Revelation

stepped back, afraid that the very air would poison them. I knew that wasn’t likely, but being overly cautious was better than being overly zealous.

I fit my own gas mask over my face. It felt awkward there, and I hated the heat it produced just covering me. My breaths came in and out as hisses, and the straps dug into the back of my head. I pulled my hoodie up, getting ready to enter the Great Blight.

When the gas masks from Odin had been distributed and put on, Makara stepped forward, pressing the exit button to the blast door.

“Remember,” Makara said, half turning and her voice warbling from her mask, “we’re here for thirty minutes. Anyone who doesn’t have a mask, stay here until Michael returns. Char, have everyone who goes outside set up a perimeter around this side of the spire. If anything comes, call out, and we’re out of here.” She nodded. “This might be our only chance for a long time to deal some damage to the invasion. Let’s not screw it up.”

The men looked at each other, grumbling. They didn’t understand fully why we were here, even if Marcus had explained it — and I doubted he had done so fully. I wondered how many of these men knew the full purpose of this mission, or even of the New Angels. That was something we had to fix as well. We just hadn’t had time to explain everything yet.

“Hold on a bit longer, guys,” Makara said. “What we learn here tonight could help us out in the long run in our war against the xenovirus.”

“Could?” another man asked.

Makara rolled her eyes. Well, I couldn’t see her eyes roll in that gas mask, but I knew her well enough to know that she had probably done so. “Right now, the coast is clear, so let’s get out there and do our jobs. Stay alert. Any sign of trouble, let me know immediately. No shooting at anything unless I give the order.”

The men looked at her another moment before she left the ship, walked down the boarding ramp, and into the Great Blight. Samuel rushed off the ship after his sister, loaded with a large backpack filled with scientific instruments. Several of the men that already had gas masks also filed out, pistols and rifles in hand.

“This is a bad idea, isn’t it?” I asked, my voice metallic.

Anna nodded. “Yep.”

I followed her out the blast door, into the place I had been lucky enough to escape the first time.

Chapter 14

Anna and I silently strode out onto the bed of xenofungus, joining the Raiders and the Exiles in the dark night. The wind, warm and moist, crawled against my skin like the exhalation of a beast. The fungus beneath was squishy, sticky. It had been months since I had stepped on it, and just feeling it again made my skin crawl. I gazed out, away from the spire, seeing an endless field of xenofungus out to the point where my view was cut off by darkness. Several, smaller towers rose into the sky like alien trees, each one a good distance from the other. It seemed like their growth, or construction if you prefer, had been planned.

While Marcus and Char directed their men to set up a perimeter, Michael and his assistants handed out gas masks to anyone who was still without. It turned out that a lot of the men hadn’t listened to Makara’s order to stay in the ship until they got a gas mask. Once done, Michel joined Anna and me in walking toward the gigantic spire. Straining my neck, I could hardly see the top. The most disturbing part about the spire was knowing it was alive. We walked closer, until my feet were nearly touching one of its slimy, gnarled roots, as thick as a tree trunk. Several of these roots grew out of the fungus at the spire’s base, twisting and turning and knotting together as they shot into the air above. The spire’s entire base was wide — far larger than any tree I had ever seen. It was probably more similar in size to one of the skyscrapers of Vegas.

We found Makara and Samuel standing at the bottom of the spire, a good way off, staring up at something at the top of the roots, before they made a sharp turn upward. As I approached, I realized what they were looking at — or rather, who they were looking at.

“Ashton, you shouldn’t be up there,” Makara called, the gas mask dimming the loudness of her voice.

Ashton, however, heard, and waved a hand dismissively. He, too, was wearing a gas mask. At least he had taken that precaution. Rather than Ashton coming down, Samuel began to climb up a particularly large root — one that led directly to Ashton. I couldn’t help but notice how the root palpitated as Samuel climbed up — as if it knew it was being climbed on. The entire spire seemed to give a barely audible groan, and the fungus vibrated beneath me. Was it communicating? Everything grew still once more. Once again, the warm wind buffeted my side, pushing me into Anna.

“It’s not right here,” she said.

I grabbed her hand. I wanted something to remind me that she was there in the darkness. With my other hand, I held my Beretta. We were in a dangerous spot, but I felt we were so deep into this that backing out was not an option. Likely, crawlers were setting up a circle and just waiting for the signal from this spire to ambush us all. I stared upward, noticing now, in the darkness, that the spire had a slight, greenish glow to it. The green glow allowed me to see the entire structural lines rising up and to see its branches webbing outward from above. Thin, spindly things, like hair, waved in the breeze, growing on the branches’ undersides. Membranes, maybe. Some sort of antenna.

Samuel now stood next to Ashton. Together, they crouched low, and began to confer and take measurements. Samuel reached into his pack for some sort of tool. A scalpel, maybe. Once he pulled it out, he began digging into the root of the spire. Ashton, meanwhile, began to take pictures, the flashes of his camera like unworldly lightning.

All I could think, as they got to work, was that it was way too quiet.

I looked behind at the Raiders and Exiles, who now formed a solid perimeter around our half of the spire. Each guard was paired off with another, gazing into the darkness, ready for something to come at us. But as the minutes crawled on, nothing attacked. The fact that nothing did, the fact that Samuel and Ashton continued to work in peace far past our allotted thirty minutes, was the strangest and most terrifying thing of all.

When a full hour had passed, Samuel and Ashton had worked their way around to the opposite side of the spire. Makara went after them. Michael, Anna, and I followed silently, and the guards circled around in order to protect Samuel and Ashton from the new direction.

Ashton and Samuel paused on the other side, speaking quietly. The wind blew again, from the south, carrying with it the faint smell of rot. I looked to the south, imagining that something horrible might be lurking there. But I only saw only a line of jagged, rotting hills, maybe half a klick out, covered with infected trees. Above, the clouded sky was dark, letting in no light. I wondered how it was that we could see, before I saw that it was not just the spire that was glowing — everything covered with the fungus was. It was faint, but it was there. I had assumed at first that it was just the light being reflected. But no — it was coming from the fungus itself.

Samuel and Ashton were now climbing down from the spire, picking their way carefully down a large root. Now, close to us, they knelt and slid the rest of the way down, landing softly in the xenofungus.

“Learn anything useful?” I asked.

Ashton nodded. “I think so. I’ll learn even more when I take these samples back to Skyhome.”

Samuel stared back at the spire, craning his neck upward.

“Any idea on how to bring this thing down?” Makara asked.

“Bullets wouldn’t do any good,” Samuel said. “You might injure it, but it would only heal.”

Ashton gazed at the spire sadly. “Do we really have to kill it?”

We all looked at him as if he were crazy.

“Ashton, this thing is too dangerous to keep alive,” Makara said. “I don’t care how much research you think you can squeeze out of it.” She nodded, affirming what she had just said. “It goes down tonight.”

Ashton didn’t answer. We continued looking at the spire. Almost imperceptibly, it swayed with the breeze. It was a living thing — maybe even a living consciousness. It was almost peaceful. But was that feeling true, or did the spire just want us to feel that in order to catch us with our guard down?

These thoughts were fuzzy. I was finding it very difficult to concentrate on any one thing. It was late, and the tiredness from the day was finally beginning to hit me. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into my bunk and