Conspircaies

He unlatched the door and used the peephole before opening it. Then he stuck his head out and peered up and down the hall.

'And be careful,' he said. 'They're watching you.'

Jack stepped out into the hall. He could feel Kenway's eyes on his back as he walked away.

And so are you, he thought. Lately it seems like everybody's watching me.

IN THE WEE HOURS

Roma…

'Feel it?' Roma said as he and Mauricio waited in the basement. 'It is beginning again.'

'To what end?' Mauricio said sourly. 'To send the rest of the device to the stranger?

Roma sensed that Mauricio was troubled…much more so than usual.

'What is wrong?'

Mauricio looked away. 'I must tell you something. Earlier tonight I tried to eliminate the stranger.'

'What?' Roma cried, suddenly furious. He'd half-suspected the creature would do something foolish, but had hoped his better judgment would prevail. 'Without checking with me?'

Mauricio still did not make eye contact. 'I felt it the safest course.'

'You said 'tried.' I assume that means you failed?'

'Yes. And that is what is most disturbing. I had him down. I was about to deliver the death blow, when suddenly I was pushed away from him.'

'Pushed? By whom?'

'By myself—or rather by some strange sudden impulse within that would not allow me to kill him.'

Roma's anger evaporated. He did not like the sound of this at all. 'Did you sense the enemy protecting him?'

'No. That is the strangest part. It seemed to be the work of the Otherness. I am very confused.'

So am I, Roma thought. Why would the Otherness protect the stranger? It made no sense. Perhaps Mauricio was mistaken.

'You shouldn't have acted without my approval in the first place,' he said. 'I will tolerate no more of that, understood?'

Mauricio said nothing.

'I had a long talk with the stranger earlier. He is blissfully ignorant of the Otherness and anything connected with it. We have nothing to fear from him. When the second half of the shipment arrives, we will relieve him of both packages.'

'In light of my experience with him, that may not be so easy.'

Roma pondered that. He would not allow these anomalous events to rattle him. He would remain in control.

'That is why we must learn who he is and, as I said before, who he loves. With the proper leverage, we can move him in any direction we wish.' Roma closed his eyes and breathed deeply. 'Ah. Feel it?'

Right now he could almost smell the charge in the air. Once again he congratulated himself on his cleverness at being able to concentrate all these sensitives in one spot. They were lightning rods, so to speak, attractors for the influence of the Otherness, and as they slept they would draw it in and funnel its power through the building, weakening the barrier between this plane and the Otherness just long enough to allow something to slip through from the other side.

The second delivery was on its way now…he could feel the barrier thinning, the tiny rent beginning…

And once again, just like last night, that seepage from the other side would gift these sensitives with the worst nightmares of their lives.

James…

…awakens squinting in the white glare that pours through his room window, creating a brilliant rectangle on the carpet.

The light blazes intolerably, searing his retinas, so bright it seems solid.

Jim could swear he pulled the curtains before knocking off, but now they're wide open, as if pushed aside or burned away by this beam from above.

Where's it coming from? Sure as hell ain't the moon, and it's too white for sunlight.

He doesn't want to move, doesn't want to leave the security of his bed, but he's got to know the source. Like a reluctant moth wise beyond its genus, knowing its wings will be fried but slave to a hardwired compulsion, Jim is drawn inexorably toward the shaft of brilliance. Without allowing the light to touch him, he peers through the window at an angle but cannot find the source. Finally he takes the plunge and steps into the shaft—

—and screams as the light pierces him. It is a physical thing, lancing through skin, fat, bone and organ, spearing every cell of every tissue. He feels the birdshot sting of each photon as it shoots through him.

And once he is firmly and irretrievably spitted, the light lifts him like a speared fish and hauls him toward the window. He cringes in fear as he sees the glass rushing toward him. He raises his arms across his face and howls as he hits the glass…but his wail fades as he passes through it, leaving both window and flesh unscathed.

He's afraid—shit, he's one absofuckinglutely terrified little boy who wants to go home to Mama—but he's filled with awe and wonder as well. He's not trapped in the light, he's part of it, one with it. And as he looks up he sees its intolerably bright source, a circular doorway into the blazing heart of the Cosmic Egg at zero-point-one nanoseconds before the Big Bang.

He's not drifting toward it, he's careening upward at near light speed, far beyond escape velocity. He leaves behind the moldy apple of Earth, flashes past the moon, and hurtles through interplanetary space, past Mars, straight through the tumbling asteroid obstacle course, and on toward the red-eyed beach ball of Jupiter.

But Jim doesn't reach Jupiter. He's drawn into a huge saucer-shaped mothership hovering off Io. He flashes through the searingly bright portal. His universe dissolves into blinding liquid brilliance…

When he can see again, he finds himself naked, strapped facedown upon a gleaming block of polished steel in an oblong room with mirror walls. The surface of the block is cold and hard against his bare flesh.

He is not alone in the room.

The grays are here, perhaps a dozen of them, but it's hard to tell with all the reflections off the walls. They're not quite like the drawings he's seen, but close enough. They're big-headed, small-bodied, and three to four feet tall; their hairless gray skin is wrinkled, as if they've been left in the water too long. They float through the air, whether by levitation or zero gravity, Jim can't say. Probably levitation, because those puny legs don't look strong enough to support an infant. And nothing between those legs to give any hint whether they're male or female. Long skinny fingers at the end of long skinny arms, big, lidless slanty black eyes over a rudimentary nose and a slit mouth.

The wonder is gone, leaving only the terror. Jim feels something warm and wet pooling around his pelvis as his bladder cuts loose.

His voice echoes off the shiny walls as he cries out—inanely—in dread. 'Who are you? What do you want?'

He knows damn well who they are. And he's afraid he'll have the answer to the second question long before he wants it.

None of the aliens pauses or even looks his way. They float on, going about their business as if he were a fixture.

Suddenly something cold is thrust between his buttocks, and a whirling searing pain shoots into his rectum. As Jim screams, a gray floats into view and hovers near his head. Nothing in those black eyes as they stare down at him. The gray lifts something in its hand: a slender instrument with a thin, needle-like probe attached to its tip. The alien extends it toward Jim's face, taking dead aim at one of his nostrils.

Jim screams again, writhing and twisting frantically within his restraints.

No! Please! Not a mind-control probe! Anything but that!