by Teri Terry
I follow him to the van, where the back door opens. And there are Elena, Beatriz, a few people I don’t know—and Chamberlain.
I’m pulled inside, wrapped in a blanket. Chamberlain is warm and dry already.
“A cat always finds the best place to be,” Beatriz says, and strokes him. “He found us, and that’s how we found you.”
“Why are you here?”
“We’re worried,” JJ says. “Shay isn’t answering hails. Freja is sounding weird. Xander was already known to be weird. So we’ve come to investigate.”
“Callie, do you know what’s happening?” Beatriz says.
“Yes, some of it at least. But it’s not easy to believe.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” JJ says. “Tell us anyway.”
So I do. First I go back in time and tell them that Jenna was the contagion who spread the epidemic so fast, that she’d been a survivor and was made that way in fire. That Xander wants there to be another contagion—I don’t say this is what Jenna thinks; I’m not sure they’re ready to hear about her, or what I could say about her even if they are. And that Shay went missing, that she was last seen going into the research center—and now it’s locked.
“She must be in the quiet room,” Beatriz says. “That’s why she can’t hear us, or answer.”
“So let’s put things together,” the other man says—Patrick, he’d said his name was. “Xander wants to make a new contagion from a survivor. Shay is locked up in a quiet room. He must be planning to use her. His own daughter?” He shakes his head.
“I don’t understand,” Elena says. “Why would he want to do this?”
“He’s like Freja,” I say. “He thinks you’re all better than everyone else.”
“He wants everyone to die—is that it?” Patrick says. “And then survivors will be all that are left.”
“And immune,” I say.
JJ is shaking his head. “I can’t believe Freja could be involved in this,” he says, but the others seem to be having less trouble with it.
“There’s other news,” Patrick says. “There’s a force heading this way. We’re not sure who they are or what they want. We’ve been monitoring them from a distance. But they seem to be making their way to the same place we’re going.”
“You mean to Community?” I say.
“Yes.”
CHAPTER 23
SHAY
TIME HAS STOPPED. It’s like when I was in the hospital room at the air force base, in solitary. There is nothing to mark it. I could have been here for hours or days; I can’t tell. There’s nothing to eat or to drink, and no bathroom. Being a survivor has its advantages. I reach inside, recycle my body’s water, find unused fat and muscle, and break them down for nutrients to keep up my strength in case I need it.
There have been noises, for what feels like hours: things being moved, banged, hammered maybe, all muted through these walls. The glass in the door is covered now. Something is being built around this room, and I’m afraid I know what it could be. This quiet room is being converted to a fire room.
Then finally there is a click: the sound system.
“Shay?” Xander’s voice is in my room.
I consider not answering him, but—no. I want to hear it from him—my father—in his own voice, his own words.
“Why am I a prisoner?”
“You planned to betray me.” His voice positively drips with sadness.
I say something rude, something with four letters—and then embellish it with a few more.
“It’s said to be a sign of intelligence: knowing when and how to swear.” He’s amused. “In any event, you’re so smart I expect you’ve got this all figured out.”
“Let’s see. An enclosed room. An intense fire. Another contagion to clear the world for survivors. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Yes. You shall be the shining beacon of your people.”
“You’re crazy. You’re not my people, and I don’t give a damn that you’re my father—it doesn’t make any difference. You’ve completely lost it.”
This time he laughs out loud. “Is it crazy to want to save the world? Is it crazy to want to cure the infection that is humanity across the surface of our planet, and stop the destruction and pollution supposedly rational people are inflicting on it daily? Is it crazy to want to end war and suffering and starvation?”
“No, but it all depends how you want to fix these things.”
“The only way. We’ll clear the world, select who to save—we know how now, thanks to you and Iona. We’ll start with a selected few in Multiverse.”
And it’s like it was with Freja before. I don’t need to see his aura to know: he believes this. Fervently. That it is the only way.
Who’s to say he isn’t right about part of it—that the infection of humanity, as he calls it, won’t self-destruct, ruin the planet, destroy each other? Even without his ability to manipulate me mentally because of this room, his ability to make things seem reasonable is astonishing.
But he isn’t reasonable. He isn’t making any sort of sense: kill billions of people and save just a few? How can he even begin to justify that?
And despite the absolute misery I’ve been in—I don’t want to die. Every breath I take is precious, and it is mine. The more we talk, the longer I may live.
“Was that what you were doing from the beginning, at Shetland? Trying to make more people like yourself—more survivors?”
“Of course. Though I didn’t have any idea how fast this epidemic would spread, with Jenna’s help. And it soon will again—with yours. We’re finally directing evolution, not just experiencing it.”
“No. I’ll stop my own heart from beating before the fire. If I’m already dead, it won’t work.”
“I don’t believe you.” His voice is sure. “Until the very last second of your life, you’ll fight to hold on to it. But just in case you are tempted to do so, to save yourself the pain: if you fail to become what we want, the next try will be with Iona. After that, Beatriz. After that, Elena.”
So maybe he does understand me better than I think. And I’m starting to understand more about him too.
“Did you deliberately bring the epidemic to Community? Did you arrange for infected people to come and spread it?”
“A sad necessity—to find a cure, you needed people who were sick.”
“And it didn’t work at first. So then you brought more of them back from the farm and made sure they were exposed and got sick. Didn’t you?”
“You needed more patients to work things out. Iona too. You’ve shown us the way, at last. But enough of your questions, Shay. There is something I want to ask you.”
“Oh? What is that?”
“I’m still curious about the connection Callie seems to have with Jenna, about how it works. Has she said any more about it?”
This I wasn’t expecting.
“No. Why do you want to know that now?”
“You know me better than that.”
“I know you can’t stand not understanding something.”
“Exactly.”
“Why ask me? Ask Callie. She’ll explain it better than I can.”
There’s a pause, and my mind leaps: he’s asking me instead of her. Does that mean…she isn’t there?
“Oh, well done, Callie. Has she worked out how to leave, is that it? If you can’t find her, you can’t ask her.” And now I’m the one who is laughing. “I never told her about you, Xander, so if she left, then Callie must have figured you out all by herself—or maybe Jenna filled her in? Callie must have thought it was a good time to get the hell out of here.”
There’s a click: microphone off.
CHAPTER 24
KAI
AFTER THE FLIGHT AND A DRIVE comes the walk. It’s raining, but I don’t care—what I hate is
that Kirkland-Smith is leading the way. What if he’s taking us on a wild goose chase while some of his friends do his dirty work? Rohan knows my fears, but he says he has scouts all over the area and beyond: that he’s sure we’re going where we want to be.
We stop, set up a camp of sorts in the dark and wet. We’re within a few miles of our target, he says. Tomorrow morning, we move in.
I’m settling down to sleep when something brushes against my mind. Automatically I push it out.
I rush to Rohan’s tent in the rain and get let in. “Someone knows we are here,” I start to say to Rohan, but then my words trail away. His eyes have gone…weird.
“Kai? This is Beatriz,” he says, and it’s his voice but eerily doesn’t sound like him. “Please let me talk to you.”
“Not in my mind. Can we meet? Are you nearby?”
There’s a pause.
“Yes. Walk left down the road by yourself. I’ll make sure no one follows you.”
“Yes, fine. Let him go.”
Rohan shakes his head, a confused look on his face, and then he…falls asleep.
I slip back outside into the rain. I walk to the road and turn left, while part of me wonders if I’m walking into a trap—if I should have told somebody before I left.
But I’m guessing if I tried, they’d just take an unexpected nap too.
And Beatriz, that little girl—she was Shay’s friend. I know she was.
I keep walking. Just as I’m wondering how much farther it might be, someone rushes out of the darkness toward me, someone with long dark hair…blue eyes…
I blink and blink again in the dim light and can’t believe—I can’t—it can’t be…
She’s taller than I remember—can it really be?
“Kai!”
Callie rushes into my arms, and I hold her close. I’m choking with tears, touching her hair, looking in her eyes, then holding her close again. “Callie? It’s really you?”
“Yes. It really is.”
“Kai?” Another voice calls out: it’s JJ. “Come on. Let’s get out of the rain and have a chat.”
A few minutes later, JJ’s group and I drive up the road, then walk together to the sentry. I go first to tell the sentry to take the group to Rohan.
We’ll join them soon, but Callie and I have something else we need to do first.
“Mum? It’s me, Kai.” I peer into her darkened tent, flashlight in hand.
She sits up, half-asleep, rubs her eyes. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes, but something is also very right. Can we come in?”
“We? Who is it? Wait, let me get dressed,” she starts to say, but Callie has had enough of waiting and pushes past me, rushes to kneel next to Mum.
Mum raises a hand to her cheek, looks at me, shakes her head. “I’m still asleep. Is that it? I’m dreaming?”
“No. You’re awake. I promise,” I say.
“Callie?” she says. And then there are tears on her face and her arms are around Callie, and she’s saying things in German and then remembering Callie’s German isn’t so good and going back to English.
I step away, leave them to have this moment alone. Now there are tears in my eyes again too.
A few minutes later, I go back, and clear my throat. “Sorry, but there are things happening tonight that can’t wait. We’re wanted.”
Soon we are all in Rohan’s command tent: me, Rohan, Callie—Mum wrapped tightly around her like she’ll never let go—and JJ, Beatriz, Elena, Patrick, Zohra. Apart from Rohan and my family, survivors all.
Patrick begins. “We’ve talked everything through and have decided we have to tell you the truth about what may happen. We have to work together to stop it.” And he lays it all out: how the epidemic can be spread rapidly by a contagion; that Xander—Alex Cross—knows how to create one from a survivor, and they’re afraid he plans to do so imminently with Shay. And when he explains how this could be done, the fear and pain for Shay that hit me almost make me stop breathing.
“We have to go there—now,” I say.
“That isn’t the obvious answer: we could be too late,” Rohan says, and he hesitates, doesn’t fill in the blank: that they could aim whatever weapons they have on this one place to stop this, and end Shay’s life at the same time.
“These are innocent lives: Shay, Freja, Iona, others,” Patrick says. “We need to stop Xander, yes. But are we any better than him if we disregard them in pursuit of our goals?”
“I’m not sure about Freja being innocent, though,” Callie says. “It looked like she was involved in trapping Shay.”
I stare at her, shocked. “But why would she do that?”
“I can’t believe that of Freja,” JJ mutters. “I can’t.”
“We have the better position if they don’t know we’re here,” Patrick says to Rohan. “But they’re survivors. As soon as they notice something is up, they can see where you are. We can try to block them, but there are too many of you to be sure it would work.”
“Even assuming we manage to get close before they notice we’re there, how do we know we will be in time?” Rohan says. “That he won’t act before we can stop him, even if he doesn’t see us coming?”
“We need someone on the inside,” Callie says.
“Who is there that we can trust?” Beatriz asks.
“Well, there’s Iona—but last I saw, she was unconscious. And maybe Wilf.”
CHAPTER 25
FREJA
JJ HAILS ME AGAIN, and I consider not answering. But he persists, annoying like a skeeter buzzing in my ear.
What? I finally snap.
Nice—when here I am, missing you. How are you, Freja?
Annoyed, I wonder why he’s asking me the same thing he asked me the last time, almost like he’s checking up on me.
Or checking up on what is going on here?
Then I realize what I should have the last time we spoke. He’s not using others for projection: it is JJ, and only JJ. I don’t answer him further. I push him out of my mind, then block him completely.
That he could hail me without help with projection from others means he’s close by—how close, I’m not sure. I cast out with my mind to see if I can locate him, and for a moment, there is a brief sense of something—not just one survivor, a whole group of them?—which then vanishes. As if JJ is blocking me back now.
And that’s not all. There are spots of consciousness beyond JJ—dim and hard to detect, but they’re there. A large number of people, none of them survivors.
They’re not too far away if I can sense them like this. I could try to locate them more precisely with animals, birds, insects in the surrounding woods, reaching to them and using their eyes, but I’m scared—too scared to handle this on my own.
Where is Xander?
I reach out and find him underground in the research center.
He doesn’t answer me. I run to warn him.
CHAPTER 26
CALLIE
BEATRIZ ASKS IF SHE CAN PEER INTO MY MIND to understand the layout of Community, and then she will try to contact Wilf and Iona. She touches my mind lightly. It seems weird that this girl so much younger than me can do this thing that I can never learn.
I visualize Community, the whole layout, with emphasis on the location of the research center. Vaguely I sense she is projecting this to everyone else and that most of them are leaving, rushing to go there now. Then she asks me to show her the house we lived in.
Still in contact with my mind, she reaches out for Iona.
Iona? Iona! Beatriz has found her; she calls her name again and again. There’s a sense of someone being startled awake, then slipping back to unconsciousness.
She’s not well at all, Beatriz says, an aside to me.
Iona is starting to wake up a bit more; still Beatriz calls her name.
Go away, Iona says, finally answering.
I’m Beatriz, a friend of Shay’s. Let me help you.
No. Don’t want help. Don’t want to be like this.
Stop thinking only of yourself! Shay is being held prisoner. If you don’t help us, she may die. Callie is here too. Tell her what’s happened, Beatriz says to me. And so in a rush, I explain it all—everything—with Beatriz channeling my words to Iona. Bit by bit Iona is becoming more aware, and by turns frightened and angry.
Can I really help? How? I can’t even sit up.
You can, but first we have to help you. Please. Let us in.
There’s silence a moment. Oh, what the hell. Go on, then. Do what you have to do.
Beatriz lets my mind go now. A few minutes later, she opens her eyes. “We’ve joined together to heal Iona, but she’ll still be weak for a while. Maybe too weak to help.”
“How about Wilf?”
“Isn’t he Freja’s friend?”
“Yes, but he’s Kai’s friend too. He wasn’t happy with how Freja was handling things. If we tell him more, I think he’ll help us.”
There’s silence for a moment: they must be talking about it.
“Yes, we’ll try Wilf,” Beatriz says, and joins with me again. It seems funny she’s the one doing this.
What, because I’m eight years old? she says. I’m better at this than the rest of them.
I describe Wilf, and she reaches out, casts around. I tell her where his house is, but he’s not there. I picture Merlin, his cat, and she finds him curled up in the grass under a tree. Try up in the tree, I suggest.
Finally, she finds Wilf: high up in the branches, overlooking the research center and library.
Wilf? Hi. My name is Beatriz. You don’t know me, but Callie is a friend—she’s here too.
Callie? Are you there? Everybody has been looking for you. Have you left the land of the weird?
Yes. For good reason: I needed to get help. Listen to what has been going on. We tell him everything: Shay a prisoner; Freja and Xander behind it; what we are afraid they plan to do.
