Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1)

by Marrow, A. D.

  “Besides, why are you pressing me for details? I should be asking you what could have possibly happened between you and Kalin last night that would have caused her to not only to come with you this morning but bring you coffee and kiss your cheek. You wanna fill me in on that one, sir?” She rose up from the fridge and pulled out a tube of blood that Judah had willingly donated. She placed it in the centrifuge and pushed the button, sending it spinning with a steady whir. “Why is it you have bags under your eyes and a smile on your face when just two weeks ago you were drunk in my living room, talking about wanting to die? Bet you didn’t think I heard that, did you? How is it your ear is perfectly healed, hmm?”

  Nick’s face flushed. “A gentleman does not kiss and tell.”

  Had Sarah been able to read his mind, she would have known about Kalin’s misguided suicide attempt and Nick’s subsequent rescue. She would have also known that she’d tended to his ear and healed it. She would have known the two of them had yet to get any sleep for staying up and talking. Kalin knew about the virus he had and all about his life, the nature of his friendship with Sarah, and his love of all things historical. By the time Nick had to leave to meet Sarah at the lab, he knew all about Kalin, her upbringing, the man she almost married, and that she loved the Discovery Channel and red wine. In the course of just a few hours, they had fallen in love with each other.

  Sarah also would have known that Nick knew all about her and Taris. Everybody knew. With the excessive amount of racket and wall banging that had taken place the night before, it would have been impossible for the greater metropolis not to have known. They’d been the talk of the kitchen table that morning. After Nick was formally introduced to everyone, the gossip about the night’s events had commenced. Rather than fill her in on the sewing circle, Nick looked back down into the microscope and jotted down a few notes.

  Sarah continued to gather all of the instruments together that were needed to do the slide testing. In their original lab, they had live organs that had been harvested from organ donors to test on, but since it wasn’t organ failure that was the problem, they had to go back to the drawing board. After much debate and a few trials to make sure the transportation process did not damage the compound, they decided blood testing was going to be the best course of action.

  “I’ve been looking at their blood, and it’s amazing,” Nick said. “The erythrocytes are twice the normal size.”

  “Let me see.” He slid over as Sarah approached the scope. She absently pulled the black band from around her wrist and pulled her hair back before leaning down to look in. The red blood cells on the slide were huge, and despite the fact that they were not being moved by an active circulatory system, they continued to slip and slide past one another as if they did so of their own volition. “This is amazing,” she whispered as she heard the timer go off on the centrifuge. “Let’s see what the readout says.”

  Sarah pulled the printout from the centrifuge and stared, wide-eyed. “Nick. Look at this.”

  She handed him the paper, and after glancing over it, he had to sit down. “This can’t be real. There has to be an error,” he said, still looking at the paper as if the information on it would change. “Run it again.”

  “There’s no error, Nick.” Sarah took the sheet from him and read it again. “I’ll run a few more of them to see if it was a readout fluke, though.” She ran to the fridge and pulled out the rack of blood-filled tubes. Each tube had a label with the patient’s name on it. One by one, she prepared them, placed them in the centrifuge and waited for them to spin out and separate. As the results came out, she labeled each one according to who gave the sample. Once they were all spun out and analyzed, she and Nick sat down and spread the results out on the large table.

  “Incredible. Absolutely incredible,” she mumbled as she read over the results. “They have three amino acid chains in the hemoglobin instead of two, their white blood cells comprise almost 5 percent of their blood instead of the typical one percent, and their platelet count is through the roof. In every single test, it’s the same. Incredible.”

  The composition explained almost everything. The amped-up immune system, the need for their blood cells to consume other cells, their ability to fight off illness and disease, it all made sense. Granted, there was still so much about them she didn’t know, and no matter how much time she and Nick spent in the lab, they probably would never know everything. What they did know, however, was that they were dealing with something that could have only been created divinely. She’d marveled at the intricacies of the human body in medical school and stood in awe of the wonder that was man. Now she stood face-to-face with something even more astounding.

  “Fill two syringes with the serum. Get a needle, a tourniquet, and some sample tubes,” Sarah said. “We need to start testing.”

  * * *

  Achan sat cross-legged on the floor, his back leaning against the jamb of the door that led down into Rhiannon’s studio. His foot twitched with nervous anticipation. His fingers drummed against his thighs. Every few moments, he would glance over his shoulder, hoping for some sign of movement.

  “This is worse than Christmas,” he muttered, gently banging his head against the wood behind him.

  For hours, the entire household had been camped out in the hallway outside of the door. Rhiannon suggested, on more than one occasion, that they all find something else to occupy their time, and for a few brief moments, they would do so. But one by one, they slowly filtered their way back to the door, waiting and praying. A cruel tease came every time they heard the whirring of a machine or the tinkle of test-tubes. Eventually, music began to flood from the room, and their momentary glimpse into the scientific world that lay just beyond the threshold was blinded.

  “This is taking forever,” Achan moaned. “Why is it taking so long?”

  “They have a big job ahead of them,” Kalin said from beside him, taking his hand in hers and gently stroking his arm. “It will probably be a while before we know anything. We just have to have some faith.”

  “Faith he has,” Judah chimed in. “It’s patience he holds in short supply.”

  “Yeah, well, not everyone is the rock of fucking Gibraltar, pal,” he shot back.

  Rhiannon lifted a finger to her lips and shushed them both. “Either of you idiots notice the music stopped?”

  Silence fell over all of them, and they listened intently as there was a rush of tinkling test-tubes and a sudden burst of laughter coming from behind the door. Taris stepped over Judah’s outstretched legs and pressed an ear to the panel.

  “Hear anything?” Zillah asked.

  Taris shook his head. “Just mumbling.”

  “Hmm.” Achan leaned over just enough to riffle around in his pocket. He pulled out a quarter and tossed it to Kalin.

  “What is this for?” she whispered loudly.

  “To flip and see who is going to rib him about doing the walk of shame this morning,” he smiled.

  “No need,” Judah smiled at Taris, who was still pressing an ear to the door. “I took the liberty of playing twenty questions with him earlier.” Judah put a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t want details, really, but I did want to know why I have to repair sheetrock in the other room.”

  “I think a wee bit of sex did you good,” Rhiannon said. “She put a fire back in you, boy.”

  “Would you can it, please?” Taris barked, but in spite of himself, he bit back a smile. “What happened with me and Sarah is none of your business.”

  “We know you, brother,” Achan snorted. “Deny it all you want to. She’s got you in the grip.” Achan lifted a hand, palm up, curling his fingers and squeezing the air.

  “We’ve had our fun,” Judah said. “Now can we all shut the hell up and get back to eavesdropping?” He glanced at Taris. “You catching anything yet?”

  “Can’t really hear much of anything except some shuffling and th—”

  The door flew open, and Taris let out a quick yell as he
sprawled out onto the cold tile just inside the doorway. He was staring at large feet covered in sterile blue booties. Flipping over onto his back, he looked up at Nick, who was trying his hardest not to laugh.

  “I was going to invite you all in to see the progress we’ve made, but since you’re all being pushy…”

  “Shut up, Nick.” Sarah came up behind him, the smile on her face stretching from ear to ear. “Hurry up and get in here, all of you. You have to see this!”

  Huddled around a small projector screen, Sarah began to explain and dissect every nuance of their process. From the stabilizing of the compound serum to the test-tube trials, she spoke so fast and with so much enthusiasm that she had to slow down and repeat herself a few times. Nick was no help whatsoever. He was content to let her take the reins on this one, since Kalin was in the room. Every so often, he would catch her glancing up at him with puppy-dog eyes. It was cute, and at any other moment in history, she would’ve leapt for joy over his happiness, but right now she was more focused on what they’d found.

  “Your blood is so fascinating, I could literally study it forever,” she said to the collective group. “But the most interesting thing is the reaction it had when we introduced human blood.”

  She walked over to the microscope connected to the projector and placed a slide on the platform. It was deep burgundy, but the individual elements were clear and discernible. The large, round cells danced around on the screen in front of the room. They watched, mesmerized as the cells twisted and turned around one another, coexisting in a strange symbiosis. Sarah suppressed a confident snicker as she dipped a long dropper into a tube of bright red blood.

  “This is what happens when we introduce the untreated human blood into your blood’s natural environment.”

  A drop of the human blood was placed on the slide, and instantly the two species began to swirl rapidly. They slipped and slid around one another, as if sizing up competition before the larger cells engulfed the smaller cells. Within moments, the larger cells began to shake violently, and, one by one, they began to burst apart.

  Sarah stood in front of the projector with a look of pure anticipation. “See, the larger, more dominant cells are preprogrammed, you might say, to eat the smaller cells. When they do, like you guys have said, the advanced immune system of the human being rejects it and sees it as a cancer or some sort of virus. When you guys feed or eat or whatever you call it, your systems are designed to take it, so that kind of hemolysis doesn’t happen. It only happens in the system of the person who ingests it, and obviously, hemolysis occurs, which typically means painful death, which, of course, we want to avoid. Now, check this out.”

  The entire room was silent, everyone sitting on the edge of their chairs, staring up at the screen with childlike wonder. She ran back over to the microscope and replaced the slide, placing yet another dark crimson drop on it.

  “If we place the dominant blood on the slide with the blood we’ve treated with the antirejection serum…” She paused again and filled a dropper with blood from another tube. She gently placed a drop on the slide. “Watch.”

  The same pattern emerged as in the previous demonstration. The larger cells and the smaller cells danced around one another, only this time, when the larger cells went to eat the smaller ones, they were overcome by the smaller, lighter cells. One by one, the larger cells were consumed by the smaller cells. The blood that remained on the slide was filled with smaller cells that were overstuffed and bulging on the sides. The same violent shaking that had taken place before was beginning to take place again, but this time, the cells didn’t explode.

  They grew. The cells were actually growing. With every shift and slip, they expanded, and their colors deepened to the same dark burgundy hue that was present in the first dominant cell.

  “Merciful God,” Taris whispered.

  “I know, right!” Sarah’s excitement was contagious. “And the same thing happens if you do it with compromised blood, too. We tested Nick’s blood and—” She stopped and turned to face Nick. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to let that out.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “It’s okay. Just keep going. Please.”

  “Well,” she continued, “we took Nick’s blood and tested it, and the same thing happened. Instant acceptance and adaptation. You know what this means?”

  There was a heavy silence. Six pairs of admiring eyes stared at Sarah and Nick. In the silence, a soft cry was muffled. Achan let his head slip down into his hands, and his shoulders began to shake. Zillah and Rhiannon wrapped loving arms around him as they too began to weep.

  “It means that the two of you saved us,” Judah whispered.

  Kalin hit her knees on the floor in front of her chair, crying a silent prayer as she held firm to Nick’s hand.

  Sarah’s eyes searched the room, overwhelmed at the gravity of the situation. She’d known when she first agreed to do it what the implications were, how important it was to all of them. But confronted with this reaction from these people in particular, she was at a loss.

  “Please, don’t get too excited yet,” her voice was quiet. “We don’t even know if it is going to work in a real test. The initial experiments are encouraging but—”

  A large, steady hand came to rest on her shoulder, and all speaking stopped. She turned to see Taris, staring down at her. Since they met, she’d seen many different emotions in his eyes. Anger, fear, confusion, concern, passion. What she saw now caused her breath to catch and her heart to skip a beat.

  “I don’t have the words to thank you the way I want to, so I’ll start with this.” His arms corded around her, pulling her tight to him. Gently, he caressed the back of his hand against her face and leaned down, pressing his lips to hers. The warmth of his body and the feel of his lips made her go liquid, and she held onto him as tightly as she could. A light flick of his tongue caused her to open her mouth, and she could feel the soft warmth of it stroking her own, slowly. He gradually pulled back, placing two more soft kisses on her lips before clutching her tighter to him and resting his head on top of hers. The silent prayer he whispered as he held her rumbled through his chest and in her ear.

  “I really hate to interrupt this moment,” Rhiannon said, smiling at the two of them with tears in her eyes, “but I have to bring attention to the elephant still in the room. How are we going to know if it works?”

  Silence hung heavy for several moments before Sarah felt her heart drop.

  “I’ll do it,” Nick whispered from his seat next to Kalin. With his eyes fixed on her face, he said, “We will test it on me.”

  Chapter 25

  Argument was futile.

  Regardless of his stalwart position, Nick was getting an earful on both sides. There was the tearful Sarah, pleading with her vast knowledge of medical science to refute their findings just long enough to make him doubt his decision. She threw every guilt trip in the book at him. First, it was the years they’d been friends that he would be wasting if it failed. Then it was the important medical breakthroughs yet to come that, if he were dead, she would never be able to share with him. The one moment she almost had him was when she claimed he was the only family she had. But looking around at the admiring eyes of the people they’d just delivered from complete and total extinction, he knew better. Were he to die that very instant, Sarah would never be alone again. Of that, he was one hundred percent certain.

  What threatened to unravel him to the very last thread of his resolve was Kalin’s tearful pleading.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she whispered, clutching her arms around his midsection for dear life. “You’ve already done so much.”

  Her wracking sobs were so painful, so heartbreaking, that he almost wanted to rescind his offer. But really, if he died, what would he be losing? A life filled with medications and constant worry? A life knowing that he was slowly rotting from the inside out? None of that mattered nearly as much anymore.

  What tormented him the most was k
nowing that if he didn’t do this, and if it wasn’t successful, he would spend the rest of his life watching his love mourn as he slowly aged and passed away. He couldn’t do that to her. In the past twelve hours, Kalin had become his everything, and he would rather die trying to spend eternity with her than live the rest of his life knowing he would die without her.

  “Yes, I do,” he whispered, cradling her head in his hands and lifting her face to meet his. “You and I both know I’m dying anyway. If everything we’ve all worked for has ever come down to a moment of truth, it’s this one.”

  “I can’t lose you.” She mouthed the words, unable to speak them.

  Nick lowered his lips to hers in a soft kiss. “You won’t,” he said. Gently letting his hands fall, he turned to Taris.

  “How do we do this?”

  Sarah immediately inserted herself in front of Nick. Her chest was heaving, the tears in her eyes now more from anger than the initial terror. “You are being an ass, and you know it. Why can’t we just test this on someone else?”

  Nick cocked an eyebrow and bowed back. “Do you hear yourself? Since when did you lose your heart and replace it with whatever poisonous piece of shit made you say that? ‘Can’t we test it on someone else’? That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard you say. I’ve already punched my ticket, Sarah, and you know it.” He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “Just give me one moment of redemption, okay? I’ve lived like hell for years, riding on this face and my bank account. For once, I need to put myself out there for a good reason. Besides,” he smiled and softened, pulling her in for a hug, “I trust your work.”

  Sarah took in a deep breath and nodded, allowing Taris’ steady hands to pull her gently back toward him.