by Azalea Ellis
I looked to Chanelle. She had asked us to leave her sister's murderer alive until she was well enough to kill him herself. But she didn't even acknowledge his presence, staring off into the distance and nibbling at her raw fingertips.
“Show me the nanite booster,” I said.
Kilburn clicked his tongue mockingly and shook his head with fake sadness. “So distrusting.” Still, he walked to the edge of the platform and opened a door to a small room. He grabbed a small metal briefcase and brought it out, sitting it on the second chair and then opening it.
I was somewhat familiar with the nanite booster, and though I wasn’t an expert, a focused examination with Wraith didn’t show any differences between the vials within and the ones we’d originally stolen from NIX.
I moved to take a step forward, but Torliam grabbed my arm. “If any harm befalls you, I will take retribution in blood a thousand fold.” He looked at Kilburn while he said it, his voice reverberating off the walls and making the hair on the back of my arms raise. “None here will leave this room alive.”
“You can try," one of the Players yelled.
Kilburn waved his hand in a sharp motion, and the Player jerked back like a puppet on a string, but clamped their mouth shut and only glared silently.
"All my people are here as hostages, just as yours are,” Kilburn said. "Relax. I need them to save the world, so I won't do anything that would cause the rest of you to try and kill them."
I turned to Torliam, making eye contact with the other members of my team as well. "Don't worry. I've grown so much stronger, since the last time we met. He can try to hurt me." I threw a grin at the Players, and made my way forward to join Kilburn on the platform.
—Things might get a little heated. Don’t escalate if you don’t have to.—
-Eve-
I set the briefcase beside my chair and sat down. “Let’s talk,” I agreed. I looked at his gaunt face and remembered China's eyes, staring at me after he broke her. I still wondered, sometimes, if she’d been alive when her eyes met mine, or if he’d already killed her.
I realized my claws were out only when they scraped against my palms, digging little furrows and leaving faint lines of blood behind. With effort, I relaxed again, forcing my claws back into hiding.
His eyes tracked my fingers, lingering on the sixth finger on my left hand. “I’ve thought about you a lot, since the last time we met,” he said unexpectedly. “I had plenty of time for reflection, while NIX was healing me. Not all regenerative Skills are as instantaneous as your healer’s. I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to death than when you turned that power on me.” He shuddered, but his eyes were bright and the ends of his lips were curled up in a weird smile. Seeing the expression that must have leaked onto my face, his smile got bigger. “I’m not a masochist. I don’t enjoy pain, but in a way, that cusp between life and death was thrilling. I was angry with you at first. All I could think about was killing you. When I was able, I studied you, your past, your psychological profile, stored video imagery of you, anything I could get my hands on. I realized that you and I aren’t so different, but somehow, you’re so much more effective than I was. So then I learned from you.”
“Why don’t you get to the point?” I said, wishing I could just take the briefcase and run. I’d expected him to ask me about the hints I’d tossed them about ending the war, not go on a creepy monologue.
He ignored me. “I admit that I am cruel and violent. People have diagnosed me as a sociopath, though take of that what you will. I have a need for conflict and excitement. I am a narcissist. I think you’re not so dissimilar.” He paused then, as if waiting for me to agree.
I raised an eyebrow at him.
He chuckled. “In the past, I was aimless. I wanted power, and I needed an outlet for my urges, but in indulging myself, I unwittingly stymied my own ability to grow more powerful. This was…unavoidable, I think. There was nothing to attract all the attention and energy of a man of my particular talents. No goal. That’s changed now. I think saving the world is a glorious enough ambition for anyone, don’t you?”
He was serious about that?
“After all…you have a similar goal, right?” His smile was conspiratorial, as if we were best friends who shared a secret. “I think we can help each other. I have the manpower, you have the information.”
The room filled with a susurrus of whispers from those listening.
—If this goes downhill, get to the edge of the room. I’ll take everyone into the Other Place and grab you.—
-Zed-
I sent back a Window acknowledging him, making sure not to reveal our communication outwardly, since everyone in the room was familiar with that gaze into the middle ground that signified use of a VR chip.
Kilburn continued. “NIX hasn’t contacted me since the attempts to break through that forcefield failed. They probably expected us all to die in here, and have allocated their resources toward more profitable assets. It’s not unreasonable, but still… That was a mistake. Now they’ve left me with all these resources and no one to tell me what I can and can’t do with them.”
“You want to join me?” I had to say the words aloud for confirmation, since they seemed so incredibly unlikely.
“If you have a plan that’s better than mine.” He raised his eyebrows and steepled his fingers together, like a kid with a secret they were bursting to tell.
I sighed, and acquiesced to his obvious desire. “What’s your plan?”
“The aliens didn’t get here through space. Not this time. They didn’t use a Shortcut, either. They used a stone circle that was buried under a few tons of water and ice at the South Pole, the same way you did. So.” He stopped, tendons straining against his skin. “I need to know how you did it, and how I can stop them from sending more reinforcements. If I can do that, it gives Earth the next few years to prepare. They’d have to physically fly all the way here to attack, and NIX’s Thinkers already deduced that should take years. We could use that time to rebuild, and strengthen our military.”
I thought of Torliam, because I knew Kilburn didn’t just mean inventing better weapons. NIX would want more Seeds. With so many Estreyans effectively trapped here on Earth if the arrays were destroyed, they could capture and farm them for Seed organisms on a much larger scale. Hypothetically, the Estreyan warriors could just leave and fly back the long way, but I doubted they had the resources to survive a multi-year journey through space. I also knew I couldn’t trust Kilburn or NIX not to keep an array to study, trying to reverse-engineer or figure out how to work it. I could imagine them traveling to Estreyer only to perpetuate the war with a crop-dusting of nuclear bombs. “What is left of NIX?” I said.
“You didn’t manage to cause our destruction,” he said with another razor-blade smile.
I suppressed a shudder. “Is their leadership in place? An intact chain of command?”
“Some have died, but most of the leadership is still alive. Enough to keep operations running.”
“Do they know about your plan?”
He stared at me for a moment too long, like a snake before it struck. “They are human, without an ounce of real power. They see us as tools and weapons. Which we are.”
“But you don’t discuss your battle plan with your sword, or take suggestions from it,” I said, feeling like I understood a little more of Kilburn’s motivation. “Do they still have Thinkers?”
“A few that had the right Skills and enough power to escape, or to not be where the attacks happened in the first place. Many of them died. Are you convinced, yet? I think it’s time for me to hear your plans.”
Kilburn might not be completely loyal to NIX, but that didn’t mean I could trust him. And even if I did, I doubted the rest of the team could ever agree to work with him. He had resources, true, but I couldn’t control them, and I didn’t even know how useful they would be in finding the Champion. “What do you know about the Sickness?” I asked.
“Only what you
told Vaughn on the way here,” Kilburn replied promptly.
I wasn’t really surprised he’d been listening in. “The meningolycanosis NIX has been developing is a vector for it. But it’s not the only vector. The problem is, no one really understands what the other vectors are, or how to stop them. It’s the most virulent pandemic introduced to Earth in the history of the human race, and it’s also the reason the Estreyans have used to justify the attack on Earth. The Estreyans call it the Sickness, because it’s the only disease important enough to matter.”
“You want to weaponize it?” He frowned, tapping his fingers together.
My insides went cold. No, I couldn’t work with him.
He continued, oblivious to my thoughts. “But without any way to control its spread, we won’t be able to prevent mutual destruction. That’s one way to win a war, but definitely not the preferred method.”
“I want you to work on a cure,” I said, making sure my voice didn’t waver. I had to redirect his train of thought immediately. “If not, humanity is doomed. The pandemic is much bigger than the alien invasion. Additionally, if you’re able to develop a cure, it would be the biggest bargaining chip with the Estreyans that you could imagine. Two birds, one stone.” That wasn’t a lie, but there was no way I was going to tell him about the God of Shaping and Molding or my real plan now.
“I can do that…but I’ll want information about the stone circles in return. Your pet alien knows where they are and how they work, doesn’t he?”
Yeah, not gonna happen. But I nodded slowly. “I will need time to consider.”
He stood up and took a single step toward me, head tilted to the side and skin stretched tight around a smirk. “The fate of the world is at stake, and more of us are dying every day. You will tell me, and you will do it now.” I could sense his power gathering, a brightness that coiled up inside him, ready to lash out.
I stood to match him, a little surprised to note that, despite his lanky, stretched frame, I was taller. I showed my teeth, the expression not nearly friendly enough to be mistaken for a smile. “You brought this fate on yourselves, and, with your track record, I can’t trust you not to make it even worse. So, no. I will take time to consider, and you…” The crystal at my throat hummed, lending gravitas and an echo to my words. “You will await my decision patiently.”
Wraith could sense his heartbeat in the air, pounding faster as his eyes dilated and his nostrils flared. “I am not uncontrolled,” he whispered. “I have priorities. But when this is over, we will fight again, arrogant child. I will introduce movement into your flesh where there should be none, and you will die, unrecognizable even to those who know you best.”
Chaos bubbled out from my skin like a thin mist, taking advantage of my rage to assert itself.
He jumped back, clearing almost the whole room in a move that reminded me of Jacky.
My teammates and Kilburn’s people bristled immediately, likely to break out fighting within seconds.
But I didn’t pursue him, instead waving to my team to calm them down. “As long as you wait till this is over, you’re welcome to try,” I called back to him.
After our little display, Kilburn’s people were even more hostile, but, though they watched us like we were rabid dogs ready to attack at any moment, none of them started anything with us.
Kilburn assigned us a room and most of the team piled in to rest. We kept a rotating schedule, so someone would always be awake to alert the others of trouble.
I was tired too, but my Resilience was high enough that I didn’t need the same amount of sleep as before, and I was too tense to nap. I used Wraith to find a door one hallway down from the common area. Guards stood in front of it. I had an idea what was behind it, but instead of using my Skill to find out for sure, I went there in person. It seemed fitting.
The guards stopped me from going through at first, but Vaughn came down the opposite hallway and waved them away. “I thought you might come down here. Is it safe for you to be in the same room with them?”
I shrugged. “As long as I don’t get bitten. That’s the surest way to transfer the disease, but you can still get it even if you’ve been living as a hermit in the wilderness for the last twenty years, so who even knows?”
“Still…” he handed me a face mask. “Don’t think I’m doing this because I like you, traitor. It would be inconvenient if you went crazy and died right now.”
I accepted the mask and followed him into the room. My eyes took a couple seconds to adjust to the dim light, but my ears caught the sounds of torment right away, and the smell of decay and infection spread itself over my nose and throat like a film. I swallowed back a gag.
Vaughn walked to the corner of the room and sat on a chair, staring at the wall with an expression of grey exhaustion.
The room was filled with smaller quarantine cells made of reinforced plastine walls. In each cell, a couple people were locked up. Some were free to wander with blank, drooling faces, while others were restrained. Those infected with meningolycanosis wouldn’t attack others who were also infected, so, as long as they were locked up, they didn’t also need to be physically restrained. Some showed no signs of the Sickness. But many had distended bellies, blackened veins, or were thrashing against their restraints with obvious insanity.
I stopped before one cell, where a red-headed girl with her hands bound together was gnawing on her own arm till it bled. When she saw me, she rushed forward and slammed herself against the plastine in an attempt to get at me. She drooled, alternating between snarls and shrieks. She tried to bite at the glass, and one of her teeth broke away easily, like it had been barely rooted in her blackened gums.
I swallowed, but didn’t step back. Instead, I watched her, and I thought.
Her fate would be shared by Chanelle, Kris, and Gregor if we couldn’t find the lost god. But countless others before them had succumbed to this disease, and the Estreyans had threatened the lives of an entire city because of them. NIX had weighed power over the lives of everyone in Mordsmouth, and found power more compelling. Either that, or they just didn’t believe my warning.
But…what should they have done differently? Should they have abandoned the infected to be immolated by the Estreyans? The lives of a few over the lives of many? If this girl were one of my team, I knew I’d choose her over a hundred cities like this one. But she was a stranger, and, for some reason, that made it so much easier to see her as just a number. Unfortunately, even giving up all the infected probably wouldn’t stop the war at this point. Things were too far gone. Even so, the people turned into mindless attack beasts by the meningolycanosis were a real threat, and the easiest way for the Sickness to spread. Had Blaine given NIX the updated version of the anti-meningolycanosis serum, the one we’d used on Chanelle? If so, they definitely should have used it to mitigate the risk, even if they did plan on keeping these test subjects to search for a cure.
Vaughn rose from his spot in the corner and moved to stand beside me. “You lied to Kilburn.”
I raised my eyebrows and turned to him.
“Or at least, you omitted something. Doing research on these people to find a cure isn’t your real plan. The alien technology is so much more advanced than ours. If the cure was that simple, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. You don’t trust Kilburn not to turn on you, so you kept it a secret, but there’s another way to end this war, isn’t there?”
The door to the hallway opened again, and Torliam walked in, silhouetted against the light. He brought a wave of stale air with him that still smelled heavenly compared to the caged Players around me. He sneered at Vaughn, and then moved to my side. “I felt a hint of your distress and came to find you. I hope you were not planning to answer this boy’s question. We must not give them information about our plans,” he said in Estreyan, his voice low and rumbling. “NIX cannot be trusted. You have seen how they respond when given a chance at power.”
I bit the inside of my lip and responded in Estr
eyan, ignoring Vaughn’s grumble of displeasure. “As for the lost god, no, I definitely won’t be telling them about that. But…what about the arrays? We have no idea what’s going on over on Estreyer. What if my news messages don’t work, and she keeps sending more warriors? These people, they’re innocent. Your warriors are fighting a shadow enemy, causing bloodshed without an endgame. They made the choice to follow her into a war. Doesn’t Earth have a right to fight back?”
Torliam leaned forward, his voice urgent. “There is no shame in fighting back. But these warriors do not have evil in their hearts. They believe themselves to be saving your world from the Sickness as much as Estreyer, don’t you see?”
I nodded, wishing I had a solution. If I could cut off the arrays myself, I might do it, but I didn’t have the resources and I wouldn’t give NIX any information they could use to make things worse, because, based on their past decisions, they definitely would. “It doesn’t really matter anyway,” I said belatedly. “They know where two of the arrays are already. Some of the stone circles might just be imitations made by ignorant humans, but there are hundreds of them all over the world. Even if we don’t tell them anything, they’ll have plenty of research material. And they probably have someone who’s already translating my talk with that ship, so they’ll know the broad strokes of our ultimate plan, as well.”
“You two are being incredibly rude,” Vaughn said, obviously in English. “If this continues, I might take offense.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I should take offense that you reported everything I said to you about the Estreyans and the Sickness directly to Kilburn? I’m sure you’d do the same right now.”
Torliam straightened, looming over Vaughn, who had to look up at both of us. He spoke in English. “Your presence irritates me, two-legged-maggot. Remove yourself from the presence of Eve Redding.”