Zak couldn’t look away from it. The sheer size and perfection was mesmerizing. He recalled the images he had seen when he touched the thing in the cavern and he knew what it was. It was pure life. Everything anyone knew – or had ever known – had started here, with them, and they had been waiting billions of years until they were needed again. But they had been discovered. Uncovered. Disturbed and threatened. And now they needed to find somewhere new. Somewhere safe to wait until they were needed again. Until the life here on Earth had faded and gone, and new life was required.
They were life. They were hope. They were everything.
The remaining soldiers stood on the ice with their heads back, watching the swarm become a huge sleek slab of black, with double spirals endlessly spinning upwards. It appeared to be solid now, defying all logic, simply floating above the gaping hole in the ice.
Zak felt his connection to the hive – the Ark – grow stronger. He felt a billion minds merging with his own. It was gentle at first; the same darkening around his vision that he had felt many times already since coming here. But the intensity of it grew and grew until, with a jolt, white-hot pain filled his body. Zak put back his head and screamed as it raged through him. It fizzed and burned like a world on fire, leaping from one cell to the next, engulfing his body, and ripping into his mind with the agony of a world of thoughts and images.
Somewhere beneath the pain and the sense of being utterly possessed, Zak had a thought of his own.
I’m dying.
But even as the idea formed, the pain stopped.
It was as if it had never been there.
Above the ice, the spirals within the column flickered and disappeared. Time had stopped. The small world of what was happening right there in that spot in Antarctica, the most isolated place on the planet, was holding its breath as it waited to see what the Ark was going to do next.
Zak’s heart had time to beat three times before a stream of insects burst from the Ark as if it had grown a limb. Still connected to the main column, the limb rushed across the airstrip, over the heads of the soldiers, and burst though the Storage window.
Zak flinched from it, turning his head and closing his eyes as the limb touched him, and insects swarmed over his body. They poured across him, finding gaps in his clothing, crawling in his hair, clattering in his ears, covering his face, smothering his mouth. He tried to move, to get away from them, but there were too many of them. Some began to shed their armour and force their way inside him. Through his ears and mouth and nose, suffocating him, and he knew he was going to—
No. I’m not going to die. They’re not killing me. They’re making me whole.
Zak relaxed and surrendered to the weirdest feeling he had ever experienced. The fleshy insects were inside his head, breaking down into their life-giving components. He felt them melting into his brain, their cells knitting together with his, becoming part of him. It was a soothing sensation, followed by a release of pressure, as if a splinter was being drawn out from inside him. And he knew what they were doing. They were taking away his illness. They were curing him.
When the limb of insects withdrew, the floor around Zak was littered with the discarded remains of those that had crawled inside him. Those that had cured him. Outside, the Ark began to glow once more, spinning faster and faster until every insect illuminated itself at once, emitting a tremendous pulse of light that flashed outwards across the ice.
Zak put his hands to his face and squeezed his eyes shut against the light that burned with incredible intensity. And then it was gone, leaving an image of the Ark burnt into his vision.
As the image began to fade, Zak forced his eyes open and looked out at where Outpost Zero had been.
The soldiers were now sprawled across the ice. Some lay like they had been frozen while making snow angels, others were bundled with their arms tucked under them. The woman in black was on her front, legs splayed as if she were a rag doll cast aside by a grumpy child.
Zak turned his eyes to the sky, but there was nothing more to see. There was no sign of the swarm that had been buried beneath Outpost Zero.
The Ark was gone. It had moved on, searching for a new place to hide and wait.
36
OUTPOST ZERO, ANTARCTICA
NOW
Where there had once been a peaceful base, there was now a war zone. The ground was split in two, ragged and terrifying. Crumpled buildings were thrown aside like junk. Smoke filled the air, billowing from the burning aircraft, while flames licked at its carcass, casting an orange hue across the landing strip. The soldiers lay motionless in the snow. The ground was littered with torn metal and smouldering wreckage.
At the back of Storage, lying in a heap with the other men, women and children from Outpost Zero, were Zak’s mum and dad. His sister, May.
Please let them be OK. Please let them be OK.
Fearing the worst but hoping for the best, Zak scrambled across toppled shelving units, scattering supplies in his rush to reach his family. He went to May first, despairing when he saw her skin drained of colour, her black hair dusted with broken glass and powdery snow. Her eyes were shut, and for one unimaginable moment Zak thought she was dead – that they were all dead. He dropped to his knees and put his ear to her chest. With a wash of relief, he heard the faint drum of her heart.
Du-dum. Du-dum. Du-dum.
It was quiet but it was definitely there.
Thank you. He sat back and turned his eyes to the ceiling as he let out his breath.
Zak moved to check on Mum and Dad, relieved that both were in the same state as his sister – their eyes were closed and they were unconscious, but they had heartbeats.
‘Mmm.’ The groan startled him and he sat back in surprise.
‘May?’ When she didn’t respond, Zak shook her gently, but the best she could manage was another quiet groan. He sat with her for a while, but she didn’t stir again. And as he sat, his mind drifted to the world outside Storage. The soldiers.
He left May’s side and went back to the shattered window to look at the soldiers lying sprawled in the snow. He had no idea when they would wake up, but he was sure that when they did, they would be just as dangerous as before.
His family was alive. They had survived this ordeal, and he couldn’t let anything else happen to them. Those soldiers were the biggest threat now. He had to deal with them. Disarm them.
Climbing back through the debris, he went to the door and slammed his fist on the button. Before it was even halfway open, he pushed through and hurried out. At the bottom of the steps, he stopped and looked down to where Sofia lay.
There were no lights – when Outpost Zero disappeared, the power module and its generators had disappeared with it – but the Aurora still rippled in the sky, and the glow of a million stars reflected from the empty insect coverings that lay on the ice around Sofia. She was surrounded by them, just as he had been after the insects had come to him in Storage. Had they come to Sofia too? Had they fixed her too?
Zak knelt beside her and dared to hope for the impossible. He hesitated, afraid to be wrong, and put his hands under her side to turn her over.
He put his ear to her chest and heard the best music in the world.
She was breathing. Sofia was alive. The insects had cured him, and they had given her life.