Last Mayor (Book 9): The Light

by Grist, Michael John

  Cerulean.

  It hurt worst to remember his face, as she dropped the silver necklace back into his lap. "I'm not your daughter," she'd said. "It's time to grow up, Robert, and stop pretending."

  There was no running away from that. She'd done that, and now every jump threw it back to her, and she was tired. Beyond everything else; the years of bullying Ravi, the years of disappointing Amo and Lara, that hurt more than anything. After that, he'd died, and there'd been no chance to apologize, no way to thank him for all that he'd done.

  The pain of it worsened with every jump. She found relief only in the water, in taking another little sip that -

  …….

  She realized distantly that she was dying.

  Bubbles popped of consciousness, so urgent, sinking into darkness fast. Was it better? Was it weaker?

  One bunker murdered, eleven saved; it was a legacy of sorts.

  …….

  It was a legacy of cold.

  Amo.

  She thought again of Amo there at the end, floating into darkness. She thought of his eyes, like Cerulean's eyes, filled with all flavors of disappointment, of love, of madness, and understood that perhaps it wasn't fear of him that hurt her so much now, but the terrible weight of responsibility.

  He was too far gone to save himself. He needed help.

  He needed her.

  But who was she to help him?

  ……..

  Her arms jerked in the dark water. Death throes, they called this. Better this way. What had she ever done but destroy? Eleven bunkers saved was good, but Ravi, the baby, Peters, so many things were gone forever. She had pledged herself to so much destruction.

  But those eyes remained, Amo's eyes mingling with Cerulean's eyes. What did she owe any of them, really? She'd never asked to be born into their world. She'd never known the world before the ocean came, she cared nothing for its people or its customs, for its mistakes or its stupid, crumbling morality.

  But still, in the darkness as she shuddered away, she couldn't look away from those eyes, couldn't ignore the questions they insisted on asking. They were everything now, becoming one great, bright eye rimmed with golden light. Amo's eye, and Ravi's eye, and Cerulean's eye, and Lara's eyes, and her father's white eyes, and so much regret.

  So much regret.

  Somewhere far off a giant stood atop his island and roared.

  "Anna," he cried, though she didn't know whose name that was, or why they were calling it so desperately. "Anna!"

  The last convulsions passed. She closed her eyes and felt peace. Wasn't it good to be going home? Soon she would be back in bed and her father would be there to tuck her in, and the Hatter would be there with them nosing her wetly, and her mother would be there too, somewhere in the distance as a loving memory, and all she wanted was that.

  "Anna!!"

  The world and the eye and the coming of enemy angels were nothing to her. She felt their hot fall across the surface of the Earth even now, crisscrossing her stitched pattern of leper-shield cairns, bound for Istanbul and another end, but what was that to her?

  How was that her responsibility anymore?

  "Anna!"

  Then Ravi was there at her side, maybe for the last time, using himself up. His sandy brown hair drifted around his face like seaweed in the darkness. He didn't need to say anything. She saw the truth in his eyes, which were the same eye, like the universe had blinked and was looking all the way down into her soul.

  He saw her as the little girl. He saw her as the woman. He saw that she was tired, and broken, and going mad, and he asked for more. He asked for the warrior who would break down the doors of hell and turn back the hands of time.

  It made her crack inside. He'd always seen the best things about her and raised them up. His loving gaze had helped build the woman she had now become. He wasn't poisonous or cruel, not snarled up inside with ambition or the need for respect, but good and loving. He'd always loved her, and he needed her help still.

  There was work yet to do, and how could she turn her gaze from that?

  The jump came in her death throes. She flung a hand up, caught hold of a passing wave on the line and let it wrench her away. Thousands of miles she flew at once, the furthest, the hardest, halfway round the world to land with a wet thump and a final pulse in the midst of the escape convoy fleeing Istanbul, on the floor behind Lucas and Sulman as they worked feverishly on their cure.

  15. JAKE

  Lucas was standing above her when she roused. She moved at once to stand, in a dim van somewhere rattling along a ruined old road, but he pressed a hand firmly against her chest.

  "Wait," he said, "you're far from ready to-"

  She pushed against him, and he pushed back.

  "Anna, please, wait just a moment!"

  The line resolved under her touch and she readied to send a pulse charging into his body, rearranging his particles, but at the last moment he gathered himself and spat out the news he'd been willing himself to give.

  "Jake died."

  That felled her.

  She sagged back on the gurney. The throbbing in her head came back.

  Jake?

  "Don't try to speak," he went on, quietly but urgent, "you'll just do more damage. I don't know what happened to you, but you've fried your lungs and throat. You did it, Anna. We're getting messages in from all ten of the other bunkers, so you must have gone to them all. I don't know how, or what cost that levied, but I can't let you get up and keep jumping like this. You're right on the edge, Anna. We ran a scan and the patterns in your head, your spine, to be honest every cell of your body, they're on levels I didn't think were possible. Your brain is literally pulling itself apart."

  He stepped back and took a breath, as if surprised he'd been able to give such a speech. He looked in her eyes, and maybe saw some of the pain.

  "I don't know how you're even breathing," he added, more gently now. "It beggars belief."

  She stared at him.

  Belief?

  She reached inward, and yes, she could feel the damage in her lungs now. In her throat, layered in ways of knowing she hadn't had before. It wasn't only the pain that was new, but also a kind of deep knowledge; of her own anatomy, of her malfunctioning cells, of her cracked vibration on the line. She remembered nearly drowning in the sea off Apia, and through the fog of the headache she also remembered why.

  It brought on a bad hangover freighted with secret shame. She'd tried to die.

  But Jake?

  It was an easy thing now to reach inside and repair her throat. There were pieces out of place, cells that were damaged, and she rallied the T4 to fix them. It knew the way. It was her servant and responded at once. Flesh knitted, cells repaired, drawing on deep wells of the line to fuel the transformation.

  She opened her mouth, and to Lucas' astonishment, spoke.

  "Tell me about Jake."

  For a long moment he stared. He spluttered. He looked around the rumbling space; one of the medical vehicles on the move, loaded with smudged medical equipment, a microscope, a rickety centrifuge, racks of blood in a fridge, but found no answers there. Eventually he settled on her.

  "How did you do that? Your throat was burnt, Anna. Your vocal cords were gone!"

  She felt deeper inside herself, studying the shape of her mind, the deep fatigue in her muscles, and sent the T4 to do its work there too. In seconds she was feeling better. Perhaps if she'd known about this before, she could have helped more. She could have healed Peters, and herself. She could have healed Jake.

  Her eyes snapped back to Lucas.

  "Jake," she said, then jumped -

  In a freezer car rumbling along at the back of the convoy, she stood before his body. He lay on a metal morgue tray, coated in places with the thin layer of crisping yellowy skin they'd tried to graft onto him, covered in other places with the same damp white bandaging that Joran Helkegarde had used. Peeking through these sad, ineffective coverings lay the red of raw muscle, li
ke meat laid out on a butcher's block.

  Looking at him like this felt like seeing a whole life laid out. He'd been the first person she'd spoken to on the road to New LA. He'd been so young then, though she'd always thought he was so old. Only a few years older than she was now, but still so far away from finding a person to love him back.

  The cold wagon stopped moving abruptly, and Anna heard the shouts, slammed doors and slapping footfalls as Lucas came running. She touched Jake's cheek, and a tear splashed off her thumb. She closed her eyes and listened to the line.

  The T4 was in him, too. It was corrupted beyond belief, twisted by the Lyell's DNA and consuming itself. It was dead, just as Jake was dead, but perhaps…

  She lifted her gaze on the line, up to the fog where she'd seen Ravi, where she'd glimpsed shades of all those others pulling at her as she jumped from place to place, their memories and dreams snagging into her mind like soft fishhooks, burrowing deep and leaving her changed.

  Jake was with them. The trails were faint but clear in the air, like the spreading wake of a catamaran. As she saw those trails, she realized she could reach up and pull him back, just like they'd hooked onto her. At the same time she pulsed energy into his corpse, jolting the T4 to life and directing it to clean itself.

  So his fake skin crinkled away, shed like old bark, and a fresh layer of smooth, youthful skin grew up from raw muscle, clothing his naked thighs and chest, covering his beautiful, kind face and springing fresh black hair up from his scalp. His eyelids came back, and his hands gloved themselves in pale, baby-like pink skin, and soon he looked as if he was only sleeping, and she caught his trail with the other hand, high above, and gave a preliminary tug-

  "Stop, Anna!"

  The doors of the morgue van clattered, letting in steamy Mediterranean air, and Lucas lurched in and over to stand across Jake's body from her. When he saw what she'd done already he turned white and sagged, only just catching himself on the railing.

  "What have you done? What do you think you're doing?"

  She didn't have to listen to him. She had Jake's thread in her hand, seconds away from returning, but perhaps Lucas had a right to know before it was done.

  "I'm saving him," she said. "I'm doing what you should have done."

  "Stop doing it!" he shouted, so loud in the echoing metal box that it hurt. "Anna, whatever you're thinking, you can't. He died, Anna. He died last night, in my arms, and I won't let you bring him back. I loved him more than you, more than any of you, and I can't let you do that to him."

  Anna let her eyes drop from the line to rest on him. He seemed so very small; a fragile, temporary creature, wracked with emotions. She looked through him and saw the Lyell's eating into his cells also. There was a patch of skin on his back slipping loose already, and one on his forearm. This was simple, and natural. She reached out through the line and smoothed the pieces back into position. She rewrote his T4 with a thought, and set it to healing rather than tearing itself apart.

  His eyes widened at the changes inside. A red blotch on his cheek faded into ruddy health. He gasped, then pulled back his sleeve and studied his forearm, where he ripped away a bandage to reveal clean, firm skin underneath.

  "I don't understand," he said, reeling now, looking from his arm to Anna to Jake on the gurney table, fully clothed in skin. His corpse seemed so alive, like at any moment it might open its eyes and breathe. Anna could see just how to do it. She could feel the ragged edges where his thread had been cut, could sense exactly the way to suture the pieces back together again. It would be easy.

  "I can do it for him," she said, calm enough to calm Lucas too, steady enough to bring steadiness to the people clustered outside their carriage, peering in fearfully. She felt them all, so broken, the Lyell's in some of them, cancerous mutations spreading through the rest after days under the empty line of Istanbul.

  It was only days ago that she'd flashed through this place, setting up their shield, but it felt like a lifetime. She'd learned so much in her final jump. Everything was different now.

  "I can save him," she said, laying her hand on Jake's chest. Such soft, perfect skin. He had always been so gentle, and kind. She'd thought of him as her big brother. "Let me do this."

  Tears welled into Lucas' eyes. She could see the grief and the rage there. He'd blamed her for this, she knew that, and understood it perfectly. She hadn't been there when she should have been. She hadn't saved Jake, hadn't prevented their suffering, and who else was there for Lucas to blame? He was powerless and she'd always had the power. Maybe, if she'd tried harder or been better, she could have saved him, and saved them all.

  Now she could. Now she was here.

  Lucas put his hand atop hers.

  "Please," he said. "Anna. Don't do this. Jake is gone. I don't know how you're doing these things, but stop. It isn't right."

  Anna didn't understand that. She held Jake in her left hand like a drifting balloon. She could feel him; his happiness, his simplicity, his joy and sadness at being near again to Lucas. It would be the work of seconds only.

  "Why not? You always wanted me to do more. I'm doing more."

  Tears spilled down his cheeks. "Not like this. He's gone. Let him rest."

  She frowned. He took her hand in both of his own and lifted it to his own chest.

  "Believe me, Anna. Please. I never had faith before, until I met a man in Maine bunker who taught me what faith was. For years I was fighting for the cure because I thought I could bring him back, but I was wrong. I've seen what happens to signals on the line after they die. They change, Anna. They shift, they mix, they become something new; so there is no 'Jake' left up there anymore, not our Jake. To bring some piece of him back here would be wrong, only a fragment, leaving him torn between impossible realities. I couldn't stand to hurt him again, not like that. He needs to rest, now. Let him rest."

  He couldn't stop her. They both knew that. But perhaps he was right. The feel of Jake in her hand was different. He was saying goodbye, perhaps. He was keen to drift on. But then, if she couldn't save him, then she'd have to face the horrible truth that -

  She dropped onto her knees, panting wildly. The sobs began, and now that they'd started nothing she could do on the line would stop them. Jake was really dead, and she couldn't turn it back. She felt his shade drifting from her grasp, back up into the mulch of the line, waving with a puckish smile.

  "What's happening … to me?" she said in halting gasps, while Lucas hunkered beside her, his arm wrapped around her shoulders, tears pouring down his cheeks too. "I can't," she gasped through the sobs, "I want to, but why can't I-"

  He pulled her head against his shoulder and held her tightly while the sobs wracked her. Jake was really dead. She hadn't saved him. She couldn't save him now.

  "Shh, it's OK," Lucas said, stroking her hair like her father once had, as if for just this moment she was only a scared and lonely girl rather than a surging goddess.

  16. MOSQUE

  Afterward, they talked.

  The convoy got moving again. Absently, sitting in the back of the corpse wagon with Jake's perfect body glowing nearby, she repaired the slight imperfections in the leper-shield she'd erected only days ago. Now it spread further, and worked cleaner. The people under its umbrella began to heal; from the Lyell's infecting so many of them, from the mutations wrought by Istanbul's broken shield, from the long days beneath the absence of the line.

  Everything opened itself to her easily, now. She could read the world in the movements around her. She could feel the angels jumping toward her like footprints on the sand, appearing and resolving, washed away by tides, landing and jumping again.

  They were coming for her, these agents of Joran Helkegarde's shadow SEAL. So many things were clear. There was going to be a battle, and she had to be prepared.

  "He didn't say anything, at the end," Lucas said. He sat on a stool near the wagon's open back, while the convoy rumbled in a circuit round the dusty Istanbul suburbs. Anna saw familiar
mosque domes pass by outside and thought of Ravi, how they'd raced boats in the pools here not so long ago.

  Now Ravi was dead, and Jake was dead. That bonded her and Lucas, if nothing else.

  "I woke him from the artificial coma," Lucas went on, "it was the only hope, with his heart entering arrest. I thought maybe there was something I could do, something I could say. I gave him the cure I'd been working on." He spread his hands. "For a moment, I thought maybe…" He trailed off. "Maybe he tried to tell me something. His hand shifted. He mouthed something. But I don't know what he wanted to say."

  He dropped his head into his hands. There were no tears now, only the heaviness of the grief. This was Lucas' life, now; Anna could feel it settling like a thick fall of snow. They'd had such plans. Together they were going to build a home in Sacramento, and have white picket fences, and adopt some of Drake's children, and finally live.

  There'd been so little time for living, Anna reflected. Her life had been such a rush, for so long, filled with revenge, love and revelation. Ravi had been there throughout, and she'd taken him for granted. Of course Ravi had been there. He'd always been there, and she'd always wanted other things.

  Now she wanted him. She could feel the pieces of him on the line far above, floating amongst the stellar matter, made of starlight and cosmic dust. That was beautiful. He'd left a hole in her now, and she missed him.

  She reached across the gap and took Lucas' hand. He gave it to her. They sat like that for a long time, in a kind of peace.

  "We have to bury him," he said at last. "I was waiting. I don't know what for."

  "Let's bury him," Anna said. There was time enough for that. Soon the angels would land, and Anna would have to kill again. She could feel the outlines of her future stretching ahead. Many people were going to die at her hands.

  They halted on the outskirts of the city, in the parking lot of a cozy mosque with green columns and a cupola that still glinted with tattered gold leaf. In back there was a wall, beyond which lay a small crypt and a patch of open ground studded with old, weed-choked graves.