Fireteam Delta J. Halpin (top 10 books of all time TXT) 📖

a medical system — but they changed it. It must have been searching for a world like this one for a long, long time.”

The group was silent for a moment as they took that in.

Summers could remember things about the hamr that he wouldn’t have ever believed. Centuries of work, maybe. He—no, the man whose memories he now had was one of a few trying to find a way to escape. From what, Summers hadn’t a clue, only a vague feeling of dread.

“Summers, this is insane.” Cortez moved beside Orvar, near the pot. The man was holding down the lid so the thing inside didn’t escape.

“Trust me, I fucking know. And I think this thing might keep trying to change me. I’m not sure. My gut tells me this was more of a temporary fix.”

“Do you know anything about Nevada? What we’re heading into?” Nowak looked expectant.

“No, not really . . . but . . . if what I can remember is right, there’s a lot of it coming, and soon.”

“Like more of that monster in the city?”

“No. Like an entire world’s worth of them. It spent so long just . . .” Summers ran a hand through his hair. “Look, they’re not from this world. The guy it was trying to turn me into was looking for somewhere they could live. A new world. A new home.”

“Wait . . .” Cortez held up a hand. “You’re telling us we have to deal with a planet’s worth of those fucking things? We should be taking as many people as we can out of this . . . place . . .” She trailed off as her eyes landed on Asle. “Oh, fuck . . .”

“Asle . . .” Summers started. “You said the army came and got you, right?”

“They took everyone.” Asle responded.

“Guys, remember, we got here with the army,” Nowak explained. “How they managed is anyone’s guess, but if this thing’s after people like us, it might not have stopped at this world.”

Summers sat back in his chair. “Right.”

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

“If these things are coming for everyone, then we need to get to Nevada,” Nowak argued. “Maybe Summers knows something that can make a difference for everyone there.”

“I’m not sure I do,” Summers responded.

Summers and the others had retreated to their cabin, mostly to think. Memory isn’t something you’re entirely aware of at all times, so trying to figure out what changed was proving a little more challenging than he’d have expected.

He was used to finding holes in his memory by now, but it was an entirely different experience to find someone else’s thoughts inside his head. From what little Summers could piece together, the man whose memories he shared was named Dyer. He was a doctor, or some kind of equivalent. There wasn’t much he could say about the man; all he found were flashes of his life. The people he knew, those he’d dealt with day to day, his lover. And odd, alien beings he could only see in brief glimpses through the other man’s eyes.

Summers felt a small amount of resentment that so much of him had been overwritten by so little. There was nothing that could give him a complete picture of anything in Dyer’s life. Even the hamr, something Dyer had dedicated years to developing, was still a mystery for the most part.

He was also now intimately familiar with a type of math that utilized time as the sixth dimension. That was both worrying and confusing, given he was fairly sure he’d forgotten how to do long division years ago.

“It’s not like we can wait out the end of the world,” Cortez mused. “I still can’t see the army’s place in all this. According to you, that black gunk came here, so how’d they manage to get to this world?”

“I’ve been thinking about that . . .” Nowak started. “Suppose someone like Summers came along, and he remembered things, things that would let him build a machine like the one we saw. What are the odds you think the army would be doing everything they could to learn what that man knew?”

“Okay, but just so we’re clear, we’re talking about the army capturing someone who’d just had their brain eaten, and then making him build them shit?” Cortez scowled. “See? This is why I stick to blowing shit up. It’s simpler.”

“There’re still a few days until we hit port.” Nowak moved to his hammock, slipping inside. “We still don’t have the full picture here, but we stand a better chance with the army at our backs.”

Cortez hesitated a moment before she nodded.

Summers had to agree. Even if he wasn’t optimistic about their odds, or that the army would be welcoming him back with open arms, it was still the best chance his friends had.

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

“I am so screwed.”

Summers shifted atop a crate in the storeroom. After rumors of what Summers had done got around the ship, the sailors they were traveling with had begun avoiding the place as much as they could.

So, he sat in relative silence, trying to quietly think with a little more elbow room than usual. The problem was that thinking about his situation only seemed to make things worse. Thinking led to him combing through his memories, which prompted his realization of just how fucked they were.

Before, he’d thought the hamr some kind of magical, otherworldly being. That’s exactly what it was, but now, Summers had more insight into just how far beyond them it had to be. It was technology, at its core. The army fighting the hamr was like . . . well, it was like his friends fighting with guns against spears and swords.

He reached over to a small metal pole beside him, and then bent it. He’d torn out a lot of the hamr, but