Infinity Son

by Adam Silvera

  “She’ll definitely kill my brother if we don’t!”

  “Luna will do far worse if she becomes indestructible.”

  “We rescue innocents,” Atlas says. “This is what we do.”

  Iris takes a deep breath and doesn’t look me in the eye. “The one for the many. I want to claw out my own heart for saying it, but the mission has always been to stop Luna and the Blood Casters. The mission my parents died for.”

  “My parents died too!” Maribelle says.

  “It’s not the same!” Iris shouts.

  “Because your parents were leaders? Get over yourself. Seniority is the only reason you and your parents were ever trusted to lead. You must be living in some fantasy land where blood isn’t on your hands just because you’re not doing the killing, but wake up. Brighton was brave enough to take a shot that you never would in a million years, to do the very thing our parents fought for, and now he has to pay the ultimate price?”

  “We all risk paying the ultimate price,” Iris says.

  Maribelle shakes her head. “Unbelievable. You don’t deserve to lead this group. No one else agrees with her, right?”

  Eva folds her hands on the table and stares at the ceiling. “I’m sorry, but I do. We’re already trying to protect a country of celestials, and if Luna can take command, she will go global and have us all killed for opposing her.”

  Wesley stands by Eva and Iris. “I think Brighton is the man, and he’s done a world of good for us. But we almost died in the cemetery. This won’t be a fair trade. There’s too much to lose.”

  “I would die to protect you,” Atlas says.

  “Bro, you know what I’m saying,” Wesley says.

  “No, I don’t. If you were captured by the Blood Casters, I would be out this door already. But if we’re too careful with our lives all of a sudden, then we should go out and live our truths while we still can, because everything we’ve set out to do will come to a full stop once Luna rises to power.”

  “We have to make sure we’re around to fight,” Wesley says. “I have a family, man, and I owe it to them and everyone else to make sure Luna doesn’t become unstoppable.”

  I can’t believe people are debating whether my brother’s life is worth saving.

  “If you want me on your side, I have to have my brother,” I say. “This is how we started our alliance, and this is how we’ll end it. You’re really going to tell me to my face that you’ll let my brother die when he was risking his own neck to shine a light on your lives?”

  Everyone is quiet.

  “I’m getting Brighton back, even if that means showing up alone and without that urn. I’ll die fighting so he knows I didn’t abandon him when he needed me most. Good luck fighting your war without us.”

  I storm out knowing damn well I won’t survive this alone. I didn’t grow up with powers, but I’ve been a brother for eighteen years.

  No fire burns brighter than that.

  It’s almost six when I call Kirk, and I’m relieved when he answers.

  “Emil?”

  “Hey, Kirk. I—”

  “How are you doing? I’ve tried reaching you. I want to understand why you made the decision to become a specter and—”

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch, but everything has taken a turn and only gotten worse and worse.”

  “Is this about your brother? I saw the video.”

  Of course he’s seen it. My life is some show for people to consume.

  “Brighton’s in trouble, and I might not be able to save him. But the Blood Casters won’t win if you keep Gravesend far away from the museum. Cancel the gala, get her out of the country.”

  I tell him everything I know about Luna’s plan to use Gravesend’s pure blood to make herself immortal.

  “Immortal? Emil, that’s not possible.”

  “I would’ve told you the same before I came back to life,” I say. He’s quiet. This is the first time I’ve trusted anyone outside Nova with the big secret. “In essence, at least. Turns out Keon could resurrect. He became Bautista, and . . .”

  “Now there’s you.” Then Kirk is quiet. “Emil, this is astonishing news, truly. I would love to help you work through this, but in the meantime, we can’t cancel the gala. The museum needs this funding to keep its doors open. The Halo Knights will already be present to protect Gravesend, but I’ll alert them to the threat.”

  “Luna is planning to create her potion at the height of the Crowned Dreamer. Delay the gala.”

  “Gravesend will have hatched by then. The Halo Knights are capable, I promise you. I’d like to ask you more about this resurrection business—”

  I hang up. Between the Spell Walkers turning their backs on me and Kirk not taking my warning seriously, I’ve lost the little hope I had that we might defeat Luna.

  I go to Ness’s room. He’s lying on his air mattress and puts down the book he was reading. “Finally, firefly.”

  I sit in the center of the room, relieved when he joins me. I tell him everything—Luna pulling off the ritual, me flying away with the urn, Brighton being taken hostage.

  He watches the video and hands me back my phone. “She wants me back.”

  “It’s not fair, I know. I’m sorry. But Brighton is innocent.”

  “What’s the plan? You offer me up, and once we secure Brighton, we all get away?”

  If only it were that easy. “Iris would rather sacrifice Brighton.”

  “She may have a point,” he says.

  “I don’t care about some greater good. I didn’t ask for these powers and I’m not my past lives. I don’t know when Keon was born, and I can’t tell you what Bautista’s favorite meal was, and I’m already carrying around enough guilt for a war I didn’t cause. But Brighton getting jumped by the Blood Casters? That’s on me. No one matters to me more than my brother, and I won’t be able to live with myself if he dies.”

  The door opens, and Maribelle and Atlas walk in.

  “The good guys are here,” Ness says dryly while feigning a clap.

  “They backed me up in there,” I say.

  Atlas pats my shoulder. “We’re here to help you now too. You and Brighton have done more than we should’ve asked of you.”

  Maribelle flips a dagger between her fingers while holding eye contact with Ness. “You coming willingly?”

  “He has to make this decision himself,” I say.

  “You’re truly not cut out for this life,” she says. It feels more like an apology than an insult.

  Good on all the Spell Walkers who have stayed in this fight, even when they’ve wanted to bust out too, but the soldier life is too suffocating for me. Someone shouldn’t have to be a walking weapon simply because they possess powers. I’m not about it, and I’m done once I save my brother.

  Ness stands. “I got myself into this, and I’ll get myself out of it.”

  I don’t know how to thank someone who is willingly marching back into the life he doesn’t want for himself. “I’ll protect you too,” I promise.

  “Sure.”

  This would be easier if Ness were as awful as Stanton, but as far as I can tell, he’s a Blood Caster who was torn between two conflicts and chose the option that scared him the least.

  “Eva has the urn,” Atlas says. “She’s not going to hand it over to anyone but Iris. This is where you come in, Ness.”

  Ness looks puzzled. “You trust me to shift into your leader?”

  Maribelle scoffs. “Not my leader.”

  “I trust you,” I say.

  Ness takes a deep breath and begins morphing before our eyes. There’s that muted glow as he shrinks, and his skin darkens while his hair shortens and turns green. There’s pain on his face the entire time, and within a minute, the transformation is complete. He looks like Iris, but still in his clothes. “I don’t know what she’s wearing,” he says in a voice that sounds like his own before it transitions into Iris’s halfway. He makes the necessary changes as we describ
e her resistance shirt, white jeans, and combat boots.

  We walk down the hall. I sense Atlas is uneasy with all of this, but he’s going to do the right thing. Like Ness. If he had some master plan, this wasn’t going to be the time to make a move. Once we get the urn, I have to figure out how to save us all. I’ll honor my promise to Ness.

  Maribelle barges into the professors’ lounge, which I haven’t been in before. Eva is stretched across a fold-out couch and comes out from under her pillow. “We need the urn before your girl has a change of heart,” she says, gesturing at Ness, who is standing tall as Iris.

  Eva rubs her eyes. “It’s never going to work.”

  “We have to try,” Ness says. It’s nice to hear what Iris would’ve sounded like had she said these words herself.

  “I’m not going to let the Blood Casters get away with the urn, but I have to get my brother,” I say.

  Eva gets out of bed, goes into a closet, and opens a safe, and when she hands Ness the urn, she turns to me and holds her stare. “You get one shot.” She knows what’s up, and she’s allowing it anyway. But there’s no mistaking the look on her face—this pure anguish and hope that she won’t regret handing the world over to someone who will risk it all to save his brother.

  We grab our gear but don’t bother changing. We rush inside the car before Iris or Wesley find out what Eva has done. Prudencia comes banging out the doors, and she looks dressed for battle too. She pulls at the backseat door, but I keep it locked.

  “Let me in,” she says.

  “No. Brighton is in this mess because he couldn’t defend himself. I’m not risking you too.”

  “I can handle myself,” Prudencia says.

  “Please hang tight and explain everything to Ma in case . . .”

  I’m not as hopeless as I was when I thought I was going into this fight alone. I will survive, and I will save Brighton, and Ma will never have to panic over the death threat.

  I tell Atlas to drive, and we move a couple feet before the car stops. My face and Ness’s slam against the backs of the front seats. The wheels continue spinning like we’re stuck in a ditch. I think Iris must’ve caught up to us and grabbed the rear, but when I turn around, Prudencia is the only one there, and she’s walking toward the car with her arms outstretched as if she’s inviting me in for a hug. When she’s outside my window, she snaps her fingers, and the lock switches. She lets herself in, pushing me against Ness.

  “I told you I can handle myself,” Prudencia says. Her eyes are fiercely glowing like ping-ponging stars. “I’m going.”

  Thirty-One

  The Trade

  EMIL

  My best friend has been a celestial all along.

  “I wanted to tell you,” Prudencia says to me as we speed away from Nova.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  No matter how often Brighton, Prudencia, and Ma have been there for me, these have been the loneliest weeks of my life. When Dad passed, we were all united by grief. But no one could fully be there for me when I came into these powers because they didn’t understand firsthand. That’s what I legit thought.

  “Enforcers only mistook my mom as a celestial, Emil, but my dad was. My aunt made me promise to never use my powers again if I lived with her. That was fine. I didn’t want them after seeing my dad killed for his.” She shifts to me with this energy of someone who’s finally able to share her secret with the world, but I still hate that I’m making her relive this decades-old horror. “I was so torn because I could’ve been training to fight back like the Spell Walkers, but I also didn’t want to be defined by my power, so I fought back in other ways. The podcasts, protests, any activism I could manage.”

  “Does Brighton know?” I ask.

  Prudencia shakes her head. “Only Iris.”

  Maribelle flips around. “She what?”

  “My power was the only way Brighton and I could go on the missions.”

  “She’s not supposed to have secrets,” Maribelle says. “I cannot believe her.”

  Ness lets out a long whistle. “Drama galore, but we’ll use this to our advantage, right? No one knows you’re a celestial.”

  “I wish Brighton hadn’t taken off to the cemetery without me,” Prudencia says. “I could’ve protected him like I did when we fought Orton.”

  Everything is clicking into place. When Orton was blazing up and charging at us, it wasn’t the fire holding him back, it was Prudencia. I remember the moment on the train when it seemed like she was about to chop Orton in the neck, but she was actually about to swing with her power. All this time I’ve been going off about how difficult my life had become while she privately suffered, so determined to lead a normal life that she didn’t even open up to us.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “We’re going to set all this right.”

  “I hope so,” she says.

  Thirty minutes later, we’re a couple blocks from home with a plan in place. I never thought I would find my way back here. In my heart, this place will always be home, even if I’ll never be able to live here again, no matter if I manage to expel these powers or not. We park on the opposite corner, and I instruct Ness to go out and see if the Blood Casters are here yet.

  “Wait,” Maribelle says. “He’ll morph and run away.”

  Ness looks out the window and studies a man who’s carrying grocery bags. He closes his eyes and shifts into him. “Can’t wait to surprise you,” he says in his own voice.

  “Do you really trust him that much?” Maribelle asks.

  “I trust him enough.”

  I’m counting on our interests being the same—stop Luna and get out of this life.

  A few minutes later, a woman enters the car.

  “Sorry, this isn’t a Lyft,” I say.

  “The Blood Casters are here,” the woman says as she morphs into Ness. “Stanton’s cycle is parked around the corner, and I spotted Dione on the rooftop. No sign of June, but there are acolytes in the lobby turning residents away.”

  “So we stick to the plan,” Prudencia says.

  We get out of the car and enter the neighboring building from the back entrance. As we go up the stairs, I’m reminded of the times Brighton and I would hide from our friends during rounds of manhunt, when we were so hard to find that they would text us when they gave up. This isn’t a game. We reach the roof and there they are. Brighton is on the ground with his hands tied behind his back and Stanton is holding a wand to his head while staring straight at us. Luna is nowhere in sight, but Anklin Prince is here.

  I summon my blazing wings and shakily glide across one rooftop to the next. My landing isn’t graceful either, but I stand tall. Atlas and Maribelle carry Ness and Prudencia across the gap and join me.

  “Give me my brother,” I say. Brighton has never looked so scared.

  Stanton smirks. “Luna is looking forward to seeing you again, Ness.”

  Maribelle draws a dagger. “Not enough to show up herself.”

  Stanton digs the tip of the wand against Brighton’s temple harder. “Luna learned her lesson after this one took a shot at her.”

  We coordinate how this will go down. I’ll accompany Ness in the middle, and Anklin will release Brighton after he’s verified the authenticity of the urn. Once I have Brighton back, I will clock Anklin, and Prudencia can call for the urn before the Blood Casters can reach it. I don’t want to hang around and fight, but if it comes down to it, we’ve got them outnumbered for once.

  We meet in the middle. Anklin takes the urn from Ness and it shakes, as if the ghosts are trying to fight their way out. Brighton’s eye is swollen shut, and there’s dried blood across his face and arms. Brighton keeps shifting between me and Ness with his good eye and subtly shaking his head. I don’t get what he’s trying to say, but spellwork explodes across the roof and we all duck.

  Acolytes come running up from the fire escape, and Dione tackles me out of nowhere. I cast fire and slam down on her back with my burning fist so I can escape her hold. I pop up
and chase Anklin, only stopping when Stanton fires off a blast at Brighton. Prudencia telekinetically sweeps the white bolt away, sending it sailing off the roof to meet some other fate. Brighton halts in shock, just like when my powers first surfaced on the train. Then Stanton throws down the wand and leaps at Brighton while he isn’t paying attention. Prudencia’s power isn’t strong enough to hold him back, and Stanton bangs straight into Brighton’s back. Brighton rolls across the concrete and stops at Prudencia’s feet.

  “Brighton!”

  Atlas and Maribelle are locked in combat with Dione and her four arms. Prudencia looks like she’s running on fumes as she suspends two acolytes from reaching her.

  She will protect Brighton, and I have to focus on the urn. I call for Ness, and we run at Anklin from both ends, cornering him at the ledge.

  “Hand it over,” I say.

  Anklin tries hurling himself off the roof, but Ness catches him from behind. My heart steadies as Ness snatches the urn and holds it up like a trophy. Ness’s smile vanishes when he sees that Stanton is closing in on us.

  Then Ness swings the urn into my face, lights out.

  Thirty-Two

  The Darkest Fire

  BRIGHTON

  My eyes are closed as greens and pinks and blues and oranges pierce the darkness. I’m hot, like I’m directly under a spotlight, but it becomes relaxing in no time—until the screams start. I squint past the lights to find Eva and her healing hands. It’s too bright to keep staring, but I chill back while Eva does her thing since I’m safe at the nurse’s office at Nova. When I’m all good, Eva wipes the sweat off her face with the hem of her shirt and sinks into her seat.

  “Thanks, Eva. Sorry you had to go through that.”

  “Not the worst,” Eva says.

  That’s alarming considering that’s the greatest pain I’ve ever been in.

  The last things I remember are Emil shouting my name and Prudencia’s eyes glowing as she saved my life. I’m suddenly hot again.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Scattered. Mostly everyone is in the boardroom, and Prudencia is keeping your mother company as she rests. While you were . . . when you weren’t here, she had a heart attack.”