“I ... see that.” Sadly, Avery added, “He’s Become.” The story of the runaway farm boy had indeed ended, and not well.

“Think so?”

“He’s just like the others now. It’s like—like he’s joined some sort of hive mind. He’s no longer really himself, if you follow. No longer Xarris but simply a piece in some larger organism comprised of many bodies. The same must be true of the priests of the Restoration. But … if that’s true … that means the hive mind is a conscious mind. It has a purpose.”

“What do you mean?”

“The priests were trying to seize Layanna.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I don’t, either.” Avery sighed. “I think this is what they’re trying to fight, Janx—the Nisaar. You were right. What’s more, I would bet that that’s the cause of all the tribal warfare in the region—the uninfested tribes trying to wipe out the infested ones.”

Avery suddenly noticed that maggots shared the floor with him. Wriggling in the hundreds—thousands—out from their hosts on the surrounding pallets, they thrust their horrid little bodies over the wooden floor toward him, inch by inch getting closer to his exposed flesh. With a cry of terror, he shot to his feet and stamped the floor all about him, feeling his boots crush the life from dozens of the things at a time—but not enough. Never enough.

“We have to leave,” Janx said.

He grabbed Avery’s arm and hauled him away, absolving Avery of abandoning his patient by eliminating his choice in the matter. When they reached the rear door and burst out gasping, Hildra and Layanna stood over the body of a junior priestess—still breathing, Avery was glad to see, but unconscious, a wound on her scalp bleeding. On the other side of the building, another burst of gunfire cut the air.

“What did you find?” Layanna said.

“We have—have—to burn the Hall down,” Avery gasped.

“The villagers would kill us,” Hildra said.

“Doc is right,” Janx said. “Those things could get loose at any time, infest the whole area.”

He was about to say something else when suddenly shouts rang out. All heads snapped in the direction they’d come from, toward the village wall. A group of warriors on the parapet were shouting and pointing their weapons at something beyond the wall, while one man had gone down with a huge arrow protruding from his belly. Other arrows arced over the wall, some aflame.

“Nisaar,” Layanna said.

Gunfire split the air, too, and not from submachine guns of Mailos’s group; these were heavy-duty, mounted machine guns, the kind, Avery realized with a cold sinking in his gut, used by Octunggen storm troopers.

“Hurry,” he said. “No time to worry about burning down the hall. The Nisaar will do that for us. We have to find our armor, rejoin Mailos and get out of here before they can encircle the village.”

Coming around the Hall of the Chosen, they found the groups that had been engaged at the front breaking up, though the shamans still barred the soldiers’ way, all armed with lances aimed at the soldiers’ chests. Mailos’s people would have to kill the women to come through. Everyone else was rushing to the walls, to arms, or to hide their families. Mailos looked emboldened.

“We have to get out of here,” Avery told him. “The Nisaar are attacking, and they have backup. I wish we could protect the village, but there’s no way we can fight them with the weapons they have.”

“We’re not leaving without Xarris,” Mailos said, speaking through gritted teeth. His face was a tortured mask, and his eyes had become mad things. The white scar on his dark face seemed to throb.

“We have no choice,” Avery said, speaking slowly, calmly.

“You don’t, maybe. I do.”

“We went inside. They’re all diseased—gone—there’s no hope for Xarris now. We can—”

But Mailos had lost interest in Avery. Moving aggressively forward, he shoved his gun up against the high priestess’s head and barked something at her. Instead of obeying, she thrust her lance against Mailos’s abdomen—not penetrating, but making her point clear. The other shamans tightened their holds on their own weapons.

Mailos shouted. One of the soldiers, a female, stepped forward and struck a shaman on the side of the head with the butt of her weapon. The woman crumpled to the ground. Another shaman launched her lance, catching the female soldier full in the chest and piercing her through. Six inches of sharp wood jutted out her back, slick with blood. One of the soldiers shot the priestess through the head. Another priestess immediately skewered him. Mailos gasped as the head shaman’s lance shoved through him, his gun went off, and they both collapsed, dead or dying. After that it was all a bunch of shooting and sticking, until only three panting soldiers stood over the corpses of a dozen.

After making sure Mailos and the others were in fact dead, the surviving soldiers pushed into the interior of the hall.

“They’re lost,” Janx said. “Even if they get Xarris out without getting swarmed, Xarris’ll have his wrigglies in ‘em in no time.”

“Come’n,” Hildra said. “Let’s get our armor.”

Even as the group moved away from the Hall, shots sounded from the soldiers inside, followed by screams. As Avery rounded a bend, he looked back to see a single surviving soldier stumble out of the Hall and fall to her feet, raking her nails across her face where the maggots burrowed in.

Behind her, Private Xarris, freed by his mates, emerged from the Hall followed by several of his brood—no, many. Radio hissing noises issued from their open mouths.

“The Nisaar are already started,” Avery said, smelling smoke on the breeze. “This place needs to be burnt to the ground.”

He and the others threw their armor on as the clamor of battle intensified—shooting, whooping, the sound of fire eating into wood and flesh. Then, clad in armor, the four moved through the chaos toward the opposite side of the town from that which the fighting took place.

“If they are in league with Octunggen, the Nisaar will have sent troops to the rear to kill or capture anyone who tries to flee,” Layanna said. “Let me go first.”

She brought her other-self over, and Avery and the others leapt back as her pseudopods thrust and her tendrils curled, the whole bulk of her glowing and translucent, eerie yet beautiful. She exploded through the rear entrance and tore across the clearing. Bullets and arrows riddled her, but all were dissolved by the acids inside her amoebic sac and none even neared her human body floating in its center. She reached the tree line, where more screams filled the air. When they faded, Avery, Janx and Hildra rushed across the clearing and found her, panting and sweaty but human, over the splintered, half-dissolved bodies of several Nisaar, long and surreal and feathered. The tang of ammonia hung heavy in the air.

“Nice job, blondie,” Hildra said. “I remember why we keep you around.”

Layanna turned toward the jungle. “Which way is north?”

“This way,” Janx said, and shoved through a green wall.

They hadn’t gone ten steps before a ring of black-skinned soldiers surrounded them. In their center stood Admiral Jessryl Sheridan.

Chapter 8

“Good morning,” Sheridan said. Wearing an Octunggen uniform, she looked cool and composed, with just a hint of sweat on her forehead in testament to the heat and activity. Her gray gaze moved to Avery, and she nodded. “Doctor.”

“Jessryl.”

Her mouth quirked.

Her attention shifted to Layanna, and Avery could almost feel the latter’s rage boiling off of her. She had already spent her otherworldly energies on the Nisaar and could not bring her other-self over again so quickly, at least not without feeding first, and the Nisaar had not been infected, simply inhuman.

Looking at Sheridan, Avery realized something. “You allowed Layanna to kill them.”

“What do you mean?” Hildra said.