Chapter 19: Parasite

 

Paragon. He’s going to bombard the world with the plague.

“No,” Jarod says, the word leaving his mouth just as it slips past Nessa’s lips.

“I don’t remember,” Nessa says, her eyes darting everywhere. It’s like everything is rushing back to her, the understanding of what she’s been doing all this time. She turns to Gabriel, to Magpie, to Jarod. “I don’t remember. These things, I didn’t make them. I didn’t program any of it.”

“Oh, but you did,” Hargrove says. “It was your mental capacity, your brilliance that enabled this. All of it. Paragon, the right cities to strike. Perhaps you needed a little coercion to do it,” he says, his eyes flashing white, the color of the moon, for just the briefest moment. “But it was all you.”

“No. I only wanted to help.” Nessa’s eyes turn completely white. The writhing in the room stops, all the tentacles going limp, then wavering to the floor. This was how Hargrove started that attack on the Hive, by possessing a man and having him rip the barricades from the inside with his bare hands. Forrester, the poor sap, his eyes went milky white when it happened, just like how Nessa’s look now. But she grits her teeth and shakes her head, and the color in her eyes returns just as quickly. She’s resisting. But for how long?

“Don’t do this, Nessa,” Jarod pleads.

“But she isn’t doing anything, Mr. Samuels. The sequence works independent of Ms. Wong’s actions.” Hargrove smiles. “It will only abort if the facility’s command center is destroyed.”

Jarod looks around helplessly. Is he talking about a computer terminal, a motherboard? There’s nothing else here. He can’t mean Nessa. Then that would mean that the only way to stop the missiles –

A door in the far wall explodes into splinters and dust. The battered, gore-smeared thing that breaks through spits blood from swollen lips, then stalks for Nessa’s platform. Robbie’s eyes gleam with menace, and anger. Every tentacle in the vicinity goes rigid, slowly turning its point in his direction, like a den of snakes prepared to strike at its next victim.

Hargrove tuts. “I shouldn’t have tried to force her. The harness does the bulk of the work, anyway. Now the other one approaches.” He smiles. “The first one.”

That brief lapse in Nessa’s total control of the appendages, it must have been caused by Hargrove’s attempt to possess her. Now there are two of them to deal with in the same room – Paragon’s two most powerful children – gathered here under the watchful eye of the insane father that created them. Jarod can’t imagine a more dangerous place to be.

“You again,” Nessa growls.

“Stop this,” Robbie shouts, or at least he tries to. His words are a slur of consonants, his mouth, and no doubt his insides still ruined. “Nessa, you’re better than this.”

“Stay out of this,” she snarls, all innocence and confusion slipping from her face. Her eyes take on a hardness and her expression goes aggressive, her fists tight at her sides, her posture rigid, the way Robbie turns when he reverts to his feral state.

Is that how this works? The alpha striking against the beta, these immortal creatures forever clawing and fighting to be on top? Nessa seems to be taken by something when it comes to Robbie, like the Paragon formula in each of them is struggling to become the superior being.

“One fights the other for dominance,” Hargrove says. “Do you see? Only the strongest survive.” He steps away, secreting himself into one corner of the room. He nods at Jarod. “I suggest you do the same.”

“Damn you, Hargrove,” Jarod says, even as he herds Magpie and Gabriel away from the platform. “Fuck you and your madness. This doesn’t help humanity.” Jarod’s voice strains. “I defy you to show me how this helps humanity.”

Hargrove shakes his head sadly. “It isn’t for me to explain something so great to someone who sees so little.”

“Don’t bother with him, Jarod,” Gabriel says. “Focus on us. We have to stay safe.”

“No matter,” Hargrove says. He smiles with his lips. “The show is about to begin.”

Like a streak of blood Robbie dashes for the platform in the center of the room, the gore spattered over his clothing marking him clearly among the immaculate silver of the tentacles. Nessa lifts her hands to her face just in time. Their fingers lock as they grapple, Nessa’s tendrils rearing up, then faltering, like she doesn’t have full control of them still. From his corner, Hargrove tuts again.

“Flawed,” Nessa snarls, turning her body with each slash of Robbie’s talons, deflecting his blows with her armor. “Imperfect.”

“If I’m imperfect, what does that make you?” Robbie rakes at the air with fingers pointed like claws, his nails gouging angry red lines into Nessa’s skin. Her wounds heal over almost immediately, the way that his would. This could go on forever. “Weaker,” he spits. “Slower. Frail.”

Robbie feints long enough that Nessa dodges, but he weaves with preternatural speed, reaching behind her and ripping out the wires embedded in her skull. Blood spurts from the holes that they leave. When Nessa screams, the sound of it scrapes through the entire facility. The ground shakes.

She clutches at her head, eyes shut, the pain blinding, giving Robbie enough time to knock her to the ground. He straddles her, something Jarod now understands is how he fights, bearing down with his weight and taking his opportunity to weaken her further.

“Stop this,” Robbie says. “Stop all of this from happening. The sequence, Paragon. We can help each other, Nessa.”

“I can’t stop it. I am helping. I’m helping.” She struggles and flails, sending out a hand against Robbie’s cheek. Her nails gouge out three horrible tracks in his skin. The wounds do not bleed, like the formula already knows.

“If you won’t stop it, I will. It’s this harness. This thing he put you in. We’ll start there.”

“No,” she screams. “No no.”

With terrifying strength Robbie rips a plate off of Nessa’s exoskeleton. She shrieks as it comes away, its edges ragged with sharp, broken metal, its insides sparking with broken circuitry. The dismantling continues, with Robbie peeling away more and more of the plates from her torso, baring her stomach.

Each part that comes away tears another hideous scream out of Nessa’s throat. But she doesn’t bleed. This pain, it isn’t physical. And the skin underneath the armor, it’s whole. The flesh is unmarred. She lied. Robbie only ever bit her neck. That was all. He reaches for another section of Nessa’s carapace, prying his fingers under to loosen it, when Nessa throws her head back and intones in a voice so deep that it rumbles as it fills the room.

“Enough.”

The wind whistles from the force of four tentacles slicing through the air. They lift Robbie bodily off of Nessa, then slam him into the wall, hard enough that the room shakes, enough that the ceiling rumbles. Robbie wails from the pain, his body broken in too many places for him to fight back.

Outside, somewhere, near or far, Jarod knows that the horde is stirring. The pain is going to call the dead once more.

Gabriel springs forward, his bat raised, but one of the tentacles intercepts him, smashing into his stomach and sending him sprawling to the ground. Jarod dives after him.

“Don’t,” he says, cradling Gabriel as he catches his breath. “We can’t fight this.”

And Jarod, Jarod still doesn’t understand where his loyalties lie. These were his friends, people he loved. Perhaps he still loves them, to some extent. No, the enemy has always been Vertex. It’s always been Hargrove all along.

“Then we have a victor,” Hargrove says. “Finish this.”

In a flash of steel and blood, more tentacles fly through the air, unerringly seeking their target. They don’t stop when they make contact with Robbie’s body. They keep going, their assault relentless, the room trembling faintly as each tentacle smashes through Robbie’s flesh and embeds into the wall.

Robbie screams and quakes as six, nine, a dozen tentacles pierce his body in several places. Too many. His body is a pulped mess of disintegrated flesh, the meat pulsing as Paragon works in desperation to knit him back together. The only thing Jarod recognizes now is the boy’s face.

“You’re killing him,” Jarod shouts.

Nessa’s gaze doesn’t leave the far wall. More tentacles slam and spear through Robbie’s body, eradicating all that’s left of him.

“Oh god,” Gabriel mutters.

“Stop. Nessa. Please.”

“Jarod,” Magpie shouts, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Listen to me. We can end this. If you’re willing to do what it takes, we can finish this. Stop the sequence.”

Jarod looks from Nessa to Robbie in despair. Nothing left for them now, but that leaves nothing for the rest of the world if the missiles find their mark. He glances at the floor and nods, reaching for the gun. Nessa doesn’t seem to notice as Magpie strides forward, heading for the frayed mass of sparking wires that have fallen to the floor.

“What are you doing?” Hargrove says.

Silent, focused, Magpie grasps a bundle of wires and thrusts it against Nessa’s spine, into the metal of her carapace. Her scream wrenches through the room, the tentacles convulsing, then going still. The air fills with the smell of cooked flesh.

“Now,” Magpie shouts.

Jarod raises the gun. Even in her agony, dazed and stunned, Nessa has enough of her facilities left to turn her head, her eyes locking with Jarod’s as she does. A glimmer of the woman he once loved still lives there, hiding somewhere behind her lashes. It’s her, just plain old Vanessa Wong, without the influence of her harness, or Hargrove’s compulsion, or any of Vertex’s madness.

Her eyes settle on the gun, and her gaze returns to Jarod long enough to give him a last smile. “Do it,” she says. She shuts her eyes. In a way, this will be the second time he kills her. Jarod’s heart breaks as he pulls the trigger.

Blood and brain pour out of the new hole in Nessa’s head. It lolls about on her neck, her chin digging into her chest, her expression beatific, beautiful in death. The blood keeps pouring, Paragon’s gift lost now that the bullet has destroyed where the plague lives. But her body remains rigid, standing, supported there by the tentacles that have gone as still and unmoving as her corpse.

Above them, the map flickers and fades from the panels. They did it. They’ve aborted the sequence. The reinforced barrier at the door lifts. Daniel, Tyler, and Esther – all three of her – rush in.

“No,” Hargrove says, the word emanating from his mouth in the sound of three voices. “No.”

“Yes,” Jarod says, pointing the gun at Hargrove’s head. Finally, justice, for Nessa and Robbie if for no one else. He swallows his tears, then squeezes the trigger.

Hargrove’s head explodes in a mass of tar, this horrible, glutinous lump of infinite black that coalesces and reforms mere moments after the bullet passes through. His laughter rings throughout the room, each of his three mouths appearing and reappearing with every bullet Jarod fires through his head. Jarod screams as he empties the chamber, receiving no satisfaction for seemingly slaying Hargrove several times in succession, only to see his skull and brains regenerate within seconds.

“What are you?” Jarod demands, hurling the spent gun at Hargrove’s head, watching in frustration as it does absolutely nothing to him.

“Something that you’ll never kill,” Hargrove says, the perfect beauty of his face marred by its reassembly, all the parts arranged wrong somehow, his teeth streaked black with his blood.

Gabriel grabs for Jarod’s shirt. “We should go. Jarod, stop.”

“No. He took everything from me.” Jarod cracks his knuckles, then approaches, golf club in hand.

“Surely not everything,” Hargrove says, his eyes flitting in Gabriel’s direction. That only raises the blood-red heat in Jarod’s skin even further.

“Samuels,” Esther says, now rejoined into a single entity. “Not good. Don’t.”

Other voices join the chorus, all imploring Jarod to stop. He hears nothing but the sound of Hargrove’s laughter ringing in his ears. Hargrove lifts his hands in mock submission, the white of his palms turned out like flags of surrender, but his horrible chortling fills the air like smoke, like bells tolling for mourning.

Jarod smashes his head in, then again, and again. Hargrove stumbles, then falls backward onto the ground. He laughs again when his head cracks against the floor, and again each time the club descends on his face. Jarod keeps hitting, and hitting, and hitting, slamming the club like a gavel. This is justice, for everything that Hargrove has done. Everything.

But all this violence, this rage, it isn’t for nothing. Jarod is chipping away at the body this thing is wearing. Hargrove’s face changes each time the club comes away, his skin ripping and sloughing to show something black and oily underneath. Jarod’s worked his way through the first row of teeth, the ground littered in broken, blackened fragments. Still he laughs. He laughs the whole while, like the monster he is, like something out of a nightmare.

“Mr. Samuels,” the thing burbles, its voice now a slanted cacophony of noises, issuing from out of hell itself. “I’m afraid you might actually kill me.” It laughs again.

Jarod doesn’t answer. He just keeps hitting, pleased that the head he’s been bashing no longer reforms, that the body beneath it is sinking against the ground, like it’s melting. Hargrove, whatever he is – whatever it is – isn’t afraid to die. It doesn’t understand death.

Somewhere between his blind red rage and the gurgling laughter of what remains of Jonathan Hargrove, Jarod gathers enough of his senses to make out that the quivering puddle of tar on the ground, this amorphous mass of mouths and eyes, it’s still trying to speak to him.

“Youuu,” one mouth says. Another one opens to finish. “Do you remember your nightmares very much, Mr. Samuelsss?”

Jarod stops mid-strike. The last nightmare he had was back at the Hive. It was the one where the man in the suit tried to kill them. It was the one where the man succeeded. The golf club clatters to the floor as Jarod turns to shove Gabriel out of the way.

Too late.

Hargrove lifts his hand and points one taloned finger. It triples in size so quickly that Jarod can hear the man’s bones breaking and fusing and growing as it lengthens into a dagger, a sword, a spear. Then this finger, this lance made of nail and flesh and bone, it slides through Gabriel’s shirt, then his skin, and somehow, somehow Jarod knows that it pierces Gabriel’s heart.