by Azalea Ellis
Before healing her, Torliam allowed the others to use the lance so they could sense what it revealed. All of us, even Chanelle and Birch, were able to sense the Sickness using the lance, though Birch had to hold the metal in his mouth when he poked Jacky.
Torliam healed Jacky, and then found the Sickness in Adam.
When it was my turn and the lance broke the skin, Torliam’s jaw clenched, and the muscles around his eyes tightened.
I knew before he said anything. I had it, too. “We can fix it, now,” I said, swallowing down the hot rush of fear that had bubbled up.
His jaw clenched, and his eyes squeezed closed. The seconds passed. Then he nodded.
I let out a slow breath as his power, filtered through the lance, healed me.
We went to sleep, and in the morning, Jacky dragged me back down to the dining table and made me explain my dreams in more detail to the rest of the team. Torliam set his Tracker Skill to looking for the enemy that was attacking me with the dreams, but we knew it would take time for him to get any definite direction.
In the meantime, they set a watch so someone would always be awake and keeping an eye on me while I slept. Luckily, I now only needed four hours or so of sleep per night, so it was less of a hassle than it could have been. They grumbled, as that wasn’t quite enough to mollify their worry, but there really wasn’t much more we could do, except for me to train so that I didn’t lose and die again the next time my dreams were invaded.
We turned to the news to see what had changed over the last week. Our faces were being displayed less frequently, now that so much time had passed since the last time we'd been sighted. The Estreyans had continued their destruction, and NIX and the military had continued to fight back against them, losing twice for every small victory they gained. The Earth Defense Force, the EDF, was a conglomerate of what remained of the mundane military, NIX, and a couple of NIX’s counterparts in other countries. Apparently, the EDF had taken down a couple more Estreyan ships, and driven off, but not downed, another destroyer.
People were starving to death, dying of disease due to the lack of clean water and medical facilities in some areas, and being killed by other civilians. A group of enforcers had taken over a supply cache in one city, hoarding the resources and refusing to distribute them to the helpless civilians. A kind of desperate, despairing selfishness seemed to have taken over. Earth, with all our armies and years of preparation, was still losing.
There were more outbreaks of the meningolycanosis. The most critical area was another large city, a few hundred miles from the city we'd been in when the initial outbreak had happened.
According to the news reports, an investigation had discovered what they thought was the first infected person to enter the new city, San Mateo, after escaping Mordsmouth. A family had escaped when the barrier came down. They’d found a wrecked military vehicle on the side of the road. They stopped, hoping to help anyone who was still alive. Their daughter had been infected by one of the rabid soldiers, and they had escaped with her, tied her up in the back of their pod, and rushed to the next city in hopes of getting her medical care. It didn't work out like that.
San Mateo’s local military had taken to killing the infected to keep the disease from spreading enough that the Estreyans would be drawn to the city. If that happened, they knew they were all doomed, so sacrifices had to be made, despite the opposing outcry from one faction of the country, who believed these people needed medical care, not summary execution.
I looked at the lance tucked against my skin. I felt disconnected from the lives on the other side of the screen, in a way. My team was safe, now. I was safe, too. If we tried to help the rest of the world, we’d be putting that safety at risk. But even so, I knew the guilt would crush me, if I let all those innocent people continue to die. If I let the multifaceted plague wipe out the rest of humanity. I may not have been connected to all those people directly, and none of them were as important to me as myself and the members of my team, but still… I stood up from the table, put on my winter clothing, and left the cabin for a walk in the dark.
I remembered Kilburn and his assertion that we weren’t so dissimilar. If he was a sociopath, what did that make me? I wanted to try and save the world, not because I was good, not because I truly had some moral core, but because I was afraid of the guilt. Besides, even if we continued living safely, our quality of life would deteriorate during a full-blown apocalypse. I nodded to myself. That was a good reason to interfere, right? Besides, unlike most of the things I’d dragged them into before, I could give the other members of the team a chance to make their own decision about this. It would be politics, probably, instead of the life-and-death battles we were accustomed to. I didn’t need them to come with me just to ensure my own survival.
Feeling lighter, I returned to the cabin. I had no delusions that I was actually a good person, but I could still do good things.
When I asked the rest of the team if they wanted to help me stop the Sickness and end the war, or if they’d rather retire to some safe place in the country, they all stared at me like I was an idiot.
Adam shook his head and sighed, looking to the ceiling as if praying for patience. “Eve, we’re a team. Even if we weren’t, we all want to stop the Sickness and this idiotic alien invasion. We’ve even discussed this before, so I don’t know why you’re bringing it up now. Why don’t we spend our conversational energy on something more important, like…planning our course of action? That seems like a much smarter idea.”
I wanted to scowl at him, but I couldn’t help the small smile that ruined my expression. Adam was amazingly rude, but a lot of it was a cover for his soft innards. I pressed my hands down flat on the table. “The lance is our greatest resource right now. We need to make sure we employ its influence correctly.”
Adam nodded. "It's not so simple as going out and announcing to the world that we have it, or healing every affected person we happen to come across."
"We have to use this power to actually fix things," I agreed. "And that goes beyond stopping the Sickness. We have to stop the war, heal both the Earthlings and the Estreyans, and help Earth to rebuild." The words felt strange coming out of my mouth. I reminded myself that I wasn't an altruistic do-gooder. I just wanted to be able to live without crushing guilt.
"We must have diplomacy," Torliam said. "It cannot only be a ceasefire between our two peoples, or war may start again because of resentment. You humans may not have the technological or personal power of my people, but you excel at putting your energies together to advance, and it seems vindictiveness is in your nature."
I fingered the lance, holding it up so the light glinted off its pale metal surface. "Since we're the ones with the bargaining chip, we'll have to handle the negotiations, at least to start."
Sam shifted in his seat. “But we are going to heal people, right? As many as possible, as quickly as possible, before it’s too late? If we see someone who needs it, we heal them.”
Torliam frowned at him. “That is a certainty. If not, what was our purpose in this entire quest?”
Adam shook his head, ignoring the astonishment which preceded Torliam’s glare. “We’ll be most effective if we get infrastructure and allies set up first, and then start healing. This isn’t about making ourselves feel good. It’s about healing as many as possible, as quickly as possible,” he repeated Sam’s words with a glance to the blonde boy. “And that means being smart about it. We can’t go around searching out and healing people one by one.”
Before Torliam or Sam could retort, I said, “Adam’s right. We need to be doing mass healing. That means we need other people bringing the infected to us, and extensive organization and infrastructure to make it as efficient as possible. We’ve only got one lance. Plus, it’s not just the Sickness we’re dealing with here. The meningolycanosis is a huge problem even without the Sickness using it as a vector, and people are going without basic necessities like clean water and food.”
Sam leaned forward, his ou
trage gone. “Okay. But where do we even start? And how?"
I wasn't quite sure. Instead of saying that, I talked through my thought process aloud. What did I have, what did I need, and how was I going to get it? "The two most critical issues, as far as I see it, are the rapid spread of the Sickness through the meningolycanosis, and the Estreyan attacks. Either one is going to cripple Earth. We have to stop them both, immediately. Preferably at the same time. Both Earth and Estreyer desperately need something, and we have to offer them that. We hold all the leverage, so there's no way they won't agree to any demands we make, as long as they feel they have no other option."
"Like kidnapping and torturing us, or something," Gregor muttered.
My mouth twitched upward at one edge. "Yes. That would be a supremely bad idea on their part. We'll just have to make sure they fully comprehend their current position."
Sam nodded, but the frown had returned to his face. “So now we can cure the Sickness, but what about the meningolycanosis itself?”
Jacky turned to him. “Can’t you heal that?”
"No. Not without stripping the virus of its camouflage, anyway. I can heal the damage it does to the brain, but that doesn't help if it's still active inside their bodies. It doesn't register as a wound directly. But even so, the bigger problem is that I can't heal thousands of people." He held up a hand when Jacky opened her mouth again. "It's not about offsetting the damage. It's about the logistics of trying to heal people infected with an extremely contagious virus, one at a time."
Torliam nodded slowly, crossing his arms over his chest. "We could bring healers in from my world to deal with this. The problem is that it is indeed spreading so quickly, and healers are a rare, valued resource that my people are already lacking enough of.”
I rubbed my neck. “Even if we could get Estreyer to agree to lend us some healers, they’d have to use the arrays to get here in time, right? I’m…worried about that. We’ve been doing it so far, but there’s a good reason they were forbidden, right? A reason that I hinted at very strongly when I did that interview with the Estreyan reporters. We should get a better idea of how likely we are to bring along an eldritch being before we authorize further mass use of the arrays.” That darkness I’d glimpsed on the other side of the broken sky of the god’s realm had brought to mind that danger. Plus, it would seem pretty hypocritical to ask people to use the arrays after I’d publicly condemned their use.
Jacky pursed her lips and tilted her chair backward to balance on two legs. “I know Blaine did most of the inventing, but isn’t it possible to make more of that orange serum stuff? The one we used on Chanelle, yeah?”
I shook my head. “NIX might have the information on it, but that serum was meant for use on Players. It didn’t actually get rid of the virus, just made it so the Seeds could see and deal with it, without negative side-effects. Plus, the serum wouldn’t fix the brain damage already caused.”
Sam leaned forward, shaking his head. "No, Jacky's right! Obviously, the serum from before won't work. But we're not limited to that. Our problem is that the meningolycanosis is spreading too fast, right? If we can stop that, and the spread of the Sickness, there would be time for any damage done by the meningolycanosis to be healed at a later date."
Zed frowned at him. “But how are human immune systems supposed to deal with the virus? That’s still a problem. A huge one. A lot of people have already been infected.”
Silence fell for a moment. I looked between the two of them. "What would happen if you were to be infected, Sam? Would your body recognize the meningolycanosis as a threat, then? I know your Skill becomes increasingly efficient at healing anything it considers a wound or a poison.”
"You're saying, we might be able to find a way to kill the meningolycanosis in normal humans, by studying my body's response to it?" Sam said slowly. “I might be able to overcome it, but we’d want to test some on a blood sample first, I think.”
I nodded. “Without Blaine, we probably can’t make use of that ourselves. But NIX might be able to. If they could mass-produce a cure to the meningolycanosis, at least, we might be able to mitigate a lot of the devastation. I’m sure we can convince them, with a sufficiently impactful visual aid. We’ll make sure your Skill can handle it first, and if so, you can do a live demonstration.”
Gregor nodded wisely, his arms crossed across his chest. “I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure people create this thing called immunoglobulin with other people’s antibodies.”
I had no idea what immunoglobulin was, but I wasn’t a child genius, so I tried not to let that bother me.
Zed raised his hand. "Uhh, don't forget, we have to stop the Estreyans from killing people directly, right? They're going after all the infected people. We can't just waltz into a city full of people going crazy and expect them to wait while we inoculate all of them."
"Not as things are right now," I agreed. "But there's no reason we shouldn't be able to expect that. In fact, I want those Estreyans on the ground helping us inoculate and heal people." I turned to Torliam. "Do you know what the hierarchy of command might be, among the invaders? Obviously, they're beholden to Queen Mardinest. And they've had some way to receive updated information from her. But with how reluctant your people are to send anything through the arrays, I assume there is someone in charge here on Earth. Someone the others would defer to, without needing confirmation from her. Maybe someone who has the authority to command the whole force? Maybe…even some way for me to contact Estreyer directly?”
His smile widened as I spoke. "Yes, there would be a warrior given command of the others, and a line of succession should the first die in battle. The commander is likely in charge of one of the destroyers."
"Is there any way to know which one?"
Torliam shook his head. "Not for us, unless we were to contact them and ask."
"But they have ways to contact each other?" I said. "If we were to access one destroyer, we'd be able to communicate with the commander of the whole invasion?"
"Yes. And with evidence of what we have achieved, I know no Estreyan who would not be willing to listen and…parlay, is that the word? They would parlay with us." He lips quirked up into a smug smile.
Adam rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything.
"We'll need the humans to agree on the terms of the peace, as well,” I said. Sure, they'd been mostly on the back foot the entire time, but I didn't want them retaliating against any healers we possibly convinced Estreyer to send, or against Estreyer itself.
Adam tapped at his link. "Humans are so divided, who can we speak to that has the power to negotiate on behalf of the whole race?"
"There isn't anyone like that," Gregor said. "At best, we'll be able to meet with delegates from all the major countries."
Torliam said, "My mother also does not rule the whole of Estreyer. However, the rulers of other lands have never attacked Earth, and likely have much less ire against its people. They will still be interested in the cure, and willing to bargain with us for our help against the Sickness."
"Even more reason we have to be absolutely certain to protect that little stick," Adam said. "If they find out anyone with Seeds can use it, there's no reason for them to listen to us. And something so valuable can easily become a weapon, by the very act of withholding it."
"You are correct," Torliam said, nodding his head grudgingly toward Adam. "We will need to employ a bit of misdirection and perhaps a few lies about the requirements to use it. I doubt any of my people would dare to risk the loss of the cure, if they are sane. We would only need to point to an enemy and make an accusation, and the entirety of the world would tear them apart and lay their ashes at our feet."
The idea of power like that was…pleasing. If only it didn't come with such an equally heavy burden. "Perhaps, with careful examination of the situation, and the ways that Earth provoked Estreyer, we can make our own leaders see reason," I said.
We talked for a long while, laying out plans and route
s of attack. “We’ll head out in the morning. Well, morning such as it is,” I said, looking out into the perpetual darkness through the cabin window. “It’ll be good to see the sun again. A proper bright, yellow sun.”
Chapter 33
There is in God—some say—A deep, but dazzling darkness.
— Henry Vaughan
At first, we weren't sure where to go to find a destroyer, and Adam had discovered that the human leaders had long ago left their plush offices for more secretive and secure locations, so it's not like we could just walk up to them and demand a meeting.
But we knew where the most recent outbreaks of the meningolycanosis were, and that was the key. "That's where we need to be," Adam said, pointing to the map on his link. "They're not managing well. Which means the Estreyans are going to be coming, and the EDF will be there soon after to try and keep them from setting up another quarantine bubble and flattening the city into slag and bones."
Adam tried to hire another plane, but even private flights were basically nonexistent, now. So we loaded up and went back to the boat owner's house, again.
The man had repaired the damage to his front door from Jacky's attack, and set up reinforcing bars around the frame to keep the same thing from happening again. A new peephole allowed him to see those outside without ever opening the door.
"Do you want to do the honors?" I said, turning to Torliam.
"I want to do it,” Zed said, grinning. "Can you imagine the look on his face when he sees us again?"
Torliam ignored him, stepped forward, and knocked politely.
I kept Wraith extended through the tiny openings around the doorframe and into the house within, just in case.
It turned out to be a good idea, because when the old man came to the door, he peered out through his new peephole. He jerked back with a harsh gasp of surprise.
"He sees us," I said.
Jacky turned to Adam. “Did you ever actually pay him for the first time?"
