Ascent. Морган Райс

Chloe said, looking absolutely distraught as she hung there on her own frame.

      “I’m right here, Chloe,” he said. He didn’t try to promise her that it would all be okay. That didn’t feel like a promise he could make then. “I’m not going anywhere.”

      It turned out that they were both going somewhere though, because the large, armored aliens lifted the frames, carrying them like builders moving panes of glass into position. Weirdly, Kevin had no sensation of being lifted, because for him, down still felt as though it was toward the frame.

      “Where are you taking us?” Chloe demanded. “Let us go!”

      “Try to stay calm,” Kevin said, hoping that none of the fear he felt in that moment crept into his voice. He was afraid of what might happen to both of them, but he was really afraid for Chloe. With how much she hated being trapped, this was the worst possible thing that could happen to them.

      Except that it wasn’t, and Kevin knew it. There were still plenty of worse things that could happen. Would happen, if they didn’t figure out a way out of it.

      The aliens carried them toward a golden spire, through a large door that opened automatically to admit them. The interior was everything that the rest of the world ship was not: clean and bright and comfortable looking, so that to Kevin it looked like a very expensive hotel might have, or perhaps a palace. There wasn’t the huge variety of different angles and directions here, either; unlike the rest of the ship, everyone seemed to have agreed on which way was up.

      They carried Kevin and Chloe up to a room where dome-shaped banks of machinery stood, looking half-built, half-grown. A section of the wall flickered with an image of the Earth below, and Kevin didn’t know if that had been done simply to stop the walls from being featureless, or as a kind of additional cruelty.

      Purest Xan followed them into the room, standing between them, by one of the dome-shaped devices. It took tiny, squid-like things from an opening within the dome one by one, each no bigger than the tip of the alien’s finger. Purest Xan placed them on Kevin’s head, where they stuck, feeling warm and slimy all at once.

      “What is all this?” Kevin demanded. “What are you doing to us?”

      “We are going to examine you,” Purest Xan replied. “We will see what use you are to the Hive. There will be pain.”

      It said it as though it was nothing, or at least as though it didn’t care. Kevin could hear Chloe crying again now, and he wanted to say something, wanted to comfort her. Then the pain hit, and there was no time to do anything but cry out with it.

      It felt like cold fingers rummaging around in his thoughts, picking things up and putting them back again, or maybe it was the tentacles of the things stuck to Kevin’s head. He tried to push them out, concentrating as hard as he could, but it made no difference; it just brought more pain.

      Kevin could feel other presences now, dozens of minds, hundreds, connected in a kind of silent communion, their collective presence pressing into him and exploring every corner of his being. He heard himself scream, and he heard Chloe too, suggesting that exactly the same thing was happening to her.

      Kevin saw images then, flooding into the forefront of his mind and flickering there. There were images of friends, of family, of everything that had recently happened. Kevin saw images of the Survivors jumping into his mind, and he tried to think about something, anything else, so that the aliens wouldn’t know where they were. He could feel their lack of interest though; it seemed to make no difference to them.

      He started to see other things, the visions flickering through the rest of it, although the truth was that he couldn’t tell whether they were real visions or something flowing back along the connection to the Hive’s collective. The images filled his mind, blotting out the pain, the sensation of being pinned in place, even the fear of what was happening to Chloe.

      He saw a planet floating in space, huge and dull. Moons spun around it, but even as Kevin watched, he realized that they weren’t natural moons, but more world ships. He saw one move out of orbit, the space around it bending and shifting as it moved impossibly fast for something that size.

      He felt his consciousness being pulled down toward the surface of the planet, and as he reached it, he saw that the surface was blasted and ruined, polluted and inhospitable. There were towns there in spite of that, filled with hunched figures who looked similar to the Purest, but hunched over and changed, their flesh twisted to live in the ruined environment. Kevin found it hard to believe that anyone would want to live in a place like that, but through the connection to the Hive he knew that these figures didn’t get a choice. They were the ones not chosen for the world ship.

      He saw other things there. He saw the camps of creatures stolen from world after world. He saw the flesh factories where they were tested and reshaped, tortured in way after way, with electricity and fire and more. He saw creatures dissected while alive, or forced to breed with one another in combinations that produced monsters. Among the desolation of the wasted planet, he saw small green domes too, like islands of perfection among the horror of the rest of it. Kevin wasn’t surprised to see golden towers standing at the heart of each one.

      He came back to himself, gasping, feeling as though every scrap of energy had been pulled out of him. Kevin lay on the platform, looking around and seeing only Chloe in the room now. It felt as though the visions had only lasted seconds, but it must have been longer, to give Purest Xan enough time to leave the room.

      “Chloe?” Kevin said.

      He heard her groan, her eyes opening as she looked over at him. They were red with crying now as she stared over at him.

      “I saw… I saw…”

      “I know,” Kevin said. “I saw it too.”

      “They’re going to kill us,” Chloe said. “They’re going to pull us apart to see how we work. They’re going to experiment on us like some little kid pulling the wings off flies.”

      Kevin would have nodded if he could have pulled his head away from the frame enough to do it. That was the problem, though: they could talk about how much they needed to get out of there, they could see everything that was going to happen, but they still couldn’t move. All they could do was stay there, staring at the screen in front of them, and the Earth rotating slowly upon it.

      It took a second or two to realize that it was getting smaller.

      It was gradual at first, the planet shrinking away a little at a time. Then it started to move faster, and faster still, receding until it was just a dot. Then it wasn’t even that as the space around the world ship folded around it and it shot away through space.

      Kevin stared at the screen in horror. He didn’t know where they were going, or why, but whatever could persuade the aliens to move their whole world ship from the Earth, he knew that it couldn’t be good for him and Chloe.

      Or for Luna.

      CHAPTER THREE

      Luna fought. With every scrap of energy she could find, she tried to fight back against the immobility creeping through her body, making her slow, making her stop. She stood in the middle of Sedona, at the heart of a group of controlled people, and her mind screamed with the effort of trying to keep herself from becoming like them.

      It felt as though her body was turning into stone, or… no, more like her limbs were going to sleep while inside she was still awake. She couldn’t feel her fingertips, but she kept on fighting. She could feel herself slipping into the controlled state, though, becoming more and more of a prisoner in her own body with every passing second. It felt as though she was trapped behind glass, her personality and her ability to control herself an exhibit in some museum made from her own flesh and bones.

      The world even looked as though she was looking through a kind of strangely filtered glass, colors shifted so that all the ones Luna expected had a milky opacity to them, and new ones crept in around the edges of her vision. Luna didn’t need a mirror to know that her pupils would be a vivid white by now, and she hated it.

      I will keep fighting,