Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation Read Online Free PDF

something similar was clear on her face.  
    Piper shone her light next to Cameron’s but saw nothing.  
    “Over here,” Charlie called.  
    After a lingering moment, Charlie and Piper turned.  
    Again, something shifted at the edge of Cameron’s peripheral vision, just out of sight.  
    “Look.”  
    Cameron did. Benjamin’s keyboard was in front of his old office terminal. Many of the lab units didn’t even have keyboards, but Benjamin had always liked taking notes and preferred typing to dictation.  
    Now the keyboard was a twisted mass of plastic. It had been torqued as if twisted like taffy, snapped in the middle. The two halves were destroyed, keys popped loose and scattered across the floor like knocked-out teeth.  
    “What do you make of this?” Charlie asked.  
    “Someone doesn’t like lab work.”
    Piper turned to Cameron. He thought she’d roll her eyes, given the mood. Instead, she gave him a tiny smile. Her warmth barely helped. Cameron still felt a chill at his rear, and no matter which way he turned it felt like there was something beyond his vision, just out of sight.  
    Charlie picked up half of the keyboard. He set it back down then shone his light around the workstation with fresh interest. The floor was littered with pens and other miscellany. Beyond, one of the thin monitors had been smashed.  
    “I don’t get it. This looks like it was done by people.”  
    Cameron picked up the keyboard. “I don’t know. I’d swear this was bitten. Like by a Reptar.”  
    “It’s pointless. If they wanted the place gone, they could have just blasted it. If they wanted to get information, tossing it like this would be counterproductive.”  
    “They’re not good with our computers,” Piper said. “And they don’t understand the way we share our consciousness over the Internet.”  
    “Then why try? Why walk in here?” Charlie kicked at a wheeled chair lying sideways on the ground beside a shattered water glass. “They’ve been siphoning the Heaven’s Veil network from the start. Not by coming down and hacking, just by using the air. They could have tried that. Maybe already did.”  
    “Terrence’s virus,” Cameron said. “Maybe it cut all of the connections, and coming in here was the only possible way to get what they needed.”  
    Charlie shrugged. “Maybe. But still … ” He kicked through more debris, the answer apparently too elusive.  
    There was new movement to the rear. Cameron heard what sounded like a sniff before spinning, sure that the shadow had come to claim them at last.  
    But his flashlight lanced the face of a teenage girl instead, her blonde hair a mess, her clothing filthy.  
    Cameron didn’t know the girl well, but he knew her, all right: Nathan’s daughter, Grace.  
    “We thought they were looking for something,” she said in a broken whisper. “But mostly, they were angry.”  

CHAPTER 8

    Piper listened to the girl for as long as she could.  
    Charlie had offered to calm her nerves with a cup of tea. When he remembered that the lab didn’t have power, he offered to hike back to the RV to boil the water. Cameron looked at Piper when Charlie said that, and they exchanged an amused glance. Charlie barely acted human most of the time, and here he was offering to be this young girl’s hero. Grace declined with thanks, and Charlie looked at both of the others as if he’d just realized his fly was open, daring them to call out his tenderness.  
    There was still bottled iced tea in the refrigerator. It had warmed, but tea was still tea. Grace accepted it even though the lab seemed to have been her home all along and she clearly could have drunk the tea at anytime. When Piper led to her the couch, she’d gone willingly.  
    Then she unspooled her tale.  
    Not long into it, Andreus and Coffey entered, their pointless distraction having come full circle in its futility. Of course there was nothing in the obliterated basement. And of course