“Becca,” I breathed. “What’s going on?” I crouched on the floor beside her bed. When she didn’t say anything, I reached for her hand, desperate for her to confide in me. “Please, tell me.”
She cleared her throat, and I lifted my gaze to her heavy-lidded gray eyes as she looked down at me. “I’m dying.”
My breath hitched, and I nearly choked. “You’re what?” First Sarah, and now Becca? I didn’t think I could handle losing her, too…I didn’t think I could handle losing anyone else.
Becca’s gaze seemed unfocused and distant. “The Re-gen process does not come without repercussions.” She stared down at the bloodied tissue in her hand. “My organs are shutting down. It is only a matter of time.”
“What?” I nearly screeched as I squeezed her hand. “No! You finally belong with us. Why…”
“You can’t bring people back from the dead and expect them to go about life as though nothing has changed. It’s not natural, and my body is failing.”
I shook my head and rose to my feet. The space in the room wasn’t nearly enough as I paced back and forth, my mind racing and my heart breaking. “And you know this because you’ve seen it?”
“Yes,” she said easily, but I struggled to accept things as easily as she did.
“Then you must know of a cure,” I said. “If you’ve seen this, if you understand, then you must see a way out…an alternative…” I straightened, realizing Jake had no clue. “You never said anything.” How can she do this to him again? I suddenly felt desperate, angry but desperate. “Jake…”
In an unexpected display of emotion, Becca narrowed her eyes, apparently comprehending the directions my thoughts were going. “And why would I tell him? There is nothing he can do for me. He would just worry.”
“Of course he would worry. Becca, you’re dying. I—” I froze mid-step. I suddenly felt a flare of hope. “A transfusion. Jake could give you a blood transfusion. It’ll be the first thing he thinks of, I know it will.”
Becca shook her head. “That won’t work. The process by which we’re created—”
“Becca, we should at least—”
“Trust me,” she said, her patience clearly thinning.
“And Mase…and Camille.” Dani would be devastated; we all would be devastated. “We’ve already lost so many…” I stepped in front of her, searching her eyes for reassurance. “Please tell me there’s a way to help you…to save you.”
Her eyes softened, and she offered me a weak smile. “Mase and Camille are okay,” she said so certainly I almost believed her. “They’ve both had so much electrotherapy that they should be fine…for a while.”
Shaking my head, I tried to steady my voice and my breathing as I sat down beside her on the white down comforter. “Electrotherapy? Like what happened to Dani…or like what Carlos was doing to me?”
“Yes, both. But what Carlos was doing to you was only a fraction of the intensity that is needed to prolong our lives. It is similar to part of the process that creates us in the first place, and it seems to act as a sort of reset.” Becca stared out the open bedroom door. “I have mentioned my degeneration to Mase and Camille, and they have no symptoms, not like me…and they will not for some time.”
I gaped at her, completely speechless. Unable to take her silent contemplation, I stood and strode to one of the windows, peering out at our fresh start that seemed to be slipping away before it really even began. Like so many times in the past month, I felt useless. “Please, Becca. Please tell me there’s a way.” And just as I said the words, I turned to face her. “Carlos—”
“We cannot risk him burning his Ability out,” she said. “You need him too much, and he is so young. I will not ask him.”
I straightened, a jolt of anger shooting through me. “It’s not your call,” I said. “It’s Carlos’s. I don’t want anything to happen to him, either, but he’s been practicing on Mase and Camille; he’s getting stronger. You don’t know that he can’t handle it…unless you do because you saw something.”
Becca shook her head. “And you would risk him burning out? For me? Do you not see—” Becca began coughing again, this time lying back and curling into the fetal position, her features twisted in pain. “I shouldn’t speak, it only makes it worse.”
“Hold on, Becca. I’m gonna find Harper. We’ll figure something out.”
And before I knew it, I was running down the hallway toward the stairs. Gabe was the one who knew about this stuff, but he was with Sanchez back in New Bodega. Harper was a doctor, but not a Re-gen specialist, so I could only hope we would find a solution before it was too late. I rushed into the living room, where Harper and Chris were still sitting sleepily beside one another on the couch.
“H,” I said, trying to get his attention without waking the twins. “H!”
Finally, Chris’s eyes opened, and upon seeing the look of what I assumed was horror on my face, she nudged Harper from his nodding state.
He immediately straightened, his eyes focused and alert on mine. “What is it, Baby Girl?”
“It’s Becca,” I croaked. “She’s sick, and…I need your help.”
As I took the babies from their arms, I explained what I knew in a rush of words I wasn’t sure they fully understood, but they didn’t waste any time. While Chris ran out to grab Carlos and Jake, Harper and I went upstairs.
Becca’s coughing had momentarily subsided, but I could see the fear in Harper’s eyes as he stood beside her bed, staring down at the bloodstained tissues surrounding her.
When Chris, Jake, and Carlos appeared in the doorway, I stepped aside, allowing them room to enter. The fear reflected in Jake’s eyes, the grief, was nothing compared to the overwhelming sense of desperation that riddled every fiber of him. Worried I wouldn’t be able to control my own emotions, not to mention everyone else’s, I left the five of them alone and went out to the hallway to wait, a twin in each arm.
Aside from the bitterness I’d felt toward Becca during our initial meeting back in Cañon City, she’d become my friend. She’d been like a kindred spirit when I’d lost my memory, a sister of sorts. Jake might never recover from losing her again, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it, either.
But it wasn’t my choice, and it wasn’t my life that would be in danger by trying to help her. It was a decision Becca and Carlos needed to make together. I just hoped it was the one I wished it would be.
After I paced for what felt like a half hour, Carlos walked out of the room. His eyes met mine instantly, and I wondered if that was a good or bad sign. He stopped in front of me and I held my breath, waiting.
“Of course I’ll do it,” he said on an exhale, and I let out an uneven sigh.
Harper and Chris filed out after, reclaiming the babies from me.
I steadied myself and moved to the doorway of Becca’s room. The tension in my chest eased and tears pricked my eyes at the sight of Becca wrapped in Jake’s arms.
32
DANI
MAY 28, 1AE
The Farm, California
“Hey, Carlos,” I said as I walked into the stable.
I could see him through the open doorway of the first stall, Vanessa’s room for the foreseeable future. He was seated on a wooden chair, his sister sitting on a sisal rug at his feet as he combed through her rat’s nest of hair…or rather, attempted to comb through it. Carlos cringed more than his sister did as each stroke caught in the myriad of snarls, jerking her head back despite his obvious attempt to be gentle. Vanessa hardly seemed to notice, instead continuing to whisper to the empty space beside her.
I smiled at Carlos. “Can I borrow you for a bit?” I bit my lip, feeling guilty about stealing him away from Vanessa; his presence had an even more calming effect—if not a saning effect—on her than Chris’s Ability, though Chris claimed she was making progress in working through the tangled synapses of Vanessa’s mind.
Tossing the comb on a folding card table that was one of Vanessa’s three pieces of furnitu
re—the chair Carlos was sitting in, the card table, and a cot Jason and I had found while, ahem, “exploring” some of the barn’s hidden recesses—Carlos sighed. “Yeah. Not like this is doing any good anyway.”
“You could just cut it all off,” I said with a shrug. “I’d offer to help, but I think she might bite me if I came near enough…”
Vanessa snorted and hissed, “Yesssss…” drawing out the sibilant word until she ended it with a harsh cackle.
“Nessa!” Carlos moved out of the chair and crouched in front of his sister so he could look her in the eyes. “If you don’t have anything nice to say…” His tone was one a parent might use on an unruly child.
Rolling her eyes, Vanessa returned her attention to the air beside her. “I know, Rosie, you’re right…she’s trying to steal him, too. First Annie, now my little brother.” There was a long moment where she said nothing, and then she giggled. “Like she wants to be me?” It was clear that Carlos and I were missing out on an integral part of the conversation.
“Nessa,” Carlos said, reaching out to touch his sister’s shoulder.
She brushed his hand away, flicking an irritated glance at him.
Again, Carlos sighed. “I love you,” he whispered before he stood. “I’ll be back in a bit, okay?”
But Vanessa didn’t respond; she was too busy conversing with “Rosie.”
Poor Carlos, I thought. I cleared my throat as he approached, backing out of the doorway so he could exit the stall.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked once the padlock keeping his sister locked safely in the stall was securely in place. He turned, looking at me, his eyes shining with frustration…and an immeasurable amount of loss.
“Carlos…” I shook my head. “It’s okay. Stay with her. I can find some other way to—”
“Don’t,” he said. “Please.” His face hardened, but his eyes still shimmered with all of the pain he was holding inside. “Don’t pity me. I’m just lucky to have her back.” He laughed cynically. “Even like this.” And I knew he was thinking of Ky and Ben.
“Okay. Yeah, okay…sorry.” Again, I shook my head, finding it impossible to shake off all of my pity for him. “I just…” I looked up at him. “I think it’s really amazing what you’re doing, you know, taking such good care of her.” Reaching for his hand, I gave it a squeeze. “I’m so proud of you, and I’m sure your whole family would be, too. She”—I nodded toward the stall—“would be proud of you.”
Carlos stared at me for a few seconds, then looked back at the stall door—more away from me than actually at the door—rubbed his hand over the several weeks of hair growing on his shaved head, and made a rough coughing noise. He sniffed once, twice, a third time, and wiped his hand over his face before returning his gaze to me. “You, uh, needed me for something?” he said, his voice a little hoarse.
“Oh, right. Yeah…” I smiled and pointed out the stable door, to the water tank a short ways up the hill behind the farmhouse. “It’s empty. I need you to do your mojo and get the pump going so I can finish setting up the chicken coop.” Eager, I rubbed my hands together and started bouncing on the balls of my feet. “I sensed a bunch of hens and a few roosters nearby—I’m going to bring ’em in once the coop’s ready, and all that’s left to do now is fill the watering thingies.”
“Got it.” With one final glance back at the stall door, Carlos strode outside, me at his side; I had to take three steps for every two of his. He stared out toward the raised water tank. “I just filled that thing this morning.” He looked at me askance. “How’d we go through it so fast?”
I shrugged. “Just finishing getting the farm set up, I guess. I had to fill the troughs in all three pens and in the pasture, the water buckets in the goat house and all the stable stalls…” I glanced at Carlos. “Except for your sister’s. And Mase and Camille converted part of the old barn into a washhouse—for clothes, not people”—I cocked my head to the side—“though that’s not a bad idea. But anyway, Mase and Camille have been doing an epic load of laundry, and by the time I got around to the chickens, the tank was dry.”
“Got it,” Carlos repeated as we trudged uphill through overgrown grass and bobbing spheres of mostly white clover flowers and a few violet-tinged red clover flowers.
Without thinking, I picked one of the red clover spheres with a longer stem and started plucking off the tiny flowers to suck the nectar out. As far as I was concerned, it was never a bad time for something sweet. I held out the flowers to Carlos. “Want some?”
He shook his head.
I shrugged. “Did you know that when these get moldy, they act as a blood thinner?”
Carlos shot me a sideways glance that said “Why the hell would I know that?” more clearly than words could have. “That another one of the traditional medicine things your grandma taught you?”
I nodded slowly. “You know, I always thought she was so silly with all that stuff, but now I wish I’d paid more attention…remembered more of what she taught me. I think next time we make a trip to New Bodega, I’ll stop by Grams’s house and pick up her recipe book and some of her herbalism stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Yeah, you know, like a mortar and pestle, measuring cups, that kind of thing.” I tossed the stripped clover stem onto the ground. “Could be useful,” I said, thinking about Harper and his increasing hesitancy to give us antibiotics every time one of us injured ourselves enough to risk infection. According to him, the antibiotics might do more harm than good at this point.
“Seems like a good plan,” Carlos said. “And hey, maybe there’s some herbalism thing that can help with the Re-gens.”
“Help with the Re-gens?”
“Yeah, you know, the degeneration thing that’s making Becca sick…?”
I stared at him as we continued uphill. “Becca’s sick?”
Carlos met my eyes, disbelief in his. “Zoe didn’t tell you about what happened earlier?”
“I haven’t seen her since this morning…when she was looking for Becca,” I said, waving my hand in a keep-going gesture. “So what’s going on? What hasn’t she told me?”
“That the Re-gens…they’re dying.”
My stomach lurched. Stopping mid-step, I grabbed his arm and pulled him around to face me. “What?”
What he explained next horrified me. I felt like he’d punched me in the gut, then pulled the ground out from under me. If Becca was right, and the Re-gens were constantly on the cusp of degenerating back to their natural state—dead—then Camille and Mase were constantly in danger from what had been done to them at the Colony. They could die any day…unless Carlos, or someone like Carlos, was around to recharge their biological batteries every now and again.
“Are you sure you’re up for that?” I asked, eyes wide with the horror his words had ignited. “I mean, maintaining Camille and Mase’s health with daily doses of electrotherapy is one thing, but how much power is it going to take to revitalize Becca? Is it even possible?”
Carlos raised his shoulders. “Dunno, but there’s only one way to find out.” He continued walking, and I had to jog a few steps to catch up to him.
“Well, at least you won’t have to do this much longer,” I said, gesturing toward the water tank and tiny pump house several dozen yards ahead. “So you’ll be able to save up all your juice for keeping them from devolving or degenerating or whatever you’re calling it.”
When Carlos’s brow furrowed, I explained, “Jason’s working on that old windmill down by the storage barn. He’s pretty sure it’s usable, so once he gets it working, we’ll be able to use that instead. Should be a day or two…or three, but hopefully not more than that.”
Carlos shrugged. “I’ll do what needs to be done. Becca was stupid to wait this long to tell us. She’s really sick, and even though I did a pretty intensive electrotherapy session with her earlier…” He shook his head. “I don’t know if it’ll work. She was just so stupid to—”
“You never k
now what she saw,” I said as we reached the squat little pump house beside the water tank. “You know how she is…it could be that telling us would’ve meant we’d all die horrible deaths, or something like that.” I leaned my hip against the edge of the roof of the pint-size building while Carlos crouched before the short door to open it.
Reaching inside, he touched the well pump’s motor, and a few seconds later, it whirred to life. Touching whatever he was charging up was by no means necessary for Carlos, but it made the task a whole lot easier and it prevented the faint electric tingle that charged the air whenever he used his Ability from a distance.
I studied his youthful, handsome face. He was so freaking adorable. If only he’d been a little less attractive, maybe his first few months after the outbreak wouldn’t have been so bad for him…except for everything that happened with his brother and sister…and Annie…
“What?” He was watching me watch him, his shoulders hunched.
“Nothing.” I looked away, shifting my attention to the farm laid out below us. The barns and stable were set up in a “U” formation, with the gravel roundabout filling the empty space between them. The grand old farmhouse, its adorable little companion cottage, and the brick oven and flagstone patio took up the remaining side of the roundabout, and beyond them lay a large garden, a greenhouse, the root cellar, the orchards, and a creek feeding into the pond. It was our own little slice of homesteader heaven.
“Have you had a chance to explore this place much?” I asked Carlos.
He shook his head. “Been spending most of my time with Nessa and doing this…and now, helping the Re-gens.”
“You should take a break, walk around…maybe stop by the windmill and see if Jason needs any help. Oh, and there are beehives over by the garden shed, too, just past the greenhouse. Those are pretty neat.” I squinted, hoping to catch a glimpse of my other half between the end of the stable and the storage barn, where the windmill stood, but I couldn’t see him. I sighed and focused instead on the garden. “Or you could find Grayson—help him with his surveying and whatnot,” I suggested, thinking of our resident “farming” expert.
The Ending Series: The Complete Series Page 126