Evolution

by Teri Terry

  People like me: I know that includes Xander and his Multiverse. There was that day so long ago now that I met Xander; we were in the same car when we raced to the airfield to escape SAR, just us and a driver. We talked during that long drive. I’d been suspicious of him—the way Kai felt about him, it was hard not to be—but I understand so much more now. So many of the things he said were right. We don’t belong with the rest of the world. They will never accept us.

  Hang on a sec, I just need to check something, JJ says. He’s back a moment later. Stay where you are. One of us will come and get you.

  CHAPTER 2

  CALLIE

  CEPTA IS IN MY MIND. Fully. I sit up in bed, too startled to protest or try to resist.

  She’s soothing, easing my fear, but with her own feelings and words, not by changing how I am inside like she used to. Then there is a rush of thought and feeling from her to me, too fast to make real sense. And then—and then she says goodbye. And she’s gone.

  I hesitate, wanting to wake Shay, to ask her what this might mean. I’m scared Cepta has done something to me again, even though I don’t truly think she has. At least, not in the way she has done before. But Shay was awake a day, a night, and another day. She only slumped asleep next to Iona a few hours ago. She’s exhausted; I can’t disturb her.

  Cepta said goodbye? And the way she said it—like it was a final, forever thing. Where could she be going?

  I don’t understand, but I feel…different. Somehow lighter, freer.

  I settle back down to go to sleep. Whatever has happened, it doesn’t feel like a bad thing. It can wait until the morning.

  CHAPTER 3

  SHAY

  A NARROW FLAME FLICKERS AND WAVERS, beckons me forward to climb into bed. Dread is heavy, but I step toward it. Rest is here. Rest, rest…

  There are filmy curtains all around—like a princess’s bed. I push them aside. A bed so soft and warm, how can it feel so chilling? I should run, I know it, but there is no strength, no way to resist. Rest, rest…

  I lower myself, lie down. The curtains close around me. The candle that called me is here; there are others too, casting thin pools of light in darkness. The curtains wave gently as I close my eyes. Rest, rest…

  But it’s all a lie, a trap. I can’t open my eyes, but I can still see: the candles catch the edges of the curtains, the bed linens. Flames march prettily up the fabric as it burns, curls.

  This soft bed is a pyre: a thing for the dead, not the living. But I still live, breathe.

  Just.

  The heat and pain is fierce, and I’m screaming.

  Then the screaming is real, but it’s not my voice—it’s not in my ears either—it’s in my mind. Fatigue is so heavy on me it’s like I’m trapped under a mountain, and I have to force myself to stir.

  I smell smoke.

  I struggle out of bed, to the front room. Iona is standing at the open front door, holding on to the doorframe as if she’ll fall if she lets go. Callie steps out of her room now too.

  Iona turns. “There’s a fire,” she says, her voice no more than a whisper. “I see the glow—the colors. And around the stars?” Awe ripples through her aura; she’s not sure what is real and what isn’t—what she sees with the new eyes of a survivor.

  But I can’t help her right now. “Wait here,” I say to Iona. With Callie at my heels, I run across Community. A house is on fire, well alight. Others are there already, forming a chain—with buckets of water—but it’s futile. All they can do is stop it from spreading to the trees and houses around it.

  It’s Cepta’s house.

  I’m reaching for her now and calling her name out loud—Xander is too—but there is nothing.

  No reply.

  Her pretty bed, like a princess’s?

  Her candles.

  Her pyre.

  CHAPTER 4

  KAI

  I WALK UP TO THE SENTRY POINT at Chester slowly, hands out where they can see them. They don’t notice me for a while—slackers. But when they do, it’s all guns and attention.

  “Stop! Stay where you are! Hands up!” one of them shouts.

  I stop, put my hands over my head, and wait while they work out what to do.

  Finally two of them come up to me in full biohazard suits.

  “State your name and why you are here,” one of them says.

  “I’m Kai Tanzer. I’m immune, so you don’t need the suits.” I start to lower my hand to show my tattoo, but the movement alarms them. Their guns are now raised, and I put my hand back up.

  “Don’t move! What is your business?”

  “I’m hoping that Dr. Sonja Tanzer—my mother—is still here? If not, I’d like to speak to Rohan.”

  “Rohan?” They exchange a glance.

  “I don’t know his full name. My mother introduced him as Rohan.”

  One of them talks into a radio, then I’m gestured forward.

  I’m marched, armed soldiers all around, into the walled city.

  CHAPTER 5

  FREJA

  WILF’S EYES ARE ROUND WHEN I TELL HIM that they’re coming to get us in a helicopter tomorrow. “We’re going up in it?”

  “Yes.” And I’m pleased he is showing excitement at the thought. He’s barely spoken these last few days.

  “Cool. Who’s coming? Is it your friend you told me about?”

  “No, JJ can’t fly the helicopter. The pilot is Xander—the head of Multiverse.”

  “Tell me again what that means.”

  “Well, from what I understand, they are a group of mostly scientists. Some of them are survivors. JJ says they’ve been working on how to stop the epidemic, and lots of other projects.”

  We leave the bike nearby, and walk the rest of the way to a cricket pitch. Merlin follows behind, still keeping his distance from me. JJ picked the pitch as the best place near us for the helicopter to land, and asked me to have a look now—to make sure it’s clear. We check for signs of life on the way.

  There is nothing; this village is dead. Like so many other places.

  One more day. Then we can leave it behind.

  CHAPTER 6

  CALLIE

  WE BURY CEPTA’S BODY—what is left of it—later that day. Xander insists on being the one who wraps her in a blanket and carries her to her grave. Shay watches as he does so, a questioning look in her eye. We stand by it now. Shovelfuls of dirt are cast into a dark hole until all sight of her is gone under the earth. Xander has her gold necklace wrapped tight around his hand.

  I feel sick about how she died. There has been so much death already—so many bodies for the pyres—but she was still alive. So many times I’ve dreamed Jenna’s death by fire, when she died the first time. The pain and fear are there in my memory, and I can hardly hold it back enough not to scream.

  “Why did this happen?” I say to Shay. “Was it an accident? She had candles, those curtains. The other night I saw them waving around and blew out her candle. If only I’d checked on her last night.”

  Shay’s arm tucks around mine. “This isn’t your fault, Callie. I promise.”

  “But was she just careless, or…?” I can’t put it into words. She said goodbye, like it was forever. And it was.

  Xander turns and joins our conversation now. “Cepta was never careless; everything that she did was thought out and deliberate.” And I agree this was the Cepta I knew, at least before the epidemic came here.

  “Do you mean she did it on purpose?” I can’t not ask, even though I’m scared of what he will say.

  “Cepta couldn’t live when so many of her people have died,” Xander says. “With so much going on, perhaps she didn’t get the support she needed from the rest of us.” He shakes his head. “I just can’t believe she’s gone.” And there is raw pain in his voice. “Why is she gone?” He almost sounds puzzled.

  “Sh
e said goodbye to me,” I say. “I didn’t know what she meant. I should have known! Maybe I could have stopped her.”

  Xander’s eyes are intent on me now. “When was this?” he asks me.

  “I don’t know. It was in the night. She was in my mind and said goodbye. Then I went back to sleep. When I woke up, her house was already on fire.”

  “You didn’t know; how could you?” Shay says, and gathers me closer to her.

  “We didn’t always get along, but—I can’t believe she’s…” My words are choked, and now my tears are falling.

  Cepta was meant to help me, and I don’t think she always did. Sometimes she could be mean. But she was always there.

  Not anymore.

  CHAPTER 7

  SHAY

  I TAKE CALLIE BACK TO OUR HOUSE. The things I have to say to Xander now need to be said alone.

  Iona is still on the sofa where we put her before Cepta’s burial. She’s so pale.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask her. “Any better?”

  “I don’t know. Shaky, weak. Can barely stand. My head is weird; everything looks wrong.” Her eyes are cast down as if she can’t bear to look around her. Can’t bear to look at me.

  “It’s the way things are with survivors, I promise. It’s normal. You’ll feel better soon.”

  “You call this normal? Huh.” Her eyes are starting to close again. Soon she’s asleep.

  I tuck Callie onto a chair with Chamberlain. “I’ll be back soon,” I say, and head out the door.

  We need to leave—Iona, me, Callie. I don’t care if I have to put Callie to sleep to get her over the edge of the world that she sees. But Iona—she’s too weak. We’ll have to wait for her to regain enough strength, to know how to use her mind and how to shield it. Otherwise she’ll broadcast to everyone when we go.

  But we’re still here now, and I can’t leave this alone: I have to know. What really happened to Cepta?

  I walk back toward Cepta’s grave: will Xander still be there? He’s not, but I find him nearby—staring at the remnants of her house.

  He’s calling her name, projecting silently over and over again. Cepta! Where are you? And there is such pain in his aura, his words, that despite everything, it tears into me and my hand is drawn to his arm, to comfort him, but then—I see it, and my hand falls back to my side. He is searching for her, but not as she was.

  He glances toward me, acknowledges my presence, but says nothing.

  “Others have died by fire—other survivors, I mean, like those who died at the RAF institute,” I say. “They didn’t become like Jenna. Did you think Cepta would?”

  “I wasn’t sure. But why would that happen only to Jenna?”

  “I don’t know. Lucky that she was the only one, or the epidemic might be across the planet by now.”

  “Yes, of course. But I don’t understand, and I don’t like not understanding anything.” He’s frowning. “Maybe it’s something about the contained fire being more intense, or the construction of the room itself.” He’s thinking out loud now; I can see that—speaking as if he’s forgotten I’m here. Dread grows inside me as the implications of what he is saying take hold.

  “Do you mean the room where Jenna died?”

  “It was like the quiet room we have here—the construction—one survivors can’t penetrate with their minds.”

  “Why would they have had a quiet room on Shetland? Jenna was the only survivor there then. How would they have known how to make it or what it could do?”

  “It was a chance discovery. The density and materials needed for the walls in a room that could contain an intense, closed fire turned out to be the same as a quiet room. It was on Shetland that I worked out that it blocked survivors’ minds.”

  “But you told me that Jenna didn’t die like that. That that was what she said, but you told me—you told all of us—that she was mentally unstable, that she made it up. That she died in the underground fires and explosions that followed the oil reservoir accident at Sullom Voe.”

  His eyes are on me, aware now of what I’ve said, what he’s let slip. Will he still try to deny it?

  “The disaster actually began at the particle accelerator,” he says. “Shutdown procedures weren’t put in place like they should have been when something went wrong. Probably because people were dead, or dying, from the epidemic—from Jenna. The underground explosions from the accelerator caused the oil reservoir fires.”

  I process that. “So the Sullom Voe accident was a cover story?”

  “The government knows what really happened now. They’re not saying.”

  “Anyway, that’s not the point: stop trying to deflect. You lied about how Jenna died.”

  “She was dangerous, Shay. Very. We had no choice. We didn’t know it would turn her into a contagion.”

  I turn my head, careful to keep my thoughts shielded, but there is nothing I can do to stop the horror I’m feeling from rippling through my aura.

  “You lied. You deliberately burned her in a fire—burned her alive. What she went through…” I shudder.

  “We’re not—I’m not—monsters. There was a colorless, odorless gas containing a knockout drug released in the room first. If what you say is true, it didn’t work. She must have processed the drug out of her system, a skill I didn’t know survivors possessed. Until you showed me it could be done.”

  I believe that when he says it, but how many other things have I believed until he later admits the lie?

  “Even if that is so: what gives you the right to decide who lives, who dies?”

  “She was a danger to herself and others. It was the right thing to do at the time.” And he completely believes what he says.

  “What about Cepta? Was she a danger to herself or others?”

  “Obviously. Since she killed herself. Such a senseless waste of a beautiful mind.” His aura ripples with sadness, and despite everything, there is still a part of me that wants to believe him. He always has such conviction, certainty, in all that he says and does. It would be so easy to follow him.

  Like Cepta did.

  I shield my thoughts carefully. Did something change between them? Did she question him about the death of her people, maybe even oppose him?

  Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe she did what he said to the end: to her end. Another one of his experiments.

  He lied about how Jenna died. Who can say what is the truth about Cepta’s death? That dream I had—was it a dream, or was I joined with her in my sleep?—there was no sign of Xander there, but in the dream I was scared, trapped. There’s no way it was a choice to be there. And then he deliberately handled her body himself, so I didn’t come into contact with her, couldn’t sense her last moments.

  Cepta could be cruel—to Callie, to others who weren’t members of her Community. Some of her views I found hard to accept. But she fought with everything she was in order to try to save her people. I’m sure she’d have given her own life if it could have saved them.

  And now, Xander wants everyone to believe she has given her life—but she hasn’t saved anyone.

  No. It can’t be. She wouldn’t waste her life like that in aid of Xander’s schemes. I’m sure of it in my core. It’s not who she was.

  I’m shielding carefully, watching Xander. Somehow I always want to believe him, to give him the benefit of any doubt, no matter how small. The reasons for this I can hardly understand myself. Is it because he’s my father that I think he should be more like me? Is it just this way he has—that he has with everyone—and the utter conviction of his own beliefs? Or maybe he has been subtle enough to adjust my aura, my mind, to influence my thoughts without me even knowing.

  No matter the reasons—enough. I’ll never believe anything he says, ever again.

  I shake my head. Push him out. Walk away.

  CHAPTER 8

  KA
I

  ONE OF MY ARMED ESCORTS TAPS ON A DOOR. It’s opened from within.

  They salute. “Major General, sir!” And Rohan looks up from a desk. Major general? I don’t know much about rank, but I get that a major general is right up there. Why would he even be here, at this little post in Chester?

  “Ah, Kai; there you are.” Rohan gestures at the guard. “You can go.”

  “Major General,” I say, and nod.

  “Have a seat,” he says, and I sit in a chair opposite his desk. “I must say, I’m surprised to see you again. You seemed quite keen to get away from us the last time we met.”

  “I wasn’t expecting soldiers—or you either, for that matter.”

  “No, I suppose not. Your mother didn’t know they were there either. She was furious with me.” A rueful smile. “Though they wouldn’t have moved in without my signal, which was precipitated by you making a run for it.”

  “Is my mother still here?”

  “No. She’s moved on to another center.” He doesn’t say where.

  “Am I under arrest or something?”

  He tilts his head to one side. “You should be, but I haven’t decided yet. Why are you here? Let’s talk about it. But first there are a few things I want to tell you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “First of all, I want to thank you. We’ve had confirmation in various ways that Dr. Alexander Cross is indeed still alive, and we’ve linked him conclusively with Shetland. We might not have done that if you hadn’t put us on his trail.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”