Zander moves closer, as does every other curious Godling in the room. Chris is eyeing Ketchup like he’s just found a new toy. After throwing a glare at him to back off, I turn my focus back to Ketchup. “What?”
Energy in need of expending makes it impossible for him to keep still. “Okay, it’s just a theory so far, because who was I really going to ask about this aside from you guys, but your power…some of it stayed. Inside me. Before, I only felt stronger when you were with me. Now, it’s there all the time. Maybe it just got stuck, or maybe this was supposed to happen, but it’s pretty freaking awesome. I can’t do what you can, but I can definitely do more than what I should be able to. Watch.”
Whatever he was about to show me, he doesn’t get the chance. A shriek of fear echoes through the gym before the distinct sound of a body hitting a mat snaps everyone’s attention away from Ketchup. Gyan is trying to scramble down the cargo net to get to his crying sister, gets tangled in the net, and falls, his ankle catching in the webbing and leaving him hanging upside down before anyone has had a chance to react. Chris and Cat rush for them both. I’m not far behind.
Verity’s ankle is clearly broken, and her sobbing makes my hunger flare. I stay back, desperate to act, but not wanting to get in Chris’s way as he extracts Gyan from the net. Once his son is safely on the ground nursing a rope burn, he picks Verity up and cradles her in his lap. Cat strokes her hair softly and says, “Verity, I know it hurts, sweetheart, but we’ve been practicing healing, right? Let your hunger feed, then allow your power to stitch everything back together. Remember?”
“No,” Verity sobs. “It hurts too much.”
“I know, but you need to—”
“No!” she shrieks. “Let Van do it, please!”
Normally, Cat would insist Verity do it on her own. She never misses a teaching opportunity with her children. A look passes between her and Chris, and she shrugs. “It’s a relatively easy break to heal,” she says quietly. “Verity needs practice, but…” She glances back at me. A question pulses in her eyes and I can feel her curiosity hovering around her.
Everyone is curious.
Chris turns away from his crying daughter and considers me. Concern battles with his own need to push me and see my power in action. “Are you strong enough?” he asks.
Honestly, I don’t know, but I nod anyway. Part of me needs to know healing Ketchup wasn’t a onetime thing. I kneel down next to Verity and her sobbing quiets somewhat. Latent power is already attempting to heal her ankle, but it’s slow and unpracticed and having a difficult time correcting the misplaced bones.
“Is it going to hurt?” Verity asks. She sniffs and wipes at her tears.
I don’t really know, but Ketchup is suddenly beside her, smiling. “Not at all. It feels pretty neat, actually.”
Hoping he’s right, I extend my hands toward Verity, but wait until she nods before touching her. As soon as I do, my hunger begins siphoning off her pain and she relaxes. I let it feed until numbness settles into Verity’s bones and muscles, then nudge the power that’s built up in my core to do…something.
Nothing happens.
“Keep taking the pain,” Ketchup says quietly.
“But, it’s gone.”
He shakes his head. “The immediate pain is gone, but it’ll come back unless you keep pulling. Take that pain too, but as you do, give the power it creates back to her.”
I don’t fully understand how he knows what I need to do. He wasn’t even conscious when I healed him. Regardless, I trust him and unleash my hunger again. It immediately goes deeper into the wound, surrounding each cell, pulling so insistently at the pain still hiding it seems to speak to its other half, to the power it produced, calling to it for help. Slowly, I begin to understand what Ketchup was talking about.
Taking the immediate pain reduces suffering, but only healing a wound takes it permanently. As realization hits me, power flows out of my hands and into Verity’s ankle. My hunger devours the new pain brought on by shifting bones and muscle, creating more power to be used for healing. I’m stunned to feel the cells reorder and strengthen themselves. In a matter of seconds, Verity is completely healed and she yanks her leg out of my grip to try it out. Bouncing excitedly, she giggles as she thanks me.
“Can you fix my rope burn, too?” Gyan asks.
Cat shakes her head. “You are perfectly capable of…”
“Let me do it!” Verity shouts before flinging herself as her brother.
“Verity, honey, you can’t…”
The air is sucked out of the room when Verity’s young hunger and power burst to life and flow into her brother’s leg. No one else is more stunned than me when the angry red marks on Gyan’s leg disappear, slowly. I point at it, unable to voice the question stumbling around in my mind.
I don’t know when Oscar showed up, but he answers my unspoken question. “Verity did it, not Gyan.”
The healed siblings are laughing and shoving each other, talking about climbing the cargo net again, and who will win the next race. To them, nothing particularly amazing just happened. I fall back to the mat and stare at Chris, begging for an explanation.
“Verity’s always been a very…experiential learner. Once you demonstrate something, she can do it.” He shrugs, then rubs his head to try to rid himself of the confusion and disbelief assaulting everyone.
“But,” Ketchup says slowly, “I thought only Van was supposed to be able to heal people. If Verity can do it, too…what does that mean?”
No one offers up an answer. Not because they don’t have one. Because they’re afraid to speak it. Shock numbs me, but the words slip out anyway. “It means, I’m not the Gift.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Without
(Oscar)
Zander’s head is down as he pours over Noah’s report. Having already read it, three times, and only followed a portion of the computer jargon, I focus my attention on Joshua as he opens and closes a drawer on the desk. A loose piece of paper flutters each time he pushes the drawer closed. He is oblivious to it, but I keep expecting the paper to fall.
A grunt from my brother distracts me, but he continues scanning the documents without speaking. My thoughts stay on him, though, on his failed experiment. While everyone else has been in an uproar about Verity learning Van’s healing trick, and all wanting to try it themselves, my little brother attempted to kick start his own gift by going back to the place I hate second most in this world.
I would feel better if the hospital which held me captive would burn to the ground. It wouldn’t solve anything, but it would be gratifying. Zander going back there also solved nothing. Not that he was able to meet every patient, but he sampled enough of them to know there are either no Richiamos being held, or his gift is still dormant. It’s impossible to know which one is the truth without a Richiamos available to test the theory.
Testing children’s facilities turned out no better, but brought him back in a dark mood. Noah believes he’s coming closer to finding them through tracking their communication with his old Eroi faction, but the locations he suspects are too far away, too dangerous, for Zander to test in person. So we wait, read Noah’s reports, and become frustrated. Zander most of all.
“What’s with this page of gibberish?” Zander asks.
His voice startles Joshua into losing his grip on the drawer handle, and he falls backward to land on his backside. Drawer apparently forgotten, Joshua crawls over to me and climbs into my lap. He stares at Zander as though he were listening intently.
In answer to my brother’s question, I shrug. “I thought it was gibberish, too.”
“Noah didn’t offer any sort of explanation?” Zander asks.
“He only said he pulled it off the Eroi server, but didn’t have the cipher to decode it yet. I think maybe one of his computer programs is working on it.”
Zander sighs. “If it’s encrypted, it’s probably important. Noah said he’s positive Isolde is planning her attack in coordination with the Ero
i here in Albuquerque, getting intelligence from them about us to set it up. This could be part of it, and he can’t figure it out?”
Frustration has him on edge. I share his agitation. I want Isolde dead more than anyone. As much as David needed to die, she is the one who sparked this war by sending Ivy after my brother. Being locked up taught me patience, though even mine is beginning to wear thin.
“Maybe I should go talk to Noah, see if he’s found anything new,” Zander says. He pushes aside the various documents, intent on following through even though he knows Noah would have told us if he’d discovered anything helpful.
He only gets to one knee before we both freeze at the sound of a voice saying, Ask Aunt Van.
Zander looks at me, but he knows it wasn’t my voice. My startled expression clues him in that I heard it, too. We both heard the words, yet they weren’t spoken out loud. I would almost think my mind is cracking again, but Zander isn’t crazy. He heard it as well.
“What?” my brother asks, not directing his question to anyone in particular.
I think it’s idiotic to ask a bodiless voice a question at all, but I am shocked all over again when it answers.
Aunt Van has the key.
Zander slowly settles himself back down on the floor. His voice is low, which is also stupid, when he asks, “Why is it calling her Aunt Van?”
Having been too startled to pick up that detail, I realize the truth as soon as he voices his question, and calmly look down at my son. “What did you say, Joshua?” Zander’s eyes widen, but I don’t have time for him at the moment.
Without looking up from the string of my hoodie he’s sucking on, his answer comes, and this time I’m focused enough to feel his words rather than simply hear them. Aunt Van’s papers. It has the puzzle key.
“The puzzle key?”
Now he does look up at me, exasperation on his little face. The silly words. One of her papers tell you how to read it.
“How do you know that?” I ask.
Joshua grabs the other hoodie string and sticks it in his mouth, slobber running down his chin as he gnaws on it. I saw the words.
“And you understood them?” I can’t hide the shock from my voice, but Joshua doesn’t seem to notice. When he nods, I ask, “How?”
My question makes him pause. He stops chewing on the strings long enough to consider his answer. I don’t know.
Enlightening, but he is only a baby. He can’t be blamed for not understanding how his power works.
Why don’t you talk to me in my head? Joshua asks. It’s easier. I like it better than words, except Mommy can only hear words. Not talking like this. He sighs disappointedly at that, but doesn’t seem terribly bothered by it, overall.
“I don’t know how,” I admit. “When did you learn to talk to people this way?”
Joshua spits out the string, blowing a raspberry as he does and making himself laugh. I don’t know. Today? It’s like a game.
“What’s like a game?” I ask.
Learning new things with power.
Distracted when he spots a stuffed dog under the bed, he crawls off my lap and moves to retrieve it. While he seems to have forgotten the conversation, Zander hasn’t.
“What the hell is going on?” he hisses.
I wish I knew. To Zander, though, I say, “Joshua has learned a new trick, apparently.” Then I think of him somehow understanding Van’s papers—whatever those might be—and realize I’ve misspoken. “Several new tricks, actually.”
Zander sighs and shakes his head. Deciding not to comment or attempt to understand Joshua’s abilities, he goes back to the original topic. “What set of papers is he talking about?”
I almost tell him I have no idea. Then I remember how we learned of the Mark, and consider the fact that Van took more than just that one note from the Eroi compound after doing away with their leaders. I also consider the fact that she has kept them hidden. There is no concern of her hiding information. If she believed there to be anything of value, she would have shared it, and indeed has shared information she learned from them. Hiding them was like my mind breaking, burying the evidence of what she’d done to spare herself from having to face it.
“Where is Van now?” I ask Zander.
He shrugs. “Probably with Chris and Cat, trying to teach the other Godlings how to heal. It’s all she’s been doing since what happened in the gym. Chris thinks she’s pushing herself too hard, but it’s the only thing keeping her from freaking out about not being the Gift—if that’s even true.”
“It’s true,” I say without reservation.
The Gift is unique. Van certainly is unique, but not in this. After watching Verity heal her brother, I understood. Healing is not the Gift. It is our purpose. Everyone who is strong enough will eventually learn this from Van. Egidio said the Godlings must embrace their purpose through an act of selflessness. What could be more selfless than giving up your own life to save another? Luckily for Van, healing Ketchup only required almost the entirety of her life force. If it had required more, she would have given it without thought. Pure, selfless love for another.
Of course, she is not the only one to fulfill such a prophecy. I once called Ivy evil. It’s good to admit when you’re wrong, and I misjudged the girl of vines and war. Her path wound through Hell and back, but she proved herself just as Van did. Richiamos are not Eroi, but their pets, their weapons. Yet, even stained by their influence, Ivy gave the last of what life she had left to save the Godling children, to save her sister.
Isolde will do no such thing, but Ivy’s sacrifice proves them capable of change.
Selflessness has been proven. A Gift was promised. We were mistaken to think it would come through Van, but I find myself believing it will come in some other form. Maybe that makes me crazier than I have ever been. Most likely, it makes me right.
“Joshua,” I say, my voice causing him to stop waving around his stuffed dog by its long, floppy ears. “Do you know where Aunt Van’s papers are?”
Joshua giggles and claps his hands. Yes. He crawls toward me, reaching one hand up to be carried. I scoop him into my arms and leave Zander to follow behind me. As we walk, I ask my son, “Why can’t Mommy hear you speak in her mind?”
He cocks his head to one side and laughs, as though he thinks my question silly. Mommy has no power.
It is the answer I was expecting, but it creates more questions than anything else. Before I can ponder them for too long, we arrive at Van’s door and I reach for the knob. It doesn’t turn on the first try. I grip it more tightly, and am about to break the lock, when Zander pushes my hand aside. He shakes his head and unlocks the door with a key.
“Could we keep the destruction to a minimum, please? We’ve got enough to fix around this place without you causing more work,” Zander grumbles.
If he insists.
We push into the room and Joshua immediately points to a small closet at the back of the room. Above the rack of clothes is a high shelf. Van would need a stepstool to reach it, but I follow Joshua’s direction to a folded blanket, and feel beneath it. Just under the edge, I feel the crinkled stack of papers and gently remove them. Van will no doubt be annoyed with me for getting into her personal things, but this cannot wait for an argument to be settled.
Zander takes Joshua when I hand him over, and I search through the wrinkled papers until another sample of gibberish reveals itself. That’s all it is, though. Frustration wells in me. I am about to set it aside to search for something more useful, but I notice the corner is torn. That’s not immediately unique, given that the entire stack looks as though it were wadded up and then smoothed out in a pointless attempt at repairing the damage. This corner, however, isn’t torn evenly. It seems to have had resistance…a staple pairing it to another paper.
Dropping the stack of documents to Van’s bed, I hurriedly spread them out, searching the edges for one with a staple and the missing corner. I find it sandwiched between a report on maintenance work orders and
Watcher intel. Snatching it from the stack, I hold it up next to the coded communique. Gaze bouncing between the two, I read them side by side, memorizing the cipher and taking in the information on David’s troop movements and the various response scenarios.
This particular document is out of date, useless for the information it contains. Noah’s document…that is new, stolen from the Eroi servers late last night. Reaching back toward Zander, he hands me the new document without me having to ask. Many parts of my mind are still broken, but not this one. Not the part that has always loved solving puzzles. Sometimes, it was the only thing that got me through nights at the hospital when the pain seeping into me from the other patients was too much to bear.
I decode, and read, and feel fear wage war against the fury springing to life inside me.
Coordinated Strike Operation
Target: Godling remnants
Location: Albuquerque school/compound
Use of Force: Kill on site any Godling not belonging to the Roth bloodline. Capture Roths if possible, execute if necessary.
Directive for using Richiamos: fully trained and in-progress
Plan of Attack: Tactical operatives take out surveillance and outer perimeter guards. Second wave protect Richiamos bait. Kill all Godlings acting upon the lure, no age restrictions. No prisoners outside the Roth family. Richiamos Guerra is to be held back until Roth children are located. She has been instructed to use all available means to draw them out and will not fail. Roth siblings are to be neutralized when the lure proves successful, and taken back to the Richiamos training facility for further study. The Gift Vanessa Roth carries is still unknown, but will likely be incapacitating in some way. Every effort will be made to take her alive, but if the threat to Eroi operatives proves too great, her death will be the price of our survival.
Timetable for Operation: 14:00 Thursday, June 9th
Wicked Revenge Page 25
