Evolution

by Teri Terry

  CHAPTER 18

  SHAY

  “LARA! LARA? WHAT’S WRONG?”

  She’s shaking; her face is white, then red. She drops to the floor, rolls up into a ball, to the smallest she can be.

  “Lara! Answer me.”

  But then she starts screaming—a high-pitched sound that tears into me—like she did the other night when I said her name, when I called her Callie.

  This time I am not calling Cepta or Xander. I’m not letting them crack her open, forcibly soothing her—like crushing her spirit into a straitjacket. No.

  There are ripples of black pain all through her aura when I reach out as gently as I can. Lara, can I help you?

  NOT LARA!

  Who are you?

  CALLIE, I’m CALLIE! And now she’s screaming her name over and over again, and I’m seeing what she sees, what she feels, and it takes all my strength of will not to withdraw in horror and fear.

  Was it Anna’s candle that brought this on now?

  She’s burning, on fire—like I was, when I nearly died…

  And this is how Jenna did die—the first time. When she was cured in fire.

  Did Callie hear about this, then imagine it somehow?

  No—it isn’t just that; it can’t be.

  It is Jenna: this is exactly her memory, one she shared with me before. How can Callie have Jenna’s memory? How is that possible?

  Callie stops screaming; she collapses against me. “Jenna?” she whispers, out loud—did she hear my thoughts when I was reaching out and trying to help her? “Jenna,” she whispers again. “She was Jenna—that was her name. Part of me died with her.”

  And Callie is out of the memory, or dream, or whatever it was now—and she’s crying, not just a little but the complete gut-wrenching sobs that take over every part of you. I’m rocking her in my arms. “Shhh, shhh, Lara, I’ve got you; nothing can hurt you.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m Callie,” she says between sobs.

  “Okay. Callie. Nothing will hurt you ever again, not while I’m here. I promise.”

  But even as I say the words, I don’t know if this is a promise I can keep. Anna said the epidemic was in the woods below us. Without Jenna around anymore to spread it far and wide, it can only pass from person to person, but they are so near. Has Callie been exposed to it before? Ninety-five percent of people die—five percent are immune. Very, very few are like me and get sick but survive.

  Can I really protect her from this?

  * * *

  Completely exhausted, Callie finally lets me half carry her to her bed, and she falls asleep almost instantly, her hand still clinging to mine. I keep expecting someone to come—to have heard her screaming and come to investigate—but no one does.

  I watch her as she sleeps, unwilling to take my hand away in case it disturbs her.

  How did she experience Jenna’s death? She was there—I know she was—every detail was exactly the same as the memory Jenna shared with me before. And Callie said part of her died with Jenna?

  I can’t think of any way this makes sense.

  But this mystery will have to wait for another day.

  I reach out to the woods and beyond. I seek out birds, other animals, any eyes I can spy through—to see if I can find evidence of the epidemic, like Anna said. There’s a small hope inside me: maybe she was mistaken. Maybe they’ve got an ordinary flu or some other illness.

  But it doesn’t take long to find a rat sniffing at a body. Dead. There’s no doubt it is from the epidemic: there is blood in the open, staring eyes. And then I see there are more who are ill, who are dying, even now.

  The epidemic has never found this place before.

  Community: they aren’t immune; they aren’t protected.

  Is Callie?

  I reach out with my mind, this time to find Xander, panic leaking through my thoughts.

  CHAPTER 19

  CALLIE

  THE NEXT MORNING I WAKE UP SLOWLY.

  I’m alone—no, Chamberlain is here, asleep by my feet. There’s a note on the table by the bed:

  Please don’t leave the house—it’s important. I’ll explain later. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Love you, Shay.

  I touch her last three words with my fingers, feeling as though the warmth these words carry stayed here in the paper for me to feel.

  She didn’t put my name at the top of the note. Maybe she was unsure whether it was a good idea, if I’d gone back to being empty Lara.

  No: that won’t happen. I’m Callie. I know this now. I never want to be Lara again.

  I also know there are many other things I’ve forgotten—or been made to forget. I want them back.

  Last night when I saw the candle in Anna’s hand, the edges moved in, surrounded me. The thing of shadows was here, and we writhed in pain in the flames together.

  But this wasn’t like before—all those other times. Although I could never remember my nightmares after I had them, when it happened last night, I remembered them all. Was it different this time because Cepta’s influence was gone?

  I was still terrified and screaming, and there was pain, but I was also aware. I knew it wasn’t a hallucination or a nightmare; it was real. It really happened. Not to me, but to other-me: the one who has lurked on the edges of my life for as long as I can remember. She’s been silenced lately by Cepta’s tricks, but she’s tired of being ignored.

  Shay was with me last night, but instead of pushing other-me away like Cepta would have done, she stayed with me, helped me deal with this memory—because that is what it was. She knew what it was because she saw it herself.

  And she knew her, recognized her: other-me.

  It’s Jenna, she’d whispered, words full of amazement, in my mind.

  Names have power. Jenna thought she was me back then, in her memory of fire and pain, much like sometimes I think I am her. Our lives are so entwined the edges are blurred, but once I had her name, I could see her for who she really was.

  Callie has power too, and it’s mine:

  I claim it.

  CHAPTER 20

  SHAY

  I RUN ACROSS COMMUNITY to Xander to tell him face-to-face what he was resisting from a distance.

  “Xander! There you are. We all have to leave right now. Maybe it isn’t too late to escape the epidemic.”

  “No,” he says. “We must stay and fight.”

  “Fight? What on earth do you mean? You can’t fight this thing. People will die—most of them here, if not all, will die.”

  He shakes his head, his aura tinged with sadness, and something else—something I can’t read. “We stay and fight, because that is all we can do.”

  Xander takes me to the hall. The place where we joined last night is now where our sick are being brought. There are five from our Community—ill, in agony, on makeshift beds on the floor.

  Five so far.

  It’s too late to flee.

  I’m terrified for Callie. I reach out to her, to see if she is still okay. She says she’s fine, that I should stay to help if I can, and she promises to stay where she is. I’m thankful for once that she has been kept apart, that her house is the one away from all the others.

  She’s brave. She doesn’t think she’ll get sick, and I can only hope she’s right.

  It was me who arranged for Callie to come for dinner with everyone last night. What if she caught it then, before we knew it was coming to us? I’d never forgive myself.

  Cepta is fiercely trying to take their pain onto herself—to ease them—and I have respect for her I didn’t have before. She is their Speaker; these are her people. She will do anything she can for them. She broadcasts her will: They are mine. They cannot die. I won’t allow it! But more become ill, and more. And soon the first ones die despite her raging against it.

  What can I possibl
y do to stop this?

  When I first learned how to see auras, I had just read about them—in Xander’s books in his Shetland cottage. My own aura matches the hues of a rainbow: the books said this is the sign of a healer, a star person. And while I didn’t know what the latter meant then and still don’t, healer is obvious. A healer makes sick people well. But how? I’m scared.

  I want to run away, but instead I kneel next to a girl—Megan. She’s no older than Beatriz.

  “It hurts so much,” she says, gasping, and I have to help her. I have to try to find a way to stop this illness.

  How does it cause pain? How does it end lives so easily?

  I reach to her, and the shock of her pain as we join makes it hard to remember what I must do: ease her agony, see why she hurts.

  I soothe her pain, take it onto myself to diffuse it as much as I can and still retain the ability to think. Then I look closer, deeper, inside her.

  Her blood is flooded with things that aren’t usually there—components of cells, cells that are dead and dying all over her body. Why do they die?

  Focus: on one damaged cell. Something is happening—something that isn’t typical for a healthy cell. The whole cell is producing more and more of a new protein, one that isn’t usually there, at a furious rate. The cell is scavenging itself for amino acids, the building blocks of protein; it is destroying its essential components and then the cell wall, until finally the cell bursts.

  This accelerated protein production is being repeated everywhere, almost like every cell in the body has turned into a tumor that grows and grows until the cell destroys itself.

  Now that I see what is happening, can I target a cell and heal it?

  I focus on one cell, where the protein production is just gearing up: send healing waves to block the protein production—to stop the process. And it works! I can stop it and heal the cell.

  But while I’ve healed one cell, thousands—tens of thousands—more have died. It’s spreading faster than I have any hope of healing.

  And cells burst—releasing toxins into the blood, toxins that travel to all the organs.

  Pain…organ failure…death.

  Megan is gone: a little girl has died. So much pain, hers and mine.

  The grim day goes on. We ease their pain as best we can and hold their hands as they die, but I’m filled with the same mad fury as Cepta that we are so helpless against this. Is that really all we can do? I’m obsessed with doing anything I can to help them, but even if I try with someone whose illness isn’t as advanced as Megan’s, I can’t stop it by healing individual cells. It accelerates and spreads too fast.

  And still more people are brought in; more are sick. More die.

  Another dying man cries out in pain, and I kneel beside him. His name is Jason. I know him, of course I do. Despite how short a time I’ve been here, I know all of them, from the inside—from evening joinings. He’s a chemist with a quirky sense of humor. Even at a time like this, he likes to grow impractical things, like flowers—ones you can’t eat.

  When I reach out to him, I’m plunged into his pain, like I have been into each of the others’. And this one more is too much—his pain, and mine, almost take my will away.

  I’m weeping.

  This is your moment, Xander says to me; his words in my mind are fierce. Work out the answer to your question. Why do so very few survive this—how do they survive? What makes the course of this different for them? If you find the answer, you can save him. There is such conviction in his words that I start to believe it myself—that this is something I can do.

  Jason’s pain is so intense it’s taking over; it’s strangling his aura even before there are enough toxins in his bloodstream to kill him. His life energy is almost gone.

  Is it just an increased ability to withstand pain that has some survive? If you can live long enough, can the process somehow be reversed? I doubt it could be anything as simple as that, yet…

  I release Jason and reach out, far and wide, finding a startled Beatriz first. I explain, and she helps me gather other survivors. And this time when I join with Jason, they are there to help.

  The shock of his pain is like diving into the sun. I couldn’t manage this alone anymore, but together we plunge him into the cool, dark depths of his mind—helping him to release much of his pain.

  We ease his passing. But he still dies.

  CHAPTER 21

  CALLIE

  NO ONE HAS TOLD ME WHAT IS HAPPENING IN AGES, and I’m going crazy with worry. Shay said there was an epidemic here, one that can kill: has it swept through the whole of Community? Is everyone dying right now while I worry on a sofa with a cat?

  The last time Shay checked on me, she told me to stay here, and I said I would. She’s afraid I’ll catch it, get sick like the others. She didn’t say it, but I could tell—she was afraid I might have already caught it.

  I feel well enough. Can I go there, see what is happening—maybe help? Or will I get sick if I do?

  No. That won’t happen.

  The thought is there in my mind without me thinking it, like it came from someone else, another voice. Not other-me, but my own self that has been hiding away for so long that I don’t seem to know how to consciously access my own thoughts, my own memories, anymore. But there are moments like this when I seem to know things, even though how or why I know them isn’t clear. All I can do is trust that it is right.

  I open the door. Funny how I can see where it is now: it must have been one of the blocks Shay said Cepta put in my mind so I couldn’t see what was right there, in front of me. Is that like not being able to see past the edge of the world?

  I’m scared of where I’m going, and my steps get slower as I walk. I’m not scared that it’ll get me, but of seeing other people ill, maybe dying.

  There is no one walking around, no one I can see through the windows of their houses. The library is empty. I open the door of the research center and listen, but there is no sound. And I marvel at simple things—like opening these doors—that I couldn’t do before.

  Are they in the hall where we had dinner last night?

  I hesitate outside it, then open the door partway, stand there and try to take in what is happening.

  There are people lying on the floor. Some are still, unmoving, bloody eyes staring straight ahead. Some are crying and screaming in pain. And in the midst of it all are Cepta and Shay, trying to help them. Xander is here too, but standing back, and it is his eyes that find me first. He walks to the door.

  I feel his mind brush against mine, and his eyes widen.

  “Callie?” he says.

  “Yes. Shay helped me; I know who I really am now,” I say, and he smiles, touches my hand.

  “You shouldn’t have come here. You don’t need to see this. Go back.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t stay alone while this is happening. I want to help.”

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll catch it?”

  “No. Should I be?”

  He tilts his head to one side, like he’s thinking about what to say. “No,” he finally says. “You’re immune.”

  CHAPTER 22

  SHAY

  I’M IN A FURY when I look up and see Callie standing in the doorway with Xander, because I’m so scared for her.

  I told you to stay where you were! Please go; maybe it’s not too late.

  She shakes her head and says she’s immune—how could she know that?—and that she wants to help. And when I don’t seem convinced, she tells me Xander confirmed it. I can’t work out what this means, that he knows she is immune when she’s been here, in Community, all along—a place that hasn’t been touched by the epidemic before. But I can’t think about that right now. What is happening is taking all my concentration.

  With Beatriz and the other survivors, near and far, helping now, I can go on. I join with o
ne of the ill, then another; we ease their passing but can’t stop them from dying. Joined as we are, I am the conduit for the others, and every time it happens, I feel each death keenly. It is like I’m dying myself. Despair grows inside me as it happens again and again, and I have to fight to make myself still try to help the next person. And each time I join with another soul, I delve deeper and deeper inside them, looking for something—anything—that might help.

  What about the darkness I’ve sensed inside me—what I’d thought might shield the antimatter that is still detected in survivors, but hidden? I start to look for this in the dying. None of them have it.

  Could this be it, the reason some live and some die?

  I need to look for this in another survivor. I shy away from trying with Xander and instead ask Cepta if I can join fully with her, see if she has this darkness inside her. She doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to do it, but finally says she will try anything that might help one of her people.

  We join. She isn’t what she has appeared to be in many ways, but I try not to see, to pry; it’s not why I’m here. Deep within her, I finally find it—a darkness that I can sense but not truly see or feel: she has it too. This is the thing that makes us survivors; it must be. This is what they lack.

  I look across the room: Callie is holding hands with the sick too. Though she can’t ease pain the way we can, it still helps. She’s still well: I pray she’s right, that she’s immune like she said.

  And Xander confirmed it? But how could he know?

  Cepta, how long has Callie been here?

  What? I don’t know. Maybe six months.

  Not a year?

  No, not even close. Why are you asking me this? Did what you found inside me show you a way to help my people? Then do it!

  Those who are left—the sick, the dying—I check them all. Not one of them has this darkness inside them. They’re all going to die, and there is nothing I can do.