by Blou Bryant
A picture came to him, unbidden, of the house on Draft, and the smoking bulldozer, surrounded by bodies.
Hannah’s hand tightened on his arm.
The picture changed, he remembered the inside of Mennar, the glass walls, the gleaming antiseptic floors, where Jessica and Ford had fought for the virus. He looked down to see Lewis on the ground, shards of glass poking from his head, which still smoked from the vial of acid that Ford had smashed into him.
A faint warmth spread through him.
Another scene, a doctor, sitting, tortured by Jessica, shot through the knee. Murdered later, at least out of Wyatt’s sight, but that didn’t change the fact that he was dead, that he was a part of this strange new world that they’d been thrust into.
The warmth built, it was familiar, but for the first time, it wasn’t pleasant. Why?
The scene in his mind changed. Wilbur lying on top of him, blood seeping from a wound that would never heal, dead eyes staring at Wyatt with cold accusation. The man who’d given him a hot chocolate spiked with something harder, a nice man, now long gone.
Wyatt felt tears spring to his eyes and wept at the memory.
The warmth was an illusion, he realized, an electrical itch that filled him, disguising the cold. What was going on?
Wyatt shivered at the sudden cold and opened his eyes, but he wasn’t in the room and it wasn’t Hannah and Teri in front of him. Jessica was next to him, and thirty feet in front, her father was being beaten to death in a puddle by a guard.
It isn’t real, this isn’t real. Wyatt closed his eyes again.
The cold deepened, but so did the electricity that sparked within him, now centered on his arm. He no longer felt Hannah touching him, and couldn’t hear her, didn’t know if she was speaking, or if she was there at all.
Why did he need this, again and again? Why was he tortured simply for existing?
He opened and closed his eyes, and shook his head to clear it, but visions of the dead kept coming. Vasca and Ford, one a threat who became a friend and the other a friend who became a threat. Both dead, because of him, because of this stupid virus.
Wyatt wanted to lash out, to hit something, to yell, to scream. The bubble of electricity—the tickle deep inside—no longer centered on his arm, it flowed inside his center and around him. The visions melded, and a red glow tinted the illusion.
Screw the world, screw those who kept pushing him down, kept punishing him for nothing more than being who he was.
He gave in to the anger deep inside, and fed off it. The bubble grew, the itch became insistent, undeniable. He yearned to give himself the freedom to say, no more!
People who didn’t hesitate to attack, to hurt others, to seek retribution for the smallest slight. Why not him, he thought, anger building inside. Why be nice, why care, why not lash out? Why did he have to be the nice guy?
A touch, on his arm. A prick. An intrusion into the angry void he’d fallen into.
Wyatt opened his eyes and found he was back in the bedroom. Teri and Hannah were in front of him, their mouths moving, but no sound escaped—none that he could hear at least. Their skin was tinted red by an unnatural light that filled the room.
He turned his head and stared into Teri’s starry eyes that were bluer than blue. His image was reflected back at him, and what he saw was terrifying. He glowed with a harsh red light. He appeared something other than human. Sparks came off his skin as if it reacted to the touch of air, if it fought the oxygen that surrounded him.
Another touch. Pain?
Wyatt turned his head—what an effort, such a simple thing, but so removed from him—and glanced down. Teri was holding his hands. A blue light emanated from her.
Wyatt turned his head—less difficult now—and saw Hannah, holding his arm in her hands, her eyes bright with fear. Her face was bathed in red and blue hues.
Oh, how easy it would be to let go. How easy to step away from the world, from others, from all the pain, and all the difficulty that life brought. To give in to the red and say no more.
His hands burned. Teri was burning them. Hannah was shouting—or so it seemed, her mouth moving but the words, the sounds didn’t break the red barrier.
Teri was calm, bathed in blue. Her eyes pulled him back to her. She wasn’t moving, wasn’t yelling, her mouth unmoving. She stared at him with an intensity he couldn’t deny, couldn’t avoid.
Come back.
No.
Stay with us.
No.
Stay with me.
Why?
An image. His mother, home, alone, with a bowl of popcorn on her lap, their favorite show cued up.
Another. Teri, almost four years earlier, mocked and attacked under a cold moon by a sad young woman.
Another. Ari and Ira, conjoined. Ira and Ari, dancing, free, happy. His hands warmed and Wyatt looked down in wonder. A brighter blue covered Teri and touched him.
Another. And then another. Patterson and Custer, brought together by Wyatt. Andy and Rich, renovating, beers close by. Sandra and Rocky… together… that wasn’t a memory. Were they a couple? The surprise at the last image jolted him.
“You did this,” came through the void, through the silence. “Do more.” The warmth spread. “Don’t give in,” came the voice.
Wyatt looked at Teri and then turned to Hannah in wonder.
Someone said, “Five.” Was that Teri’s voice? That was his special number.
“Four.” Was it his voice?
“Three.” He took a deep breath.
“Two.” Why was he so angry?
“One.” A light blue spread from Teri, filling his vision. His anger evaporated.
Nothing. He passed out.
Chapter 10
There were sounds around him. People moving, talking in whispers.
Wyatt kept his eyes closed and stayed motionless, listening. The voices wafted away and he let himself drift off again.
The sounds of the old house and the wind in the large maple outside his window greeted him as he faded in and out. There was no rush to move, he enjoyed the comfort of the bed and the weight of the old quilts that covered him.
During one conscious phase, he used an old meditation trick that a coach had given him to prepare for track meets, and took physical inventory. Starting at his toes and working his way north, he concentrated on each part of his body in turn, lightly flexing toes, then calves, and on and on, muscle after muscle. At each, he paused and gauged his body’s response. He was sore up and down, especially in his right arm, but everything was working.
Well, that was only half true. Things weren’t going well, the virus wasn’t acting like it should, nor was he.
He sighed in frustration. He had no clue how to fix himself… not knowing if, or even how he was broken. Nobody else in the world carried V32, not like he did. He was patient ‘Patient Zero’ and the only doctor who understood it was dead.
A quiet shuffling and a slight depression in the bed alerted him that he was not alone and this time he opened his eyes. Teri was staring at him. She signed, “Thought you were awake.” She moved her hands slowly, so he could follow along.
Wincing, he raised his arms and signed back, “I was. And see, I can sign.”
“Like a baby,” she replied, placing her arms together and rocking them back and forth.
“You’re insufferable,” he said out loud.
She shrugged, and the two went silent for several minutes.
Eventually, Wyatt had to ask. “Do you understand what’s happening?”
Teri shook her head.
“You had that… in the field, when you saved me.” Wyatt remembered the moment, it had been the same thing as he’d seen emanate from her when she’d pulled him back from… whatever it had been, if it hadn’t been a dream. “How long was I asleep?”
“Hours, not many,” she signed and even though he hadn’t asked, said, “And yes, it was real, what happened, it wasn’t a dream.”
“I don’t unde
rstand,” he admitted.
Teri shrugged. “Me either.”
“But you said you needed to see me, you knew something was wrong.”
“It was a feeling.”
Wyatt paused at that. What did she mean, and how did she know he was in trouble? Instead of asking, he said, “Where’s Hannah?”
“Sleeping.”
They lapsed into silence again.
Wyatt hadn’t been comfortable with the virus when it did only one thing. Still, he had gotten used to it, and had learned to live with it. Whatever it was doing to him now was something different, something unknown. He was more comfortable when things were better when ordered and understandable. His parents, his therapist and teachers had given his obsessiveness names, suggested ways to deal with it, and prescribed drugs.
The attention was something that hadn’t been welcome, as he’d never felt broken… he was just who he was. He let out a long sigh.
Teri patted him on the hand and favored him a long, caring look.
Was she in his head? Was she like Ari and Ira, able to read minds? The idea bothered him as much as the unknown did. His thoughts were his own.
“No, I’m not reading your mind,” Teri said. She wrinkled her nose at him.
“How’d you know what I thought?” That came out harsher than intended.
She switched to sign. “It’s all over your face. You’re worried.”
“Of course, I’m…” he started and stopped at the sense of anger welling up in him again, the edges of his vision turning red. “What the heck is wrong with me? Yes, I’m worried.”
This had the ring of truth to it. He wasn’t the best at hiding his feelings, his moods. The redness inside subsided—a little—as he considered her strange eyes. He remembered her staring at him as the bubble of blue washed over him. “Did you stop me from…?” He wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.
Would he have blown them up, like he blew up the bulldozer?
She knew something was wrong, even before he did, but she said she couldn’t fix him. What were her… the word ‘powers’ came to mind, and he shoved it away. “What’s happened to you since we separated?” he asked instead.
“You want to know how I knew, why I’m here?”
“Stop doing that.”
“I told you, I don’t read minds.”
“What is it then?”
“Have you ever had a dog?”
What did that have to do with anything?
“Just answer the question.”
He remembered his one and only dog, Charlie. He’d died when Wyatt was twelve, and they’d never got another. “Yes?”
“And do you remember how it knew when you were sad, or angry? Without you saying anything?”
He nodded and pondered that for a moment. Charlie just did it, and Wyatt had never questioned the ability. “You do that?”
“Sorta.”
“What about the bubble? And don’t tell me my dog could see the future or send messages to people at long distances, like you did with Ari last night.”
“Dogs find their way home, thousands of miles. Butterflies can fly from Mexico to Canada. Can you explain that? Scientists can’t.”
“So, it’s magic?”
She shrugged. “Just because I don’t know how something works doesn’t mean it’s magic. It means I haven’t figured it out… yet.”
“And the blue bubble… or your way of convincing people without words?”
“Ain’t figured it out.”
Wyatt returned to silence, but continued to probe those blue eyes. He hated talking about this stuff, but at the same time, once he was doing it, it made him feel better. “I can’t keep blowing up.”
She nodded.
“And I’m getting angry… losing control. Everything’s going red.”
She nodded again, as if she understood.
“You’re no help.”
Teri put a hand on his. It felt cold against his skin, and Wyatt remembered that it’d been her touch that had pierced the red fog he’d fallen into. It’d been her link to him that had stopped him from… whatever would have happened. “Okay, you’re a bit of help.”
“Thanks,” she said, brightening. Was there a blue spark in her eyes, or just a twinkle that accompanied her grin? “What do we do next?” she asked.
That was a good question. He’d hoped she’d have the answers, reasonable, scientific ones. But she was thirteen. She might be in this with him, connected through the virus he’d infected her with, but it wasn’t reasonable to expect her to have all the answers. It was enough that their link could moderate whatever was happening to him, save him from himself. No, not from himself, from the alien virus that infected him and whatever mutations it was creating. It wasn’t him.
In that last thought, he recognized an answer that hadn’t occurred to him. He wasn’t immune to the virus anymore. That had been his special nature, the genetic quirk that had started him on this path, that he was the only one that virus could live within, without changing. This allowed him to transfer it. When this happened, the virus changed, and was no longer a blank slate. It moved in and cut out snips of the DNA of the new host, specific strands. It activated dormant ones, but again, specific ones. That was his special nature, the reason he was chosen in the first place.
“If it’s mutating in me….”
“Yes,” Teri said, flexing her fingers while staring at him contemplatively.
“You mean we don’t know what’s happening to me?”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
Eventually, they entered an easy conversation, starting with her talking about school and him the martial arts he practiced with Rocky, and then evolving into a bit of this and a bit of that. Inside, the room was brightened by two lamps and an overhead light, while outside dark clouds passed by the window, flirting behind the dancing branches of the maple that guarded the front lawn.
As this little woman, who had powers beyond understanding, talked about the cliques at her school, Wyatt marveled at how extraordinary could cohabit with normal. No matter how we changed, we were still—at base—human, meaning social and connected, desperate to understand who we were, where we were and how we related to each other.
***
An hour later, Trix and Hannah quietly entered the room. Their caution evaporated when they realized he was awake. “Teri, I told you to get us the moment he woke up,” complained Trix, striding across the room to stand directly before him, her stance and visage reproachful.
Wyatt ignored his giant friend and snuck a look at Teri. She’d disobeyed them, in favor of talking with him. In response, she gave the slightest of hand movements. He suspected it was an effort to sign without being overheard, but he couldn’t read whatever it was that she’d said. I really need to improve my sign language.
Hannah interrupted the moment when she moved between them, her pale green eyes searching Wyatt’s with worry. One hand reached out to touch him, but then pulled nervously back before contact and she instead sat next to him, on the side of his wounded arm.
That reminded him, he’d been shot. What a strange new world he lived in, that he had been awake for a half hour or more and hadn’t once thought about how a bullet had sliced through him only hours before. Turning his attention to the wound, he found it covered in a thick bandage. Moving the arm made him wince; it was still raw. “I guess the cut was too deep for you?”
Hannah scoffed, but there was an underlying worry as she said, “I can heal cuts like that…”
“But?”
“But I wasn’t able to do it this time, you… well, your body… rejected my attempt to speed up healing.”
“What do you mean rejected?”
She turned her head side to side, searching for the right words. “I don’t heal people, they heal themselves, I help their bodies do what they do naturally, but faster. I wasn’t able to establish a connection.” Hannah paused. “If I hadn’t seen it… that red glow…”
“It
happened again?” interrupted Trix. “Like with the bulldozer.” Worry lined her normally smooth and smiling face.
There were questions waiting, but she didn’t ask, perhaps not understanding how.
Wyatt felt the eyes and attention of the three women on him, and all of a sudden, wished he was alone. He didn’t have the answers they were seeking and didn’t know how to assuage their fears. The last thing he needed now was for them to lose focus on Jessica, on saving the HUC and the Zone. He didn’t want them worried about him, didn’t want them spending their precious time thinking about him.
“It’s fine,” he said, knowing that wasn’t going to be enough for them.
Trix wasn’t buying it. She shook her head and said, “Nope, it’s not. What can we do?”
“There isn’t anything to do,” he said, and chanced a glance at Teri. She kept her mouth shut, and her face didn’t reveal whatever thoughts were going through her strange brain. Good, he thought.
Hannah shook her head in disagreement. “Why do you always do that? You close yourself off from me.” She pleaded, “Stop being your usual stupid self, and tell me what’s happening.”
“Nothing.”
She made an exasperated sound. “You can’t tell me nothing is going on—I saw you enveloped by a red light, some energy—and your body rejected my help. You can’t say nothing is happening.”
Wyatt considered his response. She was right, they would not let him stay silent this time, wouldn’t let him retreat into silence. Lying wasn’t his thing, but neither was telling the truth. Not answering usually worked best for him.
Teri clicked once, to draw their attention and signed to Hannah.
Unable to read sign, Trix looked to Hannah for interpretation.
“She said it’s a quirk of the virus, but we shouldn’t worry.”
“Glowing is a quirk?” asked Trix, raising her right eyebrow.
“I’ve heard about it, it’s a DNA thing. Scientists do it all the time, make things that glow different colors.”
“I’ve seen that, you can buy glowing goldfish now. Hannah, you have your own, personal nightlight? Kinky.”