Disclaimer: This story is a fanfiction inspired by the wonderful work of the great Stephenie Meyer. All related to the novel The Host, characters belong to the author and has full rights to them. The rest is merely my invention.
Author's Note: Each of the chapters of this fanfiction is narrated from the perspective of a different character (rather than a single first-person narrator) indicated next to the name of the chapter.
It has sought to maintain a sequential order of events, but on more than one occasion the action of the story jumps back and forth in the form of flashbacks and memories.
It is also possible an alternative reading of those chapters whose plot happens independently.
I don't speak (or write) English, so I had to use Google translate. Sorry.
Synopsis
The war between the souls and humans who are scattered throughout the world rages.
Peace shown even more difficult to achieve when a series of disappearances spreads like wildfire through the peaceful and just society that have instituted souls on planet Earth.
Seekers, desperate for the new situation, begin to take increasingly extreme measures to achieve end the threat posed to the world the rebel human cells almost extinct measures.
A particular soul, whose stay on Earth was terminating (The Skipper) will be recruited to carry out the task of interrogating a captured rebel human. Engaged for the umpteenth time to perform its duty, he will discover that this human world still awaits surprises that were not expected.
Both sides, human and soul are hidden dangerous and dark secrets. As avowed enemies of each other, they begin a race against time with the same goal but with different intentions: Keep safe the last remaining humans or suffocate once and for all threats towards souls.
The Skipper is not even remotely a story of friendship, love triangles impossible or allegiances changed, as was The Host. Do not expect, dear readers, anything like this. For this world it is much more inhuman, deadly and unjust than it should be.
Equilibrist
I'm coming toward you
always
instep on the quivering wire
leaning aside
but never looking down
eyes unsmiling
immune to sleep
or hazard
I'm coming toward you
Always your pallid image leaps
behind the bars of distance
where merge sea and sky
Not setting with the sun
nor waning with the moon
your torso centaur-like
is prancing
upon my mind's rim
Fiercely taking aim
my body is a sharpened dart
of longing
coming toward you always
MAY SWENSON
PROLOGUE:
Shot Down (Ian)
While sitting on one of the benches of the old playground I used to go as a child in Portland, I was quite inconceivable that we were in the midst of a war against the souls.
Saw pass before me loving couples, couples with small children in their carts and elders who sat sun that shone brightly over our heads. And if it were not occasionally captured through sunglasses, a faint silvery reflection in his eyes that betrayed as parasites, that seems an idyllic panorama movie set.
It was surreal being surrounded by so many souls, of those who had hated so deeply, and not feel that I was in mortal danger. The souls were essentially peaceful, confident and sincere. None of them would have thought that a human (one of those brutal and unruly humans) were sitting so quietly in the middle of one of its civilized cities, taken in the first wave of the invasion.
Perhaps because of its lack of belligerence they had managed to conquer so successfully. Two million years of evolution based on the 'survival of the fittest', annihilating all our threats, we had elevated as the dominant species on the planet, yes.
But what good was our instinct to fight when the enemy did not attack? If parasites have been like all the aliens portrayed in science fiction novels (coming terrifying invaders from outer space to exterminate every human being) we would have won easily.
Against violence still we responded with more violence. How desperate were, how much worse off the confrontation, most would break boundaries to achieve defeat our enemy. But what new kind of war was this, which our enemies had become ourselves?
The tinkling laughter of a child getting off a slide momentarily distracted me from my thoughts. I smiled involuntarily to note that the mother and the child ran me a funny look discreet. Then I averted my head to watch patiently again one of the park entrances.
I examined my wrist watch nervously scowling and I regretted having done that right away. I hoped no one would have noticed. This was a typical gesture of human being that should not appear. I knew well the parasites and knew there were often delayed and otherwise negligently not chafed against a delay.
My key to hide among souls as one was security and serenity. None of the parasites was afraid of his fellows, unlike humans, whose unique and main enemy had always been his fellows.
Among the souls were no murders, no violence, no hate, no wars, were a united whole. Perhaps one of the first reasons why I had hated at first it was because they had found a way to achieve the desired peace: Removing us from the equation.
I looked like someone who does not like things towards the entrance to the park.
I hoped the time came.
I knew what I would do. I had to do it.
I tried to keep my mind free from distractions, concentrate on the mission and nothing else. If I failed at that point, the lives of everyone I had known would be in danger.
No, they will not be in danger, they will be dead. That chilling thought crept into my mind, but my body did not react.
Concealed beneath his jacket, carrying a small pistol hidden. Sig-Sauer's 9mm courtesy of Nate. I did not know even how good it would be shooting in case I had to use the only weapons they had shot in my life had been small: Toy guns with which I enjoyed with my brother Kyle.
Humans are the worst: Teach their children to kill I admitted sorry to remember the shootings between Kyle and me.
I suddenly remembered that my father had a gun at home, locked away in his desk. Every time Kyle or me watch near his office undid all his evil intentions against us. I left immediately to that line of thought to notice how anger flooded my mind by reminding. I needed to stay calm to keep my false front of soul, and I knew would not make if I reminisced about all the hatred i had for my father.
I gave a slight wince to take a look at another of the four entrances of the park: Jared Howe was walking in my direction.
But what the hell does? I was stunned momentarily. Still he is missing until nightfall to collect the message I had left under my bench.
Sunglasses did not help him at all to go unnoticed in broad daylight. There were more souls in the park with his glasses on as ours, yes. Parasites were always very careful, shielding seen as atypical in that sunny afternoon. But her milky skin like mine evinced the climate of the region of Oregon. Instead Jared his bronze complexion made him stand out from the crowd like a fly in the soup.
Could Jared Burns replaces come? Or maybe he was disobeying the orders had been given? No, no way. Jared was of those who stuck to a plan and continued with the mission to the end.
I could then only be one possible explanation for his unexpected presence. Jared's instincts, his unmistakable smell to detect problems, had warned him that something would happen in that park.
Damn selfish paranoid! When I saw him approaching buffet step towards catastrophe.
I did a quick scan to look for the other gates of the park and how could it be otherwise, appeared in full view seekers Jared had intuited.
They are not very subtle to say, I mused with a bitter aftertaste.
Although none of the five seekers wearing some kind of uniform to identify them, how to move and barely column address look or speak the betrayed everyone equally.
They watching around quickly and, after a short, four of them fanned out around the perimeter to cover the exits. I could tell that they were armed under his civilian clothes. I did not think I had the need to use firearms, a small spray of Peace was very easy to hide in any pocket. But I knew that Jared would go armed with Glock of the seeker and he himself would use.
I got up slowly from the seat.
I gestured with his chin that was just a spasm and pointed with his shoulder seeker black leather that looked like the leader and moved among a large group of young college students.
Jared a split second stiffened and turned to see the steps slightly to not come to me directly, without appearing to have seen me and not to the search engines. For the concentrated expression on his face I knew I was already thinking about facing the situation, looking at each of them and evaluating options.
Fight or flight.
Jared's face suddenly hardened and I knew what I had just decided.
The park, so full of souls of all ages, began to seem a place more and more gloomy despite the harshness of the sun that afternoon. I was surrounded by hundreds of potential victims.
Collateral damage.
It turns my stomach just thinking about it.
If he start the shots, it will be a slaughter That reflection was a no-brainer.
Fight or flight? No choice was good.
Jared was always the best in extreme situations, the brink of failure, but had not the slightest idea how reasoned souls, what drove them. As much effort to put you always saw things from their perspective and not from that of their enemies.
No soul never choose to fight unless they endanger the lives of his brothers to flee. Parasites were peaceful and scary. But they could be extraordinarily courageous in adversity and will not hesitate to protect any of their peers who were in danger... even at the expense of their own lives. If we attacked, that park would become a mousetrap which we should open killing step. And if we ran, all those souls willingly collaborate in our capture along with the search engines.
There had to be a better option.
Think fast! I spurred me trying to be more like Jared and be as fast as lightning. But I could only see corpses look where to look. I just felt remorse, despair and helplessness.
Do not THINK, idiot, ACT!
It was then when I got a crazy idea... I faced him toward Jared and took off my sunglasses to get their attention and prevent set in motion what the hell was planning. I stopped short and I could see from a distance as his eyebrows came together in an expression of puzzlement and curiosity when he saw me put my hand in his jacket pocket and lips silently articulate a single word:
"Run."
Time seemed to me that ran in slow motion. The brief flicker of my eyes as he turned his back on Jared was an eternity in the deepest darkness. And the strong and vertiginous my heartbeat seemed slow idling of an old steam locomotive.
The seeker took no more than two seconds to meet my dull blue eyes. Appraising a smile crossed his face when warning that had located the man he sought. His gaze drifted to the pocket where the silhouette of a gun divined.
It had to be faster, if it would not be lost. Like when we played Indians and the cowboys Kyle and me. The seeker lay hands on the side, when I started pulling his hand from his pocket, looking for his own weapon.
We both made the same move at a time. I aimed from a distance and he froze for a split second with the gun in hand, hesitantly, seeing that he pointed his index finger rather than the barrel of a gun.
"Look out! He's got a gun!" I shouted to his lungs, my eyes narrowing slightly in a grimace of terror. "It's going to shoot!"
Hundreds of silver eyes suddenly alarmed turned in my direction and was silence throughout the park. They did not bother to look at my face to see if it was one of them, only they looked away to the finder still holding his gun gesture shoot. They did not see her bulging eyes accusing me as clearly as in a silent scream.
They only saw the gun.
It was not enough anymore.
All the souls of that park ran screaming like gazelles chased by lions. By pure irrational fear.
The seeker gave a spiteful snarl when he had to raise the gun to shoot not by accident souls who stood involuntarily in my career. I slipped between the bustling throng towards the exit which was heading Jared. He could make his bronzed neck like a dark lighthouse in the distance, as he missed repeated peeks not lose sight of the crowd. A couple of detonations resounded across the square, when the leader of the seekers fired into the air.
"We are seekers! Get down and stand back!" he shouted desperately to the entire scrum of bodies crossed around haphazardly.
Very bad idea to shooting in the air! The pace of the flight became even more frantic.
Other seeker also drew their weapons and tried to plug exits the park but only managed parasites became more chaotic in their movements. They fled the vision of the arms, back to the square, disregarding the words of warning and ended up crashing to come across people trying to escape the gunfire. Some even squatted on the floor after hearing the warning from leading seekers.
I could see Jared tried to sneak out among a group of parasites that were going through the exit despite warnings from the search engines. But I lost sight of him when I noticed a lump lying on the ground, a few meters from me, in the playground.
I could recognize the same woman I had before on the slides smiled, balled. Her in his arms and legs figure your child. Other desperate souls ran, staring at the outputs, without noticing that one of their own was lying on the sand, shaking with fear look.
If I had stopped to think for a single second, it would never have I crouched beside her and would have spoken. It was a soul, one of the enemies, and at that time hindered compassion. However, only I saw the helpless human figure of the woman.
I was not enough anymore.
"Are you OK?" I exclaimed getting up from the ground, the woman did not answer me but not resist when I picked it up. "Stand up please. Chuck is going to do damage there."
I could not carry on tenterhooks mother and child together, but luckily she started to leave the shock and secured their feet to the ground trembling. I tried searching again the neck of Jared but had completely disappeared.
"I'm... we are OK" stammered with shaky teeth. "Thank you very much."
Her voice cracked on the last syllable and looked away again to the unknown. His frightened expression had changed completely and her brown eyes sparkled silver wide open, staring mine.
"Shit, the sunglasses!" I immediately regretted my error. The woman was stunned, as if he saw something that amazed him.
"Nothing." I replied without losing sight of the exit and fearing that at any moment put to paste voices shouting "Human!", But she was silent.
I helped or rather dragged gently toward the exit around his shoulders with my arm, ready for what it was. His neck quivered as fragile as you approach the riot, if necessary I have to silence it as quickly as possible. The idea of cover her mouth, suffocate or even break his neck seemed cruel.
But it would be quite inevitable.
We crossed beside the search without being able to stop us, the fleeing throng exceeded imaginable. The woman remained silent staring into his eyes, his face child refugee in his chest. When we arrived at a clear point, I blurted hug and I got sunglasses.
I watched one second before run. She was not terrified, nor stupefied. But relieved and a little... hoped?
What the hell was that? I did not stop to reflect upon hearing ambulances and police cars, rapidly approaching from all directions to the park.
I watched as he walked running a parade of parasites with bruises, bleeding gaps in the head and wounds of all kinds who were aided by those who were uninjured. The traffic of the surrounding streets had stopped and open routes for emergency services will advance. And from heaven the engine of a rescue helicopter was heard approaching.
I had organized a tremendous mess with my idea:
Back against each other.
Souls could be as civic they wanted, but the irrational fear in a human body in a crisis, coupled with a large of individuals confined in one place, always triggered an uncontrollable mob.
I walked half running, along with other parasites that continued to flee without looking back, for a couple of blocks. But I did not hear anyone yelling 'Human!' or pointing accusingly.
I could not reach Jared among all the crowd and probably best way. Search raids would soon mobilize. It would be harder for him to hide until everything had calmed if he was next to me.
"I must continue with the plan," I ruminated dismayed, while barreled an avenue with lots of houses on both sides. I found just what I needed few blocks later.
When Kyle, Jodi, the rest of the gang and I were hiding for months in Portland, after the first wave of the invasion, we were always looking for places that had been recently unemployed but were not ruined, or closed down. These shelters were always possible. We had only the essentials to survive on his back and slept light to be aware of when the police appeared. But sometimes we skipped the houses that had been evicted, either because their occupants fleeing the invasion or because the parasites had taken control of their minds and gone elsewhere.
Kyle was the best finding those little fortresses of solitude. Forcing entered the back door and we stocked up with everything we found: flashlights, batteries, food scraps refrigerator, running water or second-hand clothes closets.
We never were in those houses more than a few hours and we tried to leave almost everything in place to not detect us. But we memorized their locations to back away if you need a few hours.
They were easy to identify if you know what to look for: accumulated mail in the mailbox, a porch full of tree leaves, dry grass with weeds growing, an unalterable quiet even at peak times of day, etc...
And just at that moment of my flight I had just found a house that appeared to meet many of these signals. Stood out from the rest of the neighbourhood: the windows closed and bolted with the curtains drawn, the dustbin unplaced for the collection and newspapers piled up at the entrance. No house belonging to a family of parasites that would look so bleak.
This house was saying loudly 'Empty'.
So I played my approaching the front door and rang the bell. No one answered. I called a second time and looked discreetly houses around, hoping that no parasite coincide in me. I knew they were not gossiping with each other, but sometimes could be very clever.
I reached for the doorknob with adrenaline accelerated heart (surprising once again exuded confidence that those alien creatures) to open no more. The door did not even have a key to boot. Perhaps it could have been crystal clear if it serves that there would be drafty in winter. It was just a decorative element of the house. As the window sills or paint fences.
Upon entering the hall I was a few seconds with his back against the closed door, trying to reduce the rate of my heartbeat and match my breathing. No one came to see who had entered, so I assumed he was alone. When I finished calm, I tore sunglasses face, pulled the semiautomatic pistol under my jacket and checked still wearing the insurance and fifteen bullets in the magazine.
With the gun still in hand I entered the room to make sure she was really alone in that house. An answering machine was blinking above a side table with a vibrant red glow. Shelves full of dusty books stacked wood in a corner of the room and a grand piano located in the illuminated area, imposed certain respect for that room.
I feel like I just entered the home of someone who had died long ago and whose house still remains its spirit, doomed for eternity.
Is it parasites also have their own ghosts? I wondered, laughing to myself, looking at the portraits of the former tenants of the place that decorated furniture and walls everywhere.
A sudden noise from another part of the house, startled me even more than advisable with my mind wandering eccentric fantasies. It took me a second to remind myself to fear living souls more than any other dead or spectrum that might exist. Barged, armed and ready to attack, in the corridor of the hall to the kitchen, where the noise had come.
Chances are that it was seekers who had given me after my short flight. But then I remembered Jared, perhaps we had had the same idea, hiding in the right place.
I was not crossed my mind that there could be more human in Portland. They were still surviving after all the years of my way. The chances were very remote, one against a million.
I opened the door slowly but there was nobody on the other side. The kitchen was deserted and the only anomaly was that one of the chairs around the breakfast table was overturned on the floor. As if they had shot down a misstep.
The door to the backyard had thrown latches, although it was not exactly the sound of a door what he had heard. A gray shadow moved across the floor and quickly pointed to the shape moving.
"Meow" mew a gray and tan cat cautious peeks around the corner of the central cabinet. Catnip door was open so he could freely pass that stray cat. That had been the source of the sound. Pussycat gaze pleadingly said a drinking fountain and empty food dish.
When I moved a little closer and the light of the fading afternoon, which filtered through the blinds, lit up my face, feline ducked, he hit his ears back and huffed before leaving as an exhalation through the cat flap. After checking that my eyes sparkled in the light without a flash of silver.
"This is the last straw!" I whispered voice taken. I always had been shocking to see how pets and other animals seemed more comfortable with parasites with humans. In science fiction movies of the old days (Alien, The War of the Worlds, Predator, etc...) always warned of the danger of monsters coming to harm us.
But when the invasion began there was no warning signal. Souls came at night like thieves protected by anonymity and snatched the lives of everyone we knew from one day to another. Had it not been for that impossible to call my father, I never would have believed the rumours.
I laughed bitterly remembering the irony.
To bend over to put in place the fallen chair I noticed a bowl of breakfast broken on the floor behind the table. The stray cat had already noticed spilled milk and gnawed cereals. Something was wrong. Rather, nothing fit.
"What happened here?" I asked rhetorically, realizing suggesting that abandoned kitchen.
It was as if someone who was breakfasting quietly had decided to leave the house in the middle of the morning, knocking him all along the way, without worrying about returning. As if he had run away from something that haunted him as the devil himself... Or as if someone had broken and had forcibly removed.
I looked more closely at what surrounded me trying to get a mental image of who were the owners of the house. I saw that had stuck with magnets on the refrigerator door several children's drawings.
For the photographs I had seen in the hallways, it was a happy couple of middle-aged souls twins five years, a boy and a girl with golden brown hair. Nothing to astonish me especially. Parasites were always happy and comfortable in their perfect home lives.
So why had the feeling that background at that place was a terrible misfortune happened?
I went upstairs to check the empty rooms and checked in closets that none of the family suitcases had been used. Neither made the beds, and ordered the toys. If they had left under his own house, which he doubted, they left with nothing and little else.
See so many smiling faces on all pictures made me remember something very important. I left the gun in the hall and started frantically checking pockets, one after another, scared at the prospect of having committed such an error.
Lightly I touched the tiny cyanide pill that always took over, the second full of bullets in my back pocket charger, a few wrappers gum and candy and a piece of paper he had used to leave the note in the park, but there was no trace of that.
I let out a deep sigh of pure relief remember that before leaving for the mission he had kept in my room, there in the caves. Seekers were not supposed to meet with the memory of us. Never.
Before night fell completely lit plasma television lounge and mute the sound to see the news. I wanted to admire the damage I had caused with my little incident in the park. While the house had been examining the bustle of the streets had declined. The noise of police sirens and helicopters flying over the area had also been reduced. I feared that seekers had given complete human hunting.
Because that could mean they had captured Jared or any of the other Nate's cell members.
Parasites newscasts reported that emergency services centers closest to the Healing facilities had been collapsed in the early stages. But despite the high number of injured and affected by the living avalanche, he had not been swept away no life.
"At least that's a relief," I thought watching TV and waiting in absolute silence as the dark of night slowly hovered in the sky.
Time to leave approached: Twilight.
It was the safest time for humans. When the dazzling rays of sunlight we discovered disappeared over the horizon. When a soul and a human could walk next to each other without hardly be distinguished. Instead the deep night was dangerous, too dark on the streets, any small light highlighted their looks.
I turned off the TV and got off the couch when I realized that silence was perhaps a little thicker than before. As if the whole world had decided to stop at once.
This is the end I felt it.
I noticed it in my bones before they take the first step into the hall, before I saw the first powerful halogen light bulb illuminating the facade of that house. I perceived in goosebumps that I bristled before hearing the hurried pace of a heavy military boots approaching.
They lambasted the door just when it reaches the semiautomatic pistol and pointed entry in an instinctive gesture. The silhouette of a seeker surrounded by the blinding brightness focus appeared before me, went armed with a sawed-off shotgun, a bulletproof vest and a helmet. I pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Nothing happened.
The seeker gave a kind of grunt.
The trigger safety catch was set.
I had made a terrible mistake.
Then the seeker squeezed the trigger.
The sound of detonation paralyzed me.
CAN NOT BE! I shouted incredulously to feel the devastating impact throw me down a step backwards. The gun fell from my hands, as everyone began to lean at an impossible angle.
"Aim shot down!" I listen, my murderer shouting the rest of his teammates.
My hands blood soaked splatter when I felt my jacket and holed shirt. My lungs struggled for breath while gasping like a fish out of water. The sound of my heartbeat trailed off to nothing. My body stopped answering me when I finished fall apart lifeless on the floor.
I was not dying, I was already dead.
Sorry, Wanda. It was the last thing I thought when I closed my heavy eyelids and sank into a darkness without end.
TO BE TRANSLATED…