by A. P. Kensey
“We’re screwed,” said Bastian.
“Thanks for the professional assessment,” said Haven. “What can we do?”
“Unless there’s a tank of water in the truck and a spare starter,” said Roku, “nothing.”
Haven turned and looked in the direction they were heading. Heat shimmered over the miles of hard ground and crumbled rock between the truck and Billings.
“Should we go back to the warehouse?” she asked. “Maybe there’s another truck that wasn’t damaged.”
Roku shook his head. “We’re closer to the city than to the building. We have to walk.”
“It’s still forty miles!” said Haven. “And we don’t have any water.”
“I don’t need water,” said Roku.
Haven looked at him, her hands on her hips. She suddenly realized she was imitating an aggravated pose made famous by her mother and quickly dropped her hands to her side. “What do you mean, you don’t need it?” she asked.
“With this heat, I can draw in enough energy so I don’t have to use any of my own. I’m not sweating.”
Haven had noticed that Roku looked oddly cool in the burning heat. The rest of them were sweating bullets.
“You were sweating earlier in the warehouse,” she said.
“I was injured and I needed to focus all my energy on transferring a memory to you.”
“Yeah, cut the guy some slack,” said Bastian. He hopped off the back of the truck and stood next to Roku. “You going to do the running thing?”
“What running thing?” asked Haven.
“Roku here is a regular Flash. He does this thing where he can really book it for short periods of time, as long as he has enough energy to draw from.”
“If I don’t have enough, it starts draining internally instead of externally. I would be stealing my own life.” Roku looked up at the sun. “But this should be more than enough. I’ll get to town and come back with transportation.”
“We’ll get as far as we can on our own,” said Bastian.
Roku nodded and walked away in the direction of Billings. He took one more look up at the sun and sped up to a light jog. He picked up speed gradually, until his legs were moving so fast that Haven could hardly tell them apart. A plume of dust billowed up behind him as he shrank toward the horizon.
Haven and the others walked after him. She held up her hands to shield her eyes from the sun and wished for a cold bottle of water.
“How does he do it?” she asked. “The running thing.”
Bastian shrugged. “Roku can do a lot. Like the memory piggybacking magic he worked on you when we first met. He seems to have an understanding of the way his body interacts with the world on a biological level that no one else can begin to figure out. I think the running has something to do with the way his body distributes energy, all the way down to the amount of blood delivered to his muscles. He can control what parts get more attention if he really focuses. But he’ll burn out if he pushes too hard.”
“How long will it take?” asked Marius. He trudged forward, staring down at his feet to keep the sun off his face.
“Depends on how resourceful he is in town.”
“Marius is sorry about before,” he said suddenly.
“So am I,” said Bastian.
They continued on in silence, following Roku’s path across the hard-packed ground. Haven looked up at the blinding sun and the desire for water was temporarily forgotten behind the sincere hope that Noah and Colton were okay.
34
The smell of perfume seeped into Colton’s dreamless sleep like a thin sheet falling over a bed. It was a smell of spring flowers and rain, and he knew it belonged to his mother. He called out to her in his sleep, seeing her for a moment in front of him, smiling. Just smiling. It said more than her words ever could.
He reached out for her but she was gone.
He woke up in a small bed in the corner of a small room. There was a little vanity desk with a cracked mirror on top, a short dresser with three drawers, and a single door. Several thick, humming pipes ran along the interior walls—pipes through which a Conduit could funnel their uncontrollable energy instead of burning up with it from inside their own body.
It was his mother’s room.
Colton swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. He put his hand on the pillow in the depression made by his head and remembered his arrival at the Dome. His mother had lived in that very room for a time, guarded over and protected by Elena and the others; kept safe from Bernam, who would have killed her without hesitation. Colton’s Conduit ability had been taken by Bernam and given to Reece, a friend who Bernam was manipulating into an obedient follower. After that, Colton only had a short time to live. A Source or Con stripped of their ability will wither and eventually die.
Colton had been on the verge of death when his mother transferred her own Conduit energy into him. He tried to give it back to her—knowing it meant her death—but he didn’t know how. Unlike a Source, a Con can freely give their power to one who is without either ability. Colton’s mother knew how to pass her gift on to him, yet he didn’t know how to give it back.
She had died in his arms just as they were reunited for the first time since he was a boy.
A tingling sensation swept over the left side of his face. He reached up and touched his temple, feeling fresh scar tissue. It burned under his fingertips. Tracing it down, he followed a crescent moon of burnt skin past his left eye. The scar arced inward like a parenthesis cupping his eye and ended just below his cheekbone.
Kamiko.
Colton stood up and a wave of nausea swelled through his stomach. He quickly sat down and covered his mouth with one hand. There was a trash can nearby and he grabbed for it greedily, then threw up black liquid. He wiped his mouth and set the can aside, then slowly stood again. The nausea passed and he went to the door. It was locked. He rattled the doorknob and smacked his palm against the paneling.
“Hey!” he shouted, more of a croak than a word. He continued to hit the door until at last there was a soft click and the knob turned freely in his hand. Kamiko was in the next room, leaning casually against the wall with her hands at the small of her back. She stared at the wall across from her and did not acknowledge Colton as he slowly approached.
The room was narrow but long, with a single overhead fluorescent light that cast a flickering green glow upon the concrete floor and walls. A single table and chair sat pushed into a corner, long forgotten. The door at the other end of the room was solid steel, too thick to break through without his ability. Colton eyed it hungrily but stood still, waiting to see what Kamiko would do.
She turned her head lazily and looked at him with her dark eyes. Thin strands of shiny black hair hung in front of her face like wispy vines.
“What have you done to the others?” asked Colton.
She pushed off from the wall and brushed the hair away from her face, slowly, one side at a time, oblivious to the suffering of the world around her.
“What have you done to them?” she replied. Her voice purred like a kitten.
Colton took a step back, the confusion evident on his face. She moved gracefully, languidly, her every motion like a shifting pool of water, flowing seamlessly into the next.
“I told you not to try anything,” she said. “I warned you not to be a boy hero.”
“Are any of them still alive?”
She looked into his eyes. Her dark blue energy was gone, at least for the time being. She did not float over the floor as she stepped closer to him, but walked normally in slow, patient steps. Her eyes, what Colton once thought of as black holes, were now noticeably dark brown, with tiny flecks of gold around the irises.
She crossed her arms, then reached up and twirled a strand of her hair with a slender finger. “They’re alive,” she said at last. “For now. Your friend Dormer is in bad shape. He will be sedated until the work is done.”
“What about June and the others?”
She shrugged.
“What about Micah?” His voice cracked when he said the boy’s name.
“You saw him yourself,” she said, still staring at him with those deep, dark eyes.
“How could you let that happen?” he whispered, backing away. He hit the wall and stopped. “He was just a child.”
“Colton,” she scolded. “How many children do you think will die once Alistair releases his plague upon the world? How many innocent lives will be lost? What does it matter if one of them goes ahead of schedule?”
He ran at her and screamed. He got both hands around her throat and slammed her into the wall. She stared at him calmly and kneed him in the groin. He coughed out all of his air and fell to the ground in a fetal position, rocking from side to side, unable to breathe.
Kamiko knelt down and traced a sharp fingernail over his new scar. “I gave this to you so would always remember me.” She looked over his writhing body. “You don’t have to go with the others,” she said quietly, as if it embarrassed her to speak the words. “You could come with me after my work here is done.”
He looked at her like it was the most absurd thing he had ever heard, because it was. Then he saw that her face was about to twist from hope to rage at his reaction and he settled back down to the ground. He let his eyes play over her slim body, pretending to admire her every curve. She softened under his gaze, becoming more feminine in that mysterious way mastered by so many women before her.
“If you promise me they won’t die,” he said. “I’ll follow you anywhere.”
Kamiko smiled and put a gentle palm to his scar. Then she pulled him roughly to his feet and pushed him face-first into the wall.
“Don’t make me regret my decision,” she hissed in his ear. He nodded and she released him.
Kamiko walked to the steel door and hit it three times with her closed fist. A moment later, there was a loud mechanical whine and the door slowly opened. She walked out into the dome room, then stopped and turned back to Colton. He followed her, hesitantly at first, unsure of what she would do.
“Go see the Doctor,” she said. “He’s falling behind schedule.” She turned away abruptly and left him standing alone.
Three soldiers stood near the dormitory hallway. One of them leaned against the wall for support, but the others paced back and forth impatiently. The bodies of the dead soldiers still lay strewn about the floor in front of the elevator hallway door. Colton waited until Kamiko disappeared down the dormitory hallway. He walked quickly to the training room and ducked inside before anyone tried to stop him.
Micah’s body was on the cold ground. Colton picked him up gently and carried him back into the dome room. One of the soldiers stood outside the door and raised his rifle.
“Put him down,” he said.
Colton shook his head and said, “Shoot me.” He walked past the soldier with his eyes closed, hoping he didn’t catch a bullet in the back.
35
After Colton took a few more steps, he looked back. The soldier stood there, his rifle held loosely at his side.
The Grove was the only room in the Dome that had not been tainted by the arrival of Kamiko and her thugs. The grass was still as vibrant, the air as crisp and cool as the day Colton had first arrived at the underground complex.
He walked through the grid of healing trees and over the small hill on the far side. Tiny blue lights danced slowly over the surface of the still pond. Colton knelt down and laid Micah’s small body against the base of the willow tree next to Elena’s grave, as if he had simply fallen asleep for a light afternoon nap.
Colton made a silent promise to come back and bury him as soon as he could. He rested his right palm over the boy’s eyes and said goodbye.
All three soldiers were by the dormitory hallway when Colton walked out of the Grove. He went right past them. Their heads turned to follow him, but they said nothing. He walked directly to the water processing room and pushed through the door.
Adsen was still inside, rushing around his makeshift lab like a mad scientist whose creation was about to explode. He muttered to himself and did not notice Colton staring down at Dormer, who lay unconscious on a small cot next to the aluminum tables in the middle of the room. A thick plastic tube burrowed into a vein in Dormer’s arm and fed blood to a machine on the table.
“Were you working for them all along or did you switch sides at the end?” asked Colton.
Adsen let out a shriek and whirled around to face him. “Colton, good heavens! You nearly scared the life out of me!” He put his face too close to a computer monitor and read off some numbers, then scribbled the numbers on a notepad. “You shouldn’t be in here. I already told you that. You should be out there trying to stop the madness.”
“We missed our chance,” said Colton. “We were only able to get some of the soldiers. We failed.” He looked down at Dormer. Dark bruises covered his arms and neck. A large cut started over his nose and ran up his scalp, all the way to the back of his head.
“Yes,” said Adsen. “I was made aware of the…particulars.”
Colton took a step closer. “So you can stop now.”
Adsen’s pencil froze in place. He peered at Colton over the top of his reading glasses. “What do you mean, stop?”
“I mean you don’t have to prove to Kamiko that we’re cooperating. It was all just a distraction anyway, right? But we failed, so now it doesn’t matter if she knows you’re not making any progress. You need to stop working on Fade.”
Adsen sighed. “Do you know why I’m drawing blood from my brother?”
“Because you’re crazy?”
Adsen smiled without humor. “The same reason I drew blood from myself.” He rolled up his sleeve and showed Colton a dark bruise on his forearm. “Do you know what connects us, and only us?”
Colton thought for a moment. “You’re the only ones not infected with Fade.”
“Correct—well, mostly correct. I fear the only reason I am not infected is because I had no ability in the first place. They drained it out of me while I was stuck in Bernam’s facility. I am, for all intents and purposes, normal.”
“So you’re drawing Dormer’s blood to see if the improved Fade will infect it. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.”
Adsen smiled at him and there was a genuine twinkle of joy in his dark pupils. “It does if creating a more powerful virus is not your true goal.”
For the first time, Colton noticed a row of medical syringes laid out on the table. Adsen picked one up and pulled out the plunger. He selected a vial of bubbling yellow liquid from the apex position of his chemistry set and carefully tipped it into the syringe. When the small reservoir was full, Adsen replaced the vial over an open flame and put the plunger back in the syringe.
“You might want to try this,” he said, and handed Colton the syringe.
“I’m not injecting that poison into my veins.”
“Use your head, Colton. Put the pieces together quickly, before we run out of time.”
Colton concentrated as best he could. What was another reason to draw blood from an immune patient if not to learn how to infect their system?
“You made a cure.”
The smile on Adsen’s face grew into one of great pleasure and relief. “Well done, my boy. Well done.”
“But how?”
Adsen filled the other syringes, one at a time, carefully measuring out just enough liquid to fill the tiny reservoirs. He talked as he worked. “To tell you the truth, it was something of a miracle. It was only possible because the genetic makeup of the virus and the cure are nearly identical until after the very last chemical process. I was able to give Kamiko reports on exactly what I was doing as I went along, because I was, in essence, furthering the capabilities of the base virus. Only in the final report—which she has not yet received—would it become obvious that I had deviated from her orders. Here,” he said, offering the syringe to Colton. “I doubt we have much time.”
; Colton took the syringe and held out his arm. He made a fist, pumping it hard until the black veins under his skin bulged out. He rested the needle over the thickest vein in his forearm and then stopped. Adsen watched him eagerly, his breath coming out in short gasps.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked.
“I’m trying to decide if you’re lying.”
“You’re already infected,” said Adsen. “What good would it do to infect you again?”
“How should I know? You’ve already lied, Adsen. Why didn’t you just tell me you were working on a cure?”
Adsen turned away and ran a hand through his slick, thinning hair. “I couldn’t risk you knowing the truth. If they took you, and—and they tortured you…” His hand went to his neck and scratched at a faint scar over his throat, usually hidden beneath his shirt collar. “I know their methods. It was too great a risk. You would have talked. I’m sorry I kept you in the dark, Colton. I’m sorry you hated me for it. But it was the only way.”
Colton stuck the needle into his vein and pushed down on the plunger. The hot yellow liquid shot into his arm, burning like acid as it surged through his veins. He dropped the empty syringe and staggered backward. Adsen watched him with a mix of horror and wonder.
“Tell me how you feel!” he whispered.
Colton smacked his lips. They had suddenly become dry as a desert. “Weird,” he said. “Like…like someone pulled out my skeleton.” He held up his fingers and squinted at them. There were twenty on each hand, wiggling back and forth like earthworms.
“Fascinating,” said Adsen. He wrote quickly on his notepad.
Colton’s vision cleared and he took a deep, long breath. “I feel like I can breathe for the first time in my life!” The air was more light and fresh than the air in the Grove had ever been. Colton felt new strength filling out his muscles, making him whole again.
“Excellent!” said Adsen.
