At night, when Cousins is waiting for sleep on his bed in the room of the IBF basement, he can feel that he is not alone. He can’t hear or see ghosts, but his conscience is very heavy and he feels bad that he is alive while Dr. Moss is dead. It should have been him, he says this to himself often, he was likely to suffer a long and slow disease anyway and Moss had so much of her life ahead of her.
Cousins has tortured himself for months now, sure that if Moss could speak, she would curse him for continuing to cooperate with her murderer. The woman Aile had confirmed her hostility, or she hadn’t denied it. All she really told him was that she was haunting him and she would not stop anytime soon.
Aile had hoped to make Cousins feel guilty at the death of his partner because she had not forgiven him for his part in Eakran’s early work in the basement. Sure, Cousins had been the nicest of them, but he was complicit in what amounted to torture and Aile had heared agonizing screams through the walls of her locked room that lasted for hours.
In reality, Moss had only lingered out of guilt and she had implored Aile to tell him that she was sorry for everything, for keeping Eakran’s secrets at the expense of their friendship. But Aile refused to relay messages for Moss.
“You don’t deserve the privilege of commune with the living,” Aile told her after she and Wendy helped to loosen her grip on the body of the woman Helen. “You don’t think there’s millions of spirits out there with words for their loved ones? And they didn’t torture vulnerable people for a paycheck. I won’t help you feel better with your poor decision making. Spend eternity with the guilt of what you have done. “
So every night that Cousins is waiting for sleep, sure that there is a ghost screaming at him, he is right, only he can’t know that she is repentant and hoping to save him. He thinks that he is being egged on to murder Eakran for his sins, and Cousins is struggling because he would like to give Eakran the chance to give humanity all of his knowledge. He believes that Eakran can find redemption because he can restore life in ways that no human on Earth can.
But Moss is hounding him and she deserves peace in her afterlife. Cousins would end this. And some other alien could come to Earth to be the savior of mankind.
Alia is spun up in webbing up to her chin on the third floor of the IBF, in the laboratory of Dr. Sylvia Hansberry, who is unconscious in her office. Alia can see Giovanni, Dr. Eakran’s personal security guard, laughing and playing games with Wendy and her patients Helen and Mildred, and they have been joined by other patients and doctors from the third floor who wandered inside, curious about the commotion, and they are all lost in a levity that Alia wishes she can enjoy. Grown adults playing like children, laughing and throwing balloons and confetti.
Alia can’t quite explain it, but she knows that something is using Wendy to trap her. Wendy stops still in her levity, like she hears something that only she can hear, and then she makes eye contact with Alia as she comes to stand in front of her. Wendy runs her hands along each of the cocoons lined along the wall beside Alia.
“It’s time Alia. This will not last long. You bring your friends and these things here will do the rest. And when all that mess is done we will make the IBF the happiest place on Earth. Brace yourself.”
Wendy opens her mouth and a stinger slowly emerges from her throat. It is long and sharp at the end, and it seems to drip poison.
“Wendy, what is happening, stop this please!” Alia pleads, but the stinger continues to emerge, and it plunges into Alia’s forehead. Her eyes go completely white.
The stinger looks real, and it is very scary, but it is not a physical stinger and plunges into her spirit form contained within her body, and the pain is worse than anything Alia has experienced in a while. She screams with all of herself, across many planes of existence, and the sound brings many beings to a halt.
As soon as it happens, Alia works to regain control of herself, and she slams her mouth closed, hard enough that there is an audible sound. Then the white of her eyes begins to intensify and the stinger in her brain begins to sizzle and smoke, and then it turns red as a coal and Wendy retreats, shrieking in pain, and the stinger retracts.
“Why don’t you starlight yourself free?” Wendy asks when she recovers.
“Because I won’t hurt anybody in this room and whoever is doing this to you knows that. Wendy, please, you just gave her what she wanted. Ivan and Clay will be here as fast as they can, there’s no way they didn’t feel that. What are you gonna do to them? They don’t deserve this. They helped to free your Great Ancestor from the Red Father. Ivan lost his body. And you just helped them both, and Ivan helped you save a lot of people. Don’t do this to them.”
“You don’t understand what Uttu has shown me. She has shown me a peace that I can make myself, and I can share it with anyone that I want to. Ivan and Clay can enjoy that too, if they give Uttu what she wants. She won’t kill them if they cooperate.”
“Wendy!” Alia screams, “when they get here, it will be chaos. Clay has trouble controlling his emotions, he has a gift that he struggles to control and he is like my brother. When he gets here, he will try to rip you apart for the pain you brought to me, and whatever is in those cocoons won’t be able to stop him from ripping this whole Institute apart. Wendy! Anesu! Pull yourself together. Where are your ancestors?”
Wendy smiles with her whole face, but she trembles noticeably and a tear rolls down her cheek.
“I had to show Uttu that I was worth the gifts she promised. They were my first sacrifice. Clay and Ivan are the last, but she won’t hurt them if…”
“What did you do to them?” Alia asks as the white light of her eyes begins to intensify again, and this time, the webbing of the cocoon that holds her begins to sizzle and then catches fire. The stinger emerges again from Wendy’s mouth and it shoots what appears to be amber that solidifies around Alia and attaches her to the wall.
When the stinger retracts, Wendy smiles again and she approaches Alia as the glow of her eyes dims and she sighs.
“You won’t hurt anyone and neither will I. Uttu gets what she wants and then we make the happiness we have been denied for everyone. Even your friends in the basement. We can save them from Dr. Eakran.”
“You don’t understand, Eakran isn’t like that anymore. I’m only here because Yuri didn’t get the memo, but he’s good. And they’re so close, Wendy. I can feel Clay, and Ivan is just as upset. He won’t hold him back.”
“Then you will see,” Wendy says as she turns to the crowd gathered in her lab. “Have fun, be happy, it will be permanent soon enough.” Everyone cheers and Wendy is about to get lost in the reverie, but they hear the sound of the large window of the lab shatter and there is a flash of green light. And then Ivan appears, engulfed in raging flames that fill the room with a green glow, though the scary flames around Ivan don’t catch on anything. He slowly lands in the middle of the room as the people clear a circle around him.
Then there is another crash but this time it shakes the building as Clay jumps into the room, smashing through the wall that had contained the window and leaving a big hole and a lot of debris.
“Where is Alia?” Clay yells and the room seems to shake.
Alia watches Wendy float above the crowd and when Ivan and Clay notice her, they are both surprised and their anger subsides. Ivan floats to meet Wendy above the floor and he smiles at Wendy.
“It’s so good to see you here! Alia’s hurt, she’s in trouble, she just screamed so loud and I searched for her with my mind. It took me some time, I’m not as good at it as she is. But she’s here’s. Isn’t this where Eakran was keeping her?”
Wendy smiles as Ivan talks, and then he stops talking and Wendy does not say a word. He looks down at Clay who shrugs his shoulders. Ivan looks at Wendy again.
“You can fly?” he asks. “You couldn’t in Charleston.”
When Wendy finally opens her mouth, she makes wretching sounds like she is about to throw up. Ivan is about to approach her, but then she vomits, and an inconceivably large spider slides from her mouth, covered in a slime. It hits the floor and shakes away the slime, and seems to disappear.
“Ivan, Clay,” Wendy says, “this is Uttu and she is here to collect your green energy. Give it to her and she will leave.”
“Wendy, that spider is messing you,” Ivan says as Clay looks around for a trace of the thing.
“Very well,” Wendy says as she lifts her hands. The cocoons begin to split and what looks like the same old man emerges from each of them. Each of the men is a model of her Great uncle, who had taught her to fight and would be a formidable opponent for Ivan and Clay, even if he wasn’t copied twenty or so times.
The copies of the old man attack Clay and he takes punches as he fends off others. Ivan assists from the air, tossing out balls of green energy that badly wound the copies when he manages to connect.
Alia watches the scene and she is scared. All of the attendants to Wendy’s party had scattered and now the empty laboratory is a mess of destruction. With each breath, the glow of Alia’s eyes intensifies and then she breaks free from the amber that flies away in small pieces.
When she is free, her entire body seems to glow and the light blinds everyone in the room who cower away from it and shield their eyes. She dims the lights as the commotion stops and then everyone sees the spider that is transparent with clear outlines, like it is made of glass or plastic.
“Clay,” Alia yells, “that thing is controlling Wendy. Kill it!”
Clay punches the spider that dissipates into dust.
Wendy faints and hits the ground before anyone can catch her.
The three stand around Wendy and they lift her onto one the lab tables.
“We should get her down to the basement,” Alia says. “Maybe Eakran can help her.”
Before they can leave the lab, Giovanni stumbles in.
“Thank God you’re ok,” he says to Alia. “That was horrible. I wanted to stop laughing but I couldn’t. Did these guys save you?”
“This Is Ivan and Clay,” Alia says proudly. “They saved more than me today.”
“The whole building is surrounded. It looks like they’re sending people in to get you guys.”
“I’ll explain everything,” Alia says as she tries to push past Giovanni, but then she feels a hand on her arm.
“Alia,” Clay says. “Ivan and I broke out of jail to come help you. Ain’t no explaining that.”
“Jail?” Alia says incredulously. “Why were you guys in jail?”
“It’s a long story,” Ivan says. “But it seems like Jamar, that drug dealer is behind it somehow.”
“That’s it,” Clay says suddenly. “This ain’t coincidence. Wendy, the woman that risked her job to save you a few months ago, is trying to steal our powers to give to an invisible spider? Us getting locked up has to be connected. What if Jamar got a spider in him too and that’s how he influencing stuff?”
“Maybe,” Ivan says and they both look to Alia.
“I’ll go back with you guys,” Alia says and then turns her attention to Giovanni. “You take Wendy down to the basement and tell everyone that I’ll be back. I think she knows Aile, ask her to look out for her and keep her calm when she comes to. I hope she’ll be herself, she should be, but Aile will know what to do if she isn’t.”
“You should stay here,” Clay says. “We can always find you if we need you, but we don’t even really know what our plan is now.”
Alia nods solemnly as the duo flies away from the IBF, Clay jumping and Ivan floating, and they mostly avoid detection, though some notice a green streak in the air.
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