Fireteam Delta by J. Halpin (ebook reader that looks like a book txt) 📕

let it take over my brain,” Summers responded. “So, yeah.”

Synel nodded. Asle gave him a reassuring smile before he turned back to Cortez and took one final breath.

“All right, I’m good. Do it.”

“I know this was my idea, but you come out of this with an eyepatch, don’t blame me.” Cortez moved a hand up to Summers’ head, holding it in place.

Slowly, she slipped the blunt metal tool behind his eyelid. He could feel the cool pressure slowly intensifying.

“I’m so fucking glad I can’t feel pain,” Summers muttered.

“Shut up.” Cortez cringed as she worked. “But yeah . . .”

Then Summers’ eye came loose. He reached up, cupping the now dangling eye in wet bandages with one hand.

It was an odd sensation, but not unpleasant. Something like crossing his eyes.

“Summers, you good?” Nowak looked at him, concerned.

“Yeah. Yeah.” Summers reached up toward the now vacant socket. “All right. Let’s see what happens.”

He stuck two fingers into his eye, pressing against the back of the cavity. As soon as his fingertips reached the nerve, he could feel a pulsing, bright mass nearby.

He reached for it, willing it to come closer.

Then, the world disappeared.

<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>

Summers found himself in a void, his hand still in his head, still pulling at the mass.

A beat, and then a voice spoke out to him.

“H . . . ome.”

He didn’t understand what was talking to him. If it could even be considered talking. It was more like a concept being fed directly into his head. Summers kept pulling, refusing to let up.

The scenery flickered. He saw his mother standing in front of him. He saw his father, a field of flowers.

“Host in . . . com . . . plete.”

More faces flashed through his sight. His friends, people he barely remembered.

“A new . . . ho . . . me,” the voice repeated.

Then new faces appeared. Alien faces, some bordering on what he could still call human.

The world resolved itself. He was in a large, empty room.

A humanoid figure, a silhouette, moved slowly in front of him. He was faintly luminous, with something that looked like eyes forming and unforming as Summers’ watched.

“Is this it? The end?”

Summers startled at what sounded like his own voice speaking. No, he hadn't said anything. But still, it felt familiar, like one of his dreams.

The black form turned to him.

“No.”

The figure seemed to dissolve as he finished speaking, and a tidal wave of blackness washed over Summers, engulfing him. He was plunged into pure darkness.

Summers redoubled his effort as his consciousness began to fade.

He could feel as the force resisting him relented, releasing its grip.

Then all at once, Summers remembered pain.

It started slowly at first, blooming in his head until it became his whole world. Suddenly, he could feel the sharp sting in his eye, and something in his chest pressing against his heart. His entire body was on fire. It was almost too much; he nearly lost consciousness right there. But he pressed on, feeling something wet brush up against his thumb. As soon as it made contact, Summers pulled with all he had.

<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>

Everything was gone.

The others looked to Summers, confusion evident on their faces. He could only stare back at them.

After a moment, he noticed the mass of black flesh in his hand. It tensed, trying to squirm free.

“Oh. Fuck!”

Summers threw the hand-sized tumor into a pot and slammed the lid down with a little more force than was necessary.

He heard the struggling within the pot, but managed to keep the top on. He was still trying to come to terms with what happened as he watched Cortez heft it over to the stove they’d prepared.

He couldn’t sense the mass inside his head anymore. But the dull ache in his body had carried over, the pain in his eye still blazing. For now, he could endure it.

It was odd. On one hand, he wasn’t sure what would happen when he removed the creature. If his memories would come back, or if they were gone forever.

He hadn’t expected them to be replaced.

Chapter 35: Visitors

Summers sat, poking at his eye. The pain had mostly faded to a dull but manageable ache. To Cortez’s credit, she’d been able to get it back in mostly without issue. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it sat a little looser than it had been.

“You have someone else in your head?” Cortez watched Summers skeptically.

“It’s not someone,” Summers chided. “It’s . . . they’re memories. I don’t know if it was this thing that kept me from seeing them, but it’s like I can remember someone else’s life.”

“So, it was trying to . . . what? Turn you into itself?” Nowak asked.

“No. It’s bigger than that.” Summers rubbed at his head. After taking the hamr out, things had started to get a little clearer for him. Everything he’d lost had been replaced. They were fragments, but there were a few things that stuck out. “It’s hard to explain. I think it’s a machine, like an archive.”

“An archive of . . . what?”

“People? It breaks them down so it can build them back up. Makes you crazy, so it can spread, survive. It came here for us, our bodies.” Summers gestured to himself. “Bottom line is, I don’t think it wanted me dead. I think the attack on the city—everything it’s been doing—it was all just to get more of us.”

“Why?” Nowak watched Summers with a distinctly uncomfortable expression.

“To change others, like it did to me. I can remember when I . . . when the guy in my head died. Something killed him, killed everyone he knew. And the hamr was their way out, their ark. It was meant as