Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation Read Online Free PDF Page B

the Astrals hadn’t been fooled, if they’d been watching.  
    Every card was on the table. The ship above must know they were here; it was too much to hope that they simply looked skyward and never down. The humans knew the ship knew, and the ship knew they knew. It was, in a strange way, as Charlie had said: They were twisted partners, each in pursuit of the same thing. The only questions were how long each party would let the other tag along … and who would attempt to knife whom in the back.  
    Andreus saw his daughter and finally lost his cool. It touched Piper just as Charlie’s kindness had, and she fought, strangely, not to cry. The big bald man embraced the girl, holding her tight for too long while she squeezed him back. Then their former awkwardness seemed to recur, and they separated: Grace moving back to the couch, and Andreus to the small group’s outer halo to listen.  
    And then Grace talked.
    About the attack, which Piper guessed had timed perfectly with their own escape into the tunnels. The shuttles that had come here first must have arrived seconds after Trevor’s death. After he’d kicked Piper away and shut the door, saving her while feeding himself to the wolves.  
    Trevor had been seventeen. So was Grace. They might have been friends. Or maybe something more. But Trevor would never see another birthday. Or a proper burial.  
    The ships came. Shuttles first then the mothership. The lab’s skeleton crew had hidden with nowhere to go, slipping under desks like a 1950s duck-and-cover drill. There had been a volley of shots from outside. Grace said she’d heard the ranch house break apart and burn, “like someone kicking down a house of sticks.” Another energy shot close to the door filled the room like a live wire.  
    Then the Reptars had come, tall white Titans beside them like escorts. They’d riffled through the papers, to poke impotently around the computer monitors. Either the network had managed to survive that long, or the mothership had somehow held Terrence’s virus temporarily at bay because the screens had remained lit; the lights had stayed on.  
    Unable to access whatever they were trying to retrieve, the smashing and killing started.
    The first to go had been a tech whose name Grace didn’t know. She’d spent her ranch time mostly in the house out back, and had only run to the cliff after the tumult had started. Telling the story, Grace teared up — not over the tech’s life, but over not knowing his name. As if she hadn’t cared enough to learn it and had somehow caused his death by her own hands.
    “That thing they do,” Grace said. “Do you know the thing they do, with your mind?”  
    Heads shook. Cameron almost spoke, but Grace had moved on by the time he thought to. He knew a thing they did, if not the thing. He and Piper had shared a strange mental bond once upon a time, but this sounded different as Grace described it. Like an intrusion. Like a rape of the mind, pinning the nameless tech to the wall with Reptar claws, alien eyes meeting his while the thing pillaged his brain like a hacked data bank. Listening, Piper couldn’t help but recall the monks telling her how the Astrals understood human minds as they should have developed, even if they didn’t understand the Internet.  
    The others had watched. Literally watched . They saw the tech’s thoughts as the Reptars searched them. They saw the intrusive images the Reptars inserted to apply leverage. Then they saw the kid die from the inside, and then the outside as claws ripped him to shreds.  
    Then the next person in the lab.  
    Then the next. Furious. Smashing things along the way. Kicking like a tantrum. The Titans’ big white hands pinning each victim against an outside wall so the Reptars could do their job, the dark-think inside the Titans percolating through to the survivors, indistinguishable in image and tone from that of the Reptars.  
    Maybe Titans couldn’t fight. Maybe they really