“You know I was Drake’s biggest supporter,” he said to the humans in the garage, speaking as quickly as he could since he didn’t know long he would have before Drake found a way to stop him. “But Erin convinced me Drake has played me for a fool. And he’s doing the same to you. So hear me out. Don’t let Drake muzzle me. The stakes couldn’t be higher. If you hear me out and I can’t convince you, shoot me.”

Gibb considered. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll hear you out. Why not? Tell us how we’re being played.”

“No.” said Drake. “Shoot them immediately!”

“If Drake has nothing to hide,” said Erin, “why is he suddenly so eager to kill us?”

Hansen caught the eye of the genetic engineer. “Drake told you he was the ultimate pacifist, didn’t he, Max? Does ‘shoot them immediately’ sound like the words of a pacifist?”

“I said to shoot them!” barked Drake.

Gibb hesitated.

Drake shook his head in disgust. “No matter,” he said. “None of you would have been useful for much longer, anyway.”

Suddenly, Burghardt and the two mercenaries sank to their knees, screaming in agony, the weapons held by the two mercenaries falling to the ground beside them. They continued screaming and writhing, as if their entire bodies were being sprayed with acid.

Hansen glanced at Drake, but he wasn’t moving and looked bored.

The screaming continued for several seconds and then all three men passed out, all at about the same time. An eerie silence filled the enormous garage.

Drake walked over to the three unconscious men, lifted one of their guns from the floor, and put a single bullet into each of their skulls, his expression never changing.

While Drake was going about this with cold-blooded efficiency, Erin redoubled her previous efforts to slide her wrist through the cuff, tearing more skin as she did so, but making sure this occurred on the top of her wrist so she didn’t cut through her radial artery. With one last heroic effort, shredding the skin on top of her wrist to the bone, she finally pulled it through.

As Drake shot the last of his three former associates, he dropped the gun and turned to face Erin, now free. A stream of bright red blood was running along her wrist and splattering on the glossy floor.

The Hive-controlled alien shook his head, as if disgusted by Erin’s pathetic attempt at resistance. “Take one step toward me and I’ll do the same thing to you as I did to them,” he warned.

Erin didn’t respond, but she remained where she was.

“So let me clear some things up for you, Kyle” said Drake, never taking his eyes from Erin Palmer. “What Erin meant when she alluded to having some tricks up her sleeve is that she gave me the wrong combination for the cure.”

Hansen glanced over at Erin, whose eyes widened in shock.

“That’s right, Erin. I know all about that. Why do you think I suspected you in the first place? When you gave me the wrong combination, I knew something was wrong. So I had Gibb scan you for bugs while you were napping.”

“How could you know I gave you the wrong information?” mumbled Erin in dismay.

“There was no guarantee you would survive and make it here. So I decided I needed a backup, in case you didn’t. I waited until Fuller pulled surveillance from your apartment and broke in, being careful not to disturb anything so no one would know I had been there. But I did pay a visit to your desktop computer. And I got the correct combination from your files. I had what I needed five hours before I spoke to you.”

“So why didn’t you put Max to work on this immediately?” asked Erin.

“I decided to wait for you to give me the information, since I had already told Kyle you were the key, and I didn’t want to have to explain to him further. I have to say, I was very surprised when you fed me misinformation.” He shook his head. “But make no mistake. Your pathetic attempt at deception gained you nothing. I gave Burghardt the correct information immediately after you left the call. So the virus I released will do exactly what it’s supposed to do.”

Hansen found himself unable to speak. Erin’s ace in the hole had been countered effortlessly.

Erin’s expression changed from nauseated to calm indifference, as if not wanting to give the Hive the satisfaction of seeing her beaten. She shrugged. “So what? I won’t be around in thirty thousand years when you sweep through here anyway. In the meanwhile, by curing psychopathy, you’ll have saved us a lot of trouble. So you outsmarted me. I couldn’t care any less.”

“Oh, I’m not done yet,” said Drake. “Now that I’ve successfully completed my primary mission and I’ve been discovered, I have nothing to lose by using this host to wipe out as many of you as I can. This is my chance to see how good Fuller and the Wraps here really are. And I have to say, given this operation, I’m not impressed. They planted you as a mole and now they’re blindly following an empty van. Perhaps I overestimated the potential of your species. Not that it matters now, since you’ve been neutered. But I’m willing to bet I can kill at least half of you in the next few years before my host is killed.” He glared at Erin. “So do you care now? Is this imminent enough for you? Personal enough?”

“But why?” asked Erin. It was a question she had asked of the counselor who had carried her out of her father’s veterinary clinic many years before. “Why must you obliterate all other intelligent life?”

“Because only I matter. Everything that isn’t me or doesn’t directly serve as fuel is an abomination. A pale imitation of true life. Of true intelligence. I will ultimately fill the entire galaxy. And in billions or trillions of years, the entire universe.”

As Drake had been speaking, Erin had gradually inched her way toward the nearest fallen mercenary.

“I need to be going now,” the alien said to Erin. “But I wanted you to know before you died just how profoundly you had been beaten. And that your failure will result in the deaths of billions of your fellow humans in the near term, and extinction when I come through to finish the job.” He shook his head in disappointment. “I only regret having to kill Kyle Hansen so soon,” he added. “He could have continued to be a useful pawn.” Drake shrugged. “Oh well.”

Once again Drake’s expression didn’t change, but Hansen’s brain was flooded with pain signals that threatened to melt his body. It was as if a flamethrower were being used on the inside of his skull. As if millions of fire ants were tearing every cell of his body to pieces.

He screamed and fell to the floor like those before him, in more agony than he had imagined it was possible to feel. And fear. A deep, seeping, paralyzing fear to go along with the pain. He found himself praying for death. For anything that would end the overwhelming agony. Finally, his mind cooperated and he blacked out, falling the rest of the way to the smooth floor.

At the same time, Erin fell to her knees as well. Her eyes filled with tears from the excruciating pain. It was greater than any she had ever experienced. But not the fear. The fear she felt was immense, but she had been initiated into the realm of absolute fear before she had reached puberty.

She fought to retain consciousness. And although she succeeded, the Hive continued to exert pressure on the fear center of her brain, paralyzing her. When the Hive realized she was not yet unconscious she felt another burst of pain, even greater than the first. She saw Drake though nearly closed eyes walk over to the now-unconscious Kyle Hansen and pick up the gun he had used to finish the other three men.

Erin willed herself to move, but could not. The fear and the pain were too great.

Memories of her parents and her beautiful little sister, Anna, rushed to the surface, and Erin knew from experience that no pain, no fear, could possibly be as debilitating as those losses had been. Or as debilitating as losing Kyle Hansen would be now. She could not allow history to repeat itself. Not this time.