The Brightest Night

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  “I feel okay,” I told him, and that was the truth. “Just a little tired.”

  Luc blinked once and then twice. “Just in case you didn’t hear me the first or second time, you’ve been unconscious for four days, Evie. I’m getting the doctor.”

  Realizing Luc wasn’t going to be swayed, I quieted, and then I thought of Nate. My stomach dropped. That food wouldn’t have lasted four days. “Has Nate come by?”

  Luc’s brow puckered. “The kid? I don’t think so, but I imagined if he did and saw me or anyone else here, he probably headed in the other direction.”

  That would make sense. I sighed, hoping if that was the case, he’d come back.

  Luc rose from the bed, and I’d never seen him so wrinkly. He’d changed since the last time I’d seen him, having switched out jeans for a pair of black cotton jogger pants and a plain shirt, but it was clear he’d spent the last four days in those clothes.

  I looked down at myself, brows raising when I saw that I was in a shirt—a black shirt. Unease blossomed in the pit of my stomach as I lifted a tingling arm and pushed the thin, yellow blanket down with fingers that alternated between numb and prickly.

  The shirt featured a UFO sucking up a T. rex.

  My heart skipped a beat. “This is your shirt?”

  “One of the ones I had here. Zoe changed you,” he explained, reaching for a bottle of water on the nightstand. “She thought you’d be more comfortable, and it didn’t feel right for me to do it.”

  My gaze lifted to his. How was I wearing the same shirt in a dream before I’d even seen it? Had I at some point woken long enough to have seen it and didn’t remember? That was possible, I supposed. But it was still bizarre.

  “Thirsty?” Luc asked, and boy, was I ever. I nodded. “Do you think you can sit up?”

  I thought about that, and then I nodded once more. Sitting up wasn’t nearly as hard as opening my eyes had been, so I figured that was progress in the right direction. Luc handed over the water, and with the first touch of liquid on my tongue, I started to guzzle it.

  “I think it would be wise to slow down.” Luc gently tugged the bottle away from my mouth. “Slow sips until we get the all clear. Okay?”

  Although my throat and mouth still felt like a desert, I took a dainty sip.

  “I’m going to get the doctor.” He started for the door, but stopped, shoulders tensed. Watching him, I lowered the bottle to my lap. “I don’t want to leave.”

  Pressure clamped down on my chest. “I’m here. I’m awake, and I’m okay—at least, I feel okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Slowly, he turned back to me, brows knitted. His gaze met mine, and he didn’t speak. He just stared at me with those intense purple eyes until I started to squirm.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said, and a moment passed. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes.” I nodded for extra emphasis.

  An emotion flickered across his face, widened his eyes for a fraction of a second, but it was gone before I could figure it out. “I’ll be right back.”

  Luc made it to the door, and I’d just taken a tiny sip before I remembered. “Kat?” Water dripped down my chin. “Is she okay? The baby? Daemon?”

  He turned back, the skin around his mouth tight. “She and the baby are fine, as is Daemon,” he answered, and sweet relief swept through me. They were okay. “They’re the happy parents of a healthy baby boy. They named him Adam.”

  16

  Dr. Vivien Hemenway arrived about ten minutes after I’d convinced Luc I was okay enough to walk to the bathroom without him following me inside. The moment I saw and heard her, I knew hers was the voice I’d heard on and off while I’d slept and that she was also human.

  Maybe Grayson had been right and I was beginning to sense things the way Luxen and Origins did, because I just knew she wasn’t rocking any alien DNA. I felt nothing when I looked at her. No weird vibes, nor did I see any weird light shows. But if Grayson was right, why would that randomly start happening?

  I didn’t have an answer as I remained quiet and watched the doctor do her thing. With brown hair pulled back in a haphazard ponytail and a face that held the kind of earthy beauty that reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of women in the ’60s and ’70s, she had an air of calm authority surrounding her that only a doctor could muster.

  Perched on the edge of the bed, she’d already taken my pulse and temperature, looked in my ears and mouth, and was currently listening to my breathing—or maybe it was my heart. I had no clue. I was just supposed to take deep breaths while Luc watched from where he stood by the bed like a silent guardian, arms crossed and hips aligned with his shoulders.

  Luc looked like he was ready to go into battle.

  Smiling at me while I stayed still and quiet for what felt like an eternity, she finally lowered the stethoscope and sat back. “How are you feeling?”

  “Um, okay? Just a little tired, Doctor—”

  “Call me Viv,” she insisted. “All my friends call me that, and I think we’ll be friends.”

  Yeah, it was weird calling a doctor by her first name. “I feel normal.”

  “But tired?”

  “Not extremely tired, but it doesn’t feel like I slept for almost four days.”

  She nodded. “Have you gotten up and walked around at all? And if so, were you dizzy, or did you feel weak?”

  “I went to the bathroom—”

  “And washed her face and brushed her teeth,” Luc added.

  I shot him a narrow-eyed look, wishing he’d return to being a silent guardian and not a tattletale guardian. “Yes, I did that, too.”

  “And she was shaking when she finally came out of the bathroom,” he continued, ignoring my death glare even though what he claimed was 100 percent true. “So, I think she was feeling weak.”

  “I was feeling a little weak,” I said. “And thanks, but I can answer for myself.”

  Luc didn’t even have the decency to look properly chastised. The smile he gave me dripped charm. I needed to stop looking at him. I focused on the doctor, who was watching both of us with open amusement.

  “I have never heard someone speak to Luc like that before,” she said.

  “I’ve been telling her that for a while.” Luc let out a long-suffering sigh that had me rolling my eyes so far back in my head I was surprised they didn’t fall out. “No one speaks to me like she does.”

  “As if you don’t like it,” I muttered.

  “I do like your attitude. In fact, I love it.”

  Remembering what I had heard him say while I’d been waking up, I felt my dumb heart turn to mush.

  “Interesting,” the doc murmured. “And you really aren’t experiencing any dizziness or nausea?”

  I shook my head. “I feel like someone who hasn’t moved in four days.”

  “Which would be common for anyone inactive for that long. You may still experience muscle weakness for the next couple of hours, and you’ll probably still be tired, but I have good news for you both.”

  “You do?” My brows lifted as I leaned against the headboard.

  “Your vitals are almost perfect,” she said, folding up the stethoscope and slipping it into the front pocket of a black book bag. “I can see no overt signs of any type of illness.”

  “What do you mean by ‘almost’ perfect?” Luc questioned, latching onto that one word.

  “Well, her temperature is a little high.” She crossed one extraordinarily long, denim-clad leg over the other. “It’s about 101.2, but from what I know, Luxen, hybrid, and Origin temps all run higher than human, so considering that you aren’t quite human, that may not be abnormal at all.”

  I glanced at Luc in surprise.

  “I had to tell her about the serums,” Luc explained. “And what you are. I didn’t want her to attempt to treat you without knowing everything.”

  “Doctor-client privilege is still a thing, even in Zone 3,” Dr. Hemenway advised. “You can trust
that what we discuss here goes no further.”

  “Okay.”

  She tucked back a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “Full disclosure. I’m no alien-human hybrid specialist. Before everything went to hell in a handbasket here, I worked in human genetics—focusing mostly on cancer and hereditary diseases, which means I’ve had to dust off my med school days to be of any real help around here.”

  “But we couldn’t have gotten luckier to have someone with her background,” Luc stated, and man, he couldn’t be more right. “We were planning to send those serums we found at April’s house to Viv.”

  “I’m still upset that I can’t get my hands on them,” she said with a sigh. “How they concocted those serums is truly fascinating.”

  I thought the how was a little horrifying, but whatever.

  “I’ve been able to study the LH-11 and the Prometheus serum,” she continued. “Well, to the best of my ability with the limited access to the necessary equipment and power to be able to use said equipment.” Dr. Hemenway folded her hands on her bent knee. “I’ve been able to learn a lot from the Luxen and the others—the ones who’ve let me tinker around with them to satisfy my own curiosity. Y’all have some bizarre genetics going, so there is a whole hell of a lot I don’t know. And on top of that, I’ve never seen a Luxen or Arum hybrid. Luc over here isn’t the special snowflake anymore.”

  A slow grin tugged at my lips.

  Luc pouted. “No matter what you say, I am still a snowflake, unique and pure.”

  Dr. Hemenway snorted. “Luc also gave me a background on your health before…”

  When she trailed off into awkward uncertainty, I filled in the rest for her. “When I was Nadia?”

  She nodded. “It’s only been in the last four years that I’ve learned anything about how Luxen and human DNA could be blended or that these serums had the potential to cure certain cancers. To think of all the lives that could’ve been saved.” Sadness pinched her features. “But these serums and cures didn’t come without a price.”

  “No,” Luc agreed quietly. “No, they did not.”

  “So.” She drew the word out. “With all that being said, I may be of no help whatsoever beyond confirming that you’re alive and breathing.” She paused. “Which you are.”

  Unable to help it, I laughed. “At least you’re honest.”

  “The only good doctor is an honest one,” she said. “It may help to know exactly what you felt before you passed out. Luc filled me in on what Grayson told him, but I want to hear it from you.”

  Fiddling with the edge of the blanket, I told her exactly what I remembered, even the weird light I’d seen around Grayson.

  Luc jumped on that tidbit immediately. “What do you mean you saw a weird light around him?”

  “I saw what looked like a rainbow of lights around him. It was brief, and I know that sounds bizarre, because when I think of Grayson, I don’t think of rainbows.”

  Dr. Hemenway leaned forward and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Me, either. I think of dark storm clouds and frigid winters.”

  I smiled again, really liking this woman.

  Luc, however, was not amused. “Was that the first time you’d seen anything like that?”

  “Yes, but I saw something around you when I woke up.” I peeked at him, and his expression was impressively blank. “It was probably my eyes just adjusting to the light.”

  “What did you see?” he asked.

  “Like an aura of white and purple light?” I pulled the edges of the blanket tight. “I know it wasn’t the Source, but it was very brief, so it might’ve been my eyes.”

  “I don’t think it’s your eyes,” Dr. Hemenway interjected, looking at Luc. “Grayson also mentioned that you might have been able to feel him before he showed up? The same with Dawson when he came outside, right before became dizzy?”

  “Yeah.” I resisted the urge to reach around and rub my neck.

  “Did you feel anything when I neared the house?” she asked, and when I shook my head, she scrunched her forehead. “And had you felt this before?”

  “Well, the last couple of days, I’d been feeling weird stuff. Sort of like the sensation of cobwebs on my neck, or I’d feel like a nerve twinge between my shoulder blades,” I said, also telling them how I’d felt like I’d been able to pick out those with alien DNA among the humans at the market and at school. “But I don’t think I felt anything before that.”

  Luc unfolded his arms. “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

  “Well, a lot of stuff has been going on, and I didn’t know if I was feeling something or just imagining it. It wasn’t constant, so I had no idea if I really was feeling them or not. I was planning to mention it.” And that was the truth. “It just didn’t seem all that important.”

  “Any new thing you feel or experience is important.” Luc did not look happy. “It could be a sign.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of you evolving,” Dr. Hemenway answered.

  My gaze shot to her. “Evolving?”

  She nodded. “We have had a few humans go through the mutation process while living here, so I’ve been able to witness the process. It’s quite fascinating.”

  “I’ll have to take your word on that,” I murmured, suddenly remembering the dream I’d had of Mom and me. As the details started to come back to me, I wasn’t all that sure it had been a dream, and a good portion of me wished that was all it had been. I sank into the pillows propped against the headboard. If that was a memory resurfacing, some of it could’ve been false, but if any of it had been real? The Daedalus orchestrating Luc and me meeting? What really happened to my father?

  “Each of them started to experience things before the mutation took hold. Able to move things without touching them, usually accidentally. They were able to start to feel the presence of the Luxen who’d mutated them, among other occurrences,” she explained, drawing my attention back to her. I had to think about that possible memory later. “Luc mentioned that earlier that day, you’d begun training with the Source? It was the first time you used it. Purposely, that is?”

  I nodded.

  “You were mutated several years ago, so we know this isn’t like what a hybrid goes through during the beginning of a mutation.”

  “Right,” Luc agreed.

  “Ever since you fell into this superlong nap, I’ve been thinking everything over, and I have a theory.” She tapped her finger off her knee. “It’s batty, and I could be way off. Everyone understand that?”

  Luc and I nodded.

  “Great. We’re all on the same page.” She smiled. “When I think of the genetic coding we were working on in humans and the similarities I’ve been able to find in the serums I have seen, I think the DNA in the Andromeda serum is more like a computer code or a virus.”

  “A virus?” I repeated.

  “Have either of you ever heard of virotherapy?”

  I stared at her blankly, but of course Luc had a response. “Viruses bioengineered to fight cancer?”

  “Yes.” She snapped her fingers at him. “You get a gold star.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Certain oncolytic viruses can bind themselves to the receptors in tumors but not to healthy cells. I imagine the Andromeda serum followed a similar path. Attacked the cancer cells without harming the good ones. And if that serum is anything like the two before it, it carried a dual purpose—not just to heal you but also to mutate you with the blending of Luxen and Arum DNA. However, this new one that I really, really would’ve loved to have seen could have unique coding features. It’s those features that remind me of certain types of viruses and their ability to remain dormant.”

  This conversation was so above my pay grade.

  “Like herpes?” Luc suggested.

  “What?” I gaped at him.

  Grinning, he picked up a fresh bottle of water. “Herpes is a virus that lies dormant in the host.”

  “He’s right,” confirmed Dr. Hemenway.
>
  “You couldn’t come up with a better virus than that?” I took the bottle.

  “Malware is a virus that can be dormant in a computer,” he went on, eyes glimmering with humor.

  I glared at him as I took a rather large gulp of water.

  “Chicken pox is also a form of the herpes virus. Billions of people have some form of it,” Dr. Hemenway clarified. “But back to the subject at hand. What if the Andromeda serum mutated you and then was coded to push that mutation into a dormant stage, designed to be activated under certain scenarios, just like some viruses only became active under a perfect storm scenario?”

  “Like how some astronauts can have herpes flare-ups while entering space?” Luc added.

  I closed my eyes and then reopened them when I was sure I wouldn’t throw the water at him. “How you even know that is beyond me.”

  Dr. Hemenway ignored Luc. “How they sent the mutation into latency is something I can’t even begin to figure out. It could’ve been the Cassio Wave used to send it into a dormant stage and also to activate it. That’s just a huge guess, but what’s not a guess is that when some viruses wake up, it’s not a bam”—she smacked her hands together, startling me; I almost choked on my water—“the virus is everywhere and symptomatic. Some are slow to get moving, to become active. Symptoms, or in your case, abilities, start to pop up here and there.”

  “So, you’re saying that my mutation is slowly becoming active?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “And no.”

  I blinked.

  “To tackle the yes part of that equation, you’re starting to experience new abilities.”

  “Arums see the energy around other living species,” Luc chimed in. “I’ve heard that Luxen looked like rainbows to them, which is how they’re able to pick them out in a crowd. It’s why Luxen used to live in communities near natural-forming deposits of beta quartz. The crystal distorts Luxen wavelengths until they cannot be distinguished from humans. The same with hybrids or Origins.”

  “Oh,” I whispered, shaking my head. This was a lot. “But that doesn’t explain how I was able to do what I did with April and in the woods.” I stopped. “I’m assuming you know about that?”