“Ah, lovers’ spat. Those are never pleasant.”
Spat? Not exactly. I run my fingertips along the box of slides, wishing again that I somehow had the braid from Sonya’s life. To confirm or deny all of my dreams. Not knowing is maddening.
“He was looking for me last night, and someone saw me and told him where I had gone,” I say, making myself talk about my romantic saga instead of what I’m really thinking. “He walked in at a bad moment.”
“Oh,” Daniel says softly and sits down on the stool beside me. “Oh, dear. Maybe I shouldn’t have encouraged you to go—”
“It’s not your fault,” I say miserably, cutting him off. And it isn’t. My meeting with Benson should have been completely innocent. I mean, I knew people were watching us. I just didn’t think Logan was one of them.
The lights above us flicker, and a knot of fear catches in my throat. But five seconds later everything seems fine.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Almost certainly a sandstorm. We’ve had some really awful ones the last few weeks.”
I think of the other crazy weather phenomena I’ve seen. “Do you think it’s one of the effects of the virus?”
“It’s certainly possible. But don’t worry. As you discovered the first night you came to us, we have excellent generators. For the essential electric needs, that is.”
True. But the overhead lights in our candlelit bedroom evidently didn’t make the list. Not that I’m complaining.
“Tavia.” Daniel hesitates and then moves his stool an inch or two closer. “Do you still have feelings for this human boy? I know it’s not my business, but now I feel guilty for having sent you to him. I never thought that he . . . well, it doesn’t matter. But, do you?”
The crying lump is clogging my throat again, and all I can do is nod miserably.
“Even . . . even now? After remembering Logan?”
“That’s what he asked. I don’t understand why everyone thinks that remembering former lives makes this life not matter!” Daniel draws back a little at my vehemence, but I keep talking. Almost shouting. “Logan is the same way. He said that Benson is less just because he’s human. And he doesn’t seem to care at all that his entire family died a week ago—were killed a week ago. When my parents died—” Even now, saying the words out loud makes my chest ache with emptiness. “When they died I felt like a piece had been ripped from my heart. Like part of me was dead because they were. And when I remembered everything, that didn’t change.”
“But you didn’t remember everything, did you?” Daniel asks.
My mouth snaps shut. “I guess not,” I say softly.
“It’s hard to explain the complete change in perspective if you haven’t experienced it. It’s like . . . like living your whole life as an ant. Then one day, you turn into a giant. And there are other giants. In fact, an entire world you never knew existed. How important do all of those little tiny ants seem to you now?”
“But ants do still matter . . .” I reply. The words seem hollow even to me. I don’t like the sense Daniel is making.
“We don’t physically change, but all of the sudden, this tiny speck of time that is a single lifetime is so small. And the people in it, well, they’re practically infinitesimal. Except for one person.”
I look up at him, remembering that he hasn’t found his partner yet. There’s a sheen of tears in his eyes, and his voice quavers a little, though he gains control quickly.
“So now you have Logan. And he has remembered. And in the enormous span of time that is his many lives, there is you. You are, for lack of a better comparison, his sun. And here you are, telling him that you still have feelings for this ant. This tiny, insignificant ant.”
“He’s not insignificant,” I instantly retort.
“But he should be,” Daniel says with a calmness that shakes me to my very soul. “And to Logan, he is.”
I remember the impression I had the other night that Logan loves me more than I love him, and my hands begin to tremble.
“It’s not simply the thought of losing you to someone else—though certainly that would be hard enough for anyone, human or otherwise. But losing you to him? Can you see why it’s so unnatural that Logan can scarcely even comprehend it?”
I do. I feel awful reducing Benson to such terms, but I understand. Or at least as much as I can without having the full memory that Logan does.
“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m not even telling you that there is a ‘right’ choice. But—” His face crumples into an unreadable expression, and he shakes his head. “That’s not true. I’m rooting for Logan. The two of you are meant to be together. If I found my . . . my partner only to discover that she wanted to stay with someone else I . . . I would lose my entire purpose. Any reason for living.” He turns to me. “The human boy will get over his heartbreak. But Logan? You reject him and you may as well thrust a knife in his heart. It’s simply a fact.” He looks at me with such pain in his eyes it’s hard to meet his gaze.
“Now,” he says, and I can hear the strain in his voice, the forced cheerfulness. “Let’s get to work.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Five hours later I want to slump over my microscope and wail. After two and a half days of painstaking analysis, we’ve still gotten the exact same result from every DNA sequence I’ve transformed.
Which is nothing.
No reaction whatsoever.
After a while I’m not productive anymore; I start botching the transformations. And then Daniel gets cranky.
Like now.
I can’t tell if he’s angry with me for not being good enough, or if he’s frustrated at himself for pushing me too hard.
“Take a break,” he says at twelve forty-five, in a tone that brooks no argument.
I brook anyway. “But I have fifteen more minutes.”
“To what?” he snaps. “Do the same section over and over?”
We’re both stressed—we’re both desperate. It was only a matter of time before one of us lost our temper. But every minute of break I take makes me feel guilty. What if the very next matched pair in the viral RNA is the right one? Or the one after that?
But that’s a train of thought with a bridge out ahead, and if I followed it I’d make myself work all through the night. And the next day.
So instead of arguing, I nod and slide off my stool onto legs that feel like jelly.
I decide to spend my hour-long break back in the room I created last night. I like it—love the illusion of being back in Michigan, where life was simple and wonderful. I glance behind me right before I turn down the final hallway and meet an unfamiliar pair of eyes.
That immediately looks away.
I don’t know that I would have noticed him staring if it weren’t for his blond eyelashes. Light blue eyes surrounded by thick, blond eyelashes. I glance up and see the lashes are paired with dark strawberry-blond hair that’s almost perfectly rust-colored. The rest of him is pretty nondescript—average height and build—but his hair is rather distinctive.
I give him my back and wonder just how innocent that little encounter was. Is he watching me? He did look away like he was guilty. Or, at the very least, didn’t want to be seen looking. I had intended to head to my new room, but now I’m not sure I should even turn down that hallway.
I remember a joke kids used to say at school in Michigan: Is it still paranoia if they really are all out to get you? It suddenly doesn’t seem very funny anymore.
Before I can dwell on this new development for very long, something reaches out and grabs me, pulling me through a doorway that wasn’t there a second ago. I start to scream, but a hand claps over my mouth and Alanna’s face blocks out my vision.
“Don’t do anything stupid or everything Sammi and Mark worked for will be wasted.”
I’m so shocked I can’t move, m
uch less speak.
Or scream.
“Are you calm?” Alanna asks, sounding absolutely nothing like the person I’ve been avoiding for the last three days.
I nod, my eyes still so wide I must look like I’m in shock.
Maybe I am.
There’s a distinct possibility I’m hallucinating.
A light brightens, and I see Thomas and Logan standing behind Alanna, the two males mirrors of one another, arms crossed over their chests. But the moment Logan’s eyes meet mine, his arms fall and the defiance in his stance disappears entirely.
Logan? The innate wrongness of this whole situation is multiplied by the fact that he’s here. Unrestrained. Like he wants to be with them.
“What the hell is going on, I swear you have ten seconds before I am gone and don’t even think you can stop me,” I say in one long string without pauses.
Alanna steps forward. “Short version: We’ve been working with Mark and Sammi for about two years now trying to find out what Daniel is up to, and I think we can trust you to help continue our efforts.”
I gape at her, but even her appearance seems altered without the vapid look I’m used to. Standing before me is a woman with a confident stature and intelligent eyes. If it weren’t for her rather gaudy clothes I wouldn’t believe it was her at all.
I’m struck still, unable to think or speak or move. I don’t know how long I stay there, stupefied, before I cough out, “Well, that is one hell of a disguise.”
She rolls her eyes. “I know, aren’t I an absolute bitch?” She takes a loud breath. “I know this is sudden. Honestly, we wanted to wait longer, but with everything that’s happened and Logan being a rather conspicuous spy,” she says, shooting an annoyed look at Logan, “not to mention our sources saying you’re not making much progress in the lab, well, we had to take the chance.”
My mouth is open at the fact that not only does she know how pathetically things have been going in the lab but that she’s basically just thrown it in my face. I’m so angry I can barely think straight.
But I’m cautiously curious too.
“Here,” Alanna says, making a gesture at Thomas. “Sit.”
A table and chairs appear. “I thought you were Destroyers,” I ask suspiciously, my eyes darting about the space that can hardly be called a room. There are walls, and they’re straight, but it’s an empty, bare space that is more an organized absence of where a wall used to be than a proper room. A tiny voice in my head whispers that I could do better—that I did do better last night—and I wonder if this is what Daniel means when he tells me I’m “stronger.”
Alanna sucks in a fast breath, then says, “I’m a Destroyer, but Thomas is a Creator. We’ve spread the misconception that we’re both Destroyers, so he can never use his powers in front of anyone. Ever. But we’ve decided to trust you.” She takes a seat on one of the chairs, and her face is so calm and serious she actually looks like a different person. “Mixed pairs are very, very rare. In fact, as far as we know, there are only two sets of us. Maybe that’s where the story really begins, actually.”
We gather nervously around the table. Thomas and Alanna immediately sit together, leaving Logan and I to also sit side by side. I tentatively meet his eyes, and a momentary truce passes between us. We’re both too curious to find out what’s going on with these two to let our drama stand in the way.
For now.
“Most people associated with Earthbounds assume, like you, that all diligos are matched pairs, and most of the time they’re right,” Alanna says. “So Thomas and I are, well, you think it’s tough being objectified as a woman, wait until you’re objectified as a god,” she says dryly. “We’re the perfect combination.”
I cringe inwardly, realizing that—technically—I’m the perfect combination all by myself.
But I’m not ready to tell them that. Not yet.
“And so everyone wants us,” Alanna says in that sensible voice that I’m still not used to. “Every time we’ve managed to find each other we’ve done our best to stay off both the Reduciata and Curatoria radars.”
I look between them, confused. “Then why are you here? This is pretty damn close to the Curatoria’s radar.”
Alanna looks to Thomas.
“I’m a scientist,” Thomas says after clearing his throat, as though he hasn’t spoken in a long time. Remembering how quiet he always is, I wonder just how long it’s actually been. “And about forty years ago—in a past life, and without any memory of my Earthbound identity—I was a doctor, and I had a patient come to me. She had a sickness I couldn’t identify, but it was obviously killing her and killing her quickly. I took samples of her blood, and none of it made sense to me. The illness simply wasn’t acting the way it was supposed to.”
“Do you think it’s a version of the virus we have today?” I ask.
“I do.” He hesitates and looks uncomfortable in a way that I recognize as extreme shyness. I wonder if that shyness comes naturally or from lifetimes of isolation. Regardless, he continues, “While I was examining her, she left the man who had brought her in back in the waiting room, as was the custom back them. As soon as we were out of his sight she started raving to me about the witchcraft and magic she was being exposed to. I dismissed her ramblings as craziness, whether natural or brought about by her disease. But now—in a different life and with my memories restored—I believe her.”
“Do you think she was a prisoner of the Reduciata?” Logan asks, leaning forward now.
“No, no, I don’t,” Thomas says, his voice firm, determined, even in its quietness. “Because the man who brought her in was Daniel.”
A silence settles among the four of us as we all continue to try to figure out how much we can trust each other. Even in the face of this bombshell.
“Tell her the rest,” Alanna prompts, her hand on his shoulder.
“That night, I was run down by a car and killed. I don’t think it was a coincidence.”
Tingles run up and down my arms as I try to take this all in. “What does it mean?” I finally say, unable to loosen the knot of mystery in her story, even though I can sense its significance.
“It means many things,” Alanna says, and Thomas looks relieved that she’s taken over. “For starters, it means that Daniel knew about the virus forty-three years ago.”
“But . . . it wasn’t even around,” I say, before remembering having that very thought this morning after my newest dream. “Unless—” But what can I say?
“Unless he was helping to develop it all along,” Logan says, unknowingly coming to my rescue.
“Or trying to cure victims whom the Reduciata tested it on,” I counter, not sure why I’m defending Daniel. Except maybe that he looked so sad this morning.
“And then killing off witnesses?” Alanna asks with a sharpness that makes me think of her disguised self for a second.
“You don’t know that for certain,” I whisper, thinking of the pain in his eyes when he talked about his lost partner.
But if Thomas really is telling the truth . . .
“It makes sense, Tavia,” Alanna says. “I don’t understand why you’re arguing so hard against it.”
“Because I would like one damn person in this entire world to be who they told me they were,” I snap, mortified to realize that not only am I yelling, I’ve risen to my feet.
“Then you’re in the wrong world,” Thomas says, and his voice is so quiet I barely hear it, yet the truth of it pierces me to my very soul. “Every Earthbound I’ve ever met is wearing a disguise of one kind or another.”
I force my knees to bend—to put me back into my seat. This isn’t about me, about Logan or Benson. It’s not about Sammi and Mark or Alanna or Thomas.
This is about Daniel and the salvation of the entire world.
“Why hasn’t he recognized you?” I ask.
Thomas grimaces and Alanna giggles, sounding more like the version of herself I’ve come to loathe over the past few days. I don’t understand the reason for the sudden reversion until she slides a faded Polaroid over to me. It’s Thomas, I guess, but he totally has shoulder-length shaggy hair and a big moustache. And let’s not even get started on the skin-tight polo.
My eyes flit from the photo to him and back again a few times before Logan takes it from me to have a look. A laugh builds up in my throat, but it’s accompanied by a strange pain. “I see,” I say dryly, looking at the handsome, clean-cut man across the table from me. Sammi once told me that if the Earthbound didn’t look the same from life to life, the brotherhoods would never be able to find us. But “the same” is such a relative term.
I don’t look quite the same, Thomas doesn’t look the same, even Quinn and Logan don’t look the same, exactly. I’m starting to think that some of the claims both the Reduciata and Curatoria make about their files and records must be partly lies. Or, at the very least, stretching the truth. A pair of Earthbounds that both groups have been looking for for centuries has been living right in the Curatoria headquarters and no one has realized?
It makes me feel oddly hopeful that maybe I can make it through this alive.
“So when you got your memories back you remembered this?” I prompt.
Thomas nods. “By that time I was living a different life, of course, but I remembered that last fateful day, and I knew I had to find Alanna and we had to do something. We’ve never trusted either organization,” Thomas says, “but the Curatoria always seemed like the lesser of the two evils, so to speak.”
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