Two children walked past holding hands. Little boys in shorts and nothing else, barefoot and bone-skinny, probably not unlike the pair Ilya had heard arguing about bread. They glanced at us briefly and turned into the slum down a path bordered by more trash piles.
I wondered why they didn’t ask us for help, or more specifically, money. It took me a moment to realize that my friends and I were still concealed as the salespeople from the Samburu Curio Shop. I blinked out of my haze of disbelief and looked around at my friends.
I had lost track of who was who and I could only pick Jonah out of our group. I decided not to worry about putting faces to names for the moment. I had to focus, like Ilya, on somehow groping my way to where Ivan and Tatiana hid in this crazy maze of misery.
The sun’s heat warped the air over the cracked clay ground. I examined my dark feet in worn-out leather sandals. It was surreal, not just to be outside a massive urban slum, but to literally walk in someone else’s shoes. I felt a stern resolve to go on, to find Ivan, defeat him, and keep moving, keep trying to heal more and more of the world around me.
We walked and walked around the border of Kibera until we reached the end of the dry field we had parked in and came up against a huge cement wall. The wall ahead had to be over ten feet high, and like the pit I’d seen in my vision, it was topped with razor wire. Something in the coiled wire sparkled in the sun. We got closer and I saw a fringe of broken glass embedded in mortar. The residents of this other Nairobi neighborhood wanted very much to keep Kibera on its own side of the fence.
Our path was forced inward and I led the way. We turned down a trash-lined alley that cut into the heart of the slum. People sat on the bare ground and in lawn chairs. They milled about surrounding oil drums over which some were roasting meat on sticks.
And then something green caught my eye on the ground. It was an empty bottle of carbonated water—the exact same brand Ivan had requested so many times back in Victoria. Was it even available for sale in Kenya? And who in the middle of Kibera would bother to waste precious shillings on it?
I bent down and picked up the bottle. Kibera went pitch black around me. I opened my eyes and I was in a pit surrounded by muddy brick walls topped by coiled razor wire around the edges. Two worn wood doors on the other side of the dusty earth were the only way in or out. Skimming the fiberglass rooftops around the top of the pit, I was still in the slum, somewhere. I heard Ivan’s voice muffled by the wood doors.
The doors burst open. Rose and Sage shoved a thoroughly beaten Ilya out ahead of them, nudging him forward until they reached the center of the pit. They pushed him to his knees. Ivan shuffled out after them. His face wore a sweaty white death mask, utterly drained of vitality.
Ivan dropped to his knees across from Ilya. It took all Ivan’s energy to squarely face his son. Ilya struggled against and unseen force. In spite of his exhaustion, Ivan seemed to hold Ilya in place telekinetically. Ivan grabbed his belly as though he was about to heave his stomach contents out onto the ground between them. Suddenly a red bolt of flesh launched from the back of Ivan’s throat, grabbing Ilya by the neck.
The red tendril wrapped around my brother’s throat again and again. It slipped up Ilya’s neck and into his mouth, forcing its way down into his abdomen.
Ivan’s body collapsed as a tail of red wiggled free and snapped against Ilya’s chest. My father lay in a lifeless heap while my brother struggled uselessly against the parasite that slithered into him.
Terror and disgust held me frozen in place. Every fiber of my body was paralyzed as I watched Ilya flinch and twitch through the last of the transition. His eyes flashed red and my brother was gone. The cobra demon had him. It stood up, squared shoulders, stretched, and grinned.
The creature reveled in the youthful strength of Ilya’s body totally disregarding whatever injuries my brother had sustained in captivity. It flexed Ilya’s arms and spun on the spot. It walked over to Ivan’s corpse and kicked it hard in the gut, again and again until the body involuntarily dribbled blood from its mouth.
I finally forced my hand open and dropped the green glass bottle that connected me to the worst vision I had ever seen. Back on the outskirts of Kibera, I regained my bearings. I studied my friends’ unfamiliar faces, trying to reconnect with who was who. Even with a stranger’s features, I saw the fear in my brother’s eyes as he flipped through the images in my mind.
“Well, now we know why it’s me helping Aunt Tat grow the hedge and release the killer bees.” Ilya’s grave manner set Faith back on edge.
“You can’t seriously think we’ll allow that thing to take you?” I gave my brother a reassuring stare.
Ilya slipped into an empty narrow little alley and I followed with the others right behind me. I felt a rush of moisture in the air and we were all ourselves again.
“There’s not much point in hiding anymore,” said Ilya.
It was refreshing to see the faces of my friends again, but I felt nervous about being exposed.
“What thing?” Jonah frowned at my brother, before turning to me and asking, “What’s going to take him?”
“The demon. The alien. The whatever-the-hell creature. Ivan is sick because his body is dying. That creature controlling him wants my body now.” Ilya stared at the ground to avoid eye contact with Faith.
“Never gonna happen!” Faith crossed her arms angrily.
“When we find Ivan and Tatiana, I’ll go with them. I’ll remind them that I can heal. I can help Ivan so he doesn’t have to hurt Ilya,” said Gemma.
“No, we finally have a real bargaining chip with Ivan and Tatiana.” Ilya took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “We can trade my body. We’ll find Ivan and you can use me to get their entire supply of Terra Nova. Even if we assume they’ve already got seeds laced with the oil and ready to go, it’ll be a one- shot deal for them if we destroy the rest of their Terra Nova. Once that creature’s got a hold of me, I can fight it. Ivan isn’t telepathic—I am. I have a weapon he didn’t.”
“Don’t you fucking try it!” Faith glared at Ilya with rage in her eyes.
“No! No, no, no! You don’t know all the abilities and powers our father has. And you don’t know which come from our father and which come from that thing!” I flung my arms uselessly trying to prove my point.
“It’s going to happen. I’m going to be possessed. You wouldn’t have seen it repeatedly if we could avoid that path. We should roll with it and make it work to our advantage.” Ilya glanced between me and Faith.
“Horseshit! You’re not rolling with anything! Over my dead body!” Faith’s voice got louder, but nobody tried to shush her. I lifted my hand, wanting to calm her. I withdrew and turned back to Ilya.
“What I saw in my vision before was you helping Tatiana release the virus. Even if you can fight the creature off eventually, the damage will be done by then. What’s the point in fending off that demon if Terra Nova is already loose?”
“We don’t know that this single release point is enough to spread Terra Nova worldwide. I don’t think it could be. They have to move on from here.” Ilya’s amber eyes brimmed with a blind optimism I couldn’t fathom.
“Hang on. I think it is possible for a pandemic to have a single point of origin. And something this virulent is hard to predict. If they’ve adjusted the incubation period properly, combined with the likelihood of infecting nearly a million people within a day, well, I don’t want to err on the side of wishful thinking,” said Jonah.
Ilya rooted around under his shirt. He produced the silver medal Faith had given me to hold back in Victoria. He held it out to me. “Wear this and you’ll keep a strong psychic and telepathic link with me.”
“It’s not enough.” I took the chain from his hand and Faith shot daggers at both of us. “I have never successfully prevented a vision from coming to pass. If we g
o with your plan, we need another plan to contain the release of those bees. We need to be there with you and Tatiana when the hedge is grown. And I didn’t see that in my vision. I would have seen it. I’m sure I would have seen it!”
“You just said it yourself. You can’t prevent your visions. You can’t stop the creature from taking me. And we need to deal with containing another outbreak.” Ilya struggled to remain calm, but the slight shake in his voice betrayed him.
“Let’s back up a bit to the location here,” said Josh. Faith shot her hands in the air and stormed off at the mere hint of entertaining Ilya’s plan.
“This incident you just saw with Ilya—was it near here?” said Cole.
“I think so.” I took long deep breaths trying to reject the image of Ilya’s possession.
“Describe it to us. Those of us who can’t see inside your head,” said Jonah.
“We’re looking for a ring of razor wire around a deep pit made of brick. In Ivan’s usual style, there’s something underground connecting to that pit. It’s almost large enough that it was a fighting arena before Ivan got a hold of it. But from the street, all we’ll see is the wire. It’s surrounded by fiberglass rooftops.”
“This whole place is made of fucking fiberglass!” Faith marched back into our midst.
“But the razor wire is only on that wall back there,” said Cole.
“That we’ve seen so far.” Josh gave a nod of caution.
“This place is huge. We’ve gotta narrow that down somehow,” said Cole.
“Can’t you listen for Ivan’s mind? That demon thing I mean?” Gemma asked Ilya.
“Wait, I saw it in my vision of Tatiana growing the hedge too. Their base won’t be far from their ground zero. Wherever that pit is, it’s near the outer edge of Kibera.”
“But that heinous wall of razors and glass cut us off from making a circuit of the slum,” said Faith, brining her temper back to normal with visible effort.
“It did to the north. If we retrace our steps back out and past the van, we can follow around the border of Kibera in the other direction,” said Josh.
“Backtracking isn’t the stupidest plan we’ve ever had,” I said.
“Let’s get on with it then.” Ilya marched back out of the alley and the full force of the mid-day Nairobi sun hit his head. Ilya flinched. He fished some money out of his pocket and gave it to a woman sitting at a folding plastic table selling hats. She smiled and started offering him one grubby used hat after another.
Ilya started passing hats around to each of us. I assessed the residents’ faces. It had not gone unnoticed that a group of white twenty-somethings had just walked out of an alley where a pack of locals had entered minutes earlier.
Several men were glaring at Ilya. Josh and Cole surveyed the scene. Before I could stop him, Cole picked up a piece of old rebar off the ground. He bent it into a knot as effortlessly as a child playing with a drinking straw.
More people stopped what they were doing or stood in their tracks to watch us.
A barefoot little girl in a stained sundress walked up to Gemma and gave her a small wood cross. “Christian?”
Gemma smiled at her.
“Good idea. We’re missionaries,” I whispered into Gemma’s ear.
Gemma took the cross and turned it over in her hand. “Yes we are, bless you, darling. You keep this.” She put the cross back in the little girl’s hand and folded her fingers around it.
Cole made a few more ‘donations’ as we walked back the way we came, down the trash-lined street and back past the glass and razor fence.
I heard a flutter above and I whipped up my head, certain the bat-creatures were back. A seagull caw-cawed and sailed away.
A sudden rustle and a low growl in a pile of trash sent my heartbeat into overdrive. A mangy tail emerged and then a tattered brown mutt backed out of the bags.
“It’s almost over,” said Jonah, sensing my panicked state as he walked beside me.
“It has to be. I can’t take much more of this.”
Chapter 24
We found our van exactly where we left it. I’d thought that the police would have gotten to it. Or that our Karibu Kab driver would be on the scene. But no, our stolen van remained ours if we wanted it.
“We should keep the van. We can’t rely on portals to get us everywhere we need to go,” said Jonah.
“And it’s nice to have shelter. We’re vulnerable in this heat,” I said.
“Hey, speak for yourself,” said Jonah.
A cloud formed over my head and began to rain on me.
“Neat trick!” Josh reached out to touch the droplets.
“Buddy, I didn’t know you could do that.” Cole patted Jonah on the back.
“Yeah, this is awesome.” I sidestepped the personal shower and wiped my face and hair.
Jonah smiled and drew the moisture back into his hands. “Sorry, I’ve been waiting for a chance to do that.”
“If we can’t laugh before the end of the world, then we’re screwed right?” Faith’s tone of extreme irritation far outpaced mine.
“Irina, do you have any other landmarks we can go on? If you can see anything on the horizon, we should leave this van where it is.” Gemma’s green eyes flashed confidently as she adjusted her ponytail.
“The kid’s not wrong,” said Josh.
“Are we more conspicuous in a stolen vehicle or as a bunch of lost tourists?” Cole examined his reflection in the van window and rubbed off some sweaty dirt.
“At this point, I’d rather draw Ivan out. Let him see us,” said Ilya.
“You’re in a rush to get possessed?” I snapped.
“We know that if I get taken, events are finally set in motion.” Ilya sounded surprisingly levelheaded.
“I’m not totally sold on her visions being written in stone!” Faith shoved a finger in my direction.
“Hey, I’ve been praying that I’ll be wrong at some point,” I said. “I’ve also seen Terra Nova ravaging Santorini. Meaning Terra Nova reaches Greece! We flat out CANNOT let that happen.”
“So when we find Ivan, what exactly do we do?” Cole squeezed his knuckles back and forth, demonstrating his intent.
“If Ilya feels he can fight this creature, we could go with his plan to trade his body for their entire supply of Terra Nova. It’s a big gamble though. If he can’t fight the thing in time and they retain any amount of Terra Nova, we’ll need a way to subdue a contagion we already know flashes out of control in minutes,” said Jonah as he swept his palm through the air.
“We’ll make the exchange and rely on Irina’s connection to Ilya to keep us close by. Ilya will guarantee they’ve given us everything by reading their minds. Faith will torch whatever they give us.” Josh ground his knuckles into his eyes.
“Screw that. I’ll torch them all on the spot before they touch him!”
Josh flicked his gaze over to Faith, and then up to the sky. Exhaustion took him for a beat, but he bounced back. “If we’re on hand when that hedge is grown, that’s our chance to destroy it. Once they’ve released those bees, Faith and Jonah will rain hell on everything in that hedge that moves. Irina, you can use your telekinetic ability to help contain it.” Josh accepted a bottle of water from Jonah.
“You and I can run interference if Rose or Sage or anyone else tries to stop them,” Cole said to Josh.
“As far as plans go, that’s going to have to do,” said Jonah.
“No, you forgot something pretty important!” I said. I nodded toward Ilya.
“We’re not leaving Ilya imprisoned in his own damn body!” Faith planted her feet in the stance I recognized as her battle mode.
“It might end that way. If you’ve got to take me out, do it,” said Ilya quietly.
; “Shut up! You’re my brother. I’m not leaving you to a demon.”
“I swear I will burn this whole city to the ground before I let you die!” shouted Faith.
“If it’s my life, or the spread of Terra Nova and the death of almost everyone else on the planet, what the hell am I supposed to do?” said Ilya.
“What if she’s right and Terra Nova spreads anyway and you die FOR NOTHING!” screamed Faith.
“We’ve got a plan. It stands a solid chance of working. And after every infected plant and bee is dead, we’ll turn our attention to restoring Ilya,” said Josh.
“Between Josh and me, we’ll hold Ilya, no matter how strong he gets,” said Cole.
“Let’s go before I change my mind.” Ilya departed along the Kibera border and everyone else followed.
I hung back for a moment. Jonah stayed with me. His sympathetic expression misinterpreted me. I held up my hand to keep him at bay.
I closed my eyes and held Ilya’s pendant in my hand. My mind flashed back to that pit where Ilya had just been taken by the alien demon. I pulled back and focused on Ilya, walking ahead of me.
Ilya, I know you can hear me, but I need to know if I can hear you. I’m not putting one foot in front of the other until I know I can trust this connection. If it doesn’t work now, how will it work once you’re trapped, taken over by that thing?
I waited for a long moment. I opened my eyes. Jonah stared at me. Our friends were getting farther away along the border of the slum.
Terra Nova (The Variant Conspiracy Book 3) Page 17