by Teri Terry
“Listen to me, Kai. I know how you feel, but we need to approach carefully. Callie is going to go ahead, find out what is happening, and report back to us.”
“Let’s go!”
“Okay, but lights off, and take it easy. Callie showed me the way. I’ll direct you.”
CHAPTER 14
CALLIE
I RUSH BACK TOWARD THE HOUSE, and when I get near, for a second I think I catch a sense of something different—a concentration of intense feeling and presence that says a survivor is here.
Shay? Shay? Are you there?
She doesn’t answer.
I drop in closer.
Around the house, the ring of soldiers I saw earlier has converged on the other group. There is a battle in the dark; shots; cries.
Beyond the fighting there is the something—someone—that I sensed. It’s a survivor, but doesn’t feel like Shay.
I drop down low, and I’m right. It isn’t her: it’s Alex.
His eyes widen when he sees me. “Is that Callie?” he says, but he says it in a funny way, drawing out my name, and there is something about his voice—something familiar. Do I remember him after all?
Yes. And you’re my father.
He’s focused on me now, not moving ahead with the others. The battle continues without him.
He shakes his head. “I most certainly am not, any more than you are, in fact, Callie. Do you actually believe that to be true?”
His words don’t make sense, but they’re almost not registering, because it’s his voice I’m focusing on, the sound of it, the way he shapes words, and I’m feeling sick, confused…
No. No; it can’t be…
But it is.
I’d know his voice anywhere—and it isn’t from remembering him as my father or anything from my life before Shetland. His voice is smooth, like velvet and chocolate—a voice you want to listen to.
I draw my arms around myself tight, shaking my head to reject it even though I know it is true.
It’s…you. You’re him. You’re…And I can’t even say it.
“What is your current delusion, little cat?”
Little…cat?
“We’ve opened the box, and there you are: you’ve fooled Schrödinger. You’re alive and dead at once.”
I don’t understand what he’s saying, but the more I hear his voice, the more things are coming back, in bits and pieces. He always wore a biohazard suit, so I never really saw what he looked like. When I saw him in JJ’s memory, I didn’t recognize him because of that…I didn’t know that Dr. 1 and Alex were one and the same.
But I know his voice. One of the last ones I ever heard before I was cured.
He’s the one I’ve been trying to find all this time.
And it’s not fair. It’s not! He’s a survivor! I can’t make him catch it and die. He’s already had it. I’ve finally found him, and there’s nothing I can do to him—nothing.
You’re Dr. 1! I say, with all the accusation and hate I can put into three words.
He shrugs his shoulders. “I’ve been called worse. But you are curiouser and curiouser. I’m not sure I would have figured out what was causing the epidemic to spread so quickly on my own. It was Shay who worked out that it was you. Yes, she did—she told me about you. And she was so terribly sad for me; she thought she was telling me about my dead daughter. Not a deluded psychopathic cat. If only I had known from the beginning!”
Why did you have me cured?
He shakes his head. “It was such a disappointment. So much time and effort went into trying to make what you were: a survivor. I finally achieved what I wanted, but in such a defective, damaged psyche. You were too dangerous to risk any chance of your escape; you had to be destroyed. But who could have predicted that curing you would make you even more dangerous? You’d already taken on Callie’s identity at that point—you didn’t even know who you were.”
No! I am Callie!
Aren’t I?
My memory is slipping and sliding, like a kaleidoscope: I can see her/me; her/my beautiful dark hair and blue eyes; she had photos of her amazing big brother and mum and she told me all about them, her home and where they lived; talking late at night to keep us from being scared. And everything about her/me was so much better than my life.
Flashes of a life I rejected flit through my mind. I try to push them away, but I can’t.
Fear.
Pain.
Things Callie would never have known before Shetland; not in her perfect life.
I’m not Callie. My name is there, just slipping away, a secret buried so deep it is hard to find…
She yelled my name when she dragged me up the stairs by my hair. My last foster mother, the one I had before I ran away. I can hear her snarling my name: Jenna, you useless brat. It echoes deep inside.
Jenna.
My name was—is—Jenna.
I wanted to be Callie.
But I’m not. I never was.
“You’re starting to remember, aren’t you?” Alex says, and shakes his head sadly. “If only it were my daughter who was a survivor. I had so hoped, but instead it was you.”
At least that means you were never my father!
“Happy for both of us, then. But as you are now, you have accomplished more than I thought possible—you spread the epidemic far and wide—not just to the few subjects we had, many of them as defective as you. That was the error, I see now: drawing our initial subjects from such a genetically poor lot. And for pointing that out, I thank you.”
I stare at him, shocked. Illness, despair, death—this is what he made me. Everywhere I go, people die, and he says…thank you?
I finally found Dr. 1, and I can’t make him sick—he’s already had it and survived. But can he burn?
I’m hot in an instant and throw myself at him, but he just pushes me out with a shrug.
“Look, I’ve got to go now,” he says. “There are more of us that need rescuing.”
His words aren’t connecting. More of us?
Does he mean survivors?
And then I remember: Shay. I’m supposed to be looking for Shay.
CHAPTER 15
SHAY
I RUN INTO THE HOUSE, Chamberlain at my feet once again. Did he see what I did? I bolt the door behind us.
Blood—Spike’s blood—and vomit are splattered all over me, and I’m going to be sick again if I don’t get these clothes off. I shed them on my way up the stairs, wiping at the blood drying on my skin with my hands, frantic, but it more smears around than comes off—not that I can wipe away what happened on the inside by cleaning the outside.
I pull on some clean clothes over unclean skin and then curl my body around Chamberlain on the bed, shaking.
What now? What do I do?
There are distant sounds and shouts and screams, as if some sort of battle is raging. But the battle inside me is worse, far worse.
Spike is dead. It’s my fault; all my fault.
I say the words inside, but even though I know they are true, they are unreal. I say it again and again but still can’t take it in.
Spike is dead. My fault.
His blood is here, on my skin. I start rubbing at it again and when that doesn’t work, scratching too, harder and harder, until my blood wells up to join his. Hysteria is rising inside.
My fault. I did this.
My fault.
Then there is a sudden blur in the air and a rush of darkness beside me.
It’s Callie?
She throws herself around me in a hug. She’s crying—but not crying, she has no tears—it is more dry, wrenching sobs.
“How did you find me? Where have you come from?” I ask her.
Still caught in her version of crying, it is a moment before Callie can speak. I’m sorry, she says. I’m not her.
I’m not Callie! I thought I was, but I’m not.
In the midst of all the mess—both the fighting outside, and the tumult inside—are Callie’s words. Focusing on them, trying to understand, helps me calm.
She is here—dark, whole, soothing—and I’ve missed her so much.
I’m not Callie, she says again. She was my friend.
I frown, struggling to focus. “I don’t understand.”
Listen to me, there are things I have to tell you. Alex is Dr. 1.
“What?”
He’s Dr. 1! He caused the epidemic! she says, and then she’s crying-that-isn’t-crying again, in pain, both inside and out.
“Callie?”
Not Callie. My name is Jenna. I knew I was the carrier, but I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone. I’m sorry! And then she screams out in pain. It’s my fault; everything is my fault. Everyone who got sick and died is because of me.
She cries-that-isn’t-crying still, and I do too; real tears and not-real tears that hurt even more—and we hold each other to try to comfort what can’t be comforted.
CHAPTER 16
KAI
FREJA URGES ME TO STOP, to hide the bike, go on foot. And I know she’s right, but I want to be there now.
I pull in. We’re close enough to hear there are sounds in the woods—behind the house. Shouts, cries. Gunshots.
“Why hasn’t Callie reported back?” Freja says. “I don’t like this. I’ll try to find her.” She shakes her head a moment later. “She’s not answering when I call, and I can’t sense her. She’s either blocking or she’s not here.”
“We can’t wait for her, let’s go,” I say.
Freja’s hand is on my arm, holding me back. “Just a moment, Kai. Let me see if I can work out what is happening.” Her eyes defocus, then come back. “There are other survivors, three of them, in the woods.”
“Who are they? Is one of them Shay?”
“No; wait.” She pauses. “One of them is hailing me. It’s a man—he says he’s Alex, and for us to go to him. He says he’ll show me the safest way to go.”
Alex really is here? Then Shay may be too—or at least he must know where she is. I follow Freja through the trees, fighting to hold myself back and go the way she is directed when I want to find out what he knows now.
There are soldiers on the ground in biohazard suits: dead. Other people too are dead next to them—not soldiers, not wearing suits. There are not as many of them.
The fighting appears to be almost over now: the soldiers are outnumbered; they’re losing. And there, in the midst of it all, is Alex.
“Ah, hello, Kai. I was wondering if you’d turn up,” he says, and steps around a dead soldier at his feet.
“Where’s Shay?”
“Calm down, Kai.” His voice, that mild voice. “We haven’t found her yet.” That reasonable tone.
“Tell me where Shay is! Tell me, now! What have you done to her?”
“We’ll find her, but I’m a bit busy just now. Wait a moment and keep out of the way.” He says it that way—with that persuasive weirdness that has always made me so angry, and so unable to resist, for as long as I can remember. And now, finally, I understand. I get what I always hated.
He’s trying to nudge inside my head.
I push him out.
He turns to me, startled. “Have you learned a new trick?”
“Where is she?”
He doesn’t answer and tries in my mind again, but I push him away and then my hands are on his shoulders, anger raging inside me.
And there are other hands on me now, pulling me away from Alex, and I hear him saying not to kill me, but I don’t know why when I’d kill him given half a chance.
But then there’s a voice—a child’s voice. A young girl; an older woman stands next to her with a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s okay, Kai,” the girl says. “Shay is safe in the house with Chamberlain.”
But then her attention shifts from me; she looks up to the sky and frowns. A distant rumble touches my ears a moment later.
A plane?
I struggle to my feet. They let me go and I run for the house.
CHAPTER 17
JENNA
GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!
A command slams into my mind, a strong, direct voice, someone I don’t know.
That’s Beatriz, Shay says, in response to my unasked question, but her thoughts are puzzled, detached.
Get out, now! Panic is all through Beatriz’s thoughts, and then we hear it too—a plane.
“The soldiers were waiting for something. They surrounded us and waited. Was it for this?” Shay says, but her eyes are lowered, her voice flat.
It’s getting closer, but still Shay doesn’t move.
Shay, get up! I say. Kai must be here by now.
“Kai?”
He’s been searching everywhere for you.
“He’s coming here? For me?” And when she looks at me now, her eyes are alive again.
CHAPTER 18
SHAY
I REACH OUT. MENACE FLIES ABOVE in the sky, and it’s getting closer. On the ground there are people—Alex is back, Beatriz and Elena are there too, and many others, ones I don’t know—and they are all running away from the house, deeper into the cover of the woods behind it.
But there is one running toward the house—coming for me—and I can feel his aura even though I can’t see it yet: an imprint of mind, thought, and energy that I’d know anywhere.
I’m shaking, not quite able to accept Kai is here even when I know it is true.
I touch his mind lightly. Kai? Is it really you?
He doesn’t pull away from this form of contact, not like he usually would. Shay! he answers inside, my name a plea, a caress. I’m coming for you!
He glances at the sky, and I see through his eyes. The plane is flying low on the horizon, getting closer, and I can feel the deadly threat inside of it. This is why Beatriz was telling me to get out of the house. I knew the way she shouted that she was scared for me, but it was remote—I’d felt so numb after what happened to Spike, and the soldiers I killed.
My fault.
Not again: don’t let me be the cause of any more death.
Fear flashes through me—for Kai—and now I can move. Kai, turn around! Run for the woods! I’m coming!
I scoop Chamberlain up into my arms and run. Callie—Jenna?—is close by my side.
Down the stairs. Across the hall. To the door.
I rip it open and see two things at once:
Kai is still running this way, not back to the woods.
The plane is nearly overhead.
There’s a whistling noise in my ears, and I look up. Something is falling from the sky.
I was too slow. Too late.
I stand still; strangely calm, because there is nothing I can do, except hope that Kai is far enough away to survive. Fractions of seconds hang apart, like counting beads on a string, but no matter how much time seems to slow, there is still not enough of it to save me.
Callie—Jenna—embraces me and Chamberlain and flows all around—she is dark, cool, soothing.
Below us in the garden, maybe a hundred yards away, Kai’s steps have stalled now too—horror, fear, pain wash through his aura in a kaleidoscope of sound and color.
And love.
I’m sorry, I project to Kai, and I am.
CHAPTER 19
KAI
SHAY’S MIND IS IN MINE, her heart open to me and mine to her. Then abruptly she breaks the connection so I can’t share this, and she pushes me away.
Intense light fills my eyes.
Sound blasts into my skull—as if the earth is ripped apart and everything in it. I’m thrown backward, and my head hits the ground, hard.
“Shay! Shay!”
&nbs
p; I know I’m screaming her name, but I can’t hear it over the rush and roar. I scramble to turn, to see what I’m afraid to see, shielding my head with my arms as debris flies through the air.
The front of the house—where Shay stood in the door—is completely destroyed. A blaze of fire grows to consume it.
Shay!
CHAPTER 20
JENNA
IT WAS INSTINCT. I DIDN’T THINK ABOUT IT, I just did: threw myself at Shay as that thing was falling from the sky, forming a thin layer all around her—covering and protecting her and that huge cat in her arms.
Too thin.
Spread out like this, when the massive blast hits it burns, tears, begins to destroy me.
I scream in pain.
I could roll into a ball and get out of here, and save myself. But what about Shay?
No.
I’ve done so many things that are wrong.
Let this be the one right thing.
CHAPTER 21
SHAY
LIGHT.
SOUND.
Simple words aren’t enough. It’s like diving into the brightness of the sun with stars exploding all around us—as if we’re caught in a smaller version of the big bang. A tiny part of me is detached enough to wonder what sort of bomb it is that behaves like this, while another, bigger part of me marvels that I can still wonder anything at all.
Callie? I mean, Jenna?
She doesn’t answer. She’s covering me, all over, every inch of me—and Chamberlain too.
But she’s screaming in pain, horrible pain.
I have to get us out of here.
CHAPTER 22
KAI
THERE ARE PEOPLE RUNNING TOWARD ME. Freja, Alex, that young girl—the one who told me where Shay had gone.