by A. P. Kensey
The strange sensations left Colton as soon as they had found him and he stood there, his mind as calm and serene as the Grove pond, seeing very clearly what needed to be done. He reached out and took every syringe. He found a small black duffel bag under the table, emptied its contents, and put in the syringes.
“Wait!” said Adsen. “We need more time to see if it’s permanent!”
Colton held out his arms. The black veins that ran like snakes under his skin were already fading.
“That could mean anything,” said Adsen. “We have to be sure.”
“Run more tests, then,” said Colton. “But run them after I’m finished. And wake up your brother. We’re gonna need him.”
36
Haven stared straight ahead as she walked across the desert. The sun reflected too brightly off the ground and it burned too brightly in the sky, so she kept her focus on the wavering horizon, across the miles of cracked earth and rock and through the shimmering heat. Several times she thought she glimpsed a distant vehicle, only to see the dark splotch on the horizon fade away like vapor.
The others marched silently, lost in their own thoughts. Bastian and Haven walked side by side a few feet apart as they picked their way over loose shale and around prickly-pear cactus. Bastian had said they could eat it if they really had to, but it would be a lot easier if they could boil the spines and fry the cactus meat first. Haven said they may as well find a way to cook sand for all the trouble it took to prepare one small chunk of cactus.
Marius walked behind them and had been slowing down over time. Haven glanced back occasionally, but every time she did, Marius waved her away impatiently. His face was slick with sweat and the black veins had crept up from his neckline to cover the sides of his face.
They had been walking for four hours without a drop of water. With the amount of sweat they were each shedding, it wouldn’t be much longer before they all collapsed and died out in the middle of nowhere. Roku would come back—if he came back—to find three dried-out corpses.
Haven tried not to think about never seeing Colton again. Every time he entered her thoughts, it felt like he was pulling her back to him.
“Look,” said Bastian, pointing to the horizon.
A black shimmer appeared between the distant outline of two low mountains. Haven squinted and shielded her eyes, watching intently. She expected the mirage to waver and fade away, just like the others, but instead it grew larger. A cloud of dust rose slowly into the air behind what was most definitely a shiny black vehicle.
“I really hope that’s him,” said Bastian.
They stopped walking and waited as the vehicle drew closer. The noise of the engine carried across the flat ground; a loud growl that reached their ears long before the vehicle came to a skidding halt in front of them. Roku sat behind the wheel of a four-wheel-drive Jeep with no doors or roof. A roll-cage offered the only protection.
“Best I could find on such short notice,” he said.
Bastian whooped and jumped into the passenger’s seat. He leaned over and kissed Roku on the cheek. Roku pushed him away, disgusted, and wiped his face. Bastian hardly noticed; he was too busy messing with the air conditioner controls.
Haven waited behind Marius as he slowly climbed into the back seat, ready to help just in case he was too weak to boost himself up. He made it on his own. Haven grabbed the roll-cage bar and pulled herself up next to him.
“Good job, Roku,” she said. She reached forward and squeezed his shoulder. He smiled at her in the rear-view mirror.
“You couldn’t find one with a roof?” asked Bastian. He had the air conditioner cranked up full blast and put his face right up to the vent.
Roku looked at him, frowning, then put the Jeep into gear and made a U-turn.
Bastian hadn’t stopped smiling since he got in the car. “I thought that was the end, my friend. I thought we were done for.”
Roku picked up speed and followed his own tracks back toward Billings. He reached down near his feet and brought out three bottles of water. Haven took hers and drank all of the water in several long gulps.
“How long did it take you to reach us?” she shouted.
“Thirty minutes,” said Roku.
Sand and small rocks shot up from the back tires as Roku sped over the desert. Looking ahead, Haven saw the glimmering lines of a city.
“Where’d you get the Jeep?” asked Bastian.
“You really want to know?”
Bastian looked at the dashboard, then opened the glove box. It was empty. “This thing’s brand new! Did you steal this right off the lot? Take it for a test drive and never bring it back?”
Roku shook his head and Bastian’s smile faded. “Tell me you didn’t buy this Jeep.”
“You paid for this thing?” asked Haven, leaning forward. “How?”
Bastian’s mouth hung open in disbelief. “Come on, man! We’re down to our last bit of cash!”
“I didn’t want to steal it,” said Roku. He gripped the wheel tightly and pressed down on the accelerator.
“He didn’t want to steal it,” said Bastian to no one in particular, shaking his head. “Of course he didn’t. Always the Boy Scout. Captain Morality. Well, I hope they do refunds. And what happened to the roof?!”
“It would have taken too long to attach,” said Roku.
“How did you guys get so much money?” asked Haven.
Roku and Bastian exchanged a quick glance, and Roku nodded. Bastian turned around in the passenger’s seat. Marius was slouched down next to Haven with his arms crossed, asleep, an empty water bottle gripped tightly in hand. His head bounced lightly as the Jeep rode across the bumpy ground.
“You remember I told you about Helix Scientific?” asked Bastian. “We spoke about it briefly at the airport.”
“The company Roku used to work for,” said Haven. “I remember.”
“Yeah, well, let’s just say he didn’t exactly see eye to eye at the time of his, um, departure. He stole a couple of company credit cards on his last day and cashed them out.”
“I thought you didn’t like stealing,” said Haven to Roku. He looked at her in the rear-view mirror but remained silent.
“Stealing from a company like Helix is different than ripping off a car salesman,” said Bastian.
“What makes them so bad?”
Bastian shrugged. “Just the fact that they’re tagging and cataloguing every Source and Conduit they can find.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re easier to control if they can herd us like sheep.”
The Jeep hit a shallow divot in the ground and sand flew up over the windshield to sting Haven’s face. She rubbed it from her eyes and said, “No one at the Dome ever told me anything about them.”
“They probably didn’t know the company existed,” said Bastian. “It’s a private group, funded anonymously, with no clear purpose other than tagging Sources and Cons. Sounds harmless enough, right? Especially with that ‘Scientific’ at the end of their name. Roku spent a year undercover with them and never found out anything more than that. Even internally, they keep a tight lid on all of their operations. But I have a theory.”
“Well, let’s hear it,” said Haven.
Bastian smiled. “You won’t believe me.”
“After what I’ve seen? Give me a break.”
“I think it’s Bernam’s company.”
“Bernam’s dead. I watched Alistair kill him.”
Bastian nodded. “And yet Helix Scientific still exists. Which means control of the company has passed to someone else.”
“Alistair?”
“Maybe.”
“Seems a little small in scale for his tastes.”
“Perhaps,” said Bastian. “But tagging and cataloguing our kind would make it very easy to track us down if, say for example, he wanted to inject each of us with Fade. Anyway, Helix isn’t a major player yet, but we need to watch them closely.”
“Are most of the employees nor
mal people?”
Bastian smiled. “‘Normal’?
“You know what I mean. Not Sources or Cons.”
“Yes. All of the upper management, anyway. They use people like Roku to do the hunting and collecting.”
“Sounds to me like all the money belongs to Roku.”
“What money?”
“The money he took from Helix. Sounds like he can buy a Jeep with it if he wants to.”
Bastian laughed. “I guess you’re right.”
“So,” said Haven. “All that time he worked for Helix, you were working for Alistair?”
Bastian’s face changed and he looked away. Haven didn’t think he was going to answer. He looked down at his open palms as if he were ashamed of himself.
“I got myself into a little bit of trouble,” he said at last. “Before I met old Rock-You here, I was a bit of a grifter. A small-time scam-artist, you could say.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” asked Haven. She meant it as a joke but Bastian didn’t smile.
“There are people out there you don’t know about, Haven,” he said. “Sources and Cons who aren’t like us. They’re rotten, all the way to the core, no better than common street thugs. They form gangs and roam the streets of major cities, preying on easy targets—stealing and hurting those who can’t defend themselves.”
“You were one of them,” said Haven.
Bastian shook his head. “No. But my brother was. After my mother left us and ran off with her new boyfriend, my brother started taking drugs—heavy junk, none of that kiddy weekender fluff. He got in deep with a local drug lord. Turns out this guy’s a Con, and he uses his ability on my brother to teach him a lesson. Only afterward, my brother doesn’t wake up.”
Roku looked over at Bastian and Haven could tell by the look on his face that he had never heard the story.
Bastian spoke as if in a trance, his eyes wide and unblinking. “So I go pay the drug lord a visit. His name was Frank. Funny, right? A drug lord named Frank. Anyway, he can tell what I am before I get within twenty feet of him, and he wants to order his boys to spray me with bullets, but by then it’s too late. I’m lit up like the sun, wading through them like nothing. And then it was over. It was just me, standing there, alone.”
“What did you do after it was done?” asked Haven.
“The only thing I could do. I ran. And I didn’t stop until Alistair found me and told me that I should come work for Bernam. He paid for everything and he made my problems go away.”
“He recruited Colton as well,” said Haven. “He bailed him out of prison.”
Bastian nodded. “I have a feeling he had people like us all over the world. Little seeds he was hoping to cultivate into great big trees for his army. Alistair was my main contact. I only met Bernam once, right after I joined up. The funny thing is that I never really did anything at all for them. They told me to live my life and they would call me when they needed me. Then one day, the call finally came, and the first thing they wanted me to do was burn down someone’s house in Arizona. I didn’t go, obviously, and I spent my time running from them until Alistair finally caught me a year ago. They injected me with Fade, and then the cure. Bernam died right after that and Alistair disappeared. That’s when I met Roku, and the two of us have been quite the activists ever since.” He smiled and slapped Roku hard in the shoulder. “Ain’t that right?”
Haven sat in the back seat, stunned. “Scottsdale?” she asked weakly. Her voice sounded far away, as if it came from another person.
“I’m sorry?” said Bastian.
She swallowed hard. “Scottsdale, Arizona? Is that where they wanted you to go?”
“Yes,” said Bastian, looking at her with surprise. “How did you know?”
Roku reached over and punched him in the arm.
“Ow!” said Bastian. “What’d you hit me for?”
Roku nodded at Haven.
“Oh,” said Bastian quietly. “Haven, I’m sorry. I didn’t put the two pieces together.”
“It’s okay,” she said, and looked into his eyes. “I’m glad you told me.” In a way, it was good to know that there were people out in the world who wouldn’t sell their souls because they were simply “doing their jobs”. In another way, her parents were still dead, and that meant there were people out there in the world who enjoyed inflicting pain. For the time being, Haven chose to believe the world was filled with more good than bad, even though, recently, all of the evidence pointed in the other direction. She chose to look at it like that because it was the only way to keep from completely losing her mind.
“We’re almost there,” said Roku.
Haven looked ahead as the Jeep left the desert and hit smooth asphalt. The outskirts of civilization rose up around them—abandoned buildings and industrial lots filled with rusty machinery and old trucks. A few miles away, downtown Billings awaited.
“Good,” said Bastian. “Let’s refuel and hit the highway.”
Haven leaned over and put a hand to Marius’s forehead. His skin was burning up but he shivered, even under the bright midday sun. His eyelids opened and he smiled when he saw her. He said something in Russian and before Haven could ask what he meant, he closed his eyes again and fell asleep.
“Please hurry,” she said to Roku. She wanted Marius to see Corva one last time before Fade ran its course. She did her best to push the thought of burying them together out of her mind, but it was useless. All she saw when she closed her eyes was a row of graves, all lined up next to Elena’s in the Grove. Etched into each one was the name of someone she loved.
37
The three soldiers guarding the dormitory hallway didn’t try to stop Colton as he approached. He carried the small black duffel bag confidently and looked right at them when he passed. He could feel them staring at him and fought the urge to quicken his pace. Finally he was past the kitchen and at the fork in the hallway. Colton turned left and followed the hall until he reached Marius and Corva’s room.
He spun the wheel, pushed open the door, and went inside. June stood against the wall with an iron frying pan in her hand, ready to bring it down on his head. She let out a relieved sigh when she saw it was him and tossed the pan onto an empty chair.
“You’re lucky you aren’t one of them. I almost flattened your head.”
“Thanks for double-checking,” said Colton. He went quickly to Corva’s bed and knelt down, then unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out a handful of capped syringes.
“What are those?” asked June.
“The cure.” He handed one to her and pulled off the protective cap covering the needle. “Here, take it.”
“What?! You’re crazy.”
Colton showed her his arms, now completely free of black veins. He pulled down his shirt collar so she could see the faint grey outlines of the veins that had once been pitch black.
“Good enough for me,” she said. She inserted the needle into a vein in the crook of her arm and slowly pushed in the plunger. “It burns.”
“Yeah,” said Colton. “It gets better. In a minute you’re going to feel really good. You should probably sit down.”
“It’s already started,” said June. Her eyes crossed and uncrossed, then she sat down heavily on the nearest chair and right in the frying pan. She didn’t notice.
“What’s going on?” asked Noah. He had been hiding under a cot and stuck his head out to look up at Colton.
“Hey Noah,” said Colton. “How are you feeling?”
Noah shrugged and scratched at the floor shyly. Colton wanted to ask him how he managed to use his ability while infected with Fade. He wanted to know how Noah was able to use his ability at all, given that no Source or Con ever manifested their power before they were at least sixteen years old. The black veins that had been so prominent in Colton’s skin were only thin lines in Noah’s, and had been since he was first infected. His body had something extra to fight off the infection, even though Colton was certain that Fade would eventually
win in the end.
“We found some medicine that’s going to make everyone better,” said Colton. “Come on out here and we’ll all take it together.”
Noah crawled out and sat on the cot.
Colton prepared another syringe and gently turned Corva’s face toward him. The skin on her cheeks was almost completely purple-black, and when he lifted her eyelids he only saw onyx orbs with red streaks running through them. Her arm was cold as ice as he rolled up her sleeve and found the biggest vein beneath her skin. He put the needle in slowly, watching for a reaction. Her breathing quickened and then stopped. The beating pulse that had been so clearly visible in her neck was still.
He injected the cure and held his breath with her, afraid that if he filled his lungs it would curse everything. The needle was black when he removed it from her skin. Her back arched up suddenly and she screamed. Colton put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back down to the bed. She stared at him from behind strands of wild, white hair. Her eyes were no longer black.
“You’re going to be okay,” said Colton.
Her back arched up again, too strongly for Colton to press down, and then she collapsed. Her eyelids fluttered closed and she let out a deep, contented sigh. Colton felt for a pulse on her neck—weak, but steady, and her skin was already warming.
“Will she be okay?” asked June. She hovered over Colton’s shoulder, looking down at Corva.
“I think so,” he said. He picked up some syringes and handed them to June. “Here. For them.” He nodded toward the five comatose people on the cots around the room—the other survivors from the medical facility.
Colton administered the cure to Noah while June took the syringes and, one by one, injected the others. None of them were as bad off as Corva, but it would not have been long before Fade ran its full course. Colton sat heavily on the ground, holding Corva’s clammy hand, and closed his eyes.
They did it. They survived. And it was all thanks to Adsen, a man who Colton thought had been trying to perfect his own creation—his virus that Alistair meant to unleash upon the world. There would be a nice, fat steak in Adsen’s future, Colton was sure of it. Ten steaks, if he wanted them. There was no way to thank him enough.
