Return (The Invasion Chronicles—Book Four): A Science Fiction Thriller

CHAPTER ONE

For the longest time in the darkness that surrounded him, Kevin was convinced that he had died. It felt right somehow. Everyone had told him that he didn’t have long to live anyway, and then there had been the spacecraft drifting in the emptiness, the air running out little by little. After all that,

shouldn’t

this be the end of things?

“Kevin,” Chloe’s voice called from somewhere in the space beyond that blackness. “Open your eyes.”

“G’way. I’m dead,” Kevin mumbled, because a part of him just wanted to go back to sleep. It wanted to drift off and relax, letting the blackness overwhelm everything. He was so comfortable that… He winced as something pinched his arm. “Ow!”

His eyes shot open to reveal a room that definitely wasn’t the ship they’d been floating helplessly in. This wasn’t a stolen Hive craft, where they were slowly dying after being winged by an Ilari craft and the wreckage of their world. This space was larger than that had been, and it looked almost like…

“This is a hospital,” Kevin guessed. He knew what hospitals looked like by now. He’d spent so much time in hospitals, and labs, and other places that it was impossible

not

to recognize it for what it was, even though it only looked like a hospital in an alien way, with none of the devices looking like the ones he was used to.

“You’re awake then,” Chloe said, from the spot where she stood beside Kevin’s bed. She looked faintly satisfied with her efforts to wake him up, smiling to herself in a way that suggested that she would be more than happy to do it again.

“That hurt,” Kevin complained, and then a thought came to him. “Are

you

hurt? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Chloe assured him, sounding serious now. “They patched up the worst bruises when they brought us here.”

Kevin looked her over anyway, wanting to be sure, and worried that she might be trying to hide how hurt she really was. Someone had given her a kind of silvery uniform to wear in place of her usual clothes, which looked a little like the silvery scales of a fish, reflecting the light in different ways as she moved. As Kevin looked down he saw that he was wearing the same thing.

“How about you?” Chloe asked with obvious concern. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Kevin said. “I don’t think so.”

He definitely didn’t feel any worse than he usually did, or at least, than he usually had before the Hive had chosen to make him one of them. He had pain running through his body, and dizziness threatening to rise up inside him when he moved too fast, but Kevin knew those feelings. They were so familiar that they were almost like old friends by this point. He couldn’t feel any of the sharper pains of anything broken over the top of it.

Chloe came forward and hugged him tight. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

Kevin held onto her, even though he didn’t feel like he deserved it right then. It was his fault that it had come to this. If it hadn’t been for him, Chloe wouldn’t have been stuck in a cell, undergoing experiments. She wouldn’t have the strange, alive-looking thing bonded to her arm, tight as a second skin, its bony, insect-like surface seeming completely out of place against the smoothness of her skin.

It felt so good that she was safe that for a moment or two, Kevin didn’t even think about who was missing.

“Where’s Ro?” he asked, looking around for the former member of the Hive. “Is he—”

“Good, you’re awake,” a new voice said. Kevin turned to where a door had opened to reveal a blue-skinned Ilari woman in a dark uniform with military insignia. Kevin recognized General s’Lara from the com-cast he’d made trying to trick her and the rest of her kind. Just the thought of it made him sure that this must all be some horrible dream.

“General,

you

saved us?” Kevin said. “But I… I tried to trick you.” That wasn’t the worst part of it though. “I… I played a part in blowing up your world.”

Guilt flashed through him at the thought of all he had done, while he saw the general’s expression flicker to one of anger.

“You also helped to warn us,” she said. “That gets you some consideration from us, and… well, we don’t want to abandon people in need.

We

are not like the Hive.”

“That’s…” Kevin didn’t have the words. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” General s’Lara said. She glanced up, and she seemed to listen to something only she could hear. “My AI tells me that the others are ready to decide what to do with you. You

and

that so-called ‘Purest’ you brought with you. Follow me, please.”

“Kevin’s still weak,” Chloe argued. “He needs rest.”

“He can rest all he wants once the trial is done. Now come with me.” The general was clearly used to having her orders obeyed, already walking without waiting to see if they would do it.

Kevin looked over at Chloe, who shrugged. They knew that neither one of them truly had a choice. Hurrying to keep up, they followed the general out of the hospital room, into a set of twisting corridors whose walls had shimmering images that gave them the illusion of broad, open spaces. Here and there, Kevin and Chloe passed windows that held a view out into open space.

“We’re on a ship, aren’t we?” Kevin guessed. It didn’t feel the same as the Hive’s ships. This one didn’t have the perfect stability of gravity drives, but it was still definitely a ship of some kind.

“This is the flagship of the escape fleet,” General s’Lara said. “My AI is integrated with it.”

“So every inch of this place is… you?” Chloe asked.

“I guess you could say that,” the general replied. “My AI will connect to the others for your trial.”

“Like the Hive?” Kevin asked, and instantly knew from the general’s expression that it was the wrong thing to say.

“We are

nothing

like the Hive,” General s’Lara said, in a sharp tone. “They force themselves upon the worlds they destroy, upon the people they make a part of them, upon each other. The misery, the

choices

, of others mean nothing to them. We join with our AIs, but we still choose what we will do, and we seek no conquest. We sat behind shields because we did not wish to slaughter others, even though it cost us

worlds

.”

Kevin could feel another wave of guilt rising up in him at that. He’d been the one to help bring down those shields and make their planet vulnerable to what came next. He’d been the one to help the Hive destroy their world, and take his. To his surprise, though, Chloe was more direct.

“You could have fought them and you didn’t?” she said. “You hid away from them when you could have

stopped

them?”

“Chloe—” Kevin began, but it seemed that Chloe wasn’t done.

“No, Kevin,” she said. “If she’s saying that they could have done more, that they could have beaten them before they got to Earth, then they could have spared all of us this. They could have saved us.”

“We couldn’t even save ourselves,” General s’Lara said, looking mournful now. “We don’t have the tools to stop the Hive. We can kill them, we have the technology to beat their ships, and they just keep coming.” She seemed to listen to something again. “No, I know. Anyway, we’re here.”

She gestured to a set of doors. Kevin and Chloe stepped through, into a large space filled with people. As with the corridors, images spread over the walls, but these seemed more abstract, and Kevin could see the patterns in them. Somehow he knew that this was the AIs communicating with one another.

Ro stood on a blank circle of floor raised above the rest of it. Kevin hurried over to the alien, wanting to make sure he was all right, while Chloe was even faster, throwing her arms around him. The people there stared at them. Kevin could see so many of them, both Ilari and other aliens who had taken refuge among them, that it was hard to pick out individual faces. Even so, he knew that they were staring at the three of them without looking away, trying to make up their minds.

“Ro, are you all right?” he asked. His friend didn’t look hurt, but even so, he seemed shaken.

“I don’t know,” the alien admitted. “I am feeling so many emotions. Guilt, and fear, and… how do people

cope

?”

Kevin put a hand on the alien’s shoulder. Chloe put an arm around him.

“We do,” Chloe promised him. “And we keep doing it.”

“These three were salvaged from a floating ship,” General s’Lara said, obviously addressing the assembly. “You can see that one of them is one of the Hive’s ‘Purest.’ Of the others, one is the boy who helped to let them into our world, while the last has been changed into one of their creations.”

Kevin hated hearing him and his friends described like that. The worst part, though, was that he couldn’t deny what they were saying about him.

“We are on our way to another outpost,” General s’Lara said. “The ship tells me that our fleet is being stalked, and so we must decide what we are to do with our new guests. Can we risk having them aboard? Are we in more danger by having them here? Are they all that they appear? Are there any who wish to speak regarding the first of them? The girl?”

There was a swirl of images and letters on the walls as the AIs communicated with one another. If he concentrated, Kevin felt as though he could get the gist of their conversations, the signals that made them up transformed for him through the same talent that had let him translate all of their other signals…

…not guilty in all of this…

…a victim, not a foe…

…the device on her arm though…

Two individuals stood up.

“It has been decided that I will speak for her,” a man said. “It seems obvious to us that she was a captive of the Hive, their victim, and not one of them. We should give her safety as one seeking refuge.”

A woman stood up. “It has been decided that I will speak against,” she said. “Although we have sympathy for her plight, we do not know what the aliens have done to her. The item on her arm could be a risk, because the Hive do not design anything

safe

. We should contain her, or destroy her, for the safety of others.”

General s’Lara nodded to Chloe. “Do you have anything to say?”

“What do you want me to say?” Chloe snapped back. Kevin could see that she was close to losing her temper now, and that probably had a lot to do with how scared she was.

“Then I will say it,” the general said. “We are not a people who kill because there

might

be a threat. Chloe here is as much one of us as any of the others who have come to the Ilari in search of help. I believe that she should be welcome among us, and perhaps in time, we will be able to reverse what was done to her. Do any others wish to speak? No? Then we will talk of the others.”

Kevin felt the general’s gaze rest on him, then on Ro.

“The arguments around the others are more complex,” she said. “One warned us of the attack, and helped us, but was also the one who brought down our shields. The other is one of the Hive’s Purest, and so our foe. I know that our people are peaceful, but I find it hard to feel anything but anger when faced with this.”

Kevin looked at the walls, and now the writing buzzed around less like fireflies and more like angry bees. The arguments seemed far more complex, and his talent for translation only gave him snippets of it this time, so that it was impossible to follow along completely.

…where does responsibility begin…

…where does it end…

…If he is one of them, he is one of them…

…Destroyed a whole world!

Kevin was so busy letting the arguments wash over him that he almost didn’t hear the moment when the first person stood up.

“I speak for the boy,” a woman said, in a gentle tone. “I feel that although he has done great wrong, he only did it when controlled by the Hive. When free, he sought to help us. He warned us. He broke free, and we should not reward that with harm. We should take him in as we did his friend.”

“I speak against,” a man said. “Whatever else is true, he

was

one of the Hive. They slaughtered more than we could count without our AIs, and he helped them. Am I supposed to watch him walk around freely, when those we love cannot, because they are dead? Are we supposed to forgive the unforgivable now?”

“I speak for the Purest,” an older man said. “They are part of a whole, and he has broken from that whole. He was twisted by who he was, but he is not that creature anymore. If he has had the courage to break free from them, we should celebrate that, not denounce it.”

“No one breaks free,” another of the Ilari snapped, and the anger there was palpable. “It’s obvious that this is some kind of trick. They tried to trick us before. They broke through our shields. They murdered our people. They destroyed our

world

. This thing was a part of that, they both were! We should destroy it before it harms us further.”

Kevin could hear the emotion coming through there, completely different from the way the Hive had been. They would have made decisions purely rationally, while this… this felt more

real

somehow.

“Do you wish to speak for yourselves?” General s’Lara said, looking over to him and Ro.

Kevin knew that he ought to, but he wasn’t sure what to say. The guilt he felt still seemed as though it flowed over everything, burying any words. He knew he had to try, but the truth was that he didn’t

want

to try right then.

“I don’t want to speak for myself,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t deserve it, and the truth… I’m dying anyway. It doesn’t matter what you do to me, so long as the others are safe.” It almost came as a shock to hear himself saying it, but it was the truth. It was more important that Ro and Chloe were safe than that he was. “I helped to destroy a world. I don’t deserve… I don’t deserve anything, but Ro broke free from the Hive. That should count for something.”

Ro shook his head. “I am… I am scared, I admit that, but I will not run from what I have done. I have committed horror upon horror. I have done evil things. Once I was Purest, but now, I am not even that. I am impure. It is Kevin you should save. We made him one of us against his will. He had no choice.”

“There is always a choice!” the man who had spoken against Ro called out from somewhere in the back of the room.

Kevin didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed that Chloe did, though, because she shouted above the rest of it, looking straight at the man who had spoken.

“You think Kevin

chose

to be taken over by aliens?” she demanded, in a tone that would have been enough to make most people take a step back. “You think he was in control? They made him say yes to hurting me in all kinds of ways, and even so, I don’t blame him, because it

wasn’t

him. It was him without any emotions, without any compassion. And if you don’t have compassion, you’re no better than the Hive!”

She took a moment to look around at the aliens, and for a moment Kevin thought she might be done, but then she kept going, jabbing her finger at the people around them.

“You’re all standing there making decisions about us, but you haven’t even

tried

to understand us. Kevin… he’s been across our country trying to save our world. He’s gone into space because he was trying to stop the Hive. They only took him because he was trying to stop them. As for Ro, he’s fought back against everything he has ever known. He’s a sign that the control of the Hive

can

be broken, and you want to… what, kill him? You’ll have to kill me if you want to do that!”

She stood there glaring at them, and General s’Lara held up a hand for silence.

“I will not speak on this,” she said. “My own thoughts are too conflicted. Logic demands one thing, emotion another. Yet I would ask, are we beings of pure logic? Are we like them? I don’t know. It is time for us to divide.”

She bowed her head, and above them, Kevin saw dancing lights buzz around as AIs talked and debated, presumably balancing the feelings of the Ilari with the needs of logic. To Kevin, they looked like swarms of angry bees moving around, shifting and splitting, then recombining in different combinations as the debate between them went on.

From down where he stood, Kevin couldn’t begin to work out exactly which way the debate was going. He could catch snippets of it if he tried, but there were so many different fragments that even he couldn’t begin to work out which way it was going.

Finally, something seemed to be happening. Kevin had the sense of the AIs shifting, moving into stacks, forming into groups as they made their decisions. Two blocks, one red and one blue, appeared on the surface around the edge of the room. The groups seemed close; so close that Kevin couldn’t count them, and couldn’t begin to guess which one was larger. He could see some AIs still buzzing around, reviewing the facts or discussing them with those they were connected with. Slowly, though, the count settled, and the groups stabilized.

Even then, Kevin couldn’t guess at what the outcome was.