Terra Nova (The Variant Conspiracy Book 3)

by Christine Hart

  “You were too rough! You fucking killed him!” Faith rose, started toward me. “You dumb bitch!”

  “You think I wanted to stab him?” I fired back defensively.

  Jonah, Josh, Melissa and Tarak ran to us all dripping wet.

  “What happened? Is it over?” said Jonah.

  “Did the healing work?” said Melissa.

  “Not yet,” said Cole.

  “Shut up! It’s going to work!” I shouted.

  Gemma got up and surveyed the rest of us. “We should give it a minute. Is anyone else hurt?”

  “See if you can heal Rose and Sage. They were burned, but they might still be alive,” said Cole.

  “Don’t move an inch! You stay here and try Ilya again!” Faith rammed her finger through the air, pointing at her fallen boyfriend, my only brother.

  “I’ll come back for him. Don’t worry.” Gemma moved off and another flare of bright light ballooned beside us.

  I didn’t take my eyes off Ilya. I wiped my eyes and my nose with my sleeve.

  “What about Mueller? Or Tatiana?” said Jonah.

  “Fuck them. If they’re not dead already, leave them. They might just try Terra Nova again anyway,” said Josh.

  “Before we do anything else, Faith, Giorgio, you need to torch that hedge. I don’t know if it’s still a liability without Ivan’s energy to bring those bees to life, but we can’t take any chances,” I said.

  Faith got up and Giorgio followed her. She unleashed a rage-fuelled stream of fire that blasted the hedge into an instant inferno.

  Another ball of bright light bloomed beside us. I heard wings flapping and I knew the harpy sisters had just left. Gemma rejoined us.

  “All right, you healed the harpies. Now do Ilya again! Please, just try!” Faith’s frantic insistence gave way to more weeping.

  “I healed his wound. I don’t know why he’s not awake,” said Gemma, quietly.

  “Fucking do it again!” Faith angrily smeared tears off her face.

  “Just try one more time,” I said.

  Gemma looked back and forth between Faith and me. Jonah put his hand on my shoulder. Gemma knelt down over Ilya and placed her hands over his belly again. She closed her eyes to focus. Her hands hovered but the golden light didn’t appear.

  “If there’s nothing for me to heal, there’s nothing more I can do,” said Gemma.

  Faith took Ilya’s head in her hands and kissed him. She closed his eyes, laid him back down and began sobbing again.

  Chapter 35

  I backed away to let Faith grieve. Jonah reached out to me, but I shoved his arm away. I pushed past Cole. I felt all their eyes on me as I walked out into the dark, away from the slum, away from my dead twin brother. We had won, but I had lost Ilya. I’d killed him.

  I dropped into the worn flat cushions of the dirt-coated abandoned sofa. I put my head in my hands and let the tears come again. Misery consumed me. I hugged myself and buried my face into the stinking upholstery.

  The crackling of the hedge fire and the murmur of the city faded away to nothingness. I sat up and opened my eyes to re-orient myself, but I was not outside Kibera anymore.

  The sky above took on a light blue hue on the horizon in the distance. Color spread above me turning from black, to ink, to soft gray and then a golden glow rose with a fiery red-orange ball at the center.

  As light fell onto the landscape I realized I’d come back to the grassy meadow where I met Mom when I’d been knocked out from Noel’s venom. And there on the patchwork quilt sat both my parents—my mother and real father—and my brother.

  I walked across soft, lush grass feeling it tickle my bare feet. I wore a sleeveless, blue and white striped cotton sundress that I recognized from my childhood, only now it fit my grown body.

  “Ilya? Mom? Ivan?” I called out as I hurried toward them.

  “Irina!” Ilya stood up and hugged me. He too was clean, strong, and healthy. He wore a black Ramones T-shirt and his grey denim jeans. His amber eyes were full of life and his cinnamon hair shone in the sun as he grinned. He felt real, as real as everything else around me. This place had a tactile quality that my visions didn’t.

  “Where is this? Is this heaven? Am I dead, Mom?”

  “You’re back in the visiting room. I told you you’d find a way to visit me again, Irina.”

  I hugged my mother leaning in and breathing deeply. I tried to drink in her essence. I still didn’t trust the idea that I could just pop out to another plane of existence and see my dead mother any time I felt like it. I wanted to pull away to enjoy her smile, but I didn’t want to stop feeling her arms around me. I felt safe and content, but at the same time, angry that it couldn’t last.

  “What about you? Did you die?” I asked Ilya.

  “I think so. But they told me I have a choice,” said Ilya.

  “They who?” I said.

  “Ve told him, because ve know.” The ravages of age had reversed and Ivan evolved into the father I’d never had, my mother’s true match. His complexion was sun-kissed again and his eyes sparkled as he took Mom’s hand.

  “The demon that infected your brother pierced a hole in his soul. Gemma didn’t have the skill to heal him. But I do. I can heal his soul and send him back, if he wants to go.”

  “Of course he wants to go!” I blurted.

  “I’m still thinking about it,” said Ilya.

  “What do you mean you’re thinking about it?” I shouted. “You have to come back. Faith is tearing herself apart over you.”

  “Calm down. It’s a great adventure, being dead, going with Mom and Dad—finally the ‘real’ Dad and the Mom I never knew—to see what happens to the dead. I’ve always wanted to know,” said Ilya.

  “Everyone wants to know! You’re not staying dead, and that’s final!”

  “You could always visit me, here, the way you found Mom,” said Ilya.

  “I can’t get back here on purpose. It just happened. Both times,” I said.

  “Sweetie, you could train yourself. Even if Ilya goes back with you, I hope you’ll still come to us from time to time.” Mom kissed the back of Ivan’s hand. I wondered briefly where Darryl was, but it seemed irrelevant.

  “Darryl can’t move between worlds. He crossed long ago,” said Ilya.

  “Another plane of existence and you can still hear my thoughts. I can’t handle this right now. Faith is losing her mind over you. If I have to go back and tell her you stayed dead on purpose, she’ll never forgive me for stabbing you.”

  “My boy, go vit your sister. You have a long life to live.” Ilya considered Ivan for a long moment. He gazed at Mom and then at me.

  Please, please, come with me. Come home. The dead will wait.

  “She’s right. Ve vill always be here.”

  My head whipped in Ivan’s direction. He retained his telepathy too. Of course, it had been the only variation which was actually his.

  “Do we have to go now?”

  “Time isn’t standing still in your world. If you’re going back to your body, you shouldn’t linger here,” said Mom.

  Ilya hugged Ivan, taking in as much as he could as I’d done with Mom. Ilya gave Mom a quick hug too.

  “Okay. I’m ready,” said Ilya.

  I stole one more hug from Mom. I stepped to Ivan and took in the presence of my real father. It was as close as I would ever come to knowing him. His eyes had a twinkling energy I had never seen in the haze of my visions. He was full of love. I blinked hard to keep tears at bay. I hugged him briskly and pulled away. “I’m ready too. Send us back.”

  Mom reached out and placed her hand over Ilya’s head. Golden light flowed from her and she moved it over my brother’s body, stopping at his heart. The golden light got brighter until it wa
s white hot. Light exploded from my twin and blinded me.

  I fumbled in pure white light, trying to grasp at something, anything tangible. A blow knocked the wind out of me. I woke up back on the garbage couch outside Kibera.

  “He’s awake! He’s waking up!” shouted Faith at the top of her lungs.

  Hoots and howls of delight went up from my friends in the distance. I knew Ilya made it back too.

  It was the perfect time of year for Sombrio Beach. Summer travelers had returned to school or work. Warm sun kept the cool ocean breeze from chilling us. A few of the canvas pergolas from Ilya’s original camp survived the summer. We added a few more new tents.

  Mr. Mbele had left us almost immediately in Nairobi, departing as gruffly as he had joined us. Melissa returned Tarak to Cairo and Giorgio to Santorini, leaving the rest of us exhausted from the worldwide chase of The Compendium. We sat around another of Faith’s roaring bonfires, protected again from onlookers by Ilya’s illusory wall.

  “We could leave the blame on that demon, Ulu, but that doesn’t cover it. The Compendium was like any other group of evil shits. It takes more than one lunatic to navigate a fleet,” said Ilya.

  “Destroying Terra Nova was always the first priority, but we knew it wouldn’t be the end. Think of all the disasters they’re still cleaning up out there,” said Jonah.

  “There could be more dangerous variant animals, more diseases, even, God forbid, more Terra Nova, hiding somewhere in a lab behind nothing more than a flimsy cupboard door,” I said.

  “I still can’t believe we all came out of that.” Josh sat behind Melissa with his arms firmly folded around her. Neither of them was the type to make declarations about being a couple. This gesture was as much of an announcement as we would get.

  I was happy for them anyway. “Do any of you ever get the sense that it was meant to be? I mean, it all happened so quickly. Sometimes feels like we won by chance, not because we were stronger or smarter.”

  “We won because you did something incredibly hard, and brave, Irina.” Ilya sounded grateful, backed by his intent stare.

  “I don’t ever want to see my man hurt again, but I’m glad you tried to kill him.” Faith smiled at me.

  Faith and Ilya were connected at the hip too. Faith had none of her former rigid disposition. Since Ilya woke up in Nairobi, she took every opportunity to hold his hand, kiss his face or his lips.

  And I knew that feeling. I hadn’t stopped stealing glances at Jonah’s electric blue eyes and wondering if he would ever slip away from me again.

  Only Gemma and Cole sat apart, but that pairing was in the mail too. I’d learned to read Cole’s face and I saw him eyeing Gemma the way he used to look at me. She blushed every time she caught him. One of them would give in sooner or later.

  “When are we back on the road?” said Cole.

  “Back on the road?” said Gemma.

  “Irina’s probably right. Worst-case scenario, there are Compendium factions out there still executing orders for more disasters or just more gradual ecological damage. Best case scenario, there are leftovers from biological weapons and genetic development that could cause serious damage if they ever get loose,” said Cole.

  “I’ll always regret that we weren’t able to unravel The Compendium’s agenda more efficiently. Maybe we could have stopped more than Terra Nova. All those spills and storms and earthquakes. The outbreak in Chester alone was horrific. So many people died that shouldn’t have,” said Jonah.

  “We can focus on where we succeeded or where we failed. Either way, we are where we are. All we can do is keep going forward, ideally in the right direction,” I said.

  “I’ll dig back into Compendium docs tomorrow,” said Faith.

  “We’ll do it together,” said Melissa.

  I leaned in and gave Jonah a quick, soft kiss. I nuzzled into his neck and looked out at the ocean. The sun crept toward the horizon where the sea and the sky blended into a hazy strip. Jonah’s body felt powerful and comfortable at the same time. I was too content to move. Now that we really had our lives ahead of us, I could relax and enjoy the moment in front of me.

  “Are you still feeling sick?” Jonah contemplated me with concern.

  “Now that I’m not fighting to stop the end of the world, I think I’ll bounce back fast enough.”

  Epilogue

  Shanghai’s glass towers pierced the sky as we approached the downtown core. On a crowded city bus headed onto a river bridge, I could see that the shore ahead lay shrouded in lush evergreens and fluffy deciduous trees. It hardly seemed that only a few months earlier this city had been the site of an enormous chemical disaster.

  I felt through the front pocket of my purse for my pack of tarot cards. I wouldn’t touch them directly any time soon, but for the time being, they served as a good luck charm.

  “Do you think we should have made the trip right away after Sombrio Beach?” I asked Jonah who was seated next to me. His crisp white collared shirt and bright eyes struck a dashing figure.

  “A lot of The Compendium’s worst initiatives were unleashed ramping up to Terra Nova. I think the urgency died down once Ivan, Tatiana, and Claude weren’t snapping their proverbial whips.”

  “This Jinhua guy, Harold Yu, might be telling the truth or he might be covering up, you never know.” Ilya piped in from the seats behind us. His new short, combed haircut still caught me off guard, revealing a different, almost professional, version of my twin.

  “I think he’s full of shit.” Faith had cut her hair too and now sported a blue pixie cut.

  “He said he was being blackmailed to sabotage Jinhua’s facilities and develop malicious technologies.” Ilya pointed out.

  “I’m curious to know why he wanted us to come to him,” I said.

  “I’ll figure him out fast enough,” said Ilya.

  The bus pulled up in front of a modest square building of gray concrete and large windows. As we hopped off the bus, I saw signs for an airline company and a health care office. A café occupied the corner of the bottom level. It was an ordinary building. I hadn’t expected a sign—Evonatura hadn’t posted one either.

  “Are you sure this is the place? There isn’t even a sign.” said Jonah.

  “What would that say? Jinhua Enterprises: A Compendium Company?” Faith smirked with bright pink lips and eyes black as ever with makeup.

  “This is the place. They’ve got the top floor,” said Ilya.

  “You heard him up there?” I asked.

  “He told me over the phone.” Ilya walked into the building with purpose and we followed.

  “Can you even pick one mind out here?” said Jonah.

  “There’s a lot of mental chatter here. No getting around that. But I’m used to it. And everyone’s thinking in Mandarin. Once we’re in the same room and he’s talking to us, thinking in English, it won’t be a problem.”

  We stepped off the elevator and found the top floor of the plain little cement cube surrounded by walls of glass which illuminated the space with warm mid-day sun. A faint harp and piano melody filtered in from an unseen source. A young girl sat at a large glass desk along the far wall. Rows of plush microfiber armchairs lined either side of the wall. Guests here obviously waited in comfort.

  Harold Yu had been expecting the four of us. The young girl greeted us shyly, disappeared briefly, and reappeared with a platter of teacups. Jonah smiled and took one. The rest of us hesitated. Faith and Ilya eyed the cups with caution. I had an extra reason to be careful about what I ate and drank. Ilya’s frown suddenly turned into a smile and he picked up a cup, so Faith and I did as well. If Ilya knew the drink was safe, I wondered if he already knew my secret too. Probably. We took four seats together along the wall not bathed in bright sunlight.

  “Mister Yu is finishing a conference c
all at the moment. He thanks you for your patience,” said the girl.

  “We’re happy to wait,” said Jonah.

  The girl returned to her desk. The clacking of keyboard keys suggested she resumed her task.

  “Is he really in a call, or are we just being fashionably delayed?” I whispered to Ilya.

  “Whoever he’s talking to, it’s in Mandarin,” said Ilya quietly.

  “Can you pick out how many people are in this office?” Jonah whispered, leaning toward Ilya.

  “On this floor? I can pick out six, but they’re all thinking and talking in Mandarin. It’s hard to say what each of them is doing. I don’t see any mental pictures of hands-on science. If I really had to guess, I’d say this is strictly an administrative headquarters,” said Ilya.

  The clip-clucking of dress shoes drew our attention. The sound grew louder in the hallway.

  “Good afternoon, respected Innoviro guests,” said a small slim man in a navy blue suit. “I am Harold Yu. Thank you for accepting my invitation. Won’t you join me in my office?”

  “Thank you for having us.” Jonah extended his hand to Yu, who took it happily.

  Yu led us down a long hall clear across the top floor of the building. We entered his office which had a view of the Yangtze River.

  “Please, sit.” Yu reclined in his oversize leather executive chair.

  “I don’t mean to be blunt, but why did you ask us to come here?” said Faith.

  “You haven’t seen my endeavor underway?” said Yu, eyeing me thoughtfully.

  I felt heat in my cheeks. “No, but that’s not shocking. My abilities have cooled off recently. I’m sort of burnt out.”

  “I wanted to see you in person, to assure you that my association with Ivan Krylov and Claude Mueller was not a voluntary arrangement.”