Moving slowly and carefully, he headed for the farthest door on the left. Opening it a crack, he took a sniff. As he suspected, there were several natum in there as well as humans. But it didn’t seem like any were close to the door, which was all he cared about. He pulled the door open all the way and slipped inside as silently as a ghost.
Somewhere down the hall, Jake heard voices. One of them was Darby. The other was Jes, her tone anxious and tense.
Thank God she was okay.
Inner wolf pacing restlessly, Jake followed the sound of their voices down the dimly lit hallway and took a quick peek into what turned out to be the control room. Jes was on the far side, Ryo Arsenault and Lais Khan—or rather the natum wearing their forms—each holding one of her arms. Her attention was fixed firmly on Darby and Damien, who stood a few feet away. Darby had a smug smile on his face, while Damien was focused on the digital countdown clock attached to the wall, which was fast approaching seven minutes.
Laurent Marconi and three other natum were spread around the room, their weapons pointed at a group of scientists sitting at a row of computer screens. Jake could smell the fear rolling off of the men and women in waves.
“Why the convoluted scheme with the Bilderberg Society?” Jes asked, jerking at her arms, trying to get the natum to let her go. It didn’t work. “If you wanted to launch a few rockets, why not simply buy your way in? Darby probably had enough money to do it. Hell, the man had more money than you could ever spend.”
The natum wearing Darby’s form laughed harshly. “You think money has anything to do with this?”
“If not money, then what?” she demanded.
Jake stifled a growl. What the hell was she doing, antagonizing these things?
Jaw clenched, he quietly slipped a fresh magazine in his M4, ready to attack the second they went for her.
But Darby merely laughed again, clearly amused. All at once, the sound became a high-pitched screech, and Darby’s features melted away to reveal his true form, the same one Jake had seen on the three dead natum on the riverbank in London, complete with gray skin, a ridge where a nose should be, and what seemed like hundreds of needlelike teeth on display when he grinned at Jes.
The scientists at the computers immediately lost their frigging minds, crying out in terror and trying to run. The natum viciously shoved the men and women back in their chairs, refusing to let them escape.
“Humans are so predictable and stupid,” the creature who’d worn Darby’s face spit out, the voice completely different now, more like the scratch of steel over stone. “You care only for your money, your wars, your possessions. Never for anything of worth.”
“And what do the natum value?” Jes asked softly.
At their name, every creature in the room looked at her in surprise. Except for Darby.
“Yes, I heard you learned about us,” he said in his raspy voice, his narrow black tongue flicking out. “I’ll have to go visit that woman in Los Angeles after we do what we came here for and make sure I silence her.”
Jes’s mouth tightened. “You didn’t answer the question. What do your kind value? What would motivate you to do all of this?”
On the wall, the clock was under four minutes.
“My people,” Darby hissed, tilting his head this way and that, the shallow sockets where eyes should have been seeming to regard her. “My people are the only thing I care about and changing the world so they can come out from hiding and finally live in the way we were meant to.”
Jake could see the look of confusion on Jes’s face from where he stood. He didn’t blame her. He had no idea what Darby was talking about either.
“We can survive underground in those rare places that are warm enough,” Darby continued. Around him, the other natum looked almost pained at the words. “But we require sunlight to thrive and reproduce. Unfortunately, cool weather is our enemy and shortens our lives, so we can’t live on the surface like humans.” He motioned around the room at his fellow creatures. “The members of my tribe who came with me on this quest sacrifice their comfort—their lives even—to help me change this planet and make it more inhabitable for our kind. It is worth the pain for us to know that one day, our kind will wipe yours off the face of it.”
When Jes still looked confused, he went on.
“There are no satellites in those rockets. Instead, each carries over twenty-two thousand pounds of chlorodifluoromethane, a chemical that, when dumped straight into the atmosphere, will rip a hole in the ozone layer almost as large as the entire northern hemisphere. The amount of radiation that will come through will kill a good portion of the human race at the same time the greenhouse effect will push average temperatures up as much as ten degrees over the next few decades—death for your kind and global warming on a scale you can’t imagine. It’s a win-win for us, as you humans are fond of saying.”
The scientists in the room gasped in horror. Jes, on the other hand, didn’t so much as blink.
“That’s why we needed the convoluted Bilderberg scheme,” Darby added, pointing at each of his fellow natum in turn as he continued. “Arsenault gave us access and priority to the space center. Khan provided the needed chemicals. And Marconi got us the rockets. It was incredibly easy to implement our plan once we had the right humans to shapeshift into.”
Jes gave him a smile. “Sorry to screw up your plans, but we’ve already disabled the other two rockets. When we take care of this one, your complicated scheme is going to go straight down the toilet.”
Darby moved toward Jes so fast Jake could barely follow him. With a growl, he lifted his M4 and pulled the trigger, clipping the creature in the knees and dropping him to the floor. Then Jake quickly turned and aimed for the two natum holding Jes.
The other natum in the room immediately returned fire. Jake felt several rounds hit him, but he ignored them all, focusing on the only thing that mattered—freeing Jes so she could get the hell out of there. But the moment he took out the two creatures holding her captive, she scooped up the first weapon she could find and started shooting.
Jake should have known better.
The scientists ran for the doors, some of them trying to take out the creatures with nothing but their bare hands on the way. It was a brave attempt, but against the stronger, faster, and deadlier natum, it was wasted. But it gave Jake a few needed seconds, and he put round after round through the creatures’ midsections.
