Where were Nellie and Bruno now? Where were my mother and Darryl? Would I ever have contact with them again in any form? Once I died too, would I or could I care? Why had I seen my mother in my ‘happy place’, whatever that place meant, along with Gemma, who still lived? It had to be more than my imagination or my visions wouldn’t be true and I would be sitting in a locked room staring out at a treed yard through barred windows.
I looked up and my eyes focused on the stars popping out and twinkling on the plain of flat black. I felt small. And feeling small felt right. I would have to make peace with knowing nothing about the fate of my friends and family who had died. I turned to see that Josh and Cole had retrieved Bruno and Nellie respectively from the Jeep’s storage. I stepped aside.
“We should say something, before we cover them. And mark their graves. It seems like the right thing to do,” I said.
“It’s only the right thing because everyone else does it.” Cole gently placed Nellie in a grave and retreated. Josh did the same with Bruno’s body.
“You don’t think they deserve a remembrance of some sort?” said Jonah.
“Of course they do. It doesn’t make it better though,” said Cole.
“Avenging them is all we can offer,” said Josh.
“In the beginning I wanted to put Ivan out of business. Now I’m going to take him out,” said Faith darkly.
“You knew Nellie best,” I said to Faith. “Let’s start there.”
Faith looked around at each of us, at a loss for words. She looked down at Nellie’s face.
“I knew Nellie because we were both hackers. She came from a bad scene. When she was a kid, her mom worked three jobs and her dad wasn’t in the picture. I don’t know if there were other variants in her family. Maybe Nellie didn’t know either. She was quiet and kept her variation a secret, until Rubin found her. I mostly knew her online. I only ever met her in person once when she came to Victoria. A couple of years ago, Ivan had a meet-and-greet type social for all of us research and office types to meet all his contractors and freelancers. Nellie wasn’t good with people. I was still new to Innoviro, but I talked to her and tried to make her feel like she belonged. We emailed back and forth a bit when she went back to Portland, but I honestly never thought I’d see her again. It wasn’t until we hit the road leaving Vancouver for San Francisco that I remembered her. She was smart and she cared about making the world a better place,” said Faith.
We all stood silently, listening for more.
“I wish I could say something about Bruno. I only knew of him until a couple of weeks ago,” said Faith.
“I’ll speak for Bruno,” said Josh. “He was a brave man. If I hadn’t known him for a moment before our last battle together, I would know the strength of his character. He took a mortal wound for the woman he loved. Dying for love is a good death, of all the things I’ve seen in my life,” said Josh.
We stood in silence under the weight of Josh’s words.
“Cover them up,” said Faith.
I wiped the tear streaks from my cheeks and concentrated on telekinetically nudging the dirt quickly back over my friends’ bodies. Cole and Josh patted down each of the mounds to make them neater and more secure. Cole ripped a slab of rock from the bedrock in the wall and slammed it into the ground at the head of Nellie’s grave. He did the same for Bruno. After she consulted her phone, Faith followed behind with a molten fingertip inscribing their full names and dates.
“We should get some sleep,” said Jonah.
“When do you want to go back to the farm?” I asked Josh.
“We’ll take tomorrow to rest and plan. Then we’ll go back after dark,” he answered.
“If we actually beat Ivan and derail everything he’s doing, no one will ever know,” said Cole. “We’ll have done all of this for all of them,” he pointed at the graves and made a sweeping gesture at the distant hills, “and nobody will say as much as ‘thank you’ to any of us.”
“Is that why we’re doing this?” said Ilya.
“It’s the right thing to do,” I said.
“We all know that. It’s hard to stay focused when you lose good men,” said Josh.
“And women,” said Faith.
Josh nodded.
Jonah drew moisture from the air and doused our campfire. We all went to bed in silence.
Chapter 32
I stood inside the translucent plastic greenhouse from Innoviro’s Mojave research farm. Seedlings in various stages stretched ahead on one side. They looked like a purple cactus and palm tree hybrid. The smaller plants were mere spiked balls. The larger plants were bristly cylinders, a lighter pinkish purple. They glittered with a powdery coating. I suppressed the strong urge to touch the spindles. I didn’t trust being safe from Innoviro even in my dreams.
I turned away from the spiky plants to face a wall of rock with a flat glass panel of sand mounted beside me. I faced a cross section of an insect colony. Albino ants streamed through the sand. A long yellow tendril shot through the sand picking up ants with its sticky surface before it retracted out of sight.
Beside the colony was a steel door with no handle. A woman dressed like a dirt biker walked past me and swept a card through a reader beside the door. The door slid sideways into the wall and the woman walked forward. My gaze followed behind her as she descended into a florescent-lit corridor.
We went down and down and down until we hit level ground. Stairs quickly reappeared and we went up and up and up. We reached another closed door. The biker slid her card through another reader and the door opened into a desert plateau, bright under the Mojave sun. We faced a mobile home alongside Ivan and Tatiana’s fifth wheel trailer. A giant carnivorous evergreen loomed over the yard. The biker crossed through the shadow of the tree and entered the mobile home.
As the biker shut the home’s front door behind her, the trailer’s door opened. Tatiana, Ivan, and Gemma stepped out. Tatiana approached the evergreen. Oil-slick bees hovered around the open flytrap mouths. They seemed to know not to land inside the glistening deadly pods.
Ivan and Gemma stopped to watch from a distance. Tatiana passed the evergreen, looking at a seedling about ten feet away. I resisted the urge to zoom to my sister. I concentrated on seeing Tatiana’s face. My disembodied self rushed ahead and whirled around to face my aunt. Her skin’s green tint startled me, more vibrant than at first. Her eyes had normalized but she now had vivid emerald irises instead of her once dark brown hue. Streaks of chlorophyll had stained her hair from root to tip around her face.
Tatiana knelt on the ground, reached forward, and rammed her fingertips into the earth around the seedling. She wiggled her hands and the seedling grew. Green flushed across her face. She looked as though she would throw up any moment, but she kept burrowing her hands into the dirt and the evergreen grew taller until Tatiana had to stand up and back away. She rubbed her temples with dirty hands and knelt back down in front of her young tree. She gripped the evergreen’s trunk and opened her mouth. Pale green fluid shot out of Tatiana from the back of her throat and the evergreen’s bark absorbed it, growing again, soon as large as the tree next to it. Tatiana let go of the tree trunk and collapsed on the ground.
“Tatiana!” shouted Gemma as she ran to my aunt’s aid. Golden light flowed out of Gemma’s hands into Tatiana’s chest. Gemma continued massaging my aunt’s collarbones while Ivan watched calmly. Tatiana sat up with a gasp, weak, but restored.
“You’re not stable,” said Ivan to Tatiana.
“I will be. Given time and resources, I’ll stabilize this variation as well,” said Tatiana.
“Ilya and Irina will be coming back,” said Ivan flatly.
“They’re your children. The decision is yours,” said Tatiana.
“She doesn’t know she’s on the wrong side! You need to give her
a chance. She’s my sister! Your daughter!” said Gemma.
“We gave her a chance in Victoria,” said Tatiana coolly.
“She will be safe unless she threatens our lives. The Compendium is the future, the life, of every variant in the world,” said Ivan.
“If Irina has her way, variants will continue to live in hiding, pretending their gifts don’t exist. She thinks our guardian bees are weapons. She thinks our research is intended to harm the very people we are fighting to protect,” said Tatiana.
“Your sister’s secondary ability has been activated. With telekinesis and remote viewing, Irina will be our biggest threat if she refuses to align herself with our work,” said Ivan.
“Combined with the boy’s mind reading and illusory abilities, there will be no level of security that can keep them out. She could be watching us now for all we know,” said Tatiana.
My aunt stood up and turned to face me where my disembodied gaze originated. As she looked me in the eye, I felt her anger. Tatiana’s mouth curved into a subtle smile.
I awoke surrounded by a dome of navy blue nylon. Jonah slept soundly next to me. I grabbed his shoulder and shook him gently.
“Jonah. Jonah, I know how to get to the other side of the Innoviro farm,” I said.
“Huh. What?” he said sleepily. He yawned.
“We have to wake everyone up,” I said.
“Be my guest.” He rolled back on his side.
I shoved my arms into my hoodie and zipped it up before I got out of the tent. I went tent to tent shaking them by the tent poles.
“This better be good,” Faith said angrily from inside her and Ilya’s tent.
“I know how to get to Ivan and Tatiana’s trailer! We can catch them now,” I said.
I still had no idea how exactly we would stop them from unleashing their disease and their variant animals and plants upon the world. The more I saw, the more I became certain I had only seen the tip of the Innoviro iceberg.
“Ilya, you have to get us into the greenhouses with some kind of cover. Can you make us look like something else? Can you make it so they don’t see us?” I said to my brother as he exited his tent.
“I can’t make us invisible, if that’s what you mean,” said Ilya.
“Do we actually want to come face to face with them? What will that accomplish? I think we’ve established there’s no talking them out of Compendium work,” said Faith.
“We still need to get a hold of The Compendium itself, so we know what we’re up against in its entirety. Otherwise, we’re groping in the dark until some catastrophic natural disaster or surprise disease puts another dent in the planet. I’m sure they’ve got it stored electronically, just not on a network or anything you can hack,” I said to Faith.
“So why do we need to get into the greenhouses?” said Cole.
“There’s an underground corridor connecting one of the greenhouses to a plateau on the other side of the hill. That’s where they’ve parked their trailer. I saw one of the dirt bikers there too,” I said.
“You’re hoping to steal something like a laptop or a netbook and then level the place?” said Josh.
“I’d like to find something truly useful, but either way, I think we should leave nothing behind,” I said.
“Are we prepared to kill to get The Compendium? Are we willing to keep killing to shut down Compendium projects? We know the Krylovs are willing to take lives to bring their vision to life,” said Jonah.
“We’ve come this far without saying it out loud, but I think it’s time. This mission will likely require deadly force,” said Josh.
“I always hoped my father would come to his senses once his projects were shut down,” said Ilya.
“There is still that possibility, however remote,” said Jonah.
“If this is bigger than our own lives, it’s bigger than theirs too,” said Cole.
We sat in silence for a moment. All loss of life around us so far had been in the heat of the moment. We had never entered a situation planning to end lives, or willing to sacrifice them. The image of Nellie and Bruno lying next to smashed variant dogs, surrounded by a charred landscape stayed fresh in my mind. One field of carnage already haunted me. Ivan wanted to remake the entire world. What would that atrocity look like afterwards?
“I’ll conceal us as coyotes. It’s an animal they’ll expect to see around here,” said Ilya.
“Hopefully by the time we’re inside the underground passage, we’ll be past the worst of their security,” said Josh.
“I’ll listen for those variant dogs as well. I’m sure I won’t confuse those primal brains for anything else around here,” said Ilya.
“What if they have something worse on the other side of the hill?” said Faith.
“Let’s hope they don’t,” said Josh.
We retreated to our tents for what little sleep we might get.
Faith and Ilya made a breakfast of baked beans and toast while Jonah and I disassembled the tents. Cole repacked his car and Josh repacked his Jeep. My stomach turned over as I watched Josh rearrange the tarp inside his Jeep’s trunk. He had flipped it over to put the bloody side down, so as not to stain our tent bags and backpacks. About an hour later, we were parking at the edge of the ruined farm field.
“We’ll need to walk in,” said Josh.
“I suggest we talk as little as possible until we’re inside the greenhouse. Sound is harder to convert than images,” said Ilya. Nobody argued.
The autumn smell of burnt leaves blew off the ground. My heart had no room for nostalgia. The adrenaline of fear rushed through me tingling in my limbs like circulation returning.
We marched with determination, following Josh’s motions and signs. He used two fingers, pointing to his eyes and then a sweeping all clear gesture. He could see the coast was clear, with his eyes at least.
The greenhouse itself had only a simple screen door to enclose the entrance and we found it merely latched, not locked. The glittering purple plants I had seen in my mind were exactly as I’d pictured them in all stages of growth. And at the far end of the structure where it jutted up against the hillside were the insect colony and the smooth steel door.
“Okay, what now? Rip the door off?” said Cole.
“Refresh our memories as to exactly what’s waiting on the other side,” Josh said to me.
“Behind that door is a stairwell leading under the hill and back up to a plateau on the other side. There’s a mobile home. I have no idea what’s inside the structure. And Ivan’s fifth wheel trailer with all his personal gear and specimens is parked alongside. There’s an exceptionally large one of the carnivorous evergreens next to the trailer. Tatiana grew it with her variation, but she pays a price every time she uses her ability. She’s unstable, like Jonah was. Gemma has been healing her, but she needs more gene therapy to stabilize herself,” I said.
“In terms of threats, did you see any animals or weaponry?” said Faith.
“No, but I mostly saw Tatiana growing her trees. I’m not sure why I saw it, but I don’t think she’s a physical threat right now. Ivan appears to be in perfect health. I’m sure Gemma healed his arm and any other lingering injuries, including his outrageously strong telekinesis. He’s got my sister totally fooled, that’s for sure.”
“Are we ready then?” said Jonah.
“Ready as we’ll ever be,” said Cole.
We crossed the greenhouse to the steel door, which Cole stopped to evaluate. It had gone unspoken that he would be the one to rip it open. Suddenly, the steel door slid open, unbidden, and an enormous mass of muscle filled the frame. In one fluid motion, the huge man flipped open his second set of arms and grabbed Cole and Josh by the collars, tossing them to the far end of the greenhouse.
The four-armed man turned around and I
came face to face with Casey, the bouncer from The Looking Glass and what felt like another lifetime back in Victoria.
Chapter 33
Casey picked up Faith by a handful of her purple dreadlocks and flung her through the plastic wall behind me. From overhead, a WHUUUPUNKSHHH announced the arrival of Rose and Sage. They burst through the plastic sheeting and wood rafters of the roof, swooping down in a shower of debris. One of Rose’s wings crashed into the ant farm spilling sand and large grey-white ants everywhere. The winged sisters grabbed Jonah and Ilya from behind and heaved, leaping up into the sky with a captive each.
Casey and I were left face to face and I froze. I cringed, waiting for a blow, but he stood there. He glared at me, speechless. Had he been instructed to spare me? I noticed a familiar talisman. He wore one of the same rune necklaces I’d carried when I lived at my Innoviro apartment.
“Where’s my sister?” I blurted at him.
“She’s with your father, where you should be. He’d forgive you, even now, if you pledge to join us. Your brother too. This doesn’t have to be a fight,” said Casey.
Cole and Josh picked themselves up and were running back towards me.
“I’ll never understand why Ivan thinks wiping out most of humanity is justifiable. He may have brainwashed enough variants to help him, but he’ll never count me among them,” I said.
Casey opened his mouth as a rush of fire consumed the nearest wall of the green house. The acrid smoke from melting plastic bellowed around us like a thick fog. I ran out of the greenhouse to where Faith, Jonah, and Ilya stood catching their breath. Cole and Josh detoured around the fire and burst out of the building.
The Compendium Page 24