by Jade Kerrion
Perhaps not, but nothing changed the fact that there was only death within him. His healing powers could save lives—one at a time—but when all the shields were down, all facades stripped away, the only thing within him was the power to kill—not one but thousands at a time.
Zara searched his face. For a moment, he thought she would continue their painful, raw conversation, but instead her voice turned brisk. “Now, if your shields are feeling steady enough, the doctors want to examine you.”
“The bullet?”
“Ripped up your quadriceps and came awfully close to your femoral artery. You could have bled out faster before anyone could have saved you. They’ve removed the bullet. A psychic healer closed out that injury. She also checked on the others.” She frowned, her emotions rippling with muted distress. “They couldn’t fix your hip or knee, though.”
“I know.” Danyael rotated his right shoulder, bracing for a spike of pain, but there was none. “It’s all right. I feel fine.”
Zara rolled her eyes. “You’re a long way from fine, but I guess you’re as close to normal as you usually are for you.”
If only she knew. He was nowhere close to normal. His life, his continued existence, was a threat to everyone because of the monster within. “What happened to John?”
“Beat a hasty retreat with whatever was left of his Sicarii. The Finnish government sent in a special forces team after us. They swept Kivisuo but found no one.”
“And Maya?”
Zara scowled. “Swears she changed sides. I wish you’d get a read on her.”
“I can’t. There’s no psychic…anything…to hold on to.”
“I don’t trust her.”
“You don’t trust anyone.”
“True.” Zara’s smile flashed. Her emotions rippled with delight—flashes of gold against her already brilliant canvas. “But I especially don’t trust her. She wants to talk to you.”
“Send her in.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Didn’t she save me from the river?”
Zara nodded. “She came up behind the Sicarii who were shooting into the river, shot them in the backs, and killed them—again, I might add.”
“Again?”
“If she was the last assassin standing at Masada, she probably killed them all once before, right?”
“Maybe.”
“At least she’s consistent there. I can’t stand fickle people.”
Danyael swallowed his chuckle, and bit back a smile.
“Then she dived into the water and pulled you out.” Zara shook her head. “I had no idea where you were. I could not have found you in time. As it was, you weren’t breathing. You must have coughed out gallons of water.”
Likely an exaggeration, since lungs could not hold gallons of water, but Danyael did not think Zara would appreciate the physiology lesson just then. “When John tried to kill me…thank you for saving me.”
Zara shrugged. “You’d wandered off.” A smile spread across her lips. “I think I know enough now to expect you to get into trouble every time you wander off on your own.”
“How much of the conversation did you overhear?” Danyael asked.
Maya’s voice cut in. “Enough to realize that John isn’t trying to save the world. He’s trying to punish it.” She walked into the hospital room. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ll be all right,” Danyael said.
Maya and Zara exchanged glances. Maya laughed. “You’re right about that.”
Danyael’s confused gaze flicked between the two women.
“He doesn’t say anything else.” Maya turned back to Danyael. Her smile faded. “You’re always going to ‘be all right,’ but John's determined you won’t be.”
Zara scowled. “The bigger problem is that John isn’t all right either. Let’s talk to Alex. Someone at the council must know of a way to stop John.”
But Alex Saunders did not have any ideas. “I don’t think you fully understand the situation, Danyael.” Alex’s furrowed brow, visible even across the small monitor of the smartphone, shrieked the anxiety he otherwise perfectly concealed beneath his stolid stance. “Most psychic shields will stand up against an attack-class alpha empath—”
“Some psychic shields will stand up, but not all. And most people aren’t shielded. If John dies anywhere near a city, he is going to wipe out entire city blocks. Only the strongest alpha telepaths will survive, and there’s no guarantee their minds won’t snap.” Danyael shook his head. “How far did Virtanen’s death throes extend?”
“Impossible to tell, given the remoteness of Kivisuo. People were found dead in a farm five miles away from Kivisuo, so let’s say at least that far. You’re a great deal more powerful than Virtanen, even though you’re defense class. We think your kill zone—I apologize for the term—could run anywhere from ten to twenty miles. John’s—I don’t know. At least as large as yours, and walls will provide no protection.”
Danyael frowned. “There are thousands…tens of thousands of people living within twenty miles of any city’s downtown. Even more during the day as people come in to work. Alex, there has to be a way to stop John.”
“We’ll work on it, but off the top of my head, I’d say the only way to counter what John can do is at the source. You have to make John release different emotions if…when…he dies,” Alex said.
Zara rolled her eyes. “I think it’s a little too late for counseling.”
Alex frowned at Zara. “There is little that can stand in the way of an attack-class alpha empath’s death throes. Find him. Bring him in. The first, most important thing is to prevent him from killing himself.”
Maya shook her head. “He’s no longer in Kivisuo, and he’s taken the Sicarii with him.”
“You’re a Sicarii. Can’t you track them down?” Alex asked.
“Not if they’re as good as they’re supposed to be.”
“We can get their records from Atheq Laboratories. Our telepaths may be able to find them,” Alex said.
Maya smirked. “Atheq destroyed all records related to the Masada project.”
Alex’s jaw dropped. “But that’s against the IGEC conventions!”
“Atheq answers to the Israeli government, not the International Genetics and Ethics Council. The project was deemed an outstanding success—”
“So why destroy the records?” Alex demanded.
Maya’s smile was slow and smug. “A psychic ghost, trained for infiltration, sabotage, and assassination, is any country’s greatest asset. As far as the Israeli government is concerned, I don’t exist.”
Zara’s fingers tapped a rhythm against the sideboard. “And there are clones of you, aren’t there?”
Maya nodded. “They’re raised and trained at secret military installations.”
“An assassination cartel of psychic ghosts…” Zara glanced at Danyael. “Look at how calm I’m staying.”
He chuckled. “Well done.” He did not remove his hand from where he had placed it, right over hers. “You’re trying to figure out how to hire them.”
“It would depend on how well the original model performs.” She slanted Maya a narrow-eyed glance. “If the Israeli government is funding the Sicarii project, why aren’t you taking orders from Israel?”
“They realized our potential too late. They did not install bio-monitors or give us the proper training and conditioning. We broke out and took off on our own. As it turns out, we’re not good at following orders.”
“Maybe that’s why the two of you get along so well,” Danyael murmured under his breath.
“John found us,” Maya continued. “He sensed our distress…our lost-ness.”
Danyael nodded. “He would have had both the range and sensitivity to pick up on it.”
“He helped us piece together who we were, and how we’d been deceived by Eleazar.”
Zara’s laugh was short and unamused. “So, you were tricked into mass suicide by an alpha empath, then cloned, only to
be tricked again by another alpha empath? I strongly suggest that if you get another shot at life, that you keep well away from alpha empaths.”
Maya trailed her fingertips over Danyael’s bedsheets, smoothing them out. “I have to convince the Sicarii to shake off John's influence.”
“It’s going to be hard,” Danyael said.
“What do you mean?”
Zara shot Danyael a glance. “What he means is that alpha empaths can get their claws into you, with little effort—and then never let go.”
Danyael turned his face away.
“Is it true?” Maya asked.
A muscle twitched in Danyael’s cheek. “There is nothing…rational…about emotions. Zara’s right. Emotions of unshielded people can be easily swayed, and once they’re locked in, it’ll take deliberate effort on the part of the empath to undo what was done.”
Maya’s eyes narrowed. “Why do I get the feeling you both went through this?”
“Because we did,” Danyael confessed. “I wasn’t careful—”
“You were exhausted, sick with other people’s pain,” Zara cut in.
“—And I screwed up. My emotions swayed hers—not intentionally, but they did anyway. But I fixed it.” His fingers curled into a fist over his abdomen, clamped down on the sharp, deep ache that radiated from the pit of his stomach to fill his chest.
I fixed her.
I couldn’t fix myself.
The look Zara gave him was quizzical, amused, and more than a little defiant.
The continuing and confusing assault of her emotions were too much to handle on top of everything else. Danyael drew an unsteady breath and refocused on Maya. “The point is, you don’t have a good chance of talking the other Sicarii out of their devotion to John.”
“I don’t want them to get hurt.”
Zara’s response was as beguiling as the purr of a cat. “Then they should have chosen their friends more wisely.”
“This was my fault,” Maya said. “They looked to me to make decisions, and I chose to trust John.”
Zara shrugged. “I wouldn’t be too quick to take on the blame. I suspect they would have trusted John anyway, regardless of anything you chose to do. We’re dealing with alpha empaths, and as I’ve so often been told, I’m not to trust anything I feel when I’m around alpha empaths.” She glanced at Danyael, her eyebrow arched.
“But I can trust what I feel,” Maya said. She looked down at her hands, her fingers spread against the white bedsheets. “Psychic immunity. The benefits of having only half a soul, or none at all.”
Danyael shook his head. “You don’t know that.”
“Don’t I?” Maya asked.
“The only fact is that you have virtually no psychic presence,” Danyael said. “The why is still open to debate. Don’t write off your soul just yet.”
Maya’s brow furrowed on the hint of a frown. “Do you believe in souls? In an afterlife?”
Danyael shrugged, but that small motion rippled pain along his spine and into his hip. “I don’t know. I’ve been too busy trying to survive life to spend much time thinking about what comes after.”
“You should.” Maya’s tone transformed from curious to reproving.
“Perhaps. If I have time.” If John doesn’t manage to kill me first. “John said there would be an accounting. He wants revenge for what Virtanen did.”
Zara snorted. “He’s about twenty-five years too late, then. Virtanen’s dead and there’s nothing left in Kivisuo to kill.”
Danyael worked through the flicker of his memories, connecting passing comments into faint logic trails. “John said Virtanen moved to Kivisuo. Before that, where was Virtanen?”
Zara’s quick phone call to Xin provided them with a massive file and more data than they could look through. Zara grimaced. “I keep telling her I need the Wikipedia version, but she keeps sending me the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, even though she knows I won’t read it.” Her phone rang. She snatched it up. “Xin? You’re on speaker. Danyael and Maya are with me.”
“You received the file?”
Zara rolled her eyes. “Yes, but I don’t have until doomsday to read it.”
“Luckily for you, doomsday may be a whole lot closer than you expect. Virtanen lived in Kivisuo for about two years, before he apparently killed himself.”
Danyael frowned. “Apparently?”
“There are lots of loose ends that don’t tie up neatly enough for my liking,” Xin continued. “But stepping back for a bit…Virtanen showed up at Kivisuo, mid-fifties, and lived pretty much as a recluse. Fact is, you don’t go to a place like Kivisuo, population two hundred fifty-nine, unless you’re trying to stay well off the beaten path. The last public record of him was as a young man, fresh out of college, traveling the far east—the usual sort of things people do before settling down to the nine-to-five grind.”
“So what happened between his mid-twenties and his mid-fifties?” Danyael asked.
“No one knows,” Xin said.
Zara scowled. “When did we become that blasé about not tracking alpha empaths?”
“Virtanen was before the Genetic Revolution went mainstream. No one realized he was an alpha empath until long after he was dead. To anyone who cared enough to look, he was a tired, lonely man, living quietly on the fringes of society.”
Zara shot Danyael a glance. “A dangerous place to be for an alpha empath. So what are these loose ends that don’t tie up?”
“The bodies found in Kivisuo,” Xin said.
“There were lots of bodies found in Kivisuo,” Zara pointed out the obvious.
Xin’s tone remained mild. “Japanese bodies?”
Zara straightened. “Kivisuo isn’t close to Japan.”
“Only about five thousand miles away. The bodies were found in Virtanen’s home,” Xin said.
“They—whoever they were—killed Virtanen?” Zara asked.
“Possibly, but not probably,” Xin said. “Virtanen’s autopsy suggests that he really did kill himself, but the fact is, those people were there.”
Zara scowled, her eyes narrowing into violet slits. “You have names for me?”
“Yes. You’ll find them on page 749 of the report. Seventeen men. Their names aren’t as important as who they worked for—Tengoku Corporation.”
“What?” Danyael’s fist curled tighter into the white sheets. “That’s…”
“The company that powered Japan into the Genetic Revolution.” Xin’s voice snapped like the closing of a trap. “The company that, in a few short decades, transformed mutants from society’s outcasts into the engine that drives a country’s economic growth. The same company that has more reprimands from the IGEC than all the other research organizations—internationally—combined. They break rules, and their unequivocal support from the Japanese government allows them to get away with it. The world needs an economic powerhouse, and it’s better for Japan to be toying along that front than on expanding their physical borders, so why not? For decades, the world has turned a blind eye—deliberately—to what Tengoku has wrought in the name of economic and scientific advancement.”
“And you think they were about to do something to Virtanen?” Zara asked.
“No.” Xin’s voice was cool. “I believe they did something to Virtanen. Those unaccounted for decades of his life. He was in the far east when he disappeared, and he emerged a broken man. Damaged enough to kill every living person within five miles when he chose to commit suicide instead of allow himself to be recaptured.”
“Do you have any proof?” Danyael asked.
“None that will hold up in a court of law. I could hack Tengoku’s networks, but that will take too long.”
“What do you mean?”
“Security cameras at Helsinki airport show Johannes Halla boarding a flight, headed for Narita International Airport.”
Danyael froze. “Tokyo…”
13
Danyael stared at the sprawl of bright lights over Tokyo as the Boe
ing jet came in for a landing at Narita International Airport. Twenty-three city wards boasted a population of over nine million people. The larger metropolis exceeded thirteen million. The greater Tokyo metropolitan area, spread over three prefectures, was estimated at over thirty-eight million people.
Tokyo was the world’s most populous metropolitan area.
The numbers staggered him. If John died, not just tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands might die.
Millions would die.
Zara leaned across Danyael’s seat to look out of the same window. “So your plan is to convince John that he needs to talk to a counselor?”
Danyael grimaced. “Something like that.”
“You know it’s not going to work.”
“Bullets…guns…those aren’t going to work.”
“Wounded, he’s going to be a great deal easier to talk into counseling.”
“Zara, if you wound someone instead of killing him, it’s only because you missed, entirely by accident. Your killer instincts are too strong, your training too perfect.”
She shrugged. “Sloppy work can be habit-forming. It’s a slippery slope. I don’t even go there.” Her smartphone beeped. She glanced down at the message from Xin, and grimaced. “John slipped past airport security. That means we now have to find him in a city of thirty-eight million people. And we still have no way of stopping him.”
Danyael frowned. “We stop him from killing himself. And we don’t kill him. We buy the council the time they need to figure out exactly how they can help John not turn into an emotional nuclear bomb.”
“And if he succeeds in killing himself, then what?”
“I…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Let’s just find him. Let me talk to him.”
Zara rolled her eyes. “Really, Danyael, you are an incurable optimist. After everything you’ve seen in the world, after everything the world has done to you, your first response is to try to talk the hate, fear, and panic out of the situation.”