“Been looking for you . . .”
In an explosion of rainbow mist, statuesque Mei appeared behind her adopted daughter and placed her hand on Mari’s shoulder, preparing to teleport them both away to safety.
“Wait,” Nik said as he, too, stepped into view. “Daughter, please, hear us out.”
I blinked, eyeing him for a few seconds before his words finally made sense. It always took me a moment to reconcile the fact that Nik has a daughter—Mei. He’s just so unfatherly in pretty much every way possible. Not that that changed the fact that he had fathered Mei millennia ago. She’d inherited her fair share of the stunning beauty that was so pervasive in her father’s bloodline, though her ancient human mother’s genes had lent her a far more Middle Eastern look. She’d also inherited her sheut from Nik, though her powers were quite different from his.
“We need your help,” Nik said, extending his hand, almost like he was pleading with her. Maybe he was.
For uncounted seconds, the five of us stood there, an ice sculpture of tensions and uncertainty.
Until, finally, Mei nodded. “Very well, Father.” She looked at me, bowed her head in greeting, and murmured, “Katarina.” Then she straightened. “Both of you, please, come in.”
26
“So,” I said, “will you do it?” I was sitting across from Mari at a farm-style dining table in their surprisingly well-stocked underground kitchen. It turned out that their hideout really was an old bank vault, and that some guy named Billy had set it up as a fallout shelter in the forties, only to leave it abandoned some years later when he died in a car accident. We knew about Billy and how he’d died because he’d been a friend of Mei’s back in the day. It was how she and Mari had known the bunker was down here in the first place.
Mari inhaled deeply, then looked at her mother, who was sitting to her left. I’d filled them in, telling them as quickly as possible about everything that had happened over the past couple days, save for our encounter with the mysterious Netjer. And my whatever-it-was with Garth. TMI is very much a real thing.
I glanced at Nik, sitting on my left, but his eyes were locked on Mei, too. Probably because she was staring at him just as hard. I didn’t know much about Nik’s relationship with his daughter, but based on appearances, it was a tense one.
Seeing that she wouldn’t get any help from her mom, Mari returned her attention to me. She blew out a breath and threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, why not.” She pointed a finger at me. “On one condition.” She redirected her pointer finger to Nik. “You agree to help me, even after we save Kat’s boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said reflexively, and Mari snorted. I looked at Nik, begging him with my eyes to agree to her condition. It was hard to do when he hadn’t even glanced my way. Losing patience, I reached out and touched the back of his wrist with my fingertips.
Finally, he looked at me, his expression hard.
“Please,” I whispered. “Nik . . . please.”
His features softened, and he closed his eyes and bowed his head in assent.
A sly grin spread across Mari’s face. She slapped her hands together, then rubbed them back and forth vigorously. “Looks like you’re not dying today, Connie,” she said to Constance, who was lying down on the mid-century couch in the “living room.” She was running a fever already, and she’d practically collapsed on the couch as soon as Mari suggested she get some rest.
Constance held up a hand, giving us a thumbs-up over the back of the couch.
“Gather whatever you need. We’ve got to get back to Bainbridge right away,” I told Mari, then looked at Mei. “Can you teleport us there?”
“You three, no problem,” she said, then looked at the couch. “But I can’t teleport her. She’s human—the trip would tear her apart.”
I sighed, then scooted my chair away from the table. “Alright, well, a gateway it is, then.” I stood, hoping I had it in me to make one more today. “Which wall do you care about the least?”
Mari and Mei exchanged a confused look.
“Her power’s evolving,” Nik explained. Oh, right, because I hadn’t included that part in my flash update, either. “She can draw a sort of doorway from one place to the next.”
Both Mari and Mei looked at me, eyes opened wide and lips parted. Boy, I sure do love surprising people. Maybe it’s why I always try to make sure their expectations are extra low. Because I totally do that on purpose. Really.
“Wall preference?” I asked, nudging them out of their shocked states.
“Oh,” Mari said. “Um . . .” Brow furrowed, she looked at her mom, who shrugged.
“Artist’s choice,” I said, nodding slowly as I scanned the space. I was already digging the bundle of Sharpies out of my coat pocket. “Suh-weet.”
27
“Alright,” Neffe said, exchanging a look and a nod with Aset, “we’re ready.” The two petite Nejerets stood on either side of something that looked an awful lot like a dentist’s chair—only the kind a demented, evil dentist would use, what with all the strappy restraints holding down the brilliant duo’s first subject.
Mitch Carmichael was being used as the inaugural lab rat for the ba-grafting procedure. Even though Constance had volunteered, Heru thought she held too much value to be used so negligently. She was willing to work with us—to share everything she knew about the inner workings of the Ouroboros Corporation and Initiative Industries, not to mention the negotiations and deals made with the Senate—and that made her an invaluable asset, especially compared to rancid Mitch Carmichael.
If the procedure was a success, Mari promised to infect Carmichael with anti-At as soon as the positive outcome became clear, and his short-lived, partially formed ba would be erased from existence once and for all. No gentle eternity for this pathetic excuse for a human being. That was just fine with me.
Standing at the foot of the chair, Nik held a marble-sized orb of At, a minuscule sliver of Heru’s ba writhing within its temporary prison. It was one of nearly a dozen such marbles filling a metal lockbox on the counter behind me. Heru was the oldest Nejeret on site, and though Mari hadn’t been able to explain why, she believed his age would make his ba the best candidate for a successful soul-grafting.
The ba extraction itself had only taken a few minutes, though it had taken Mari more than twenty-four hours of constant work to get the extraction apparatus—a modified MRI machine—up and running. With Nik’s help, Mari was able to harvest a baseball-sized chunk of Heru’s ba, which she claimed should be all she’d ever need, since the fragment would ceaselessly replenish itself within its At prison, just as Heru’s ba would regrow until it was fully repaired within his physical body. Probably a good thing, because I doubted Lex would ever let her husband go through a ba extraction again. It had been excruciating even to watch.
Mari stood beside me, arms crossed over her chest and expression rapt. Lex stood on my other side, and Dom, watching from the pendant hanging around my neck, was the only other soul present. Heru was two floors above us in his and Lex’s bedroom, recovering under the attentive “care” of his toddler, and it had been Mari’s suggestion to clear the basement laboratory of everyone else to ensure that word of this potentially world-changing procedure didn’t get out. Nobody had argued.
Nik glanced over his shoulder to look at Mari. “You’re sure this’ll take?” He frowned. “I don’t need to do anything more invasive?”
Mari nodded. “A human’s soul is contained within every single cell of their physical body. The moment that ba fragment touches his skin, it’ll recognize a potential host. It wants to be whole, and merging with a human soul is the path of least resistance. Go on . . .” She gestured to Carmichael with her chin. “See for yourself.”
We wouldn’t know if it was truly successful for a few hours, or so Mari claimed. That was how long it would take for the newly forming ba to make noticeable changes to Carmichael’s human physiology.
Nik placed the At marble
on Carmichael’s shin, balancing it there with a single fingertip. A moment later, the opalescent At dissolved into a shimmering mist. I caught only a glimpse of that silvery filament of ba before it seeped into Carmichael’s skin and vanished completely.
Mari blew out a breath and brushed a sleek strand of black hair from her forehead. “Well, I suppose we should all get comfortable. This is going to take a while.”
***
Three hours, seventeen minutes, and forty-two seconds later, Mari destroyed Carmichael’s brand-spanking-new ba. I heralded Carmichael’s writhing passage into oblivion with a one-finger salute. It was a glorious moment.
“We’ll do Constance next,” Mari said as she turned her back to Carmichael’s writhing form, “then your boyfriend, Kat.”
I rolled my eyes, ignoring Nik’s snicker. He’d swapped places with Mari and now stood on my left. I lost patience after a few seconds and elbowed him in the side none too gently.
“We’ll prep Constance,” Aset said, and she and Neffe headed to the quarantined half of the lab. The temporary plastic walls had been erected to keep the disease as contained as possible, and the area within functioned as a makeshift hospital for the few infected people in the compound, Garth included.
I watched them go, my heart yearning to follow. I still hadn’t visited Garth. I didn’t know how to talk to him without telling him there was maybe a chance that he would not only survive the incurable disease but also become a Nejeret. That he’d live forever. I couldn’t not tell him that chance existed, but I hadn’t been willing to get his hopes up. I’d needed to know for sure. And now I did.
“Go,” Lex said, nudging me with her shoulder. “He’s been asking for you nonstop.” She offered me a gentle smile. “Give the poor guy the good news.”
I searched her kind, carmine eyes, looking for some reason not to go. I was afraid to face him. But I needed to, so I pushed off the counter and marched after Neffe and Aset. The two were already beyond the plastic walls.
I could hear Lex and Nik whispering, but I hummed tunelessly to drown out whatever they were saying. Force of habit. Some things are better not overheard.
Mari laughed, and I slowed, glancing over my shoulder to see her sidling up to Nik. “Better get used to it, buddy.” She linked arms with him, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I had to force myself to keep going. “Besides, you’ve got a new partner now, and I’m half as crazy and twice as fun.”
Ugh. I threw up a little in my mouth.
Nik looked my way, and when his eyes met mine, when I saw the sad smile curving his lips, my heart seized up. He nodded infinitesimally, and I had the oddest impression that he was saying goodbye.
Shaken, I faced forward and continued onward, heading into the decontamination space everyone had to pass through on their way in and out of the quarantine zone. A quick spray of some high-intensity disinfectant cascaded over me in a fine mist, and I continued through the next plastic flap.
Garth was sitting at a folding card table alone, his back to me, a half-played game of solitaire laid out before him. Neffe, Aset, and Constance were in the far corner of the room. Aset seemed to be explaining to Constance what sorts of changes to expect after the procedure.
I took a deep breath, then plastered a smile on my face and headed for Garth. “Hey, stranger.”
He spun in his seat, looking too big for the folding chair, his fingers gripping the chair back. The second his rich brown eyes locked with mine, my heart warmed and my smile softened, becoming genuine. He looked exhausted; his skin was too pale, emphasizing the dark circles under his eyes, but he still filled the space around himself with a sense of calmness. Of peace.
“So, I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news,” I told him as I drew nearer.
His eyebrows rose. “What’s the good news?”
“This disease isn’t going to kill you.”
He started to stand, but I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “You found a cure?” he asked.
I shrugged one shoulder, pulling out the chair adjacent to his and turning it around to sit on it backwards, cool-kid style. “Something like that,” I said, resting my forearms on the back of the chair.
He frowned. “And the bad news?”
I smirked, tilting my head to the side. “You’re going to have to put up with my ass forever.”
“I don’t—” His brow furrowed, and he shook his head. And then his eyes widened. “My forever, or yours?”
I grinned. “Mine.”
28
Sitting on a piece of driftwood, I stared out at the endless gray mass of salt water. Wind made the surface of the Puget Sound choppy, a clutter of white peaks forming only to fade away under the rolling swells seconds later. Dark clouds coated the sky from horizon to horizon, but the rain was the barest of drizzles. It looked more like five o’clock than one, but a glance at my borrowed watch assured me it was still barely after noon.
Off to the left, across the choppy Agate Passage, I could just make out the shoreline of Port Madison through the mist. Garth’s family was there, waiting for word of his condition. His ancestors had been living on that reservation for generations, safeguarding the secret of my people’s existence. Now Garth—one of them—was also one of us. I just didn’t know how much the Nejeret he would become over the coming days would resemble the human he’d been. How much would that tiny sliver of Heru’s ba change him—not just what he is, but who he is? There was no way to know until he woke, and Mari wasn’t even sure how long it would be until that happened.
Garth and Constance had been out cold for over two days now, locked in a state of regenerative sleep as their bodies transformed to accommodate their new, immortal souls. I’d remained at Garth’s bedside for the first nine hours, and the inaction—the waiting—had nearly driven me mad. Patience isn’t my strong suit, and stillness is like torture to me.
“The news is reporting cases of the disease in hospitals in Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, and Vancouver now,” Dom said, breaking through my meditative fog.
I exhaled heavily, shoulders slumping. “Guess closing the state borders didn’t work.”
Washington had been under quarantine since the previous evening, once it became obvious that the people flooding hospitals in the greater Seattle and Tacoma areas complaining of a severe flu were actually the first wave of a new, frightening epidemic. The Cascade Virus—CV, for short, a strange viral pathogen that was seemingly nonresponsive to any kind of treatment—was all anyone could talk about on the news these days. I’d stopped watching TV or listening to the radio that morning, sick of hearing about the search for a cure. I already knew they’d never find one.
“Maybe they can stop it before it spreads across the country,” I said, resting my chin on my hand. Not sure who “they” were in my mind, but surely there was someone—some humanitarian group or special government organization—who could handle this. Someone who could succeed where we’d failed.
“Perhaps,” Dom said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
“If it gets any worse, this could be bad, Dom—like, extinction-level bad.”
“After everything we’ve learned from the members of the board, I believe that is precisely the point of all this.” Heru had learned from Scott, the youngest member of the Ouroboros board, that the Senate paid him half a billion dollars and promised him immortality if he arranged for the release of ten infected humans and planted them in major cities across the country. He’d only made it to seven by the time we shut down his base of operations, the lab in SoDo.
I shook my head, feeling defeated. “I just don’t get it. Why would the Senate do this? How could they? It’s just so . . . so wrong.” What good was Heru’s war now when all he was fighting for was a crumbling world?
“I wish I had an answer for you, little sister.”
“I don’t,” I said. “That would mean your mind is just as twisted as theirs are.” I inhaled deeply,
then sighed. “The number of people who are going to die . . .” Even thinking about it twisted my stomach into knots. “I wish there was something I could do. Anything.” I’d never felt more useless in my life.
“There is something you can do,” Nik said from some ways behind me.
I straightened and twisted around on the driftwood, spotting him at the mouth of the trail leading to the beach through the woods. “Shouldn’t you be with Mari right now?” The two had been working together so closely for the past couple of days that I’d barely seen him, even though we’d both been in and out of the basement laboratory the whole time.
Nik strolled the rest of the way to my driftwood bench and sat beside me. “I’m right where I should be.”
My cheeks warmed, and I hated my stupid heart for the little flutter it gave. I averted my gaze, staring down at the tiny rocks near my boots rather than risking meeting Nik’s pale eyes.
“The way I see it, we’ve got two options.”
“Oh?” I thumbed the cuff of my leather sleeve.
“Either we let all the humans die, and that’s it,” he said. “Game over.”
I raised my eyes to meet his. “Or?”
Nik leaned in, like he was making sure he had my attention. It was pointless; he always had my attention. “Or,” he said, “we save as many of them as we possibly can before it’s too late.”
“By turning them into Nejerets before the Cascade Virus kills them, you mean.” Which also meant “we” didn’t include me. I slouched, just a little, my gaze wandering back down to the rocky beach. “You and Mari, team awesome, saviors of humanity.” I gave an unenthusiastic fist pump. “Go you.”
Nik guffawed. “Not exactly, Kitty Kat.” He bumped my shoulder with his. “I was thinking of you and me, actually. Figured, with your gateways and my control over At, nothing’s stopping us from taking this show on the road.” He pulled something out of the pocket of his jeans. When he uncurled his fingers, one of the At marbles containing a sliver of Heru’s ba rested on his hand. “We’ve already got an endless supply of ba, and if we went from hospital to hospital, we could make a serious dent in the spread of CV.”
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