I asked, setting the helmet on its stand, and taking the wire harness in my hand.

Anatoly looked down at his pad, then up at me. “Yes, Alexei, we are ready.”

Mateo was coming in, too, and to my left, Kara was having her implant wires connected to her helmet. I sat back in the chair, and plugged in.

The construct that I formed in my mind was a darker, scarier place than it had been before, full of shadows and uneven surfaces. My subconscious was probably to blame, putting my anxiety ahead of my logic. Still, I knew where to go, and what to do. I headed for the nearest node, and found the point in the data stream where alien pulses were translated into human sensory information. This was the place where the Translators hung out, providing the link between two vastly different cultures.

I was on the female side of the net, due to my interface through the Arbiter’s helmet, and when I focused in on the Translators’ avatars, I saw four women standing in a circle, hands linked. Blocks of information flowed up from their feet, and as it passed through the circle it changed, becoming sights and sounds, scents and language.

I halted next to the closest of the four, trying to see her face, and figure out who she was. This group of Translators, this Eight, was unique in the alien net because they hadn’t been “initialized” by an alien warden. They had been delivered to the bunker as replacements for the previous group, and nurtured into existence through the hard work of Mateo and Kara. Each of them had remembered small fragments of their previous lives, including their names, and I looked for the one who called herself One-Jessie. She was the de facto leader of the four, her brain being wired to take the input from the three other female torsos, and synchronize it into coherent data streams that could be transmitted to the local Arbiter.

I looked from face to face among the four, trying to find one that was familiar, wondering if my subconscious had distorted the images I’d known before, when something odd struck me. The avatar in front of me looked a lot like Megan, the former Arbiter who’d been one of the four rescued from her helmet. And the woman to her left could pass for Beth. Beyond her was Tammi, and finally, I saw Kara’s delicate features knotted in concentration as she translated the data stream.

I was confused, since only Kara was in the net at the moment. She used to come in here while she was linked with the other Arbiters, but Megan, Tammi, and Beth were sitting in the officer’s mess, lost in their own converted thoughts. I approached the avatar that looked like Kara.

[Hello.]

Her face turned toward me, while still staring straight ahead, becoming a disconcerting two-faced Janus.

[Zero-Alex. We know you...]

[Yes. I’m back.]

[We’re prepared to follow you, once the pattern is complete.]

I could think of several patterns that might be relevant in this case, but if they were talking about following me, they were probably talking about the template that they were using to wage their own war on the aliens—the one based on my brain.

[The pattern will be complete soon. If I may ask, are you the one known as One-Jessie?]

All of the avatars turned toward me.

[I am One-JessieKara.]

[Two-MelanieBeth.]

[Three-RosaMegan.]

[Four-AnikaTammi.]

So it seemed that, just like the male foursome had downloaded my brain to use as a roadmap, the female Translators had latched onto the four Arbiters to pattern their nascent personalities. As each one said their new name, their clothing disappeared, and I was looking at the naked bodies of the women I’d been with several times in the real world. The ghostly images left their circle and surrounded me, pressing their insubstantial forms against me in a way that reminded me of the times that I’d joined with the real women, meshing our minds while we explored the alien network.

With no actual touching going on, their act wasn’t helping me discover anything new., so...[It’s time for me to continue my journey.]

Without a word, the four avatars returned to their positions, and took up their translation duties again. I moved away from them, and down a pathway that I recognized, heading for the bridge between the two sides. Even though the chauvinistic aliens had separated the genders in so many ways, they still needed a conduit for the two camps to talk to one another. So, like the corpus callosum in the human brain, they’d built a bridge for the sides to communicate.

Moving through the bridge, the construct around me changed subtly, becoming a little more rigid, with more of a technical feel. Once I made it to the male side, I sent out a call for Mateo, hoping that he had joined me in the net.

[Here, sir.]

I felt better with the young sergeant nearby. He’d become the expert in navigating this side of the net, and my point of contact for the Translators, once they’d started expressing their separate personalities.

[I need to talk to them.]

A path lit up in front of me, pulsing like a flickering neon sign. I followed it to a node in the network, larger and more active with data than I’d ever seen. Four statues ranged around the data stream, all of them with my face. It was odd that on the female side of the net, the Translators had taken on the personalities of four different women, while here it was all me. Why wasn’t there at least one of the Eight who looked like Mateo?

That was a question for another time. [I need to see what’s happening on the ships.]

My “sight” while I was in the alien network had never been limited to a single focus—I kind of saw things from all angles, all at once—but suddenly my construct shifted, and I was looking out of someone’s eyes. A long, low room. So low that my head brushed against the ceiling. Rows of cryo-pods with their lids open. Red-armored bodies moved around at random. Something came to me through my...helmet. I was in the head of a Sentinel, I was sure. Aboard one of the transport ships.

[This is our agent on the ship, the one who opened the pods?]

[Yes.]

The camera moved, as our puppet Sentinel left the room, marching through corridors that I recognized from a long-ago vision. Crackles of data came through the helmet, as the freed soldiers reported their progress, but the stories of success were almost drowned in a sea of confusion. Killing aliens seemed to be the priority of the hour, but none of the soldiers on board could find the ship’s bridge, or the engine room, or even a porthole to see outside.

A report came in, of several aliens holding out in a secure room, and my virtual ride ran off down a corridor, and then dropped through a tube to a deck below. He rounded a corner, and saw a dozen of his fellow warriors pounding at a bulkhead, their armored fists making small dents in the thick metal. I felt the signal flow from the Translators, through me, to the Sentinel that I was piggy-backing. From there, it went out through his helmet channel to the rest of the group: stand down.

Some continued to pound at the door, while others backed away, staring at me/him. Signals flooded into the helmet: are you in charge? The rest of the newly-awaked soldiers stopped pounding on the portal and turned to stare at me, their half-faces surprisingly animated.

Before the Eight had a chance to respond, the portal behind them hissed open, and an alien appeared in the doorway. Behind him, half-a dozen more crowded together in the back of a small room. The one in front held up a tubular arm, and in the four-fingered hand was a small device. Thinking it was a weapon, several Sentinels leaped toward the creature.

I never saw the alien’s hand move, but my viewpoint vanished abruptly, and I was back in the network construct, looking at four copies of myself standing stiffly around a node.

[Was that...?]

[Wait one, sir...yes, it’s confirmed through Cheyenne Mountain. That ship was destroyed in orbit.]

[So the aliens are going for self-destruction rather than death or capture?]

[That’s how it’s looking, sir. The Eight had the initial ship count at two-hundred eighty-one. Over two-hundred are gone from satellite tracking, and the transmissions from the agents on board have ceased.]

Fuck. So once again, I/we had acted out of desperation, and millions of people had died. The aliens didn’t need need to worry about revenge, it looked like I was going to kill off humanity for them.

[Keep monitoring for me, Sergeant. I’m going to disconnect, and try to figure out what to do next.]

[Ah, sir, before you go, I have a request from the Eight.]

[Why are they asking through you, instead of talking to me directly? Hell, it doesn’t matter. What’s the request, Mateo?]

[They want to complete their template, sir. They want to finish recording your brain patterns, so they can fill in the holes in their behavior.]

I was a little worried about having a copy of myself floating around in an alien computer, doing things that I never could, but I was acutely aware that the eight brains in those boxes of goo had very likely saved the Earth, and they were due a little benefit of the doubt.

[Fine, Mateo. Tell them yes. What do I need to do?]

[Nothing, sir. Just stay right there, and clear your mind...]

I came back to consciousness—for probably the hundredth time since the invasion began—but unlike the ninety-nine times I’d been knocked out before, I was alone. I was used to having a gallery of worried female faces greeting me as I opened my eyes, but as my memories returned, I knew that I couldn’t expect that to happen any more. All of my girls had been reduced to drones, except maybe Lani. I just wished I knew where she was.

I groaned as I sat up. All of my muscles hurt, like each one had been stretched and twisted in odd directions, and then re-attached to my skeleton. I shook my head, and the wiring harness coming out of my skull slapped against my cheek. So I was disconnected from the net—that was one thing I could tell. The other was that I was in a small room, on a bare mattress, still in the same clothes I’d been wearing for days now. The door against the far wall was closed, but I was too stiff to get up and check it. Was I a prisoner again? Had the aliens struck back, and I’d been re-captured?

The door banged open without warning, and I scrambled back on the mattress, getting my back to the wall. It turned out to be Cassie, carrying a water bottle in one hand, and a data tablet in the other.

“Greetings, Alex,” she said. She held out the bottle. “I’ve been instructed to give you this liquid, and to tell you that it contains electrolytes and other additives that will help balance your body chemistry after your session.” When I took the bottle from her hand, she stepped back, and consulted her pad. “I’ve also been instructed to ask about your condition, and to record your response. How is your condition?”

“I’m...uh...fine, Cassie. You can record my condition as fine.” She tapped away at the pad without any change of expression.

I opened the cap on the bottle and took a sip. Whoever had mixed the concoction at least had the decency to make it orange flavored. I leaned against the wall, waiting for any other questions.

Cassie finished typing, and closed the cover on her tablet. She bent down to set it on the floor, and then straightened up to look at me. “I have memories of you Alex Drummond, and those memories are integrated into my normal behavior.” She reached for the buttons on her shirt and started unfastening them. “We would have sex an average of once every third time that we met. This is the third time I’ve met you in the current cycle, so my normal behavior dictates that we have sex.” Her fingers hesitated on her buttons. “Unless this conflicts with your own normal behavior, in which case, we can call an Arbiter.”

I was a little too stunned to stop her right away. By the time I figured out her plan, she’d already unhooked her bra, releasing her large tits.

“Cassie, stop,” I said. “We’ve already established that I have the power to command. Say yes if you accept my authority.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Good. Now, your new normal behavior is to not have sex with me, no matter how many times we’ve met, or what the average rate of sexual encounters was between us. Say yes if you understand.”

“Yes.”

“OK, then. Hand me your tablet, then put your bra and your blouse back on.” When I checked the tablet, there was nothing unusual on her display, just a checklist of instructions, and a separate window where she’d typed “Alex says he’s fine.” The old Cassie had kept at least a dozen apps open at a time, working on research of one kind or another.

When she finished getting dressed, I got to my feet, slowly, and with a lot of groaning. I took another long swig from the bottle, hoping it would help with the aches. “Cassie,” I said, “I’m commanding you to answer my questions truthfully and concisely. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Where are we at this moment?”

“We are on the basement level of the former officer’s mess, on the former military base known as the Alameda Naval Air Station.”

So much for concise. “Where is Mateo?” I asked.

“He’s upstairs.”

“Lead me to him.” I took a tentative step, and managed not to fall over. Walking slowly, I followed her out the door. The room turned out to be the first one at the bottom of the stairs, so it was a short trip to the foot, but a pretty long trip up the fifteen steps. We wound our way through the kitchen, and ended up in the dining room from before. Mateo was there, looking at the solitary vid display. Two unknown Sentinels stood post by the door. All of the other people from before, including my girls, were gone.

“Alex,” Mateo said, spinning his chair away from the table to face me. “I’m glad you’re up. How do you feel?”

“Sore. Really sore. What happened?”

“Well, from what I could tell, the Eight did a pretty thorough job on you, Once they got started, they recorded everything they could find, including your physiological responses to brain stimuli.”

“You mean they triggered my muscles to see how high I could jump?”

Mateo smiled. “Something like that,” he said. “Unfortunately, they had no way of knowing what was enough, and what was too much. Eventually, Five-Scott asked why your brain waves had changed so radically, and I had to explain that you’d become unconscious. Sorry, Alex.”

I shrugged. “It’s fine. Did they get everything they needed?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I guess they’ll let me...let us know if they need more.“

“So other than that, what’s our status? Any luck finding Lani?”

He grimaced beneath his half-mask. “No, sir. Still looking.”

“OK,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “What else?”

“Colonel Freeman was just on, giving me the latest numbers on the ships. So far, two-hundred and seven have exploded, eighteen have moved off in random directions, none of which match the trajectory that the aliens first appeared from. One actually impacted on the moon. And three have fallen to Earth, one in Antarctica, one in the Indian Ocean, and one in the jungles of Columbia. We’ve got reports of tsunami’s striking Malaysia and Australia, but no casualty figures.”

I really didn’t want casualty numbers at the moment. “What about the rest? That should leave...fifty-two still in orbit?”

“Affirmative. According to the Eight though, more than half of those are dead in space. They haven’t been able to reach any of the Sentinels on board. On the ones that they can contact...well...there’s really not much hope, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we don’t know how to get those guys down. Those huge ships aren’t like the shuttles, where the Eight can pre-program the flight path. The transports might not even be safe to bring into the atmosphere—they could all break up on entry.”

“Well then we need to get the shuttles working on it, ASAP,” I said. “They got eighteen million of your comrades into those ships without landing them on Earth. There must be plenty of shuttles available.”

Mateo’s expression was grim. “No, sir. Actually there aren’t. Everything that we do involving alien technology has to go through the Eight, but there are whole sections of the blues’ infrastructure that were never authorized for Translator access. All of the shuttles on those transports are locked out from the Eight’s control. Right now, the two shuttles that were attached to the orbital monitoring station are the only way we have of getting our men off those ships. I’ve asked the Eight to start the process, but...”

“But what?”

“But, a hell of a lot of things, sir. We don’t know how much fuel those shuttles have, how many trips they can make, how many we can fit on each trip, how we’re supposed to prioritize the ships...” He sighed heavily. “It’s one of the reasons that I’m so glad you’re back, sir.”

“What, so I can do the calculations? Set the priorities?”

“No. Actually, it was so you could complete the scan. The Eight took your pattern, and are setting up the rescue solution just how you would have done it, sir, only faster.”

I sat down in a nearby chair, as the implications of that bit of news washed over me. So I’d already decided the fates of the surviving Sentinels, without making a single decision or doing a single calculation? I was getting less and less sure of the wisdom of letting the Eight use my mind. But then again, if they hadn’t it would have taken me much longer to come to the same conclusions—at least in theory. All of my “success” in making plans against the aliens had been the result of a whole lot of luck, and that was something you couldn’t calculate for. That, and the support of other people.

“I need to get back into the net,” I said, getting only slightly dizzy as I stood up. “I need to see what the Eight are doing.”

“Are you sure about that, sir?” Mateo said. “You really should be resting after that last session.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not letting anything else happen without my approval, whether it’s based on me or not. Any copy of something as complex as the human brain, no matter how good, can’t be completely true to the original.” I headed for the door. “Gather Anatoly and Param, and anyone else we’ll need, and meet me there.”

It was mid-morning as I stepped outside and headed for the main building. The steamy remnants of morning fog were burning off, and it looked like it might be a nice, clear afternoon. My muscles felt better after the drink, and some activity to get the blood flowing.

A Sentinel guard saluted me as I went in through the main doors of the admin offices. It was strange coming in this way, since our normal path to the basement had always been around back. Inside the abandoned building, I turned left, and headed for the stairwell. I smelled sulfur in the air, and wondered if it might be the atmosphere from the orbital ship, still clinging to my dirty clothes.

There was noise up ahead, and I rounded the corner expecting to see another Sentinel, or a tech worker checking the equipment. What I didn’t expect to see, was an alien, standing in the middle of the floor, his body wrapped in a yellow bubble, and his “head” wrapped with three metal bands. And as much as that sight was a surprise, what caused me to stop suddenly and fall to my knees, was the bound and gagged form of Lani, lying at the alien’s feet.

“Do not approach, Alexdrummond.” Param’s voice came from a small ovoid sitting on the ground to the alien’s right. “I have armed the triggers to the reaction devices under every wardens’ habitat, as well as the ones on board the remaining transports.” He held up his arm, and I saw the device in his grip, identical to the one we’d seen another alien use on a transport ship, just before it blew up.

Although most aliens looked alike to me, I was sure this was the Supreme Commander—the one who had offered me a job to lead the armies of Earth against the enemies of the Chrxjthal. He’d escaped from the orbital station just after the Eight started their revolt, but how had he captured Lani? She looked all right, although her eyes were closed, and her breathing was shallow. She might be unconscious, or drugged, or...well, I didn’t want to speculate on other things that might have happened to her.

I was ecstatic to see her again, and it took most of my will to stay still, and not rush to her side. I couldn’t risk it if Supremo was telling the truth—that he could blow up over twelve thousand population centers, and all of the remaining transports. I held up my hands, in a placating gesture, before I realized that he would have no clue what it meant.

“I won’t come any closer,” I said, loudly and distinctly, hoping that the portable version of his translator picked up my words.

“When we were still testing candidates to lead our new troops, the decision was made to allow your forays into our network, but only because my subordinates proclaimed that the protocols were invulnerable to attack from such a primitive species. So we let you dabble inside the grid, seeing things that we wanted you to see, and yet somehow you’ve managed to affect much more of it than we thought possible. How is that, Alexdrummond? How did you defeat our technology?”

He sounded like a vid villain, wanting to discuss the hows and whys of everyone’s plans, to go on about how brilliant his scheme was, and how the hero must have used some trick to defeat him. But I wasn’t going to give away the secret of the Eight to this apparently suicidal megalomaniac. There was no telling what he might do beyond using his bombs.

“It’s a thing we have on Earth called magic,” I said. “Search our archives and you’ll find it popping up everywhere. Very powerful, and immune to logic.”

There was a long pause, probably because Supremo was doing what I’d suggested and looking up the concept of magic. I took the time to check on Lani, and to scope out what the alien was wearing. The yellow blob around his middle looked like it was inflated, which reminded me of something Anatoly had mentioned after an autopsy on a dead alien; it seemed that these creatures absorbed gasses and trace minerals through an organ that was located where a human’s shoulder blades would be. It was their version of breathing, so the alien in front of me was wearing the equivalent of a respirator. I was considering how to pop it, when he moved suddenly.

“This concept of magic has been disproven. My conclusion is that you have attempted to deceive me, Alexdrummond.”

“Well of course I did,” I said. “We’re enemies. Mortal enemies. I’ll do or say anything to defeat you. Are you saying you don’t undersand that?”

“Your species isn’t capable of forming such conclusions,” he said.

“Jesus, are you wrong. Haven’t you learned anything about humans since you’ve been here? Fighting, violence, hatred, revenge—those are all of the things we’re really good at.”

“Your race are soft clay, made to be molded and used by those superior to you,” he said. “The fact that you are skilled in violence and all of its adjunct disciplines does not make you the equal of the Chrxjthal.”

“At the moment, I’d say it makes us the superior race,” I said. “You have no logical options at this point. Your fleet is destroyed, and your clay soldiers are either dead, or in rebellion. You have no more resources available on our planet, and, as you’ve discovered, we can infiltrate your network at will. Your only logical solution is to surrender to me, and disable the trigger for the reaction devices.” I inched toward him, not sure how his kind responded to movement and body language, but willing to try if I could get closer to Lani, and to the trigger.

“I cannot admit defeat,” the speaker said. Supremo was unnervingly still, and with no face to give me clues, I had no idea which way he was leaning on the suicide scale.

Just as I took another small step forward, there was a clatter from behind me. I chanced a quick look, and saw Curtis and two other Sentinels, followed by Mateo in his chair.

“Don’t shoot!” I yelled. “He’s got a suicide switch. If he presses it, millions will die.”

“Understood, sir,” Mateo said. I didn’t hear the order to stand down, but the other three dropped their guns to point at the floor. The Sergeant was probably using his command channel, which was smart.

“I was just speaking with our friend, here. Seeing if we can’t come to an agreement.” I hoped that Mateo picked up on the fact that I was using speech to communicate with the alien. I wanted him to stay on his silent link, and let me do the talking.

“Copy that.”

“Your control over the Sentinels was also thought to be impossible,” Supremo said through his speaker. I heard a couple gasps from behind me as the soldiers heard the alien talk. “Their programming is orders of magnitude beyond anything your race has created.”

“Well its a good thing we didn’t try to reprogram them then,” I said.

“If you didn’t, how did you make them rebel on the transports?”

“We just gave them back their free will,” I said. I felt bad taking credit for the work of the Eight, but keeping them secret could be our only advantage at this point. I hoped in some way that they were monitoring what was happening.

“No,” the alien said, “that’s impossible. Returning their will would result in chaos, not the systematic killing of my crews and the capture of my ships.”

“It’s possible,” I said, “because violence to us is logical. We use it as a tool, like you used the electromagnetic pulses to alter human minds. When you take a group of men trained for violence, and give them back their freedom, they can find plenty of ways to organize for revenge.”

“Is that what the soldiers behind you are doing, Alexdrummond? Are they organizing for revenge upon me? You’d better remind them that I have the fate of your world in my appendage...my hand.“

“They know what’s happening,” I said.

“Do they?”

“Alex, duck!”

I was on edge already, so when Mateo’s voice boomed out, I hit the deck. Gunfire erupted over my head, bullets from a Sentinel rifle tearing into the wall just past the space where my head had been.

I twisted on the ground, and saw Curtis wrestling with one of the other Sentinels, while Mateo had thrown himself out of his chair, and was struggling for the gun of the fourth soldier.

“He’s got control of them,” Mateo said between grunts. The dead weight of his legs tangled with his opponent, knocking them both to the ground. Curtis was rolling across the floor with the other one, their armor on the concrete sounding like some bizarre tap-dance performance. “He’s in my head, too...don’t know...how long...run, sir!”

I spun back around, looking for Lani and the alien, but they were gone. The only place they could have retreated to was the torso room. I scrambled to the door, staying low even though there wasn’t any more gun fire. When I got through, I closed the door behind me, knowing it wouldn’t be much protection against an armored fist, but thinking it might give me a few more seconds if the need came.

Supremo was inside, one arm still raised and clutching the detonation device, the other dragging Lani by her wrist. The room was just how we’d left it earlier, with the chairs arranged how we liked them, and my Arbiter’s helmet on its pedestal.

I wondered if I could do something to disrupt his control of the Sentinels. He must be using the same system that Albert had—his EM transmitting nodules beaming to the local receiver, which passed through the CPU, then through the male Translators, and from there to the comm equipment upstairs. It was a long chain, and I was sure I could break it, but if I did, he might use that trigger in his hand.

“Stop this,” I said. “There’s nowhere left to run.”

I heard a muffled noise from behind the door, and cursed at my bad luck—the translation ovoid was still in the outer room. There wouldn’t be any more communication between us; it would be actions from here on. I stared at Supremo’s hand, trying to decipher how the trigger worked. I didn’t see any buttons or switches that he could press, so there was no sense trying to knock it out of his hand. He probably just needed to think a code, and the EM pulse from his head would activate the device...and blow up most of the planet.

He was still moving backward on his stubby legs, but dragging the dead weight of Lani must have been difficult, because he dropped her arm. He angled away from her, putting her limp body between the two of us, and I wondered if he was afraid of me—afraid of the violence that I might do to him. We had no idea how the aliens experienced pain, but being alone in a room with a giant, violent barbarian like me must be doing something to his psyche.

The sounds of struggle in the other room had died down, but I didn’t hear anything from Curtis or Mateo. In fact the silence in the room was getting on my nerves. Lani’s breathing was so shallow that I couldn’t hear it, and the alien didn’t breathe at all, so it was only my adrenaline-fueled panting that echoed in my ears.

I watched Supremo back into a corner of the room, my eyes intent on the trigger in his hand. He inched closer and closer to the egg-shaped CPU that glowed with power just behind him, maybe trying to access it in some way.

I wondered if the Eight were monitoring the situation in the room. Their boxes sat quietly against the far wall, the bubbling of their yellow goo too soft to reach my ears. I was about to call out to them, when a panel opened up on the CPU behind the clueless Supreme Commander, and a wriggling cable whipped out of the opening, striking like a cobra, and attaching itself to his head.

Supremo’s squat body convulsed, his short legs jerking out to the sides, dumping his round ass on the floor. His free hand grasped at the cable, but he didn’t have the strength to pull it away. I watched his other hand waving in the air, wondering when he would trigger the explosion, killing us all.

Ignoring the thrashing form of the alien, I knelt down next to Lani, taking her hand, and brushing her hair back from her beautiful face. She looked so peaceful, and I was glad that she wasn’t awake for the end...

“Alex!” Mateo’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Help them!”

My head snapped up, looking around the room like an idiot, while I figured out who “they” were. The only beings in the room were the alien, Lani, me...and the Eight. I jumped to me feet, and went to the stand where the Arbiter’s helmet sat. Picking up the familiar blue bubble, I spun it upside down to find the tangle of wires coming through the iris in the bottom. I flopped down into my chair, sitting the helmet in my lap, and found the harness at the end of the wires. Like I’d done it a thousand times before, I lifted the connector up to my ear, and snapped it into place.

Closing my eyes, the world of the alien network opened up in my mind. Things were happening, but I couldn’t tell what; connections glowed brighter than I’d ever seen before, and the whole reality hummed with the amount of data passing through it.

[Over here, sir.]

Mateo. He was in the net with me, but his “voice” was faint. Normally he’d be connected through a cable, like me, but this time he was using the wireless signal from his helmet. A pathway pulsed in front of me, and I followed it, passing over the bridge to the male side, and gaining more “speed” than I’d ever used inside the net.

[Here.]

We jolted to a halt in front of a node that glowed like the sun. Energy pulsed from both sides, meeting in the middle, and lighting up like colliding stars. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, or what I was expected to do, until I noticed the avatars of the four male Translators on one side of the node. They stood as stiff and stoic as ever, but they glowed with power. Energy poured from them along the node, building a barrier to ward off the pulses coming from the other direction. The meeting of the two was the source of the blinding light.

[Block...trigger...Zero-Alex...]

Shit. Supremo was sending his signal to detonate the reaction devices, and the Eight were trying to stop him. I jumped in on their side, adding whatever energy my brain could generate into the struggle. I saw the point of conflict in front of me, and ran at it like a linebacker, trying to knock it down. While the Eight maintained their wall of defense, I went on the attack; every last bit of rage at these evil blue motherfuckers driving me. My head rang with each impact, my consciousness mashing against the alien’s, throwing off sparks of thought.

On this primal level, the medium of communication didn’t matter. Each blow against the alien mind brought our beings into harmony as my rage matched against his. I saw his race dying, swarmed by hordes of invaders. I saw his ships, his people, and his pride go up in flames as the Sentinels swarmed the transports. I saw the shock and anger at the realization that these animals called humans had defeated the mighty Chrxjthal.

I experienced all of his fury, and returned my own, bashing against him with the faces of people who’d died under alien rule; of JJ Chiu, Todd, and Maria. Eddie, General Yorikame, and Chief Callie. The nameless corpses on the streets, and the withered bodies of the starved Arbiters. The rage at having our free will taken away and our home invaded. The need to lash out against those who would so casually and callously kill billions for their own selfish ends.

It felt good to pound my anger against the alien leader, and I felt like I could happily die if I could just drive home the point that you don’t fuck with my planet. But, just like my attempt to charge headlong into the alien CPU months ago, I wasn’t doing anything productive. I was pushing back, a millimeter at a time, but as I backed up to charge again, Supremo would reclaim the distance, pushing his own rage into the gap. We’d devolved into mindless automatons, trading blows that combined into a zero sum.

I charged for the hundredth time, or the thousandth, or millionth...it had no meaning at this point. But when I backed away, something changed. Somewhere in the time between, something had happened to my body. I had no idea what, only that it was a change.

[Baby? What’s happening?]

Lani. She was there. I could feel her now, holding my hand in that other world that I’d left behind. She was alive, and she was still Lani. My relief staggered me, and I missed the next bash against Supremo’s force. The Eight still held the barrier, keeping the command from going out to all of the bombs around the planet, but the leader of the invasion seemed energized by his small success. He came back harder, gaining more ground.

I struggled to get back into my rhythm, but it was impossible now that Lani had joined me. I was too happy at her presence to summon the hammer of my fury. But the respite from the mindless struggle did something different; it brought back Alex. All my life, I’d abhorred the blunt instrument, and yet somehow that’s what I’d become—running into the same brick wall over and over with no hope of breaking it down. I thought back to the time when I’d broken into the alien CPU, how the now-dead female Translators had shown me the flaw, and helped me apply pressure at the right spot.

With my anger under control, I moved forward, coming up against the alien’s signal, but not trying to crush it. Instead I halted just in front of it, and studied it, looking at what made it; its pattern, its composition, and most importantly, its flaws. That was what Alex did—what he’d done his whole life—find the cracks, the weaknesses in the chaos of complex systems.

And there it was. Barely visible, but it was there. The smallest crevice of doubt marred the surface of the alien’s anger; the thought that the humans might actually win this fight, against all of the might and technology of the Chrxjthal.

Now I knew what to do. Once again, I was the point of the spear, focusing all of me, not just my anger, at the tiny crack that fear had placed in the alien’s armor. I opened up my mind, and felt the Eight at my back. They were my secret weapon against the aliens; the unknown heroes who had saved what was left of the human race. They had studied me, recording my brain patterns to use as a template for their actions, and now, almost before I knew what I wanted, they were there...we were there. Nine minds working as one. I aimed at the alien’s doubt, and charged, feeling the force of my will doubling, and then doubling again.

I hit the flaw in the alien’s pulse, and my brain exploded. I was thrown out of the net, falling back into the chair, my limbs twitching, and my head thrashing from side to side. Pain streaked through me as I bit my tongue deeply.

“Alex!” A weight was on me, straddling my legs, and a familiar scent came to me. Small hands gripped my face and held me steady. “Baby, wake up. Alex? Are you there?”

I opened my eyes to the beautiful, concerned face of my island girl. I wanted to kiss her, but something else nagged at my brain...something needed my attention first. I stood up on shaky legs, setting Lani on her feet, and turned to face the alien. I had no idea if we had stopped his attempt to blow us up, but now that I’d been kicked out of the network, I felt like doing something more...physical. My brain was on fire, but I clenched my fists and started toward him, remembering the image of Corporal Sanchez squeezing the head of his alien master until it popped. I didn’t have that kind of strength, but I could probably manage something just as violent.

I’d only taken a couple of steps, when the door behind me burst open. The red bulk of Private Wright streaked through the opening, and before I could react, he put a large caliber bullet right through the head of the Supreme Expedition Leader.

I wheeled to face the soldier as he continued firing, tearing the leader of the invasion into yellow and blue chunks that splattered against the wall. “Hey!” I shouted. “He was mine!“

Curtis stopped firing and lowered his gun, his visor looking down on me, and his mouth open in surprise. Then he grinned, and just as Mateo wheeled himself in, he started laughing. He must have shared the joke with Mateo over his comm, too, because a second later, the Sergeant joined him.

I felt myself blushing at my little demonstration of savagery, imagining how I must look, rumpled and mussed, with no weapons, and blood dripping off my chin. But then Lani came up and looped her arm around my neck, pressing against me, and rubbing her cheek on my shoulder. She pulled my arm around her waist, and looked up at me.

“Is it really over?”