by Chris Hepler
There's gunfire from the floor beneath me. Roland and Breunig. A few seconds later, there's an answering shot. Yarborough and I missed a vipe.
I run through the next door and the next and the next, trying to figure out where the remaining vipes are hiding. If I were one of them, I'd be huddled down behind a gun safe or some other hard cover, lights off, using my night eyes to pick off whomever made the mistake of coming through the door.
But they're not me.
One door left at the end of the hall. I go to the side before trying the handle, just in case. No bullets come. I whip around the jamb, weapon up, only to see something I'm not expecting.
There are two of them, Morgan and some man I've never seen before—probably the owner of the house. They have a window open. When I enter the room, the stranger ducks to the floor as if it will help. Morgan raises his hands. He stares as I shove my goggles up.
"I know you," Morgan says. "Must've been a hell of a lunch."
"They're tracking you with qi," I say, shutting the door behind me. "If you want to escape, you have to feed."
"Say what?"
"Feed. It cloaks your signature. Cut him, feed, and then get out that window."
"Hold on, cut him? With what?"
"Oh, for fuck's sakes." I pull a utility knife free and snap it open, tossing it on the bed. Morgan and the other man look at each other, wondering what firehose of crazy I've been sprayed with.
"He can't heal," Morgan says. "He's normal. He could bleed to death."
The words knock the room silent.
"Okay," I say, grabbing the knife again. I pull down my long glove. "It'll be me."
"Did you come here planning this kind of—"
"Bite me, or they will kill you in less than one minute."
I lay the blade across my wrist and try to cut. My newfound strength is no help. It begins to hurt, and instinctively, I shy back. Instead of a cut with rich red blood, I get less than a cat scratch across the skin. Hesitation marks.
Gunfire pops from downstairs. Roland and Breunig. The other gun is silent.
"I'll do it," says Morgan, and I see determination in his eyes. "Give it here." I hand him the knife. We have no time for anything else.
He grabs me by the arm, brings the blade up and slashes my throat.
At first, I don't know how bad it is. There's a little pain, and I know I've been hit, but by the time I try to put a hand up to stop the blood flow, Morgan is on me. His mouth has somehow moved the clothing aside. For a terrifying second, I feel myself blacking out, vision fading to a small, bright pinpoint. Then, the fear leaves.
Drinking blood feels great. Being the drink feels weird. I relax like a dropped marionette, my whole body heavy and unresponsive. I try to move and feel my arms flail in great, dull swings. Each limb crackles with tingles and then my torso as well. There is no part of me that reacts like the Infinity I know.
On some level, I can feel blood flowing out of me and into Morgan's mouth, and my body throbs every time he sucks. In the haze, it makes sense to me that his aura would change. I become convinced that I can feel bits of me dispersed in him, like droplets of ink spreading out to tint a glass of water.
Then, he's gone, pulling out or pulling back—it's hard to tell which. Suddenly, I am lying on the floor, feeling warm wind from the window and wondering what the hell happened since I don't remember falling. The left side of my neck is on fire, and as I clasp it, I sit up. I have a great view of the spreading bloodstain on the floor. I have just enough time to realize the stain is the size of my head before the dizziness kicks in and the carpet comes up to slap me.
14 - RANATH
I'm confirming the kill on the second floor when I feel a sudden cold sensation. It's disorienting because the vector in front of me is in a bedroom, using a waterbed as cover. This isn't as stupid as it sounds—two meters of water actually stops bullets better than anything else in the house—but when he pokes his head up to shoot, Olsen has better timing. As the firefight is over, my boots are squishing the soggy carpet, and my first thought when I feel the cold shiver is that I'm being dripped on from somewhere above me. But nothing's coming from the ceiling, so I guess maybe my stimweb has malfunctioned. Instead of Lorenz's signature burning into my brain, I get an injection of ice water before the sensation fades.
"You all right?" asks Olsen, who notices my inattention.
"Upstairs," I say. "We're losing him."
Olsen doesn't need to be told twice. She runs for the stairs. I hurry after her, losing all hope of reorienting the function in the back of my mind. Breunig limps behind us.
"Black Three, location, respond," I say. I get nothing.
"Black Three and Four, we're coming upstairs. Watch your shots." The words go out into the void, and again, nothing comes back.
"Black Three is wounded," barks Olsen from up ahead. I'm at her side almost instantly and see Yarborough, on the floor with his goggles in one hand, propping himself up with the other. Olsen never loses focus, covering the hallway while I give Yarborough a hand up.
When we are nose-to-nose, Yarborough yanks his balaclava away from his mouth, and I can see the man's jaw is hanging at an angle. He stumbles into a wall for support, and Breunig is there, giving him an arm to lean on.
"Where's Black Four?" Breunig asks, and Yarborough only voices a gargling sound in response. Of course, he can't speak.
"Stay here. Not far now," I say and sight down my carbine again, following Olsen to a door. We stack up, and Olsen gives the signal—three, two, one. I kick at the lock, but it has already been broken. The door bangs open and then rebounds shut again. An air current is going through the house and out an open window in this room. But I see no hostiles. I shove inside.
Infinity is on the floor. Her face is exposed, and even through the muted colors of the night vision goggles, I can tell the hand clamping down on her neck is covered in blood. Olsen clears the closet, and I go for the window.
Two floors below us, in the great unfenced back yard, a man is limping off toward the bay. I can't ID him, but it doesn't take a genius to guess he jumped. I know what to do—either this is Lorenz, or it's a witness. I aim for center-mass and pull the trigger. The carbine rips the night air, and three bullets cut straight through the target. He jerks and stumbles. The second time, I aim for the head.
As the body falls, I see another warm shape, this one far off in the tall weeds. It must be six hundred meters if it's an inch, and it flickers like a mirage in the ghostly green vision. Is it someone who's gotten a head start running? A neighbor? By the time I settle my sights on it just in case, it's too obscure to fire.
Olsen reports in behind me. "White One, we've got three injuries. Status."
Al-Ibrahim is refreshingly calm. "Nothing yet on police band. Stabilize on site."
The words jolt me back to what's important. I shut down my function—it's useless now—and kneel beside Infinity. I clamp my hand onto hers and dial up the stimweb to fire a gut-punch of yang-within-yin. If that doesn't jump-start her own yang to keep her alive, not much will. My hand burns and crackles with white energy, and Infinity spasms. Her body stretches out rather than curling up in a fetal position. Olsen gets her arm under Infinity's shoulders and injects a gel into the wound site. It starts to seal.
Infinity's eyes flutter, then turn to me. "Ow."
I pull my balaclava away from my mouth. "Stay still. You're going to live. We can carry you out of here."
"Okay." Coherency is not her strong suit.
"Were you bitten?"
"Cut."
"Did he bite you after he cut you?"
"No," she creaks out.
"Hold still," I repeat and pour more energy into my hand. As it pools there, her palm and fingers get hot, and I can feel her wound open like an iris, even as a clot begins to cover the cut itself. Her neck relaxes, and for a moment, the room smells like cooking flesh. I wipe the sweat from my upper lip with my free arm.
"Did... did he get a
way?" she asks numbly. "He had a knife..."
"There's a lot of people down," I say. "We don't have enough to go after Lorenz. Can you stand?" Infinity gets to her feet. Not bad.
"This is a goatfuck," says Breunig, supporting Yarborough in the hall. "Do you still have a lock? Can you find him?"
I put an arm under Infinity. Olsen and I lift her together.
"He's gone," I say. "We've got to get them to the vans. He's gone."
15 - INFINITY
August 14th
Breunig carries me over the threshold as Olsen keeps the gauze pressed to my neck. Roland gets the door and the lights, and down I go on the couch. If it wasn't for the throbbing and burning, I might mistake it for my high school friends taking care of me when I'm trashed.
The trio scurry around me while I squint into the recessed ceiling lights. Roland said it was a house of theirs, and I immediately agreed to go. If Roland can work on my wound, it's a far better choice than a hospital with their questions and insurance and metal detectors.
"One second," Roland orders. "Lift." Breunig and Olsen pick me up again, and he rolls a plastic tarp over the couch beneath me. I go down on it again, trying to make sure the gauze never moves from my throat. I'm not sure if I have Roland or VIHPS to thank for the sudden recuperation. I must have lost two liters of blood, but already my vision has stopped swimming.
"Get her vest off," someone says, and the Velcro straps rip. A hand goes over my neck, and my arms briefly straighten to let the armor by. I feel the cramp developing in my right elbow briefly before it goes back into place.
"Talk to me," Roland says. "Stay conscious."
"Right," I agree, watching Breunig and Olsen exit. I don't remember them talking about where they are going. "Are they coming back?"
"I can't have distractions. They wouldn't be much use."
"Olsen can do stitches," I say.
"They'd just pop out when we're done," Roland points out. "I'm going to heal you."
I'm lightheaded enough to think I'm stupid. "Didn't you just do that?"
"That was an emergency treatment. This is more."
Roland gently puts a hand under me to sit me up and then gets beside me. "I'm going to have to make physical contact with you, and I’ll need your full cooperation to get well. Can you turn your head to the right for me?"
I try. A few degrees shy of forty-five, and the pain cinches in its claws. Roland frowns.
"All right. I'm going to have to reduce the distance to zero to maximize the function. Can I put my hands on you?"
I wince. "Not if it's in the cut."
"It'll have to be close. I'm going to touch either side of it." The fingers of his left hand work under mine, and then I jump. His other hand is pulling up my shirt. His right hand curves around me, and it's large enough that he can touch a point over my liver with his thumb and caress my kidney with his fingertips. Awkwardly, I look away, then back at Roland's green eyes, fixed on my neck.
"Okay, let me know when you're going to—hhhh," I say, just as warm pools of pleasure spread from his hands. The sensation of being heated up feels odd, but also right, as if the pain had just been me making some kind of mistake. I'm not feeling it anymore.
The pain has been replaced by a strange impression of being inflated. My posture straightens, and only then I realize I've been hunched. Likewise, my fingers point straight out, as if their new fullness prevents them from curving naturally. And there's the weirdness. With this new flow of something-that-is-more-than blood throughout my body, my nipples become erect, and my eyes water. I blink the fluid away, trying not to stare directly into Roland's face. I breathe through my nose rather than exhale onto him.
Roland, for his part, continues his focused gaze on my neck, and his dilated pupils remind me of a cat about to pounce. His long, slow breath catches my attention, and I decide to ease the awkwardness by focusing on it. I bring my breath in time with his. I draw my hand away from my wound, letting him hold me.
The first few inhalations are all right, but then I smell his sweat, and it has a musky scent that makes my stomach growl.
"Interesting," he says. "I'm getting yin-within-yin from your stomach meridian. Did you not eat tonight?"
"Uh... I don't remember," I fumble. "Maybe it's because of the blood. When you lose as much as I have, aren't they supposed to give you some apple juice?" I can't lose my shit now. His brain is practically plugged into mine. He's going to figure me out in three, two, one….
"Your heart rate's up," he says quietly. "Slow it down. Breathe with me, like before."
I try again. I stare into his eyes, and after a few seconds, he stares back. I feel a tickle in the side of my throat, which I guess is my flesh starting to knit. I blink first and attempt to smile. "Guess I lose."
"You're doing fine," he says. "Do you need something to concentrate on?"
"I've got something." I sync my breathing and close my eyes.
When Joram saw Jehu, he said, "Is it peace, Jehu?" He answered, "What peace can there be, so long as the whoredoms and sorceries of your mother Jezebel continue?" Then, Joram reined about and fled, saying to Ahaziah, "Treason, Ahaziah!"
"Whatever that was, it seemed to do the trick," Roland reports. "I'm done with the vein. I'm going after the cut in the muscle tissue."
I try to remember the rest. The book of Kings isn't hard—not like the endless lists from Chronicles. Jehu, son of Jehoshaphat, waging his war against his former master, Ahab, and his Jezebel. Ahaziah shot with an arrow. Jezebel, hurled into the street to be eaten by dogs. The pulpy stories soothe me just as they did when I was an adolescent, and it's not long before my neck feels hot to the touch.
"What are you thinking about?"
Explaining this one might be tough. "I thought you couldn't have distractions."
"It helps if you concentrate, too."
"Sorry," I say automatically. Then, after a second, "Bible verses."
A smile crooks the corner of his mouth. "That's not what I thought you'd say."
"Yeah, me and the book are at odds most of the time."
"I've heard you say, 'Oh, Lord.'"
"That's not for Yahweh," Explaining my god makes me feel like an idiot. "Anyway, my dad made me memorize them."
"Was he a preacher?"
"No." I look down. "Just nuts."
"How many verses do you know?"
"Practically the whole thing."
"The whole Bible? Is that even possible?"
"People used to memorize the Iliad and recite it. No problem. The letters of Paul are a bit fuzzy, but ask me something Old Testament, and I've got it."
"Exodus twenty-two, eighteen."
"You shall not suffer a witch to live. Give me something hard."
He seems momentarily quiet, but it's thoughtful. "Job," he says.
"Got a number?"
He adjusts his grip slightly. "You'd know it better than me. Start where you want."
I know which one I'm going to say, but I don't know if I'm going to choke up saying it. "Fourteen, eleven," and here we go.
"As waters fail from a lake,
and a river wastes away and dries up,
so mortals lie down and do not rise again;
until the heavens are no more, they will not awake,
or be roused out of their sleep.
Oh, that you would hide me in Sheol,
that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,
that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me."
No tears. No choking. But my heart's in my throat as he acknowledges it all. "Well, I'm not sure if that's right or wrong, but since I don't have the book here, we'll say you win."
"I said that at my mom's funeral. It's accurate." He looks ashamed, and I know he's off the scent. But there's more distance between us now. Metaphorically, anyway.
"Is Roland your real name?" The warmth shifts, and for a moment, it becomes tingles. My neck flesh prickles, awakening. My fingers dig into my palms.
>
"Why would you think it isn't?"
"Kern," I say. "He was a little weird when he talked about you. Like he was covering for something." The flesh cools, and I feel a pulse slowly synchronize with my heartbeat, a gentle tap-tap, tap-tap. I wonder if I should go for it and, as usual, do. "You don't tell your co-workers?"
"Breunig knows. No one else." Strikeout. I take another long, slow breath, and he adjusts to keep in time with me.
"How'd you... you know, pick it? Wow, that's—my heart's starting to—"
"The muscle is stable. We're going to accelerate your cell growth."
His grip tightens, and I freak a little. Being grabbed brings back my fight-or-flight reflex from the old days, and my hand slaps down to cover Roland's. Immediately, I let go because my strong grip could give me away. I'm just beginning to think of myself as a clever girl when my heart goes into overdrive. It's like I'm climbing a mountain.
I pant and feel a flush of fluid trickle down from my wound. Blood? Sweat? The junk from cells? My breath heaves, and I catch a glimpse of Roland's eyes again. It's intent, yet comforting. I'm right here, those eyes say. We're doing this together.
Then, bang, my neck stings, and just as quickly, it fades away again as Roland moves his hand from my side to my spine. Both of us are slick to the touch, now, but whatever he is doing, it's taking the pain and adrenaline away as fast as it builds up. It's like he's fighting my body to its limit… and then, it finally concedes.
My heart stops its desperate knocking at my ribs, settling down for a regular rhythm, and the easing pressure lets me once again breathe slowly and surely. His hand leaves my back. With a gentle wipe of his fingers, Roland sweeps the gauze away from my neck and crumples it up.
I feel the side of my throat. It's whole. "Wow. Is it always that fast?"
Roland stands and washes his hands in a basin I only notice just now. "No. Your body is very well attuned. And the wound wasn't as bad as it first looked."
I stretch and turn my head, finding I have full range of motion. "Beats the hell out of stitches." I pick up a small mirror and check for a scar. All I see is a little white flesh, like I got a paper cut three days ago.