“I said no such thing,” Anapa said, tucking in his chin as his eyebrows climbed up his forehead. “Such a thing would be grossly forbidden.” He readjusted his posture, stretching his shoulders. Apparently, my question was making him uncomfortable. “I was sent here with a specific purpose: to observe, and to judge. That is what I do; that is my role in the greater schematic of existence. I study universes that may become problematic and determine whether or not they should be allowed to continue.”
I laughed and shook my head. So, the mythic Anubis wasn’t here to pass judgment on me—to weigh my heart, or anyone else’s—he was here to weigh the heart of the universe and decide whether it was worth salvaging or whether it was best to just toss the whole thing to Ammut to devour.
Unaware of my thoughts, Anapa continued, “Even this amount of interference in the natural order of this universe would be considered crossing the line by many of my kind.”
“Then why are you doing it?” I narrowed my eyes. “And what’s this bullshit about not interfering? Aren’t you the one who released the sick kids in the first place?” I felt a surge of anger and, shortly after, a rush of electric energy pouring into my sheut.
If I’d thought Anapa looked offended before, well, now he really was. “I did not release the children; that was the man whose place I took when I came to this universe. He was overdosing on pain medication, and I wished to experience the life of a human.” Anapa shrugged. “At the time, it seemed logical to pick one who was at the heart of the impending catastrophe.”
“And that didn’t count as interfering?”
“I made no decisions as Gregory,” he said. “I was a truly impartial voice on the board. I merely wished to gain insight into the mal-intentioned life-forms of this universe, as that has always been just as important in my judgment process as observing a universe’s redeeming elements.” He shook his head, his brow furrowed. “I do not know why I am telling you this. I owe you no explanations.”
“Keep going,” I said, moving closer to him.
To my mind, his inaction made him as guilty as if he’d been responsible for creating the virus himself. Because he’d known. He’d known about the virus—that it was out and spreading—and he’d done nothing but observe.
Well, it was my turn to judge. “Tell me why you’re helping now, when you’ve done nothing but sit on your ass before now.” I felt drunk with righteous anger. Not just anger, I realized, but power. He would explain himself, whether he wanted to or not. “Tell me,” I ordered.
Anapa’s eyes rounded. “Please, Katarina Dubois, calm yourself.”
That otherworldly power roared within me, begging for a way out.
“Tell me!” My voice sounded different. Bigger. More. Like it was no longer mine alone, but laced with a thousand others.
Anapa held up his hands in a calming gesture. “You’re disturbing the soul-energy.”
I blinked, confused, then looked around. And, well, damn . . . he was right.
The radiant streams of energy nearest me no longer flowed upwards with the greater current. They surrounded me, a writhing mass composed of every color imaginable, making my golden hair float and crackle. The charge building up within me seemed to be interacting with the soul-energy, communicating in some way that went way beyond words.
I could feel what the collective soul-energy felt. And I was starting to suspect that Anapa was wrong about one very important thing—it wasn’t almost conscious; it was fully conscious. It was aware. And it was pissed the fuck off.
He’s willing to watch us wither and die! The thought was foreign, but it was in my head. It felt like mine. But it wasn’t.
I shook my head, eyes wide. “Anapa . . .” I reached for his forearms with both of my hands, anger turning into fear. “Something’s happening to me,” I said, gripping his arms tightly.
He doesn’t deserve to be here! The thought was overlapped by another. Expel him! And another. Shove him into Aaru!
I released Anapa’s forearms and slammed my hands over my ears, eyes squeezed shut. It didn’t help; the voices—the thoughts—were inside my head. “Stop!” I exclaimed through gritted teeth. “You’re wrong! He’s trying to help. Can’t you see—that’s why he brought me in here.”
“It is working,” Anapa said. “Please, keep going.”
I nodded emphatically. “He just needs to teach me something, and then I’ll do whatever I can to stop the disease.”
Yes! Help us! Again, the thought was overlapped by another. We are dying! And another. Save us!
“I will!” I shouted. “I’ll do whatever I can, I promise!”
Slowly, my hair settled around my shoulders, and I peeked through one barely raised eyelid. The flow of the soul-energy had returned to normal. It was over.
I lowered my hands, but when I caught a glimpse of one, I froze. Fine filaments of At and anti-At, looking so much like delicate threads of moonstone and obsidian, extended several inches beyond the golden barrier that mimicked my skin in this place. They swayed gently with the calming current of soul-energy.
“What—what’s happening to me?” I asked, voice tremulous as I watched the threads retract back into me.
“Your connection with ma’at is much stronger than I thought.”
“No shit,” I breathed, then looked at him. He wore concern like it was an itchy woolen blanket. I licked my lips. “I heard . . .” Brow furrowed, I shook my head. “Something . . . like the soul-energy was speaking to me.”
“That is not possible.”
I rubbed my hand over my arm, but there was no sign of the—whatever it was. “Tell that to the voices.”
Anapa frowned. “Let us handle one issue at a time, Katarina Dubois. None of this will matter if you do not come up with a way to stop the disease.”
I laughed through my nose. “No pressure.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
There’s a ride at Disney World called Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress. Essentially, it’s a rotating show populated by an animatronic family that takes ride-goers through several different historical eras—the turn of the nineteenth century, the 1920s, the 1940s, and an ultra-futuristic prediction of what the turn of the last century might be like. What Anapa showed me next was a lot like that, minus the animatronics but with the added bonus of being submerged in a whole universe’s worth of soul-energy.
We skipped ahead a century or two, to the moment when Re’s first Nejeret offspring was conceived. Nuin, the human body Re had possessed in utero, stood behind a fierce-looking woman, his hands on her shoulders as both overlooked the desert landscape from a cliff. They wore robes of a gauzy black material that flapped about in the arid, desert wind.
“Neither yet knows it,” Anapa said, “but a zygote has formed within the mother, and the cells have begun to split. The first-ever Nejeret is being formed.”
The woman’s violet aura seemed to swell until, all of a sudden, a golden haze appeared beneath the purple glow. Her aura then shrank back down to its original size, the only change that tinge of gold. The moment it happened, the moment the gold appeared, there was a sharp, dissonant note in the song of ma’at. It was jarring after listening to the blissful harmony for so long.
I covered my ears and glanced at Anapa. “What happened to the song? Why did it change?”
“At the moment of conception, the first ba began to form . . . the first permanent withdrawal from the collective pool of soul-energy,” Anapa explained. “The first imbalance; the first of many cuts to the harmony of ma’at.”
I shook my head, returning to watching the man and woman on the cliff. “Did he know?”
“About the damage his actions would cause?” Anapa nodded thoughtfully. “He was aware, but he was facing a far more imminent threat.”
“Apep,” I guessed, referring to Re’s ancient Netjer counterpart, his co-creator of this universe. Apep had gone mad eons ago, leading to a war between him and Re that had nearly torn this universe to shreds and had only en
ded when Susie and Syris were born to take their places as guardians of the universe.
“Indeed,” Anapa said. He held out his hand for me to take, and the moment I did, the gentle current of soul-energy became a torrent.
I gripped his hand as hard as I could and held on. We moved forward in time, or rather, upward, with the flow of the current. It wasn’t so bad this way. It wasn’t great, either.
When we stopped, the view beyond the translucent barrier was dim, a rock wall with shadows that danced in the light of a small fire. One man huddled by the fire, the other lay on his back on a bed of furs, his breathing quick and shallow. The sweat on his brow glimmered in the firelight, and his chest was a mess of open wounds, almost like something with claws had shredded him. In fact, that was exactly what I suspected had happened.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Grandchildren of Re’s,” Anapa said. “The man sitting near the fire is human, the other is Nejeret.”
“His wounds are pretty bad.” Depending on the internal damage, it was hard to imagine even a Nejeret recovering from that.
Anapa nodded. “He is dying. His will be the first ba to join isfet in Aaru.”
I frowned, glancing back at the looming darkness on the other side of Duat. “So he’ll just be stuck in there, all alone?” I’m a big fan of me-time, but the thought of being the only soul in an isolated mini-universe was terrifying.
“For a time, his ba will be the only one in Aaru, but others will join him soon enough.”
I opened my mouth to push the matter, but in that instant, the dying Nejeret’s golden aura lifted from his body, expanding in a glittering mist as it ambled toward us.
As with the soul of the dying human before, the Nejeret’s ba burst through the barrier and into Duat. But unlike the human’s soul, the ba took on shape the moment it entered this dimension, gaining the form of a golden, glowing man. He seemed confused, looking around as he drifted across the stream of soul-energy toward that great, expansive darkness. He spotted us just a moment before reaching the dark barrier of Aaru and raised his golden hand, shouting something to us.
I felt the urge to warn him, but it was already too late. He’d realized he was being pulled into the darkness, and he was struggling against it. Fighting did him no good; Aaru already had him in its clutches.
I put my hand over my mouth to hold in a cry as I watched the darkness swallow him.
A harsh note of discord echoed throughout Duat, and I was left feeling like I’d been stabbed in the ears. I clapped my hands over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut. How had I been able to stand the discordance when we originally entered this dimension, especially when the first couple blips in the harmony were so agonizing to listen to? Oh, that’s right . . . I hadn’t.
“Is it like this every time a Nejeret dies?” I asked, peeking at Anapa through one squinted eyelid.
Anapa gripped my shoulder, lending me support I hadn’t realized I needed. I mean, I wasn’t actually standing, but the simple touch tethered me. Reminded me I wasn’t alone, not like the Nejeret who’d just passed on would be for however long. Knowing my current situation wasn’t so dire helped.
“Disharmony is created each time a ba comes into existence,” Anapa said, “and again each time a ba passes into Aaru, but ma’at is able to repair the imbalance over time.”
“But Aaru makes it worse.” I looked from him to the wall of darkness and back. “Why wouldn’t Re do something about it once he realized what was happening to us? To ma’at?”
Anapa was quiet for a moment. Thoughtful. “Can you not think of at least one Nejeret who is, in your estimation, truly evil?” Anapa asked me. “One who, if left to roam free as an energy being, could wreak unspeakable havoc upon this universe?”
“Well, yeah, but . . .”
The current of the soul-energy sped up once more, and I glanced around, thinking it was kind of rude that Anapa was moving us through time mid-conversation. But when the current slowed once more, the scene that appeared on the other side of the barrier was something out of a horror movie.
It was a nightmare—my worst nightmare, which had plagued my dreams over and over and over, relentless in its need to make me experience the single worst moment of my life again and again.
“No,” I breathed. Despite knowing better, I moved closer to the barrier. I watched myself, a young and innocent seventeen-year-old, standing in the foyer of Heru’s mansion of a house, the barrel of a gun pressed against my forehead. The gun was in the hands of Carson, the traitorous Nejeret who I’d been stupid enough to fall for.
As I’d done so many times before, I watched him squeeze the trigger. I watched my mom push me out of the way at the last millisecond. I watched the bullet enter her skull instead of mine.
“No!” I shouted. I couldn’t help it.
But this time, it didn’t end there. She didn’t end there. My mom’s turquoise aura floated up and out of her body, heading straight for the barrier between dimensions. Heading straight for me.
And unlike before, I welcomed it.
My mom’s soul surged through the barrier, just as the other two had, but instead of flowing past me and integrating into the greater river of soul-energy, it coalesced around me, a gentle whirlwind surrounding me in warmth and sorrow and so much love. It was my mom, saying goodbye to me. Telling me she loved me in the only way she could now that she was little more than energy.
“I’m so sorry,” I sobbed, hand to my mouth. “I’m so—so—”
I felt a rush of forgiveness, and a sense of pride. Of joy and hope, but also sadness. And then she was moving on, leaving me to be a part of something greater.
“Mom, wait!” I shouted, chasing down what pieces of her I could still tell apart from the greater flow of soul-energy. “Please! Don’t leave me!” I couldn’t lose her again.
“With you always . . .” The words were the mere hint of a whisper floating around me.
“I—” I looked at Anapa. “Did you hear that? Did you hear her?”
Anapa eyed me, then shook his head. “Soul-energy is not capable of communicating with anything but other soul-energy—”
I opened my mouth to tell him I was soul-energy.
“Which you are not. You are something else entirely.” He seemed to hesitate over his next words.
“But I heard—”
Anapa held up a hand. “Believe me or do not. I have told you the truth of the matter. What you do with that truth is no longer my concern.”
I heard her, I thought silently. That was the truth of the matter; I could feel it in my bones. Or rather, in my soul.
“Would you prefer for that Nejeret’s ba to be free to cause further trouble in your world?” Anapa asked, recapturing my attention and returning us to the subject at hand.
“Carson?” I shook my head, lip curling. “I’m glad he’s locked up in Aaru for an eternity.” Though I did feel bad for those stuck in there with him. At least I knew how I’d be spending my afterlife—hunting down his ba and tormenting him in any way that I could.
“Then perhaps you can understand why Re believed it too great of a risk to the universe to let energy beings roam freely until the end of time.”
“Maybe he never should’ve created us in the first place,” I grumbled. Struck me as a case of wanting to have his cake and eat it, too . . . whatever that meant. I sniffed, then cleared my throat, pretending I hadn’t just ugly-cried in front of a god. “Anyway . . . what do you say we keep this gravy train rolling?”
Anapa eyed me quizzically for a moment, then reached out to grip my shoulder. Once more, we moved forward in time.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“So, what am I looking for this time?” I asked Anapa when we slowed and the scene beyond the barrier became clear. The song of ma’at had devolved to a nauseating cacophony, so much more disturbing now that I’d heard its natural perfection, and I was grateful for my current lack of an actual stomach.
A past version of me sto
od in one of the side rooms in the lab under Heru’s place. Aset and Neffe were there, of course, as were Mari, Nik, Lex, and me. And Mitch fucking Carmichael, the child-molesting psycho who’d been on the Ouroboros board of directors until we’d relieved him of his position . . . and of his life.
“Pay attention to his aura,” Anapa said, pointing as Nik released the ba fragment into Carmichael.
The sicko’s aura started out a burnt orange color, but streaks of brilliant gold shot through it slowly, one here, then one there several seconds later. And with each gold streak came an additional, not-so-subtle hint of disharmony in the song of ma’at, growing until it was almost unbearable. In time, there was more gold than orange surrounding Carmichael, and my hands were once again covering my ears.
Anapa fast-forwarded again, and the discordance ratcheted up a notch. The scene on the other side of the translucent barrier was much the same, the only real difference being that Garth sat in the chair in place of Carmichael. His aura was a gray-streaked royal blue, which made me smile, because the blue was so similar to the color of his cop uniform. The gray, though—something about it soured my smile. It looked . . . off. Felt wrong. It was dull compared to the blue, dimming his aura’s luster.
Nik introduced the ba fragment to Garth’s body, and the transformation began. Luminous gold slowly overtook the gray, then spread throughout the blue until there was nothing but the brilliant, blinding gold of an eternal ba. It was hard to concentrate on the visual input with the added discordance to the song of ma’at, but I managed.
Anapa fast-forwarded again, and it was Constance Ward seated in the chair this time. Her aura was magenta streaked with that same dull gray as Garth’s, just less of it. They were the only two I’d seen with that off-putting grayness. Not Mitch Carmichael, who’d had an undoubtedly putrid soul, and not any of the people from the ancient desert tribe. So why these two?
It clicked suddenly, and I blamed that god-awful noise for my sluggish thought process. It was the Cascade Virus. Both Garth and Constance had been sick at the time of their transformations, and Garth had been further along, explaining why the gray streaks were more developed in his aura.
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