by Jade Kerrion
“And?”
“His father is still alive, and working for the Japanese government. He’s one of the leading officials in mutant affairs. He’s an alpha telekinetic.”
Zara froze. “Fujio Matsuda.” She slid the phone back into her pocket and raced back into the building, taking the express elevator to the penthouse and dashing down a flight of stairs to the 49th floor.
16
“How long can you hold on to grief?”
Danyael glanced over his shoulder, surprised by the suddenly pensive tone in Fujio Matsuda’s voice. “We hold on to it for as long as we want to,” Danyael said. “For as long as we feed it.”
The old man stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“Grief, like anger, like joy, like any other emotion, is fed from within.”
“It did not start within.” Deep sorrow churned within Fujio, tangible even through the old man’s psychic shields.
Brow furrowed, Danyael turned to face Fujio. “Nothing starts within, but we choose what to keep inside us.”
“Our choices do not change the facts.”
“No, nothing changes the facts, or the past. It may not even alter the present, but we can still affect the future…” A faint smile touched Danyael’s lips. “What we feel, how we react…we make those choices.”
“Don’t you feel any guilt over what you did to Sakti?”
Danyael glanced out at the window. “I have nightmares, and I know I always will. I may never know if there was another way to save my friends without killing Sakti. I know I’m a threat to others as long as I’m alive.” He flexed his left hand then curled it into a fist. “And if there’s something I can do to minimize that threat, I will.” Even if it means locking myself away, cutting off all human contact.
How long could a man live like that before going insane?
But how could a man live knowing that the monster within him could destroy everything he loved at the moment of his death?
Anger infused Fujio’s voice. “There may be no reckoning—not right now—for what happened in Kivisuo, but there is no escaping the consequences. Even if it takes twenty-five years.”
A heavy brass lamp stand flew at Danyael’s head. He ducked, but not quickly enough. A glancing blow across his temple stunned him and dropped him to his knees.
“The people you killed at Theodore Roosevelt Island died within a dome,” Fujio said. “So will you.”
Danyael reached out, but his fingers pressed up against the impenetrable surface of a telekinetic wall an inch from his face.
The wall shrank, inexorably squeezing out the air from within that bubble of space.
Fujio smiled. The curve of his lips radiated serenity, the peace of a man prepared to die. “John came to me months ago. He finds those like him, those hurting from ancient pain. He unites those like him. We understand each other. I, like his Sicarii, want justice—even if I would not survive the unleashing of it. For his plan to succeed, you must die. But don’t worry, Danyael.” Fujio’s voice sounded faint. “You don’t want others to be hurt from what you are, and they won’t. There will be no empathic backlash, no deaths resulting from yours. Unlike you, I am not a monster. The telekinetic shroud will contain your powers until they fade away. I promise you that much.”
Danyael pushed at the telekinetic wall but could not break through it. The pressure tightened, right against his skin, squeezing out the last vestiges of air from the shroud. His lungs burned on his last breath.
Not like this. His mind screamed. I want to live!
The telekinetic shroud tightened, suffocating Danyael. His vision faded to gray at the edges as his senses wilted, his body dying, his organs shutting down. Movement flickered, shadows moving against black, but he could no longer make it out.
Zara’s key card did not work on the door of suite 49-115, but the lock gave way to a well-aimed bullet. Fujio twisted around, his eyes wide. Behind him, Danyael lay on the carpet, his body unmoving, his eyes frozen wide, unseeing.
“You’re too late,” Fujio said calmly. “He is dead.” He did not raise his hands even though Zara’s gun was pointed straight at his chest. “And you cannot kill me. My telekinetic powers are the only thing containing his empathic backlash. Kill me, and you will die.”
Instinct, training, and fury united in a single action. Zara squeezed the trigger.
Fujio’s mouth dropped open. His hands came up to press against his chest, but the motion was not completed before death staggered him. He reeled to the carpet. The telekinetic shroud evaporated. Danyael’s constricted body slumped into a more natural posture. His emotions, no longer checked by psychic shields, broke over her like a tsunami.
“Fuck.” Zara hurled her gun out of the room and kicked the door shut. No point in making it easy for her to kill herself. “Come on, Danyael.” She covered her mouth with his, and forced air into his lungs. She pumped hard against his chest. Her will braced against the onslaught of death’s insidious whisper. End it. End the pain. End it all. “We’re not done, you hear me? We are fucking not done.”
Kill yourself. Find peace. Find love at the end of the darkness.
“There is no love at the end of the darkness. Love is here, right here.” She breathed into him again, then gritted her teeth against the promise of everything she wanted on the far side of death. There was nothing she wanted there. Everything she wanted was right here. Most especially the man lying in front of her. “Live, Danyael, damn it, live. I’m betting on you. I’ll always bet on you.”
He did not respond, did not draw breath.
Death’s whisper increased into a thunderous roar. End your life. Be with me.
“No! Danyael, you be with me.” Everything Zara possessed—her anger, fury, rage, will, strength, passion, love—she hurled at Danyael. “Stay with me. Fight for me!”
Danyael’s chest heaved. His eyes closed, then opened slowly. His unfocused gaze drifted to her face. “Zara…” Recognition and awareness narrowed his dark eyes. His true power—absolute control over his emotions—reasserted itself. The tidal wave of suicidal anguish splattered into a harmless drizzle of water against Danyael’s psychic shields. Suicide’s siren call faded into the depths. Death was, once again, contained.
“Breathe.” Zara’s voice shook. “Just keep breathing.”
“Fujio—”
“Dead. And for a few moments, you were too.” She smiled, but knew that it wobbled. “I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t be.”
“You…” Danyael’s hand searched for hers. They found each other. Their fingers locked, entwined. “You survived me.”
“You can’t get rid of me so easily.” She slid her arm around his shoulders. “Can you stand? Nakamura’s speech will be starting any minute now. We have to get down to the event hall.”
Danyael staggered upright for a moment, then dropped to his knees. Zara grimaced. Danyael needed a hospital bed. She did not know how long he had stopped breathing, but he had to be checked out by a doctor. Standing was almost beyond his physical ability. Walking was not a possibility. He needed a wheelchair, not a crutch. Unfortunately, wheelchairs were in short supply. Zara pulled him upright. “Lean on me. I’ve got you.”
The forty-nine floors, even by elevator, was an absurdly long way to travel, and the crowd of people surging toward the event hall made it impossible to enter. Maya’s hand snaked out of the crowd and grabbed Zara’s wrist. “This way.” The Sicarii assassin ducked her head under Danyael’s other arm. Her eyes widened as she peered into his blanched face. “What happened?”
“Fujio tried to kill Danyael. Almost succeeded.”
“And Fujio? You killed him.”
“Of course. That’s the standard operating procedure for anyone who tries to hurt Danyael.”
Maya shook her head. “We need to get him to a hospital.”
“No. Danyael’s the key to stopping John.”
“We’re well beyond polite conversation at this point. What can Danyael do?”
; “I don’t know,” Zara admitted. “But I’m betting on him. I always will.”
The physical support Zara and Maya offered was the only thing that kept Danyael upright. His lungs still burned with every breath, and half of his mind seemed lost in a fog of half-formed thoughts. His limbs were sluggish—not great on top of already being crippled in his left leg. He was a doctor. He knew perfectly well that he had died and been resuscitated. He had to get checked out for organ damage, and judging by how difficult it was to form a coherent thought, he had probably hurt a great deal more than his ego at being caught off guard by an alpha telekinetic.
Maya took them through a back way, along poorly lit corridors before emerging into a vast space that buzzed with tens upon thousands of individual conversations. A voice boomed, first in Japanese, then in English. “Welcome to the 25th Genetics Advancement Convention. This year celebrates the cutting-edge technologies that have expanded the far boundaries of what’s possible. To kick off this year’s conference, please welcome Mr. Kazuo Nakamura, CEO of Tengoku Corporation.”
The thunderous applause set up an echo in Danyael’s skull. He squeezed his eyes shut against the racket. “It’s all right,” Zara’s murmured voice anchored him. “Just hold on to me.”
She made it sound simple. It was never simple.
Nothing was simple with Zara.
But she had survived him.
He did not know how, exactly. His mind still could not fully wrap around it.
She had accustomed herself, to some extent, to his empathic powers, but he knew, too, that luck had a great deal to do with her fortuitous escape. He had started breathing again quickly enough to pull back his empathic powers before they truly overwhelmed her.
Luck and good timing.
He had probably used up the last of both.
The applause faded as Nakamura held up his hands. “Thank you all for honoring the Tengoku Corporation with your presence. Today, we celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of this conference, and the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Tengoku Corporation. Today, we look back on half a century of progress and of life—”
“Death,” another voice hissed through the speakers.
Nakamura stopped and looked around. The people in the auditorium glanced at each other uncertainly, as if questioning what they had heard.
Nakamura’s gaze flicked to the teleprompter.
Maya bit back a snarl. “John’s here. The sound booth.”
“Too obvious,” Zara cautioned. “Up there.” She pointed to a scaffolding that held up the velvet curtains behind the stage. “You’ll get a better view.”
As Maya clambered up for a quick look, Zara turned back to Danyael. “Danyael, listen to me. Maya and I can handle almost everything—except John. We’ll cover you, keep everyone else off of you, but you have to stop John.”
Danyael pressed his hands against his aching head. “I…don’t know how.”
“John knows you can, and that’s why he’s tried to kill you. He knows that you can stop him from unleashing suicide upon millions of people, even if he kills himself.”
But how? Danyael stared at Zara. His thoughts careened uselessly. Between him and John, Danyael knew he was the more screwed-up, the more damaged of the two—the one running on empty. And how could a defense-class alpha empath stop an attack-class alpha empath? Danyael could not match John’s psychic range, and there was nothing within him with which to fight John.
There was no way to spin it.
The equation simply did not work.
Movement shifted beside him as Maya returned. “He’s not at the sound booth, but there’s movement behind the stage. It’s probably the Sicarii. John may be there too.”
Zara lowered Danyael to the floor. “Stay here. Maya and I will take care of this. And remember what I’ve said—you’re the key to stopping John. Figure it out.” Her hand tightened against his. “Fight for me.”
The two women vanished into the shadows.
On the stage, Nakamura drew a deep breath. “Centuries into the technology age, and we still have sound issues.” He chuckled. The people laughed, but the sound was as brittle as Nakamura’s chuckle.
A few people started moving to the door, then more, almost like a ripple from the back of the room. Their footsteps quickened into the prelude to a stampede.
Too many people would be crushed in a stampede. No. Not that way. Danyael released a surge of peace, smoothing over the currents of panic. The sharp scent of fear subsided. The people stopped where they were, confusion flicking over their faces.
Terror rose again—pungent, acrid.
John…
Danyael gripped the wall for support. He could hardly focus his thoughts, but he didn’t need them. All he needed were his empathic powers—and empathy was more visceral than rationality and logic. His wave of peace swept over the vast room, quenching the panic.
He did not have John's range, but in an auditorium, his power unchecked by walls, he was as powerful as the attack-class alpha empath. He could undo the damage John aspired to unleash.
The voice—John's voice—emerged from the speakers. “Won’t you tell them what happened twenty-five years ago while Tengoku blazed a path through the tangle of the Genetic Revolution? What great thing happened twenty-five years ago in Kivisuo, Finland?”
Nakamura sweated visibly beneath the brilliant spotlights. “Who is this?”
“One of the sacrifices made along the path to progress. Someone who paid the price for genetic advancement.” From the corner of the stage, a figure moved—small in contrast to the booming voice that whispered fear into all hearts.
John strode into the spotlight to stand next to the CEO of Tengoku Corporation.
Damn it. Danyael dragged himself upright, head reeling. He heard, dimly, the sound of commotion beneath the stage and behind it. Zara and Maya were fighting their way through the Sicarii, holding their attention, keeping them from reaching Danyael.
It was up to him to stop John.
“Tell me, Mr. Nakamura.” John spoke from the center of the stage. “Do the lives lost feature anywhere in your balance sheet? What was Fredrik Virtanen, your escaped experiment, worth to you? What about the lives of the employees you sent to bring him back? And the people of Kivisuo who perished? Were they worth less because they weren’t shareholders of Tengoku Corporation? Because they weren’t stakeholders?”
“Security, remove this man—”
Ryoda and several men converged on the stage, but John blasted them back with terror so overwhelming that everyone cringed, whimpering.
Helpless.
Except Danyael. His psychic shields were almost in tatters, his thoughts too fragmented to sustain them, but something else anchored him. Something in him.
He could almost feel Zara’s presence beside him. Her violet eyes stared at him, challenging him. Figure it out.
Fight for me.
Danyael drew a deep breath. “John, stop.”
John spun toward him.
Danyael leaned on the stage wall. It was sturdier and stronger than his legs. The burning sensation in his lungs reminded him that he had almost died. The sharp pain radiating along his spine confirmed he was still alive. “Don’t do this, please.”
“Do what, Danyael? Remind them of the facts? Offer them the truth?”
“It’s in the past. Nothing will change anything that happened.”
“So we should simply ignore it? Learn nothing from it?”
“Learning from the past and extracting revenge are not the same thing. And it’s not even revenge. What you intend to do here will exceed every scale of what happened in Kivisuo.”
“So it’s merely a life for a life—one for one?” John thumped his chest. “It’s never one for one, Danyael. You know as well as I do. You would do anything, give anything, to save that assassin you love.”
“This isn’t about Zara. This is about alpha empaths making the right choices.”
“You killed Sakti to
save her. Don’t deny it, Danyael.”
“I don’t. I know you’re angry. Furious, and rightfully so, but there’s no need to take any action now. We’ll talk about it. We’ll get through it, John. We’ll help each other.”
“Help each other? What are your promises worth, Danyael? You love an assassin. Her questionable conscience guides your morality and your decisions. You’re the greater monster. What makes you think there is anything in you that can help me? Why would you even want to?”
“Because we owe it to each other to be more than the sum of our past. Because it’s a choice we make, every moment, every day, to be greater than the forces that tried to shape us, that attempted to define us.” Their eyes met. “Because I choose today, right now, to be a blessing.”
John sneered. “You are a fool. The choice was made for you the moment you were conceived. Alpha empaths are God’s curse on humanity. And some curses are greater than others.” John pulled a small handgun from his pocket and placed it under his chin. “Thirty-eight million people, Danyael. How many will die?”
“No!”
John squeezed the trigger. Blood spewed from the hole he blew through his head.
17
John’s body crumpled to the stage. Death unfurled like a black cloud of sulfur and ash over a volcano.
Nakamura’s face turned ashen. He dropped to his knees. The scream emitting from his throat was the wail of a hunted, trapped, dying animal.
Suicidal despair surged out like a wave.
No. Not today.
Danyael lunged forward and threw himself over John’s body. Anguish enveloped Danyael. Sorrow. Grief. Anger. Hatred. John’s emotions had festered for so long they had turned putrid, the pain so embedded it was as natural as breathing.
They swirled out of John, twisting together like DNA. Danyael, who perceived emotions as shades of color, stared into the utterly black heart of the empathic storm.