One afternoon, about a week after the junkyard, I showed up at the lab to find a chimpanzee sitting in a wire cage that was nearly too small for it. It was holding the bars, its long face looking like it wore a deep frown. Like it knew it couldn’t run.
“For the Gods’ sake!” I shouted as soon as I saw it, my voice exploding into the too-still, antiseptic air. The chimp startled, looking around the lab in alarm. “This thing is probably smarter than half the City Council, and I’m supposed to kill it?”
Drey glanced at the surveillance cameras with a grimace, but he didn’t chastise me for insulting the Council. “I think that’s the point.”
Right, I was supposed to feel bad about it … and then get over it. Because how bad would I feel when I had to kill a person? The plan was for me to get over that too.
“How do they want me to do it?”
When he hesitated, I knew it would be bad. “Slowly, to prove you’re capable of carrying out orders. The City Council is impressed with your progress, but they have to know you can do whatever is asked of you. You have to learn how to use the Word at some point, and not just practice what you already know intuitively. Organic bodies are complex, and there are many ways to take them apart.”
They wanted me to torture it. I closed my eyes. “This is horrible.”
“It’s life.” Before I could object that this was precisely the opposite, Drey continued. “Death is always intertwined with life. And of all the horrible things going on in the world right now, this is actually pretty small in comparison.”
“Keep telling yourself that if it’ll help you sleep better at night.”
He only stared at me. I doubted he was sleeping too peacefully.
My hands were suddenly in my hair, squeezing the sides of my head. “How slowly?”
“They didn’t specify, but I would think at least a few minutes.”
Ryse had probably suggested this to the City Council. Rage consumed me before I could drop my hands—I’d begun pulling out my hair. I wanted to hit the wall, punch Drey, throw something across the room, do anything other than what they wanted me to do. What she wanted me to do. But the lab was too tidy and there wasn’t much to throw. There was only smooth metal, glass and white tile, and the chimpanzee in the cage, watching me with wary dark eyes.
Instead, I held out my hand to Drey. “Give me your videophone.”
“Why?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to call anyone. Or smash it on the ground,” I added in case he could see how much I wanted to break something.
He handed it over, eyeing me as warily as the chimp. I pushed a few buttons on the screen, found what I needed, and held it ready at my side. Then I turned to the poor creature. I walked slowly up to the bars, holding its gaze. It pulled its lips back in sort of a weird grin as I bent my head to put myself level with it. I doubted it was a happy grin.
“I’m sorry,” I said. And then I touched one of the hairy knuckles protruding through the bars.
My eyes closed, and the Word of Death filled me. My rage was gone in an instant, replaced by a cool deep river flowing through me—a river of death. It was a place where things dissolved and joined the rest of the endless flow. It was a place where I didn’t have to fight, where I didn’t have to fear myself, where I could just relax. Just be. Too bad it was a place where I was alone, since, by definition, nothing else could live there with me. In spite of that, I heard myself sigh in what was nearly pleasure.
It didn’t bother me, because I was already too focused on listening to something else to care—the whispers. The Words.
Something was different this time. The longer I touched the chimp with the Words murmuring through me, the more I heard it, too. The chimp’s thumping heartbeat, its huffing breath, the blood thrumming it its veins. The music of life. And after even longer, I saw: the golden strings playing the music, connecting it all together and vibrating with vitality. They were the same strings I’d seen once when I’d godspoken through Khaya.
But I was different now. I was seeing them from a new angle. Not how to weave them together, like the Word of Life, but how to cut them. How to silence their music.
I was learning. The Word of Death could be like a pillow, smothering all the humming strings at once, or like a pair of scissors, picking and choosing. I saw exactly what I needed to do.
“Numb.” The center of the brain for pain—snip. “Weaken.” Blood flow and oxygen levels—snip, snip. But those I only cut a little bit. I tried to say the Words under my breath, as quietly as possible. But after the chimp blinked at me and sagged in the cage, I knew I could speak louder. Say what I wanted to say.
Recreating the effect of a hemorrhagic fever was pretty easy. Blood soon leaked from its nose, ears, mouth, and eyes. The chimp couldn’t feel anything—I’d made sure of that—but it still looked horrendous. The City Council wanted blood, after all. And a part of me, a part that was getting stronger every day, did too.
I didn’t turn away until the chimp breathed its final gurgling breath, just after its third seizure. I wasn’t sure how long I’d stood there watching it die. But that was what a timer was for. I slammed Drey’s videophone onto the steel table, with a force just shy of breaking it.
The red numbers of the digital clock had stopped at 15:36.
I turned around to look at Drey, who was pale and staring at me as if he wasn’t sure who I was anymore. I looked at the reflective windows where I knew people were watching, and the nearest surveillance camera too. “Fifteen minutes and thirty-six seconds,” I said. “Is that long enough?”
I was calm, so calm. I still couldn’t help feeling like I was in a cage just like the chimp, with a timer ticking down to my demise. And not even one that was counting down from a month, not now that I was doing so well. No, this would be another sort of death.
I have a way to kill your soul, Herio had said.
Drey didn’t try to stop me or even say anything when I moved for the door out of the lab this time. He probably didn’t know that I’d killed the chimp’s pain receptors, but even so … I paused before I reached the door and glanced back at him over my shoulder. “This is what a monster looks like. Don’t act so surprised. You’re creating it.”
I passed the usual audience outside the room, safe behind their windows from whatever went on in the lab. As much as people liked a good show, their numbers had dwindled recently. Now that I was cooperating, it must have grown too repetitive to just watch animals die in gruesome ways, over and over again. But if ever there was a human waiting for me in the lab, I was sure they’d return in a mob, like ancient Roman spectators for a gladiator match. Human blood was always more exciting.
Even for the Word of Death. The murmuring in my head increased just at the thought of human blood. It wanted it.
I hurried out into the hallway without looking at anyone. I needed to get away.
Pie was my usual solace when my mood was this dark, but I couldn’t face her right now. I couldn’t face anyone else either, not even my friends—if that was what Brehan and Luft were these days. I didn’t want to see their lively eyes, hear their laughter, or feel the warmth emanating from them.
Because I wasn’t sure if I could resist stopping it—the warmth, the laughter, the life—with a Word or two.
I wanted to sink myself again into that deep, dark river floating inexorably in the back of my mind. It was calling to me, and I couldn’t ignore it this time as it drew me with that siren’s song to the edge. But I couldn’t be around anything living when I gave in. I’d be too dangerous.
I told the elevator to take me to the very top of the training center. Nobody tried to follow me inside the elevator car, thank the Gods, so I had the ride to myself. It passed with my fists clenched at my sides. Then the doors opened onto a familiar hallway lined with windows that looked out over the Athenaeum, with that view encased by t
he glass pyramid. I imagined a flood rising inside the glass walls and drowning everyone. Not a literal flood, of course. That would take Pavati. But I wondered if I could somehow make the Word of Death contagious, similar to a communicable plague like an actual hemorrhagic fever, or a flesh-eating virus. Maybe I could kill an entire city. There would be a river of blood …
I threw myself toward the sliding door down the hallway and practically hammered on the button to get in before the Words straining against my lips could get out. I was losing control again. I needed to find that peace of the river but not let it carry me away.
The door slid open, dumping me inside. Bristles poked my palms and dust rose when I landed. I was kneeling on a very dead lawn. I crawled farther away from the door as it slid shut behind me, closing me in. At least in here, I was surrounded by death.
Khaya’s garden. I definitely hadn’t left anything alive, not even accidentally.
When I was far enough inside, away from where someone could theoretically trip over me unaware, I collapsed on my back in the middle of the indoor wasteland. Dead trees rose around me like bleached bones in a desert. Brehan’s lights no longer floated around the ceiling, so there was only the late afternoon sun slanting through the high windows. It would start getting dark soon.
I wanted darkness. I didn’t want to have to see what I was becoming. I wanted to give up and let the Words rip through me, destroy me, and reform me into whatever they wanted.
Which was about the worst possible moment for Luft to walk in. The door whooshed open and footsteps crunched through the desiccated grass toward me. Then his voice entered the cavernous space.
“Hey.” There was a pause, and I took in his presence, the Word of Death swelling toward him like a wave about to break. “I won’t ask how you’re doing. You didn’t seem to see me, but I was watching at the lab today.”
I didn’t sit up. “You want to leave.” My voice was dead calm. Dead, indeed. I could hear the Words underneath my own words, wanting to turn them into something else.
“Do I?” There was the same confidence in his voice as when he’d stood up to Ryse. “What if I don’t?”
“This isn’t the time to be brave. Not now.”
“You think I’m brave?” He actually sounded flattered.
I tilted my head to look up at him from the ground. The sunlight on his blond hair was the brightest thing in the room—the most alive. “Luft. I’m very serious.”
He drew air through his teeth when he met my eyes. “That bad, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
“I do, actually,” he said. He wasn’t leaving, but at least he wasn’t coming any closer. “Not exactly like you, but the Words do something like this in all of us, every so often. Sometimes they’re just … too much, and they try to overflow. Too much of anything isn’t good.”
“What—do you get really bad gas? Does Khaya want to grow a forest? Does Brehan, I don’t know, try to light up the city at night?” I rolled over, watching him from a half-crouch. Some part of my mind registered my stance as the crouch of a predator. “I want to make the city bleed.”
Luft shrugged. “Agonya often wants to light the city on fire. I sometimes want to flatten it with a hurricane. Mørke occasionally wants to lock them all in darkness.”
He hadn’t risen to the bait of my insult, which gave me no easy excuse to go at him. Not yet.
He held my eyes again. “You’ve actually been handling it incredibly well lately, but these are the Words of the Gods. Did you think they’d ride easily in mortal bodies?”
“But this isn’t … it’s not … ” I didn’t know what to say about the feeling trying to overtake me. Not the Gods? Not me? Not okay?
“I heard what you said in the lab. You’re not a monster.”
My laugh came out as short and sharp as a razor. “Tell that to my victims.”
Luft folded his arms. “You’re the victim, Tavin. No, listen to me. I knew Herio. I saw what this Word did to him. You’re right, it’s worse than the others—it’s like poison. Your body can process it, but not fast enough sometimes. Even Herio needed help every so often. And when he stopped asking for help, that was when the Word of Death sort of … ate him up inside.”
“Who could help him? Could … Khaya?” I hoped that was where this conversation was heading, anyway. That would be the only reason for me to continue having it. That and waiting for the opportunity to lunge at him.
“No. She mostly stayed away from him. And for good reason, other than her personal dislike of him.”
Dislike was putting it mildly, from what I had seen of the two of them.
Luft continued. “The presence of your opposite can agitate you instead of balance you, make you want to lash out even more or try to suppress your power, which never ends well. It’s the Word most related to you that can sometimes calm you down, make you feel more stable. Khaya … wouldn’t be good for you right now.”
I tried to absorb that. He’d told me to reach out to her, so what the hell did this mean? Maybe it meant what I was already starting to think: not even Khaya could help me anymore.
“I’m not here about Khaya,” he said. “For the most part, anyway, except to suggest something else with regard to her.”
My eyes shot to the surveillance cameras in alarm.
“They’re not on,” Luft said quickly. “I had Carlin ask for them to be shut off, since the garden is even less used than ever, now that it’s … ” He gestured around. “Or at least that’s the reason Carlin gave to security, and since he’s a Godspeaker, they listened. I’ve been waiting for you to come up here again.”
“So we can talk? Where’s Khaya? How can I find her?” I edged closer to Luft in my anticipation.
He took a step back in the dead grass, raising a hand as if to stop me. “I don’t know. You’re the only one who might be able to contact her—the only one she would trust.”
Suspicion flashed through me again. Or maybe I was just really looking for a reason to try to kill him. “Why risk telling me to reach her if you don’t have anything more to give me? Why do you think I should?”
He dropped his hand. “I thought it might be for your own good, but now … I’m not so sure.”
“You’re being pretty damned vague.”
“For a reason.”
“But if she could’ve helped me before, why can’t she now?” Then again, I had been the one hoping she could help me or get me out of here; Luft had never actually said anything about that. “Did you want me to find her for another reason? If you’re working with the City Council … ”
“I’m not,” Luft said, glancing almost nervously at the door. “Only with Carlin. But I shouldn’t talk about that, not even here. Just listen to me—I don’t think it’s a good idea anymore. Trust me.”
“I’m not sure I can.”
“Then don’t. But it sounds like you don’t know where she is anyway, so it’s moot.”
Now I really wanted to kill him. He’d gotten my hopes up and then brought them crashing back down. “I’m supposed to just … forget about seeing Khaya again?”
Luft gestured at me. “Look at yourself! Do you think you really belong anywhere near her right now? You’re having a hard enough time not coming at me … which I don’t recommend, by the way.”
I actually looked down at myself. My hands were buried in the dead grass, either to hold myself back or to claw my way forward to get at him. I had no idea what my expression looked like, but it probably wasn’t any better. Maybe that was all this was about. Before, he’d been looking out for me in thinking I should contact Khaya, but now he was looking out for her. I was too dangerous. My legs folded under me and I sat back down in a puff of dust, putting my face in my hands.
“The more pressing issue is you,” Luft said, as if confirming my theory. “You need to take care of yourself and no
t go off the deep end.”
I’d heard this before, from Swanson, Brehan, and Drey: Stay in line, don’t lose it, keep killing. Luft had been the only one to tell me any different, but now this. I didn’t know if I should trust what he’d been saying before, or what he was saying now.
“So,” I said through my hands, “if Khaya can’t help me, who can?”
“Which Word is most like Death?” he asked. “Who was supposed to be your neighbor, before Andre and Brehan worked something else out? I think what they did helped cheer you up, but this kind of affinity between the Words runs even deeper than brain chemistry.”
It was interesting that Brehan had apparently played a role in getting me Khaya’s apartment, but I couldn’t focus on that for long. I dropped my hands. “Mørke? You really think more darkness would do me good right now?”
Luft shrugged. “Like I said, Agonya helps me, and vice versa. It was the same with Brehan and Khaya, Pavati and Tu … and Herio and Mørke. You don’t even have to like the other person. But with them around, you just feel stronger, more stable.”
“So I just ask Mørke to come hang out with me when I’m feeling most murderous?” I laughed. “I’m sure she’d love that.”
Luft glanced at the door. “She’s outside right now.”
I sat up straight. “When the hell were you planning on telling me that?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you. I asked her to come watch your lab session today with me. She recognized the signs of you getting a little … borderline … and agreed to come up here.” His fingers tapped out a beat on his jeans as he studied me. “So, can I let her in?”
I flopped back on the ground, sending up the biggest cloud of dust yet, which swirled in the fading sunlight. “This is somehow embarrassing.”
“Then I’ll take it as a compliment that you’re not embarrassed around me.”
“When two people have shared homicidal feelings for each other … you know,” I told the high ceiling.
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