Rise of the Miser: Claus, #5

by Tony Bertauski

  The tower was calm and unchanging. There was no hint of the chaos unfolding on the first floor. When the end of her catharsis neared, Claus noticed someone outside the tower. Naren had moved his daughter to safety.

  He wasn’t supposed to return.

  He had promised Claus he would stay with her until this was over. It was far too dangerous and the miser too unstable. If things went wrong, he needed to be off the island. The triplets could flash her back into a harmless state again. At the very least, they could relocate her to the North Pole. The elven could heal her. Naren was putting himself in danger being that close.

  Then he went inside.

  Claus and the triplets could only watch. If they charged inside the first floor, it would unquestionably destroy the illusion. Naren, Claus realized, had planned it this way all along. If something happened to him... Claus would blame himself. Everything harmlessly unfolded until the flames licked her arms.

  The rest happened so fast.

  A tornado of flames engulfed the tower. It circled the reflective walls and climbed into the sky—a column of liquid fire that seemed to erupt from a rising spout. It stood like a skyscraper of bubbling lava.

  And then it collapsed.

  The bright orange structure of magma hit the ground like a red-hot tidal wave. Liquid fire spilled in two directions, eating through trees, buildings and anything in its way. The fiery river bisected the island in two halves. In one direction, it plowed through the resort and all the way to the ocean. A cloud of steam rose and the water boiled.

  The other direction went through the warehouse.

  A word lanced through Claus’s head. He involuntarily fell to the ground, only understanding what it said once he covered up.

  Down!

  The river of fire melted the warehouse doors. It bored through the mountain and spewed out the other side. Its fierce current fell over the sleigh. Its heat was on the back of Claus’s neck and biting into his arms.

  He closed his eyes.

  The sound of thick fluid ran around them. When he looked up, the liquid fire sizzled over them. The wall of a protective bubble glimmered beneath it. The triplets had thrown a dome over them.

  Just in time.

  Thick streams of fiery goo ran along its sides until the source was exhausted. It went through the back of the warehouse and the trees behind it. Steam hissed at the ocean.

  The mountain collapsed.

  It folded on itself. The liquid fire spread beneath the machinery that fed it. Those too bent and crumpled. When the heat faded, a path had been carved from coast to coast. The island was dark. The moon was the only light left. Claus could see all the way to the other side of the island.

  The tower was gone.

  “Naren.”

  The triplets stopped him from running to the scene of fiery collapse. No one could survive, but he had to look, had to make sure Kandi was safe.

  One of the surveillance streams was still functioning.

  The spies were projecting an overhead view of a perfectly round pool of water. Wisps of steam were rising from where the tower used to be. Claus bent over and looked closely. He wiped his eyes to make sure what he was seeing wasn’t just wishful thinking.

  What he saw brought a smile to his face.

  MISER

  39

  “You did this.”

  Her house had been brightly lit on the day she left. The day she became this. But Naren wasn’t at the back door.

  He was now.

  His hair was a mess; dark rings hung beneath his eyes. He was the controversial biomedical scientist who pushed the barriers, the kind of innovator she sought out. She’d met him at a conference where he gave a talk on his promise of expanding synthetic flesh beyond organ transplant.

  Print the entire body.

  “I knew you would survive what happened,” he said. “I knew what you lost.”

  She didn’t ask how he found the island. There were always ways to locate someone, she knew that. Even when he found her, he was too clever to reach out to her. He had moved to Alaska with his daughter after he experimented on himself. He’d isolated himself from the world, but he made himself available to her. He knew she’d be looking for assistance.

  She took the bait.

  “You can forget,” he said, “but the past never goes away. The holes never fill up. Parts of you want to remember, Heather.”

  Her gut clenched. “You don’t understand.”

  “No. But I’m here. I’m listening.”

  “I can’t remember, Naren. I just can’t.” Her words came out sharp and pointed. “People will get hurt.”

  “I know.”

  He looked at the bedroom. The door was wide open. Gail was gone. The bed was still propped up. Sonny appeared to be sleeping. The house was silent.

  She went to his bedside.

  His lips fluttered, eyes dancing in a dream. He had been such a healthy baby. The day he was born, she was the luckiest person in the world, privileged to be his mother. She would give him every opportunity the world had to offer. He could be creative, unique, discerning, scientific, adventurous... whatever he wanted.

  It had started when he was three.

  The disease turned him into a sleepless fireball. She bolted down the furniture to keep him from pulling over bookshelves, watched cartoons through the night, hired Gail to be there when she went to work.

  He didn’t deserve this.

  She had saved so many people in the world. But not him. She could only watch him succumb.

  His hair was stuck to his forehead. She pushed it away, feeling the fever on her palm. She had wished for him to calm down, to be normal. And now that he was sleeping like an angel, guilt took a seat next to her.

  She just wanted him to stop hurting.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She kissed his forehead. The fever moved inside her, trickled down her arms and lit a fire. She kept her lips pressed to his head, let the emotional gates open—the gates she’d put a lock on so long ago, a vault that contained the memories and pain she’d forgotten so many years ago. It flooded out.

  It engulfed her.

  Flames licked her arms and spilled down her legs. A fire spread across the floor and climbed the walls. It ate the furniture, the ceiling fan, the curtains... the bed.

  It burned in great gulping sobs.

  As her grief flowed, the flames grew brighter and bigger. They bubbled up from an endless well that consumed everything in their path. The house was gone; Naren had turned to ashes. The sky was on fire. The world was burning.

  This was what she feared the most. If the gates were opened, nothing would be spared. And now she was lost in the heat of her grief and everything was burning. Nothing would survive. Yet she was still there. Still alive.

  She silently wept.

  Beneath the inferno’s rage, silent tears turned to steam. They hissed as they fell. She was powerless to stop the flames, helpless to plug the sadness. It flowed from her and never seemed to stop. Time was nonexistent.

  The depth of her grief unending.

  Gray snowflakes appeared. They wafted out of the flames, circling in a tight column. She followed their ascent as they floated through a hole. The sky was above. It had survived her anguish. The stars were out and the moon alight.

  The snowflakes turned into thick ashes. They drifted down and piled around her, insulating her from the dying fire. The house was gone; the field and mountains had vanished. Perhaps it was another illusion; she was still on the first floor.

  She only appeared to be in a deep hole. The one she’d been trying to fill all her life. Water seeped from the walls. The ocean found its way through the earth and began to swirl at her feet. Everything had been devoured.

  Naren was still there.

  He had survived the flames. His body was made of the same synthetic cells that had allowed her to survive the first incident. His synthetic flesh was indestructible. But his clothes were not.

  Her robe was g
one.

  She turned away, fully exposed and vulnerable. It wasn’t her nudity that caused her to turn suddenly, to hide from him—it was the embarrassment of what she’d become. The red flesh, the sharp eyes and wild hair. She’d covered herself to protect others.

  And to hide.

  The robes from her closet floated near her. The water had reached her knees. She heard it slosh toward her, felt a hand on her shoulder. Naren’s fingers didn’t sizzle when they made contact, his flesh didn’t char when he touched her.

  She looked over her shoulder, saw the man who had forced her to remember. And he saw her. He saw all of her. And when she faced him, he didn’t run, didn’t turn away or fake a smile.

  He was still there.

  “I see you,” he said.

  She ran her fingers down his arm, across his chest. They didn’t leave smoldering tracks. When he put his arms around her, he didn’t yelp with pain. He didn’t leave.

  She laid her cheek against his chest.

  The grief returned. Without flame, she sobbed. And he held her tightly. She didn’t crawl out of the hole this time. The water washed over them.

  Together, it raised them up.

  KANDI

  40

  Kandi had a bad feeling.

  The wall of fire that crossed the hall suddenly died. Cautiously, she wandered toward it. Glowing embers fell from bits of the ceiling. Strangely, the walls didn’t catch on fire, as if the building had been built to withstand an inferno.

  She looked over the edge. The smoldering remains of a fiery current went all the way to the ground. Nothing was left of the foundation or roof. It was like a section of the resort had been burned away. There were stars above and ground below. The ocean was hissing to her right. And to the left, it looked like she could see all the way to the other side of the island.

  Something was missing.

  “Kandi!” Cris shouted.

  She was down a stairwell and outside before he could stop her. The nighttime air was thick and foul. It scratched her lungs. A thin cloud streamed overhead, dimming the stars and turning the moon into a dull spotlight. Steam rose from the ground. She pumped her arms, paying no heed to the ache in her sides and heat in her chest.

  The tower was gone.

  It had been replaced with a cauldron of steam. A circle of bubbling water was all that remained, as if the tower had sunk straight down. White mist swirled in a thick cloud. Once above the trees, it dissipated in a thin blanket that hung over the island.

  I never should have let him go back.

  Her knees were beginning to surrender. Her dad had gone back to the tower, she knew it. He was trying to save the miser and now this happened and she would never forgive herself.

  Something moved.

  A dark figure bobbed in the steaming pool. It reached the other side and began to climb out. The long tail of a heavy cloak dragged behind a steaming body. The hood was down. Her hair sprang from her head like a giant ball of bright red wool.

  A second figure climbed out.

  Kandi watched someone pull on a similar cloak. The person tied the cloak and the miser appeared to be helping him. He looked in her direction. There was a brief exchange between the two figures.

  “Dad?” Kandi muttered.

  He came around the pool, walking at first. Then running. The heavy gray cloak—the one the miser had always worn—slapped against his legs. Kandi started toward him, the world tear-soaked and wobbly. She slammed into a soggy embrace. Water soaked through her clothing. He was warm and crispy.

  “I thought you were gone,” she muttered.

  “I’d never leave you, Kan.”

  She wanted to argue, to make him apologize for putting her on a boat and walking away. But none of that mattered. He was here and he was safe. It didn’t matter how or why.

  Even if he had gray blood.

  He wiped her cheeks with the back of his hand and smiled. Kandi looked into the palm. There were no traces of the gray stuff that had stained Cris’s hand. There wasn’t a cut in her dad’s palm.

  Not even a scar.

  He had tested his blood every month for as long as she could remember. He wasn’t diabetic. He was something else. This was his secret.

  “Do you remember the name of your pacifier?” he said.

  She frowned, confused. “What?”

  “You couldn’t say pacifier, so when it fell out of your mouth in the middle of the night and you’d shout Fire! Fire! I’d drag myself out of bed and we’d search your covers until we found it. You remember?”

  “What are you—”

  “And the time you fell in the pool on your birthday? Or the time you fell off the teeter-totter and broke your collarbone? You remember that?”

  She shook her head. She didn’t remember any of that. She was too young.

  “I remember,” he said. “Because I’m your dad.”

  He brushed her hair back. His tired eyes twinkled and she nodded.

  A part of her always knew something about him was different. The monthly blood tests and the way he healed so quickly weren’t normal things. Besides, he did stuff no one else in the world did—he invented body parts. And the rumors he had developed a human body for what he called human transplants were always out there. He’d always experimented on himself. She just never thought he’d make himself a new body.

  My dad is still in there.

  “You know you touch your temple when you lie,” she said.

  He laughed. “And you bite your nails.”

  The ground rustled behind her. He loosened his grip. Cris was jogging along the perimeter of the scorched path. Sonny was on his back, his skinny arms wrapped around his neck and thin legs poking out. Cris lowered him to the ground.

  They studied each other.

  Sonny couldn’t remember her dad. He had been asleep when he was taken from the master suite. But her dad seemed familiar. Maybe it was his smell or the sound of his voice.

  Sonny stopped to catch his breath and look around. The sights and smells were brand new. He didn’t know that her dad had done something to keep him from expiring, as Cris put it. He had cured him from the sickness that took all the others, the sickness that wilted the helpers. Her dad had given them the secret to a long life.

  He gave them death.

  That was his explanation. One day in the future, when Kandi asked how he did it, he would tell her that synthetic stem cells failed because they tried to be perfect. The miser wanted a boy who would never die. She aimed to create things that would never get sick. The more perfect she made them, the faster they slowed down. Her dad simply made them human. He made them imperfect.

  We’re not meant to live forever.

  That was how he had transplanted into the body he’d printed for himself, a body that was identical to the organic one he was born with. The miser wasn’t perfect, either.

  Cris was shirtless. Grimy tracks of sweat ran down his chest. He was squinting at the pool. “Is she gone?”

  “No,” her dad said. “She’s very much alive. You’ll want to meet her.”

  “I already have.”

  “No, you haven’t. Trust me.”

  Cris nodded warily. When her dad started around the pool, he didn’t follow. Kandi took his hand. Sonny climbed on his back like a little brother and whispered, “Let’s go see Mother.”

  THE SMOLDERING PATH went straight through the dormitory where Cris’s secret tunnel entrance was stashed and continued through the warehouse. The great double doors had been cleaved in half. Snow wafted in from both sides, vanishing on the blackened ground. Sonny’s eyes grew as big as ornaments.

  “It’s snowing.”

  They followed his footsteps and walked along the outer paths, where the snow accumulated on strange machinery. Sonny walked with his tongue out, chasing thick snowflakes.

  In the center of the warehouse, the fire had cut through the center of something monstrous. They approached the remnants cautiously. The closer they got, the loude
r the ground crunched. The snow turned dark and dirty. A thick layer of something was piled up beneath it. Cris pushed the snow around and picked something up by the leg.

  It was a tiny mechanical spider.

  That was when the singing began. It echoed from both sides of the warehouse, a jolly rendition of “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

  The helpers slid out of the dark.

  They were in long lines with hands on their bellies, sliding in synchronized patterns, weaving in between each other and circling around. Without snow in the charred path that bisected the warehouse, they stayed on their respective sides, performing the same dance.

  Sonny was stunned, his tongue stuck between his lips.

  He’d spent his entire life in the master suite. He hadn’t witnessed the island’s magic. It wasn’t long before the helpers surrounded him. They took turns touching him, wishing him a Merry Christmas, shaking his hand and hugging his legs. And laughing, of course. Singing and laughing.

  Kandi’s dad was up ahead. He appeared to be sitting on a sleigh. The smoldering path that cut the warehouse in half went all the way to the other side of the island. Moonlight glimmered off the distant ocean.

  The sleigh was the only thing on the blackened path.

  Tendrils of smoke wrapped around its rails and slid up the bright red sides. A fat sack was in the back. Her dad was in front. Someone was seated next to him. Kandi recognized the blond hair.

  As they approached, her dad slid off the sleigh and helped him out. Sonny was slightly paler than the new Sonny. He was leaner, maybe a bit shorter. Her dad put his hand on the new Sonny’s shoulder.

  “Sonny,” her dad said, “this is your brother.”

  The two blond boys looked at each other with some measure of surprise. A shush fell over the helpers. They stood around with wiggling toes and twitching fingers, watching the boys study each other. Sonny looked at Cris, who shrugged. Kandi wasn’t sure if shock had finally grabbed him.

  The two Sonnys held out their hands. “Merry Christmas,” they said.