My feet burn and ache, and so do all my muscles. My mind is going way too fast to think about cleaning up just yet. I pad past the bedroom with the crushed blood vials and carry on down the hall to Charlie’s study.
It’s dark, the sky iron gray through the partially closed shutters. There’s a light on the desk. Switching it on suffuses the room with a yellow glow. A laptop lies tucked away on a shelf. I carry it to the desk and crawl into the big leather chair.
The laptop whirs to life. Opening a browser, I type two words into Google: WINTERBORN SURVIVORS
It’s unlikely to bring up anything. Still, it’s worth a try.
Movement downstairs makes me pause, listening hard to see if Ian or Hunter is headed up the stairs. They’re not thinking of ensconcing themselves in here, are they?
The hall remains empty.
My attention returns to the screen.
A chill races over me. It surges across my skin like an electrical pulse.
There’s a Wikipedia entry.
I click on it and start to read.
Winterborn is the name for a mythical laboratory that’s said to have been situated in the Arctic Circle. According to the story, Winterborn housed a group of scientists who were performing early genetic experiments on human tissue to try to induce a healing response. The research was based on work using genetic code from the immortal scarlet jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii). Part of its DNA was used to mutate a butterfly and create a new, immortal butterfly species called the Phoenix recastus. According to the story, when this new butterfly reaches what would normally be the end of its life stage, it reverts to its chrysalis phase and is reborn fourteen days later, fully reformed and perfect. This cycle is thought to repeat several times per year, and/or when the affected specimen is severely injured, thus rendering it immortal.
Basis in reality:
It’s important to note that while the Phoenix Recastus is undocumented, the Turritopsis dohrnii is real. This jellyfish has achieved biological immortality by reverting to its polyps stage rather than dying, from where it grows back to maturity.
Further speculation:
Conjecture states that the scientists experimented on unwitting personnel on the Arctic base. Those personnel unexpectedly achieved immortality and earned the nickname the Winterborn Survivors. None have ever been found.
I glance up to see Hunter in the doorway. His gaze, dark and soft, roams over me. Of course he’d come. Of course he’d sense my churning thoughts, my emotions skewing all over the place.
“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” he murmurs.
“Do I?”
Not a ghost. A mythical survivor in the flesh.
“I came to check on your toes.” His words are light, yet it’s clear a part of him has been ripped away. The part that was Charlie. The part that was family.
“My toes?” I stare at him, not really registering his words. Instead I’m clamping down on my emotions, keeping him out, barely holding back my own turmoil. How could he not tell me about my mother? About what he is?
He says, “I was worried your feet might be all cut up.”
I close the browser window and shut the laptop. “They’re fine. Just a little sore.”
He comes closer. It’s true my feet are filthy. Dust coats every part of me.
“You do know Charlie would have been mortified to find you barefoot in his study, tracking gravel all over his carpets, right?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I got distracted.”
“That’s a problem.” He rolls my chair back.
“What are you doing?” I say.
He trails a finger down my cheek. Ragged though he is, he sweeps me up into his arms and suppresses a cough. “Someone has to clean up the natives around here.”
“Put me down!”
“Never.”
My resentment is momentarily softened by the awareness of his skin, of his warmth, of his strong arms.
“Let go.” I give him a halfhearted punch, careful not to harm him further.
“Your struggle is futile.”
“I give up,” I say. “Where are you taking me?”
He kicks open the bathroom door. “The tub.”
And for now, I don’t want to talk. I just want to be. We survived and I want to live. In this moment. Steamy water is splashing into the oversize basin, and we’re stripping our clothes and climbing in, slipping in the water and laughing. His lips are in my hair.
Carefully I touch his wound. “The bullet hole’s clean, already starting to heal.”
Hunter runs a testing hand over his chest. He winces, clearly in pain, and shakes his head. “Yeah … never ceases to amaze me.” Freezing, he stares at his watch, then grabs it and takes a closer look. “Five p.m.—” A pulse of panic shoots straight from his heart to mine. His hands fasten onto my shoulders. “Did you take your—”
My medicine. I forgot about my medicine!
Terror slicks through me. I scramble, upright, leaping from the tub and sending soapy water spraying everywhere.
“King came before noon. There was no time! I didn’t think. I—”
I’m quaking in fear. Not again. My legs twitch into action and I tear past him, out into the hall, slipping and sliding toward my room. I fumble for the bag; it’s where I left it, under the bed. My hands find the bottle. I struggle with the safety cap, tear it off, and spill out a silver pill. Water—there it is, a half-drank glass on the nightstand. I lunge for it.
“Wait!” Hunter says, snatching the pill from my palm.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
“Don’t you understand?”
“I told you. I forgot!” I fumble for a new pill.
“Stop, Aeris, stop. It worked.” He gets hold of me. “By god, it really worked.”
“What worked?” I ask, even as the truth dawns.
“You missed your dose, and nothing happened! Nothing, you’re fine!”
“I … you’re right. But then—that means … it’s over?”
His eyes are glistening with relief. “Almost. You’re going to be fine! You’re going to be just like you were.”
Fine. Exactly how I was.
My stomach plummets to my toes. It’s too soon. I’m not ready. I don’t want to go back to being the closed-off person I was before. I no longer care about the threat of recasting. I’d endure anything to stay with him like this forever.
“But I can still sense you,” I say, desperate for him to be wrong.
“Yes, yes, you can. It’s much weaker, though.”
“How do you know that? Maybe I’m getting better at blocking you out. And look at how I survived that fall. How do you explain that?”
“The way you healed must have made you a lot stronger. It’s the only explanation. The other effects are on their way out.”
“How long until we can’t feel each other anymore?”
“I don’t know.”
I press my face against him. “It doesn’t seem fair.”
“It’s a good thing. The best thing.”
We’re silent for a long time, gripped together in our own thoughts.
“I don’t want to lose you,” I whisper. “I don’t want to lose this.”
He sits down on the bed with me and gently touches my cheek. At the same time, his sadness, his dread of our coming loss pours into me as if the emotion were my own. “I don’t, either.”
Our magical bond is going to break. We’ll just be two people, staring across the vast distance that separates human souls.
We lie down, sinking together into the soft comfort of the deep duvet.
We’re here now. I have to grab this moment. Time is already ticking forward. Someday I’m going to find myself like Charlie, gazing at a tattered photo of Hunter and me and aching at how fast the time went. Never again will we be these two people we are today. He pulls me to him and wraps me in his safe arms, and I never want this feeling to end.
It’s late when I dial Dad’s number. The rai
n has stopped, so I escape onto the back deck. The leaves and grass are black slicks in the dark. The night is heavy with the sorrows of today. I listen to the phone ring, nervous. Hunter assured me Dad’s safe.
What if Hunter’s wrong? I can’t lose him, too. Then he comes on the line.
“Dad?”
“Where are you?” he demands, worry plain in his voice.
I release the aching breath I’d been holding. “It’s good to hear you, too.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. Fine.”
“I’ve been worried out of my mind!”
“I know. I’m sorry. Hunter’s taking care of me.”
“And you couldn’t pick up the phone before now? It’s been all over the news. The attack on the house in New Haven. I knew it had to be you and Hunter.” I haven’t heard him this angry in a long time.
“I’m really, really sorry, Dad. I thought Victoria would call you.”
“Yes. She did. But I wasn’t about to trust her until I heard your voice.”
“Well, I’m here now, and everything’s all right.”
“Where are you? I’m coming to get you.”
“Not yet.” My stomach is in knots, knowing how anxious he is. “Not until the … effects are all gone. It’s safer this way.”
“You can recover here.” He sounds desperate to keep me on the line.
My fingers tighten around the handset. “I just want you to know that I miss you. I love you, Dad. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Promise.”
“Wait, is Gage with you?”
An ache fills my lungs. “No.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“I—I saw him earlier.”
“Is he coming back soon? What should I tell his father? And Ella? They’ll be wanting news.”
“Tell them …” What can I say? That Gage has gone rogue? My fingers start trembling, and I sink down onto the waterlogged wood steps.
“You still there?” Dad asks.
I nod, even though I know he can’t see me.
Hunter promised that we’d track him down and remove him from King’s influence. In the darkness, a lone cicada sings out. We’ll get him back. I have to believe it’s true.
“Aeris?”
“I’m here.” My voice is thick. “Tell them Gage will be coming home. But right now, he just—”
“Just what?”
“He just needs some time.”
Forty
Upstairs, I find Hunter pacing in my room. Treading a path in the deep carpet at the foot of that Transylvanian bed. He looks up when I come in.
“We need to talk,” I say.
He stops pacing.
“I know about the shed.”
“Charlie told you.”
“This isn’t on Charlie. I found it myself.”
“And the code?”
“Yeah. I guessed that one, all right. My mother’s name. Really, Hunter? After you said you’d told me everything?”
“Actually, I didn’t say that.”
“What I didn’t learn about was the whole recasting thing. I had to hear that from King. You’re immortal? When were you going to tell me?”
He stands and goes to the window. “I don’t know. A million times I started to and then … I guess I just … I wanted you too much. I wanted to pretend we were normal. I knew it had to come out. And when it did, it would all be different. I just wanted a few days.”
I stare at his hunched shoulders.
“I asked you about my mom. Straight up.”
His shoulders tighten, and he nods. “I know.”
“You wanted to be with me, but you kept that from me? She’s practically the most important thing in my life. She’s dead. I’ve spent my whole life searching for answers and you … you—”
“Stop. I know. It’s ripped me apart since the minute I figured out who you were. But your dad didn’t want the truth coming from me. He made me give my word. And I was happy to.”
Rage flares. “What? You were happy to? So my dad’s known all this time? How could he do this to me? Hide this from me?” My god, it’s like I don’t even know my own father.
Hunter turns and makes a calming motion with one hand. “He hasn’t known. He found out because I told him. And then he was worried. He didn’t want to see you hurt.”
“Well, the secret’s out now. So you better start talking.”
He gestures at the bed. “Want to sit?”
“No. I’ll stand, thank you very much.”
“Her name is not Julia Perdu.”
“Oh yeah? Then what is it?”
“It’s Julia Dryas. Her father, your grandfather, was the lead geneticist on the Winterborn project. We were in the Arctic together. I was twenty-eight, an elite soldier with top secret clearance. It’s all I ever wanted to be. I loved my work. I thought I was invincible. It was a Monday morning, just after seven. I spotted several flares several miles out, so Ian and I took snowmobiles to investigate, thinking someone was in trouble. Too late we realized it was a ruse. Russians attacked the facility. We heard the explosions across the ice. When we got back, the place was in ashes. A war zone. Less than twenty survivors. Our radio equipment was destroyed. We had no way to call for help.
“It was my worst nightmare, and I’ve never forgiven myself. There they were, a group of wounded people, half without even a parka on, standing in the howling ice. Your mother was one of them, only a kid. She was in the lab with your grandfather when he was crushed under a falling beam. He guided her to a case of syringes and told her the stuff in them could keep us alive, but only to use it as a last resort, if help didn’t come.”
“So you injected yourselves?”
“No. We started walking. People got frostbite. We had no food. But no one wanted to take the drug.”
“Why not?”
“Your grandfather was experimenting on himself. We saw what he went through. How sick he got. We knew about the recasting. He told Julia this was a stable version.”
“But you didn’t believe him?”
He shakes his head. “No, but the temptation was growing stronger. After two people died, things got a lot worse. Julia had a dog. A black Labrador. Phoenix, he was called.” He pauses as if caught by some old pain. “A lab tech named Thomas came up with the idea to inject him and see if he died. If he survived, anyone who wanted to take it would. We never saw the results. A white wolf attacked our camp, but Phoenix fought him off for a long time. Until the wolf dragged him away. God, he was such a good dog. The best.” Hunter lets out a long breath. “We never saw him again.”
My hands squeeze and release at my sides. The dog from the crate, the one Mom had been so protective of. The one on the PRL plaque. They’d named their research lab after him.
“But you injected yourselves eventually.”
“That night we lost a third person. We were frozen. Starving. We were eating snow. Still, we were sure help would come. We agreed to wait. We made a depression in the snow and huddled together to sleep. I woke up after your mom had injected me. I was the last one. She was turning the final needle on herself when I caught her and threw it down.”
I stare at him in disbelief. “She injected you without your permission?”
“It was forty-six years ago.”
I frown.
“She was five, Aeris. She was a child. She wanted us to live. And so we did.”
Forty-One
The room is dead still. No sound except my breathing. And I don’t know if it’s relief or understanding, yet tears are trickling down my cheeks.
“I don’t blame her,” Hunter says. “I never did. I never will. She was right. We wouldn’t have made it. But some of the others still carry a grudge.”
“Like Ian?”
Hunter nods.
“And Victoria?”
“Not really. Not so much. I think she changed her mind after meeting you.”
“Was she one of the scientists?”
“No. She wa
s your mother’s nanny.”
My hand goes to my mouth. “Victoria? Are you serious?” Despite my tears, I let out a small laugh.
“Yeah. I know. Go figure. No idea how that happened.”
“Why didn’t my dad tell me? I still don’t understand.”
“Maybe he thought you’d feel some unwarranted obligation to right a family wrong. To pay her dues. To drop your music and put your efforts into fixing this. When we got back to civilization, we escaped. But only after they took her and put her in the foster system. They changed her name to erase her past. Perdu …” He laughs, rueful. “Someone’s sick idea. It means ‘lost.’ We never saw her again. But I know she dedicated her life to finding a cure for us. Your dad’s afraid he’s going to lose you, the way he lost her.”
Dad knows me too well. Because, as Hunter says it, I know it’s true. I do have an obligation. To Mom, and to them. This is my legacy. To find her killer and to know what answers she’d been bringing to Switzerland.
She’d been happy. Overjoyed. She’d found the solution to their suffering. A way to fix them. I’m sure of it. A flash of memory startles me. One I’ve never had before. Of us peering through a frosty hotel window at the mountain above and her saying that after this trip everything was going to be different. When we got home, we were going to live with Dad. And she wouldn’t be busy anymore. It would be the three of us. Together.
That trip was supposed to be her salvation. Our salvation.
And now her crusade would be mine to bear.
As I look at Hunter, my mind is reeling back to that happy day that became a nightmare car crash. I’m hearing her voice when she told me she’d always be with me. I’m feeling her hands thrusting me out the door to safety. I’m seeing the black smoke coiling all the way to the heavens.
Then I recall the man’s arms that lifted me screaming and fighting from the bushes and carried me through the blackness to safety.
“That was you,” I gasp.
“Yes.”
Night air whispers softly over the windowsill.
“Yes, that was me. I saw the flames and came to investigate. I found you there, clinging to the branches, and you wouldn’t let go. It just about broke my heart. So you can imagine my shock when I saw you outside the Zenith Club. That’s when I should have driven away. Let you be. Instead, I just had to find out if it really was you.”
The Butterfly Code Page 32