Obviously detecting her thoughts as well, Mariella seized Moni’s hands and squeezed them tight enough to grind her bones into dust. Not anymore. She was one of them now. Moni had equal strength. Her mind no longer bowed. She wiggled one hand free and drew her pistol from her ankle holster. The acidic water hadn’t devoured the weapon yet, so she knew it could do the job at close range.
“We brought you into this world because we trusted you. You rescued us. We love you, mommy.” Mariella’s eyes sparkled with a violet hue as she emitted the words into Moni’s head. “We know how painful and disorientating it is to become a hybrid species. That’s why we always erase the consciousness. We kept you because you chose to value us over your own kind, and even your own life. You belong here with us.”
Mariella rested a gentle hand against Moni’s cheek as their eyes locked. She had seen such joy on the girl’s face when she rode that horse at the ranch. She had seemed so human. Moni thought she could rescue this girl like she had wished someone could have saved her from her abusive childhood. In some perverse way, she had succeeded. She gazed upon a thriving Mariella, in the form of an alien bio-machine bent on capturing a slice of earth at all costs. She had raised an amazing daughter, for sure.
“I love you no matter what, baby. Never forget that.”
As the grinning Mariella reached up and stroked her adopted mother’s cheek, Moni brought the gun to the girl’s forehead and blew a hole through her skull.
Chapter 49
Moni dropped the gun, and cradled the trembling body of her adoptive daughter in her arms while the last gasps of life escaped her. As her eyes traced the once delicate features of Mariella’s face that she had smashed with her bullet, she burst forth with an outpouring of tears and nasal great enough to raise the water level of the lagoon. Moni gripped the tiny hand that she had once held when she led the small one away from the men, and beasts who tried to take her. It had gone cold and limp for good.
She remembered the warm hugs they shared, and how the girl’s hair smelled as it rested on her shoulder. She remembered Mariella sitting on her lap on the couch, and coloring flowers for her. Only days ago, they were mother and daughter. Moni had promised her from day one that she’d defend this child, and keep all the people who would hurt her at bay. She never thought she’d be the one…
“You betrayed us!” thousands of voices screamed inside her head.
She had. Minutes after accepting Mariella’s invitation to her world, she had killed her adoptive daughter without any outside influence. Mariella had allowed herself to become vulnerable to Moni so she could give her a gift no person had ever received. And in return, Moni had murdered the only being who truly loved her.
I didn’t want to do this! I still love you!
Moni tried sending Mariella the mental message, but found no consciousness inside that battered skull. She clutched the girl’s body against her chest, and let the hollowed out head dangle over her shoulder. Mariella had rested her head on her the same way when she felt frightened, but now Moni didn’t feel a tiny heart beating against her chest. Even after what she had done, she begged for the girl’s arms to embrace her back instead of hang limp at her sides. Her baby’s life had left her for good, and Moni had made it happen.
An alarm rang through Moni’s mind. She gazed through the clear waters and spotted a bloated manatee with sullen purple eyes parting the sands of the lagoon bed like a corpse arising from the grave. A beard of sharp bones took the place of its whiskers. Its normally gentle flippers were armed with long, curved nails. The disfigured manatee lurked towards her. Then gators breached the lagoon floor with their snouts, and emerged into open water carrying abominations of nature on their backs-human limbs, second gator heads or nests of snakes. They converged on her looking ready to fight for that scrap of meat. Their jaws bared rows of daggers that hungered to avenge the assassination of their leader, even though they would cleave the flesh of one of their own. Just above the surface of the water, the bizarre flying creatures circled over her head. She had no path of escape.
As the mutants closed within ten yards of her, Moni shut her eyes and squeezed the empty vessel that had once contained her precious Mariella. She concentrated on the mental connection that existed between her and, not just the hosts, but the microscopic ambassadors as well. Without Mariella and with the aliens still not developed, Moni had the most powerful mind on the neural network-a mind that Mariella had assured her brethren they could trust.
“Stop! Everybody halt!” Moni broadcast to every being on the alien channel. The manatee and its gator army bailed out of their charge and sank their bellies onto the bottom of the lagoon. She saw the flying creatures dart away. The farming bio-machines ceased planting, and the great worm stopped undulating and spitting out organs. “That’s enough. This mission is canceled. Abandon all possessed organisms. Take down all structures. Stop converting the water and air. Let the atmosphere seep out the top of the bubble and then take the barrier down.”
“But the master species will die!” protested one of the dolphins, which were the smartest host brains left in the network besides Moni.
“Their DNA will remain in the ambassadors living in my body. Maybe one day-maybe-I’ll find a safe place to bring them to life. Until then, every one of you outside of my body is returning the lagoon to the humans, and then shutting down. I mean it. Even the smallest of you will turn off.”
At first, she noticed the downed gators and the manatee cease their twitching. They went limp-as limp as the poor child Moni held in her arms. As the great worm that once promised rebirth dissolved into particles smaller than dust, Moni gazed into Mariella’s brown eyes. They were as still and glassy as a doll’s. It relieved her that the girl couldn’t see what she had worked so hard in building getting torn asunder. She wondered whether Mariella would have killed her to preserve her world. In pulling that trigger, Moni had assumed so.
And yet, maybe Mariella would have sacrificed all of that, and chosen her love for her mother. The shattered mind in her arms had been denied that choice by the woman who should have nurtured her.
The moment Aaron saw the footage on his mobile phone of the yellow bubble cracking like a huge clay jug he turned the patrol car around and sped back to the spot where Moni had passed through the barrier. Not only did he feel relieved that he didn’t have to tell his dad how he “borrowed” a dead officer’s cruiser, he was totally stoked that Moni had somehow done it.
Aaron hadn’t exactly expected that Moni would save humanity, or at least Brevard County, when she blindly entered the bubble. That was especially true after she killed those officers. She had to be possessed during that, he thought. He feared it would never let her go.
Now the sight of the barrier crumbling made him feel like she had broken their hold, and ended the alien invasion for good. That same notion told him that Moni would emerge onto the beachside in the same spot she had left him. When he threaded the car through the dead man’s backyard once again, sure enough, he saw her.