Still not daring to speak, Violet watched Garth pull on a pair of sterile surgical gloves, then kneel in front of the boy. Maybe it was the laboratory environment, or just that Garth looked much more like a medically oriented person than Violet, but this time the child didn’t protest. In fact, he didn’t even move—just stayed utterly still as Garth pushed up his lips to check out his gums, then first one of Six’s eyelids, then the other, checking the child’s color and pupil dilation response. Seeing the child used as a lab rat made Violet’s muscles tense involuntarily, but it was also something she had to get past if there was any chance at all of finding out what was so special about this boy. When she spoke, her voice was even and unemotional, completely masking the turmoil she felt inside. “Can you make an assessment?”
Garth stood and yanked off his gloves. They made an unpleasant echoing sound inside the trailer, something that must’ve brought back unpleasant memories for Six. He winced instinctively, then was still again; Garth noted the reaction and looked down at the child thoughtfully. Steady once more, Six looked back at him, his face as emotionless as Violet’s. She had an idea that, like her, Six was hiding his feelings. “I’ll need to take some blood,” Garth finally said. His eyes searched hers. “It’ll take a few hours.”
Take blood? Violet couldn’t help but remember her struggle to do just that less than an hour ago, the way Six had resisted her efforts and threatened to scream. But when she and Garth glanced back at the boy, he was already obediently rolling up his sleeve. Was it the laboratory environment here in the trailer and the sense that he had nowhere to run, or did the child have some empathy for Violet’s kind after hearing her recount the circumstances of their war? She had no way of knowing. What Violet did see was that Six’s arm was a clinically organized mass of scars, a road map of physical evidence detailing how often his body had been tested and cruelly used in the past.
She could stand almost anything, but sometimes the sheer senselessness of the world and how it treated the most innocent of those who lived in it just made her want to cry.
The night sky was an ink-soaked blanket of stars and brilliantly colored explosions. She didn’t know what they were celebrating in the city’s interior tonight, but they had fireworks—the display went on and on and on, coating the interior of the truck’s roomy cab with flashes of scarlet, green, yellow, and blue, more colors than Violet could name. It was inexplicable, really, the way she couldn’t stop herself from watching, the way her gaze was drawn to the fire in the sky in much the same way as her ancestors, the ancient ones shared by her kind and humans alike, had probably been mesmerized by the red and orange flames of their first cooking fires. They—
Something inched into Violet’s consciousness before she could complete the thought, a sound that was out of place. She’d left the passenger door open to catch the breeze, and when she turned her head she saw Six look up at her from the open side. For a second, she wasn’t sure what to say, then she patted the seat. “Come on and sit.” When he obeyed, she told him, “Just don’t move. Or . . . talk.” A silly thing to say, really—most children were chatterboxes, but this kid hardly ever spoke a word.
Right now it was no different. He sat next to her and stared out the windshield, leaning forward slightly and placing his hands delicately on the dashboard so he could have a better view of the overhead show. Violet could see the colorful little explosions mirrored on the surface of his eyes, watch as his gaze flicked from side to side across the windshield as he tried to keep up with each new fireworks display. He was, she realized, seeing this for the first time; while somewhere in her consciousness she had known that, the epiphany was that she herself was doing the same . . . through him.
Finally, even though he hadn’t asked, she felt compelled to explain. “Humans,” she said. “Celebrating something.” When she realized what she’d said, Violet couldn’t stop the bittersweet feelings that spiked inside her, little memories that brought nothing but sharp, spiked pain. She had been human once, but the war had taken that away. The ArchMinistry wanted the world to think it was the virus’s fault, but that wasn’t true. Humans were prone to plenty of viruses, and hardly any of the other illnesses segregated its victims the way this one did. The ones that had? Eradicated. The key part was that the diseases had been eradicated, not their victims. The truth now was that the sickness part didn’t matter. Even the death part was only a piece of the whole pie. Sickness and death—those things could be easily tolerated, carefully treated, even contained. What couldn’t be allowed to continue was the strength, the speed, all the things inherent to H.P.V. that made its victims better than humans. It was all about power, not preservation. There was nothing blatant about the ArchMinistry’s extermination of vampires. It was all subjective, much like killing in the name of religion.
But then, there had been entire eras over the course of mankind’s existence that had been devoted to just such battles, hadn’t there?
Six shifted on the seat, bringing Violet’s thoughts back to the present. He seemed to be carefully pondering what she’d said about the humans celebrating, then he looked like he’d finally made a decision. Digging into his pocket, the boy came up with a worn piece of paper, looking at her sideways at he pulled it out. He unfolded it carefully, trying his best to smooth out the sharply creased edges; after another moment’s hesitation, at last he offered it to her. “So you know where this is?” he asked with his customary seriousness.
Curious despite herself, Violet took the paper from him and studied it. The image burned into her eyes, and once again she fought the lump that rose sluggishly in her throat. Behind the stoic facade she kept up, she could feel her eyes burn. Thanks to the fireworks and the moonlight, she could just make out that she was holding a timeworn drawing of a playground. A dozen kids played on the swings and the teeter-totters, more ran happily alongside a merry-go-round. Everyone in the drawing was having a great time, and it looked like an antique advertisement for schoolyard equipment. Six, of course, had never known anything like the scene on the crumpled piece of paper. His question made it clear that he wasn’t even sure such a place existed, and Violet thought he would probably never see one for himself. Sometimes destiny could truly screw over those who deserved it the least.
“When I was a kid,” Violet told him quietly, “a little girl, I used to dream about this . . . old dusty road. There were beautiful daisies growing tall on both sides—bright yellow and for as far as I could see—and they would sway in the wind. I’d walk down it for a long time, and at the end would be a schoolhouse, a red one like in the old movies, with a yard in the back where they’d have stuff like this.” Violet pointed to the picture, then her gaze cut to the window and the beautiful faraway fireworks. “In that dream, I had a family and best friends, and we’d play house and everyone lived happily ever after. It was a happy dream. But then you realize, as life settles in around you, that those places don’t really exist.” She refolded the picture and pushed it back into Six’s hands with a sigh. “Not in this world, anyway. Now I just dream about losing things.” She felt him staring at her and shrugged, suddenly feeling stupid. There wasn’t any explaining what she’d just said, and he wouldn’t understand her anyway. He was too young and naive—
“You’re dying,” Six said suddenly. She jerked and turned to stare at him. The child’s eyes were clear and without guile as he reached up and brushed his fingers over her eyelids inquisitively. “I can see it.”
Violet swallowed and returned her gaze to the windshield, tilting her head to get out of range of his questing fingers. Outside it was just beginning to rain; the weather report said the precipitation would get heavier as the night wore on, and soon the fireworks would be chased away by the moisture. “Yeah,” she said hoarsely. “Yeah. I’m . . . winding down. I can feel it.” She shrugged again, trying desperately to appear nonchalant, like this was the last thing in the world that bothered her . . . or at least that she had accepted it. She had, right? After all, it wasn�
��t like she could do anything to stop or stall the inevitable, even with Six at her side. Whatever secrets were in his blood probably wouldn’t be revealed in time to do her any good. Stuff like that took years to figure out. She didn’t even have days. “By this time tomorrow.” Violet nodded thoughtfully, then pressed her fingers against her temple. She could hear her heart beating rapidly, that accelerated Hemophage metabolism. It was killing her. “I don’t imagine there’ll be much left.”
The boy was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he finally said, and he sounded like he meant it.
They looked at each other for a long moment, then Violet raised her left hand and spread her fingers. There was still enough light from the lessening fireworks display to illuminate the beautiful Indo-Narai script tattoos that twined around three of the fingers. “Do you read Thaihindi script?”
Six shook his head and peered quizzically at the writing. Obligingly Violet ticked off each one and folded it back into a fist as she recited its meaning. “Comrade,” she told him. “Lover. Wife.” She stopped with only her blank forefinger extended. “This one was going to say Mother,” she said quietly. Was her voice shaking? She hoped not. “But I never got that far. I got infected and all that became . . . impossible.”
The boy’s gaze was frank and liquid, blatantly melancholy for her. It was heartbreaking to realize that the only person in the world who truly sympathized with her was a child who had never experienced—and never would—all the things she had lost in her life. “So when you’re gone,” he said softly, “there really will be nothing left of you.”
That went beyond even what she expected, and Violet didn’t know what to say to that. How could this boy, raised in the emotionally cold and sterile prison of a laboratory, even understand the concept of death? Of nonexistence? Or maybe it was because of his upbringing that he understood it better than most adults. Eventually Violet couldn’t stop the dark smile that stretched across her mouth. “My last act was going to be to walk into the ArchMinistry of Medical Policy,” she told him, “the very soul of all this rot, and blow it to pieces with a bomb strapped to my chest.”
Six tilted his head and Violet could see his eyes. They were sparkling, full of questions and the reflection of the rain and the last of the fireworks. “But now you won’t.”
A chill rippled across her skin, raising the fine hairs on her arms and neck. She let a minute pass, then two, then squared her shoulders. “Oh, yes—I will.” She sucked in a breath. “Nerva may have given up, but I haven’t. Before I leave it, I’m going to take this world back to what it was. At dawn I’m going to leave you here with Garth, and I’m going to walk into that building—guards or not—and before they can gun me down, I’m going to destroy it.” Violet glanced at the boy and nodded slightly. “That’s what’s going to be left of me.”
Me, she thought, and her gaze wandered back to the blackness of the night sky overhead.
And, just for a moment, Violet closed her eyes . . . and remembered.
She is maybe twenty pounds heavier, and her hair is different—cut differently, a different shade, a whole other her. Her white nurse’s uniform is starched and bright white, smart-looking even if it has gotten a bit on the snug side across the breasts and hips because of certain recent circumstances. It is those exact same circumstances that she’s going to discuss with the doctor just before she goes on her rounds and passes out the doses of medicine carefully measured out in the syringes arranged on her tray. She has a smile on her lips and a bounce in her step, all those things now lost over the course of time’s passage and the way her life has changed.
She turns the corner and ducks into the hospital laboratory. The man she’s come to see is carefully going over a stack of X-ray films spread out on one of the light tables. His dark brow furrows in concentration as he compares one to another, then quickly scribbles notes on a clipboard to his right. Despite her best efforts at sneaking up on him, he looks up and catches her.
“Doctor,” she says as seriously as she can manage. “It’s been decided.” He stands as she approaches him. His head tilts curiously and a small smile, hardly noticeable to the unaccustomed eye, starts at one corner of his mouth. She has never seen him look so handsome. “I’m getting a new tattoo.” Standing in front of him, she holds up her hand and her splayed fingers reveal the Indo-Narai script with which he’s already so familiar. The fluorescent lights overhead make the small diamond ring on her third finger sparkle cheerfully above the words—
Comrade
Lover
Wife.
“Here,” she says softly and holds up her forefinger.
His eyes widen as the realization sinks in that she’s talking about the word “Mother,” and that means she’s going to have a baby. His smile is so filled with happiness it’s dazzling. “Oh, my God, Violet—” He can’t finish, so instead of talking, he entwines his own tattooed fingers around hers and pulls her to him for a sweet, sweet kiss—
—that breaks abruptly apart when the wild-eyed man barges into the lab and skids to a stop just a few feet away.
The intruder is tall and anemic-looking—dark eyes squinting at the lights from a bone-white face fed by ramped-up adrenaline. Violet’s instinctive impression is that he’s on drugs, an almost overdose of cocaine, PCP, or crack—no matter what the police do, they can’t seem to clean that stuff off the streets. Even so, there’s something odd about him that she can’t put her finger on, a sense of strength, energy, and danger, of clarity, that she’s never seen in the hundreds of addicts she’s seen come through the emergency room.
“One suggestion,” he snarls at her and her husband. “Stay the fuck out of my way!”
She steps back automatically as he round-shoulders his way farther into the room. His watery gaze scans the lab, then stops on the oversized stainless-steel refrigerator against the wall. A red-on-white sign warns CAUTION: BLOOD PRODUCTS, but this seems to be exactly what the guy is looking for. Without hesitating, he strides toward it.
And just as unhesitatingly, Violet’s husband bodily steps into the man’s path. “Hey,” he snaps. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
It happens so fast—one second her husband is speaking, the next he’s slammed against the refrigerator and the intruder’s fingers—only one-handed—are pressed so deeply into his windpipe that Violet can’t even see the attacker’s fingernails. Her husband chokes and fights, clawing at the grip on his throat. “Violet!” he manages and gestures wildly at the tray of syringes she’s set aside on the counter. “Tranq—tranquilizer!” The word seems to infuriate his attacker, who brings up his other hand and folds it around her husband’s neck, cutting off the rest of his air. Violet is paralyzed with fear, her feet leaden on the floor—never has she faced something like this, she doesn’t know what to do, what if she drops the syringe, or misses, or doesn’t even pick up the right one—
“What the hell!”
She spins helplessly and sees one of the hospital security guards standing in the doorway, a coffee cup held in one hand below his incredulous face. The attacker releases her husband and whirls to face the guard, dark, sweaty hair circling around his head like a flock of bats; as her gasping husband slides down the wall, the crazed man leaps forward. But the guard is too quick—he lets go of the coffee cup and has his gun drawn and aimed even before the cup hits the floor and shatters.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Three shots to the chest and the man goes down . . . but not before he actually lingers upright for a moment, somehow managing to turn his head enough to make eye contact with each of the three people who will watch him die, practically at Violet’s feet.
Shocked, all Violet can do is stand there and stare downward. Oddly, something on her hand tickles, and when she looks down—
—then feels her face—
—both are splattered with the dead man’s blood.
She turns her head and wordlessly locks gazes with the horrified eyes of her husband . . .
>
FOURTEEN
Something—someone—was close enough to make her eyelids open with a snap. Violet started to jerk upright behind the truck’s steering wheel when a gentle hand—Garth’s—held her in place. Jesus—she must have fallen asleep. Forcing herself to relax, she glanced to the side and saw Six, also asleep, curled into a protective ball on the passenger seat. A pressure at her wrist made her look back at Garth; he’d slid his fingers into position so he could take her pulse and now he was frowning. When he met her eyes, he looked slightly embarrassed at being caught playing mother hen. Even so, he pressed his lips together. “You’re not looking so good,” he told her. “I need to transfuse you.”
Violet started to protest, but as she tried to sit up, she realized how utterly rotten she felt, weak and drained of what little she had going in the reserves department. She looked up at him and nodded, then found enough energy to reach over and touch Six on the wrist to wake him up. He came out of whatever dream he was having with a jerk, and for a moment he looked around wildly, like he was ready for the worst; when the boy’s eyes focused on her and Garth, the change was instant. His eyes cleared and Violet could literally see his muscles release. More evidence, it was clear, of bad lab memories.
In the laboratory portion of the trailer, Violet settled herself as comfortably as she could on the stainless steel chair in the center. It only took Garth a few minutes to get an IV hooked up and start pumping fresh blood into her; a transfusion usually made her feel better almost immediately, but not this time. Now it was just new liquid going into her while the bad liquid went out, like the old-time dialysis sessions for kidney failure patients. Her sickness had changed over the last couple of days; now it was a strange sensation—her joints felt swollen with a sort of flulike ache, her head was achy and heavy, and she was so tired, despite the nap she’d just had and the fresh blood being pushed into her body.
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