I try, but my mind is a scattering of images, rippled and distorted, like the reflection of a pond with rain pelting the surface. I try harder to clear them out, but they keep crowding in: flashes of Katya on stage, imagining myself there soon, fuzzy images of the craggy-faced man from my hallucination, and my mom… smiling in a healthful glow she no longer has anywhere but in my mind.
I gently squeeze Kamali’s hands and open my eyes. “It’s not going to work, Kamali. Maybe when I’m on stage, I’ll be able to do it. I’ll try.”
She’s frowning, determination still written on her face, like I’m a puzzle she wants to figure out. “Maybe if we do some more deep breathing…”
I glance out the window. Katya’s still at her canvas, but she’s leaning back now, examining her work. I turn back to Kamali. “There’s no time. But thank you.”
The frown disappears, and she gives me a small smile. “Thank you. I know you didn’t mean to, but I think you helped me more than I helped you.”
She’s talking about the painting I made of her, which only reminds me that the closing ceremonies are later today, and as soon as the final tallies are made, the medalists will be called down to receive their awards. I have no idea if I’ll see her again before that happens.
“It’s not too late to change your mind.” I hold her hands tighter and bring them up to my chest, drawing her closer. “And I could still go out there and win this. We could ascend together, Kamali—just think of what we could do then. For our families. For everyone. And we’ll have all the time in the world to do it.” I let go of one of her hands so I can run a finger along one long, infinitely curly strand of her hair. “Please don’t throw that away.”
“I’m not the one who will be throwing something away,” she says, peering into my eyes. “You have something more precious than a million ascenders put together. I know I can’t talk you out of ascending, but I hope you’ll keep your promise to remember me after you do. And I promise you this, Eli Brighton: I’ll remember you. I’ll remember the boy you were before you ascended, before you turned into one of them. The boy who’s scared and loves his mother and would do anything for her. That boy…” She places her hand flat against my chest, and I’m afraid she might feel my heart pounding there with every word she’s saying. “…that boy touched my soul, and I will remember him forever. Even after he’s given up his eternal life for a perpetual one.”
I’m struggling for words, but the need to say anything douses as she leans forward and presses her lips to mine. They’re softer than I imagined, and I don’t have to think to kiss her back. My lips are already moving against hers, my hands sliding up to hold her cheeks. I pull her close and wind my fingers into the silky cloud of her hair. I deepen the kiss, and it quiets something inside me, creating a bottomless calm that wars with the pounding of my heart and the shortness of my breath. Our tongues dance together, tasting and touching each other like we’re both starved for this. Like it might be the last time as well as the first.
“Eli.” Cyrus’s voice halts our frantic kiss, but it’s not until I turn to face him at the door that I see something which makes me reflexively jerk away from Kamali.
Lenora is standing next to Cyrus.
“Your girlfriend’s here,” he says with cold words that horrify me.
My mouth hangs open, and I’m frozen between lashing out at Cyrus for allowing her in and asking Lenora how she could dare to be here. Her face is deeply troubled, but the look on Kamali’s is what turns my insides to ice.
Her beautiful full lips turn down, hurt by my abrupt end to the kiss, but more than that… she’s disgusted. She looks back and forth between me and Lenora, but my body language reflex has already sentenced me in her eyes.
“You’re with one of them?” Kamali whispers, her face contorted in judgment.
My mouth moves, but nothing comes out. I hold my hands palm up and finally force out, “She’s my patron.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize they only make things worse. Of course she would be my patron, if I were that kind of human, the one Kamali is despising with her eyes, the kind I suddenly turned into with Cyrus’s words and my body’s betrayal: a domestic.
Kamali shrinks away from me. She turns, but not before I see the shine of tears in her eyes. She ducks her head and flies out the door, squeezing past Lenora such that no part of her dancer's body accidentally touches Lenora’s perfectly sculpted bodyform.
The rage inside me vents toward Cyrus. “What the hell, Cy—” But he’s already out the door, and it slides shut behind him, leaving Lenora in the room with me.
Alone.
I’m speechless about what has happened. Before I can piece together why my best friend has stabbed me in the back, Lenora crosses the floor and stands before me. Her white rose skin is luminescent in the streaming sun, almost glowing like an angel.
She’s no angel, my brain re-engages to remind me.
“Eli, please listen to me.”
I turn away from her, shaking my head, not quite believing she’s here. Through the glass, I see Katya standing and turning to the crowds, accepting their adulation for her amazing work. Work I will have to beat but have very little chance of doing so.
“Please don’t go out there, Elijah,” Lenora says, bringing me back.
“Are you kidding me?” The bitterness makes my mouth ache.
She looks to the door that Kamali just rushed out. “I can see you are… attached to that girl.”
“That girl is a gold medalist who—” I cut myself off, choking on the fact that I almost spilled Kamali’s secret plans.
“Who you care about. I can see that.” She pauses, and I want to read something into it. That maybe there’s the slightest bit of jealousy there, but all I see is deep worry. “Cyrus said you might be having second thoughts.”
“Did he?” My anger froths up to a new level. My friend who was supposed to be supporting me. My friend who, now that I think about it, was pushing me constantly to be with Kamali, the revolutionary. My friend who is probably sleeping with the resistance’s most chatty member. The betrayal burns like acid drilling a hole through my stomach. “Well, I’m not having second thoughts. I’m going to go out there…” I fling my hand toward the now-empty stage, aware that any moment the crowd will start wondering where I am. “…and win. No thanks to you. Or Cyrus. Or, for that matter, Marcus, your ascended lover who is, I’m sure, oh so much better than I could ever be.” Something tugs at me, something about Cyrus telling me, just minutes ago, to never give up. But I shove it aside.
Her eyes go slightly wide. “Eli, I do care about you. More than you can possibly know.”
“Yes, you care about me so much, you want to keep me for a pet.” My lip curls in disgust as I say it.
“Eli, no! You don’t understand. It’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that.” I turn away, but she reaches out and stops me. If she wanted to use her ascender strength, she could easily crush me. But her touch is feather-light, and I hate the way it makes my heart lurch. I hate all the times I dreamed of her touching me just this way.
I turn back to her anyway.
“Eli, I haven’t been honest with you. And… I’m so sorry for that, but you see, I’ve been trying to protect you…” Her voice is trembling.
“From what, exactly?” My words are harsh, clipped. But whatever she’s going to say is too little, too late.
“From ascenders like Marcus. From others who want to see you destroyed.” Her delicate fingers are suddenly on my cheek, cool and caressing. “Please, just come with me now. I will tell you everything.”
“Now? You want me to just walk away?” I can’t believe she would even propose it.
“Yes. I promise you will understand everything, once I have a chance to explain—”
“You had your chance.” I turn away from her and stride to the door. I open it, and the sun takes on a new brilliance as it blasts into the room. I glance back. She’s still waiting for me, h
and outstretched. “If I ascend, you and your second, Marcus, had better both stay far, far away from me.”
I step out onto the stage.
Every step across the dull black floor just stokes my anger, jolting it with another hot electric shock up my back. Cyrus betrayed me. Kamali despises me. Marcus lies to my face, while Lenora treats me like a child to the bitter end. Meanwhile, my mother lies dying of a disease any one of the multitudes of ascenders before me could cure.
I stand before them, sensing their unease like a ripple across the stadium, a breathy wind of disapproval and concern. I hate them. Hate them. With every fiber of my being. And yet I’ve never more desperately wanted what they have. To ascend. To show them. Fix everything that’s wrong. To prove to them all that I’m just as good as they are.
I feel it coming, like an undertow stealing sand from beneath my feet: the fugue state. I quickly spin to face it, flinging my arms wide to embrace the drowning waters.
I’m back in the master’s shop. The craggy-faced man is there, working on a portrait, and a twinge of recognition whispers in my ear. He’s Dutch and his clothing style is four hundred years out of date. I’m dreaming about a famous painter from the past.
Without turning, he says in his ringing thought-voice, This is not a dream, Elijah. He turns the painting toward me, and I can see it’s a portrait of me. You are the bridge, he says.
The bridge between what and what? I ask, but as soon as I do, my mind expands. I’m standing on the stage, in front of the ascenders. I sense the movement of my hands conducting a symphony of paint on the canvas in front of me. At the same time, I am standing before the master painter, staring at myself on his canvas.
You are the bridge, he repeats. Somehow I know his medium isn’t paint, but something more.
I’m your work of art, I say, echoing Delphina’s words.
He smiles and shakes his head no. I lose the sense of being on stage, and at the same time, his ancient and cobblestoned room expands to hold a hundred people. They’re whispering, but not to each other. To me.
What are they saying? I ask the master. As I say it, one drifts forward. She’s bent with age, but her dark eyes are piercing and intelligent. Her clothing is modern, stylish, but somber. She reaches a wrinkled finger toward my forehead. When she touches me, I don’t feel the aged skin of her hand, only a blinding rush of knowledge, as if she’s transferred every minute of her existence into mine. It’s an overwhelming flood that nearly snuffs out everything that I am. I stumble back, breaking contact, and the tsunami cuts off, leaving me woozy and aching, bruised by the encounter. I have a heaviness about me, a weight that pulls me down, like a burden I scarcely can carry.
You are the bridge, Elijah, she says.
I’m back on the stage, standing in front of a canvas dripping paint. I have a brush in each hand, and a roar fills my ears. I blink in the hazy-bright sun, which makes the work look as though it’s glowing around the edges. That effect isn’t what makes the painting transcendent, though. It’s the fact that I’ve painted Kamali, again, only this time her broken and bruised body is lifted from the muck, carrying chains of mud around her wrists. She’s breaking free from her earthen bonds as her tilted face gazes heavenward. Her hair, unbound and free, falls down her back, and her face shines with an expectant joy.
I’ve painted Kamali arisen… ascended… but in the way she wants to be.
It’s the finest thing I’ve ever made. Only this time I know it not just as a viewer of the piece, but as the artist. I can see the details of the eyes, the glow around her wrists, the sweep of color change along the length of her body calculated in microscopic shades. It’s like a veil has been lifted from my eyes, and I can see every minute stroke, every nuanced line, in a way I never have before. I look at my hands, which are smeared with her paint, and realize I know how to do this. I could paint her again. Or at least some of it. As that thought dumbfounds my mind, the sound of the crowd swells and fills my head with pounding. My body starts to tremble, and the brushes in my hands twitch with a convulsion that’s gripping my body.
I only have one thought left: get off the stage. I drop the brushes and stumble, nearly falling, toward the exit door. I make it just as my knees give out.
I leave a smear of brown paint on the door frame as I stumble inside Agon.
The brightness of the stage is replaced by the glowing panels of the hallway.
My head is still filled with the wonder of the piece I just painted. The knowledge that I created it—that I actually have some idea how to re-create it—gives me a burning urge to find a canvas and paint it again.
Only my legs don’t work right, and my hands are curled against my chest, shaking. I fall against the wall and smear paint along it, trying to keep upright. I hear footsteps pounding in the hallway ahead of me, but it takes all my concentration to shuffle my feet forward, crawling along with the wall as support.
“Eli!”
Through the fog in my head, I recognize Cyrus’s voice. The footsteps pound closer, and his big, rough hands grab my shoulders, pulling me upright.
“You did it, Eli! You actually—”
I punch him.
I have no strength or coordination, so it’s mostly me shoving my fist in his face and smearing it with paint before twisting and falling to the floor. I hit hard enough to pull a grunt out of me. But my swing is enough to get the message across. I think. My legs and arms are too cramped now to do anything but curl up on the floor and wait for it to pass. Then I’ll give punching Cyrus another try, even if he outweighs me by fifty pounds.
He stands over me, silent. Then he bends down near my head. “Eli, I’m sorry.”
“Go away,” I manage to get out.
He reaches out to try to help me up, but I shove away his hands. I’m mostly flailing, but he gets the idea.
“Eli, let me help you.”
“Had enough of your help.”
He sighs and sits down cross-legged next to my head. I mostly see his knees near my face, and I’m well aware that he could pummel me if he wished. My body gives a violent shudder, but it seems to uncramp my hands a little. I edge away from him, even though I’m not coordinated enough to go far.
“Eli.” Cyrus sighs again. “I told you… I told you, man, I would do anything to help you win.”
My brain chews on that a moment, but it doesn’t make sense to me. I roll over so I’m lying on my back, staring up at the light panels. I take a couple breaths as I puzzle it out. “You were trying to piss me off. Trigger the fugue.” I say it, but it doesn’t take away the sting of the betrayal.
“Well… not exactly. But yes.”
My cramped arms are relaxing, so I brace against the wall and push myself up to sitting. I peer at Cyrus from across the hallway. He’s using his blue artems uniform to wipe off the paint I smeared on his face.
“What exactly were you trying to do?” I ask.
He sighs again and looks away from my steady gaze. “I saw what Lenora did to you. How jealous you were. Frustrated. And then the fugue happened. I was trying to recreate that for you, and I could only think of one way to do it.”
“So you brought her back.” My jaw is chattering a bit, but the shakes are starting to mellow out. “And you brought Kamali into it, to make it worse.” I pause and take a couple breaths, trying to calm my body. “That was a messed up thing to do, Cy.”
“I know.” He looks back to me. “But it worked. And now you’ll get to ascend and take your mom with you, and you won’t have to worry about me being a pain in your ass anymore.”
I don’t know if I’ll actually win, but I don’t have any real doubts about it. The fugue state is the best I’m capable of. If I can’t win it there, I truly never had a chance. But deep inside, I know the gold is already mine. I know what it takes, and I know what I just painted. The anger at how Cyrus made it happen is still churning inside me, but it’s already starting to fade. “I really hate you right now.”
“Yeah, well,
soon you’ll get to hate me forever.” He climbs to his feet. “C’mon. You’re a mess. Let’s get you back to your room.”
This time I let him haul me to my feet. I nearly go down again, but he’s got a beefy arm around my back, holding me up. It’s either let him help me or sit and wait it out. I grab hold of his shoulder for support and lurch down the hallway with him.
“Did Kamali know?” I ask.
He gives me a disgusted look. “Did she look like she was in on it?” He shakes his head. “I went after her, but she wanted nothing to do with me. I’m hoping Basha can say something to make it better.”
“So Basha knew.”
“Well… not really,” Cyrus says, quietly. “She was in on helping me get you and Kamali together. She didn’t know about the rest. That’s all on me. I’m sure she hates me now, too.”
I squint at him, but he’s staring down the hallway, avoiding my gaze. My legs are starting to get more rhythm. I loosen my grip on his shoulder, then shove away from him and use the wall for support. We keep our slow march through the winding hallways.
I realize I have no idea where I am. Again. That I’ll have to rely on Cyrus to get me back to the apartment. Like I’ve relied on him all along.
I glance at him. “You really suck as a friend, you know that?”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t look at me.
“If you were any better, I’d have had no chance of winning at all.”
He looks sideways at me. “You’d have had no chance with Kamali, either.”
I laugh, but it’s more of a snort, because my body is still a bag of trembles and shakes. “Oh, come on! She was totally into me. Not any more, mind you. But before.”
He smirks. “Like you could have managed that on your own.” Then he gets serious again. “I’ll fix it, Eli. I’ll go tell Kamali it’s all a lie. That you’re not, you know, Lenora’s little love slave.”
“I don’t think she’ll believe you.” The laughter washes out of me, and I stop in the hallway. Most of the tremors are gone now, but that’s not what’s keeping me from moving forward. The look on Kamali’s face is still etched into my mind. That look wasn’t just because of Cyrus’s words; it was because I pulled away from her. Because I didn’t want Lenora to see us kissing. Because I was ashamed… and not of the right things. Kamali has every reason to believe I’m exactly what she thinks.
The Legacy Human (Singularity #1) (Singularity Series) Page 22
