by Rajan Khanna
I consider grabbing her. Throttling her, or trying to break her neck. If they tried to shoot at me they might possibly hit her. Possibly. But these are trained guards. Crack shots. And they surround me. It’s far more likely, given her confidence, that they would take me down and she would live.
She smiles at me and pats my cheek. I flinch at her touch. “Good-bye, Benjamin,” she says.
Then she turns and walks away from me.
“Do it,” she calls out into the room.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FROM THE JOURNAL OF MIRANDA MEHRA
I’ve been sitting here for a little while now, unsure of how to start this. I wanted to write “Fuck, fuck, fuck . . .” and just keep going, let it pour out of me and onto this page in hopes of, I don’t know, purging this feeling of futility. I just don’t know what else to do right now. And I can’t let on to anyone how lost and close to hopeless I am.
Enigma, this new fucking virus that came out of nowhere, is winning. And I don’t know where to go from here.
We’ve made some headway, yes. We’re better off than where we started. But we still don’t know enough. What it is. How to stop it. And while the Maenad virus transforms, Enigma kills. And keeps killing.
So I’m racing against the clock.
I think, in a way, that this virus has exposed my fucking weakness. Not that Maenad is any more forgiving, but I’ve been thinking about the infected, about Ferals, as still in play. I’ve always thought, in the back of my mind, that when we find the cure, which we will, that we can save those who are infected. If someone like Ben were infected, by Maenad, then I would try to contain him. Then I would continue to work on my cure, hoping that one day I could reverse the virus’s effects and regain a person who’s dear to me.
But Enigma doesn’t leave any open doors. This is a new kind of test for me. One that I don’t know I’m up for.
I mean . . .
I know I can crack it. Or I don’t know, maybe I can’t. No. I can. Given enough time, enough materials, enough resources. But time is the one thing that we don’t have. So I have to spend every moment fighting this. Which is what I’ve been doing. Only now, with so little sleep, delirious and frantic, what if I make a mistake? What if I miss a breakthrough?
What if I let more people die?
I’ve been working on Maenad for all my life. We’re closer to a cure, but it’s taken years. Decades.
We don’t have years. If this thing continues, we likely all die.
I think I’m just very fucking angry. That Enigma came along to pull me away from my work on Maenad. The real enemy. The real target. The one that I was pointed at the moment I could think for myself.
How can I not hit that target?
It’s what I was meant to do, isn’t it?
Of course, the irony is, if I do ever do it, find the cure, what will I do afterward?
I haven’t ever really thought about it much. I think I avoided it because I didn’t want to tempt myself, think of scenarios that are too fucking far away.
But now, right now, I need to know that there’s something else. That there is a life on the other side of all of this. And not fucking well-traveling the world, giving the cure to any Ferals I find. Maybe that’s what I should do, but fuck that right now. There’s this part of me, and it grows louder every day, that says on the day I cure Maenad, I will have done my part. I will have given enough. Let others take that cure and carry it forward. Let others do the work of spreading it around the world.
What I keep coming back to, my hidden secret shame, is this burgeoning belief that I deserve a life. For myself. Owing no one. A life, if I want to, of reading and growing plants and maybe even making liquor or wine or, for Ben, beer. This dark, shameful voice which talks to me of getting fat and old and not caring about the whole world. Not even caring too much about those around me, but just me, and maybe one special person.
Ben always says I deserve that. That I work so hard, that I do so much to keep the flame lit. He’s the one always telling me to take time for myself. To take a break. To forgive myself. Most of the time when he says that, it makes me furious. Because in those moments I feel like I can’t take that time. That him telling me to do so is ridiculous, because this work needs to be done. This work is important.
But I wonder now, as I’m writing all of this, if what really makes me furious is that he speaks with my own voice, that repressed voice, and that’s the part I resent. It’s easier to hate him for it than to hate myself.
Plants. I keep coming back to those. Growing things. A garden. Crops. Fruit. That’s something I would love to do. Help feed the world. Help just make living things grow. Put more life back into the world. Why couldn’t I do that? Why couldn’t I just live out the rest of my life making green things grow?
When I imagine all of this, I see a picture. Me in a place much like the one I’m in now, a home, somewhere near green things, surrounded by people dear to me. And I picture . . . someone with me. I picture someone by my side, hand in mine, there to help support me, to listen to my dreams and fears. Someone who will help prop me up when things seem too hard. Someone who will help keep everyone away when I’m just too tired or when I’ve had enough. Someone to hold me in the night and in the morning and most of the times in between. But someone who keeps my own fire lit, and who stokes it, even. Someone who complements me. Who knows me. Who sees me for who I am.
I see myself with that someone, I see us together, after the cure, after the worst of the hardships, after all the loss and the pain. And I see us just . . . living.
. . .
Speak of the devil. I think that’s him at the door now. I better put this away . . .
CHAPTER EIGHT
I am rigid, muscles taut, dripping with regret for not trying to kill Tess when she was close, for not ending it when I could. Now I’m surrounded, and they’re going to shoot me.
I’m sorry, Miranda.
Then, above me, a light blinks out, with the sound of tinkling glass. Then another, and I hear a familiar voice yell, “Ben! Run!”
Claudia.
She was supposed to stay with the ship, keep it ready for when I was done. That she’s here means she didn’t trust my plan. But I can’t complain.
Saving Ben’s Ass: The Claudia Nero Story.
The fires are still lit behind me, but I grab for the revolver, still on the ground, and run as the assault rifles open up. The guards surround me, but I’m out of the spotlights and they can’t see one another clearly. At least, I hope they can’t. I move for the nearest barrel, keeping low. I slam into it, tipping it over, almost falling myself, and spill the burning detritus onto the ground. And onto the guard who was standing next to it. He screams and falls back, slapping at himself, and I run for the nearest hallway and entrance into the book stacks.
Behind me, guards run for the barrel and the spilling fire, to contain it. A few less of them to worry about at least.
Gunfire staccatos behind me. As I round one series of shelves, grateful for the darkness, everything that just happened starts to sink into my adrenaline-soaked brain. Tess played me. I thought I had finally gotten her, that I had lined everything up, and all the while she was just sitting back, waiting for me to walk into her trap.
I’d be seething if I wasn’t running for my life.
Claudia’s still behind me. Probably shooting guards down with her arrows. After all of this, after everything, she’s still risking her life for mine.
I have no idea why.
Weapons rattle nearby, and footsteps pound around the bookshelves. I’m at a disadvantage here. They know this ground better than I do. Even now, they may be heading me off, sending people to cut off my avenues of escape. I need something to even the playing field.
I stop in the darkness, hoping I can remain hidden. I stay very still, try not to give any hint of a target. I don’t make any noise, except for my incessant breathing, which can’t be helped. I turn my lantern off.
I th
ink back to the barrel that I knocked over and the resulting commotion as people tried to deal with it. They’re afraid of burning the books. This is Tess’s true wealth—all the knowledge contained here. Even more than that, this is what she loves.
I reach for the lantern against my chest. Like an external heart. I stoke the fire again, burning whatever little fuel tank is in this thing, and I tear off the protective top, until the element is exposed. I press it to one of the books next to me. They’re a little damp, a little moldy—any kind of reliable climate control died many years ago—but they’re made of paper and so it doesn’t take long for them to burn. I get one book going and then move on to the next.
The light attracts attention. A burst of gunfire tears through the books nearby.
I wait until the next burst stops, then, around the corner of the bookshelf I’m hiding behind, I toss one of the burning books so that it slides right up against the next shelf over, the one where the guard is probably hiding. By now, flames are eagerly licking up the book and, as it connects with the shelf, those flames start reaching higher, to the books there, and one of them takes light.
Bullets send bits of paper and books fluttering all around me. I drop down and crawl away. During a pause in the shooting, I reach for another book, light it, then toss it again over to the next shelf.
The flames reach up, find other books, and wreath the shelf in fire.
I shimmy over to the edge of the shelf, bend myself around, and raise the gun. Now that the shelf is starting to burn, I can make out a dark shape that I take for a guard. I squeeze off two shots at him. He goes down, even as the fire continues to spread.
I don’t wait. I run for the next stack, light another book, and toss it away from me.
The fires are mostly at my back, but I’m hoping that Tess will be forced to choose between saving the books and sending the guards after me. If nothing else, it will thin their numbers.
As for anyone trying to head me off, I intend to keep this trick going, so as I reach the next shelf, I set another book burning, wedge it in the shelves where I think it can do the most damage, and then move to the next shelf, taking shelter behind it first.
A guard appears in front of me, but something about the fire slows him for a second. As he raises his rifle to me, I already have the revolver up and I’m firing. Once. Twice. He goes down in a bloody heap.
I quickly strip his rifle (taking care to avoid any blood) and move to the next shelf, ducking behind it, lighting whatever books I can find that will do the trick.
All the while, I’m running back through my head the map that Rufus gave me. The thing about that map is that it had to be mostly true. I’ve been here before, to the library, and I know some of the basic layout. If anything in that map had read false, it would have tipped me off. So they kept it real.
But a thing about foragers is that the layout of a place, especially a place we’re going into blind, is very important. Hence me studying the map and memorizing as much of it as I could. Now, the library is a big place, and with the brain that I have, not all of the map was going to stick, but I made sure to mark the placement of the important stops and the paths in between them. Those included my entrance, where they told me Tess would be, and her private office.
It was only smart. Tess was likely to be in the audience chamber, reading (or so they told me); but if that went bad, or if she wasn’t there, then she was almost certainly going to be in her office. And seeing as I wasn’t planning on leaving until she was dead, I made sure to memorize both the location of the office and several ways to get there.
So even now, as I’m moving through the library, burning books behind me, I am mentally plotting a route to Tess. The moment that Claudia started firing and I went off into the darkness, they would have moved Tess to a safe location. Maybe it wasn’t the office, but it seems the most likely place.
I move forward, ducking behind shelves, popping out to fire the gun, spreading the fire wherever I can.
After months of wanting this, Tess is so close I can practically smell it. Time to make this happen, Ben.
* * *
Run. Hide. Fire. Duck. Burn. Run again.
I do it. Moving up through the stacks. Up a ramp, then down the other side. Drop the rifle when it runs dry. Then to the stairs, back down to the ground level. Reload the pistol. I see guards moving everywhere. Some with weapons. Some with buckets of water. Some just running.
I keep on my path until I get close.
Up ahead of me is Tess’s office, and above the low roar of the flames behind me I can hear voices inside. The voices are urgent, raised.
“—will not be hurried off into a ship from my home. My empire.” Tess.
“But the place is going up,” says a voice I recognize as Rufus’s. “We might not be able to contain the fire.”
“Nonsense,” Tess says. “We’ll pull water up from the stores and put it out. I am not leaving all of this. Everything that I’ve accumulated. We’ll stop it.”
“You should at least get ready. Just in case.” Sarah.
Grumbling, in Tess’s low rumble. Then, “Thank you,” from Sarah.
“Have all the men not chasing after Benjamin focus on the fire,” Tess says. She sighs. “In the old days, this wouldn’t be a problem. They had systems back then. Fire suppression. Chemical systems to help snuff the fire without damaging the books. I doubt even I could find someone to help re-create that.”
“Tess . . .” Sarah says. Insistent.
I inch forward. Listening. Assessing. Sounds like it’s just the three of them. But Tess is there. I am so close. That voice in my head starts nattering on about being outnumbered, and probably outgunned, but I beat it down. I am so close. I reload the revolver.
The door is partially open. I push inside.
Straight into Rufus, who holds an open bag in one hand, his other, grabbing for something that looks like a portable computer. His eyes widen. I wonder what my own face is doing—the same? Or are my eyes narrowing? Is my face stony or stretched into a grin? I can’t tell. I’m inside this machine, inexorably moving, and I am so close to my goal.
Things slow down in the way that they sometimes do in moments like this. Rufus turns his head, his short dreadlocks swaying with the movement. The bag drops from his hand, falling slowly, like through oil, to the ground. I feel and see my own arm raising. Slowly. Ever so slowly. Feel my finger curl around the trigger of the revolver. I’m dimly aware of Tess and Sarah moving syrupy slow in the background.
I gave you a chance, Rufus. This is on you now.
Rufus is turning now. His head whips around in seeming slow motion, his torso following suit, a twist in his waist as his legs struggle to follow through. And that’s when my arm reaches the horizontal. It’s not a wide target, but my finger tightens and pulls against the trigger, and then the revolver is bucking in my hand.
Once. Twice.
His shoulder erupts in a bloody shower. Then his side, right near the ribs, and the impact adds some force to his spin, so he twirls against a bookcase that shudders as he slams into it. Then he droops to the ground, leaving bloody spray across the books.
A scream of horror breaks the slow bubble of time. My eyes snap to Sarah, her face twisted in anger and grief. I realize that it was real between them. I just killed someone she loved.
Join the fucking club.
Time goes from molasses slow to slipstream fast in a fraction of a heartbeat and Sarah is racing toward me, her face etched with rage, her limbs pumping. I aim the revolver, but she’s on me before I can get a good bead and she slaps it away with one hand and kicks me in the chest with a boot that feels like it’s made from metal. I lose my grip on the revolver, which clatters to the floor, and try to stay on my feet.
Punch, punch, kick, and throw is followed by pain, pain, blood, and more pain. Then I’m twirling through the air until I land hard on my back. Sarah’s small, but she’s trained to fight since she was a child, and I can’t match her th
ere.
Then I remember through the haze of pain that Tess is still there. Still needs to be dealt with. So I grab onto that like it’s a bobbing raft in the ocean, and I climb aboard.
I’m trying to regain my feet when Sarah jumps atop me, pinning me down with her knees, and I see the cold gleaming of a knife in her hand. I just have time to get my own hands up to block the downward strike. I catch her wrist with my hands, but she’s got a wiry strength and now gravity, that great fucking terror, is aiding her. My arms start to tremble. My legs are trapped.
What else do you have, Ben?
“Should have picked your boyfriends better,” I say, through gritted teeth.
Her pressing intensifies.
“Rufus was second-rate.” My arms feel like they’re going to give out completely. “He died second-rate.”
Then the knife slashes down and I push as hard as I can. It scrapes against my collarbone, carving the skin at the top, and I grit my teeth. But I feel Sarah unbalance as the blade hits the floor, and I twist her off.
She’s on her feet in a second. It takes me a few more to stagger to mine. The pain in my shoulder is incredible. But Tess is still behind her, and that means I need to get Sarah out of the way. Sarah has other ideas and spins into me, kicking again, and I take the blow on the bleeding shoulder and almost black out from the pain.
I reach out with one hand, blindly grasping, flailing. I grab something—a book—and I throw it at Sarah. Then another. And another. I actually hear Tess protesting, but I ignore her and roll over, standing up again and throwing a few more books at her and a couple of hard things that I don’t have time to actually identify.
Then, when Sarah is dodging my barrage, I run and dive. She susses out what I’m trying to do and is instantly after me. I land hard enough that it squeezes the air out of me, but my extended hand falls on the revolver, and I curl my fingers around the grip. Then a boot comes down hard. On my back. And my spine crunches.