The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  Apparently, Mei was even more of a planner than her daughter was. Good. Because, at the moment, I was a definitive loose cannon. They were functioning as my stabilizers. It was a role that, in both the distant and the recent past, had belonged to Nik. In his absence, I needed their stability, desperately.

  I took bite after bite, avoiding the implications of that realization. I didn’t need Nik. I didn’t need him.

  I didn’t need anyone.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Where are we?” I asked, peering out at the scattered clumps of trees and the boxy four- and five-story buildings surrounding the grassy knoll where Mei had teleported us. I was down on one knee and disoriented from my third jump of the night—and it was full-on dark—but I could see more than well enough to know that none of those squat buildings were the towering Columbia Center, the base of the Ouroboros Corporation’s Seattle headquarters. From the looks of it, we weren’t in downtown Seattle at all.

  “We’re at the satellite campus in Redmond,” Mari said, gripping my elbow tightly and hoisting me up to my feet. “You didn’t think they were taking sick folks in at the downtown location, did you?” She laughed, a musical sound. “Ouroboros only leases two floors there—where would they put all the people?”

  I hadn’t given it much thought, but I had assumed we were headed to the downtown location. It had been a shallow assumption, clearly. I decided not to comment, glancing around as I brushed off my knee instead. It took me a second to reorient myself to being on the other side of Lake Washington. I so rarely ventured over to the Eastside, and that abrupt transition was jarring.

  “So,” I said, “where to now?” There were at least five buildings within sight.

  Mari headed toward a paved path that led to the building to my immediate left, maybe a hundred yards away. “This way.” She walked on her toes, doing her best to keep her heels from spiking into the soggy grass.

  Mei followed her daughter wordlessly, and I stared after them both for a moment, then trotted to catch up. “How do you know where to go?” I asked.

  “I recognized the interior from one of the featurettes on the news,” Mari tossed over her shoulder. She reached the path, and her gait became much steadier, her heels tapping dully on the cement.

  I fell into step beside her.

  “Honestly, I’d bet they’ve got people stuffed into most of the buildings here by now,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  Mari nodded once. “The more test subjects, the better, right?” She laughed dryly. “I mean, they’ve got to be in full-on panic mode right now, searching for a cure and all, and if we haven’t been successful, I can guarantee they’re struggling to make any progress at all.”

  “Wait.” I paused mid-step. “What?” Again, I jogged to catch up. “Why would they want to find a cure; they’re the ones who released the virus to begin with.”

  “Technically, it was Scott and Gregory who released the infected kids,” she said, mentioning two of the Ouroboros board members. “And there’s no way it was sanctioned by the Ouroboros or Initiative boards,” she continued. “They’re many things, but they’re not suicidal.” Another dry laugh, this one with notes of bitterness. “Oh no, this has ‘Senate’ written all over it.”

  My eyes narrowed. There was another option—the Visitor. The Netjer who’d been masquerading as “Gregory” for who knows how long. But neither Mari nor Mei knew anything about the Visitor—Heru had ordered that little tidbit stay on extreme lockdown, and I’d already crossed him enough for one day—so I kept my Visitor-centric hypothesis to myself.

  “So you’re saying this sudden ‘humanitarianism’ is more than just a publicity stunt for Ouroboros,” I said, stopping when Mari and Mei did. We were several dozen paces from the building’s glass door.

  “Oh yeah.” Mari pointed her finger at a security camera sticking out of the wall a few feet above the door and closed one eye. A tiny, inky projectile that resembled a black toothpick shot out of her finger. Not a second later, the camera’s lens shattered. “This is the panicked search for a lifeboat,” she said, taking aim again, this time at a camera secured to the upper right corner of the building. A moment later, there was a sharp tink, and that one fell out of order, too.

  “Good shot,” I told her.

  She flashed me a grin before taking out a third camera at the upper left corner of the building. “That’s it for the externals.” She tapped her lips with that same, dangerous finger. “Disabling the building’s internal security system will waste time we don’t have, and if I take out the interior cameras in the same way, the guards will pick up on the fact that this is more than just a glitch in the external feeds.”

  I exchanged a look with Mei. Mari wasn’t usually such a think-on-her-feet-er, and it was fascinating to watch. Also, pretty damn stressful.

  “They’ll dispatch someone to check it out, but it should take the guard at least ten minutes to get here.” She looked at her mom. “What’s the minimum we’ve got until Heru picks up our scent?”

  Mei was quiet for a moment. “It’s impossible to say,” she finally said with a sigh. “If he’s actively searching for us right now—five minutes or so. If not . . .”

  “Then we’re just wasting time,” I said as I jogged to the building’s door. “Let’s get on with it.” We had somewhere between five and ten minutes to get this right. That wasn’t a lot of time to practice doing something using my sheut that I’d only done three times before, and then, only when I was in extreme distress. In other words, super pissed off.

  Mari cut ahead of me right before I reached the door. She pulled a key card from the back pocket of her leather pants and held it up to the reader on the wall to the right of the door handle.

  “Mars, wait,” I said, reaching for her wrist. The use of her key card was bound to set off alarm bells pretty much everywhere.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “it’s not my old card.”

  I released her wrist. “Whose, then?”

  She moved the card closer to the card reader. The red light at the top flashed to green, and the door’s lock clicked.

  I pulled on the door handle.

  “Connie’s,” Mari said, voice hushed and face hidden. She was talking about Constance Ward, the former head of the Ouroboros board and brand-spanking-new Nejeret. “Keep your face angled down.”

  Mari entered the building first, then Mei. I raised my hood and took up the rear, following them through the first doorway on our left. Almost immediately, I covered my mouth and nose with my hand, suppressing a gag.

  The room was large—likely a lobby before the CV outbreak—and it was filled with several dozen cots, all occupied. The aroma of so many people in the enclosed space was overwhelming; add on the stench of sickness, and it was nearly debilitating to my sensitive nose. My eyes watered, and I was forced to breathe through my mouth.

  “Here,” Mari said, handing me something small and cottony. Only when she secured a face mask over her own nose and mouth did I realize what she’d handed me. “It should help a bit.”

  “Thanks,” I said once I had my own mask in place and dared to risk a full breath.

  Mari nodded. “So, who’s it going to be? Pick quickly . . .”

  Right, the trial subject . . .

  I scanned the dim room. It was an effort to focus on the visual input my brain was receiving when the smell was so overwhelming. So many people, all sick with the Cascade Virus. All dying unless a miracle happened. How the hell had it come to be that I was that miracle? And how could I possibly be the one to choose who would live and who would die? I’d never wanted to play god, but I hardly had a choice. Nobody else was stepping up.

  My eyes landed on the smallest body in the room, and instinct told me it was the right choice. Picking an adult would be a coin toss—might choose a saint, but I just as easily might pick an abusive psychopath. At least by choosing a young child, our people would be able to take the kid in and raise it as one of us. The child
wouldn’t go through the same traumatic transition as Garth was going through, because their Nejeret traits wouldn’t manifest until they reached full maturity. They would be far closer to a normal Nejeret, in the grand scheme of things. And having that kind of stability as a child mattered. I knew firsthand.

  I wove my way around and between the cots, then knelt beside the one holding the child. It was a little boy, no older than three, his tiny body filling maybe half the length of the cot. Sweat matted his blond hair to his skull, his chubby cheeks were flushed with fever, and his breathing was rapid and shallow. He didn’t have much time left.

  I pulled one of the marble-sized ba orbs from my pocket and curled the child’s tiny, clammy fingers around it. Taking a deep breath, I wrapped my hands around his and bowed my head. I pressed my forehead against the back of my hand and squeezed my eyes shut, concentrating.

  As I sent my focus inward, I sought out that part of my soul that connected me to the universal energies and allowed me to do otherwise impossible things. Magical things. I wasn’t sure if I could feel the thrum of energy flowing into my sheut or if it was a figment of my imagination. Placebo magic.

  Melt, I thought, picturing the little marble of At. My whole body was tensed with the effort to release the fragment of ba into the little boy. My hands shook, and I had to make a conscious effort not to crush his fragile bones.

  Nothing was happening.

  Open, I thought. Crack. Evaporate. Disappear. Break. Shatter. Go away . . .

  I ran through a litany of every possible word I could think of that might focus those universal energies in the right way. I put every ounce of concentration into thinking about dissolving the solidified At that separated the little boy from the life-saving fragment of ba. If only I could release it.

  But just like before, it wasn’t working, and this little boy would die soon. Maybe tonight, maybe in the morning. And before he died, he would be stripped of his humanity, of everything that made him him, and would devolve to a rabid, raging beast hell-bent on attacking any living thing in his sight.

  He would never grow up. He would never experience pizza day at school or play tag at recess. He would never read a book or have an imaginary friend or a real best friend. He would never have a first crush, a first kiss, a first love . . .

  He would never be remembered as anything other than a boy who died too young. If his family was infected as well, he might not be remembered at all. He was a mere blip in the greater scheme of things. A hiccup in the timeline.

  And man, did that piss me off.

  A surge of electric energy flooded me, body and soul, and I gritted my teeth, holding tight to this reality to avoid being swept away by the magical current.

  The little boy’s fist gave as the At marble evaporated and the fragment of ba soaked into him.

  It worked; the transformation had begun. It would take hours for the boy’s human soul to be completely changed into a Nejeret ba, and he’d be out for days, maybe longer, while his new, heartier immune system fought off the unnatural disease, but he would survive.

  I sat up, sweaty and trembling with a nauseating combination of adrenaline and fatigue.

  “Well?” Mari asked. “Did it work?”

  Breathing hard, I looked from the boy to Mari and back. “Yeah, it worked.” And now I knew what I needed to make it work again—I had to be angry. I felt pretty certain I could manage that.

  “Good,” Mari said, “because we’ve got company.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Back in the study, when I told Heru the humans I transformed into Nejerets would be like my children, I hadn’t meant it in any sort of literal sense. Certainly, not in any way that included parental responsibilities. But now, as I stared down at the little boy’s cherubic face, I felt a totally unfamiliar and absolutely disconcerting tug on my heart. I’d made the decision to drag him into my world. He was my responsibility, any way anybody looked at it.

  “The guards are almost here. We must leave.” Mei took a step toward me, hand outstretched. Mari was right behind her. “Now.”

  I skirted Mei’s grip, slipping my arms under the child’s shoulders and knees and scooping him up off the cot. “I can’t just leave him,” I said, staring her down. “We have to take him with us.”

  “We can’t.” Sincerity lit her gaze. “Kat, can’t you see—teleporting him will shred his soul. He won’t survive it.”

  I hugged the boy to my chest, backing away from the mother-daughter duo. “But he’s not human anymore.”

  Mari stepped in front of her mother, slowly making her way closer to me. “For all intents and purposes, he still is . . . at least for the next few hours. I can’t guarantee Robert will survive a spatial jump until he has a complete and stable ba.”

  I blinked and shook my head, brow furrowed. “Who the hell is Robert?”

  “Him,” Mari said, pointing to the kid in my arms. “Robert Thomas Foster. At least, that’s what his chart says.”

  The realization that I hadn’t even known the boy’s name rendered me temporarily dumb, both of voice and mind.

  “We can wait it out,” I said, grasping for straws. I knew it; they knew it. “Just knock out the guards and—and if Heru shows up, we’ll jump away and come back for Robert after the transformation is complete.”

  Mari crossed her arms over her chest. “And your boyfriend’s mom will die.” The statement was cool, emotionless. Absolutely matter-of-fact. She didn’t give a shit one way or the other about Charlene, but she knew that I did.

  I opened my mouth, then shut it again. My eyes stung with tears. I’m not a big crier, but frustration is a real bitch where my tear ducts are concerned.

  “Kat,” Mari said, coming to within arm’s reach, “please . . . we need to get out of here.”

  I searched her eyes. There was genuine concern there, an earnestness I hadn’t expected.

  “Even if we leave him now,” she said, “we can always come back for him later.”

  “Tonight,” I said, unwilling to compromise. “We have to come back for him tonight, before anyone realizes he’s been cured. If Ouroboros figures it out, they won’t hesitate to slice him up and run tests on him until there’s nothing left of him.”

  Mari looked from me to her mom. “Can you jump back to this exact spot? We’re not taking any unnecessary risks . . .”

  Mei nodded.

  Mari turned her head to look at me. “Alright. We’ll come back for him.” She held out her hand, beckoning me. “Now come on. Put the boy back on his cot so we can get out of here.”

  Reluctantly, I did as requested. I tucked the thin blanket around Robert, then, for some reason I didn’t understand, leaned in to press my lips against his forehead. “I’ll come back for you,” I promised.

  “Come on.” Mari grabbed my arm and hauled me over to her mom. “Let’s go.”

  Mei’s head snapped to the right, and she stared at the doorway. “Oh, no!”

  “What?” Mari and I asked in unison.

  Mei reached out with both arms, pulling both of us into a tight embrace. “Heru. He’s here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Teleporting was getting real old, real fast.

  When we landed in the lightless tunnel just outside the vault door, I dropped to my hands and knees and dry-heaved.

  Mari gave my shoulder a scratch while holding out her phone as a flashlight for Mei, who was working on opening the vault door. “I swear it really does get easier after a while,” Mari assured me.

  I sat back on my heels and let my head hang, just glad I’d managed to keep the spaghetti down. Deep breaths seemed to help calm my stomach muscles and ease the vertigo . . . for the moment. We had at least one more jump to make before the night of rebellion was over, and with the way things were going, my reaction to teleporting one more time would result in an even more extreme outcry from my body. It’s always good to have something to look forward to.

  Palm pressed against my stomach, I coughed to
clear my throat. “Why’d we come back here?” I asked, voice raspy. “We could’ve gone straight to Port Madison.”

  The vault door clanged from within, and Mei pulled it open. “Hurry,” she whispered, like speaking at full volume might make us easier for Heru to pinpoint.

  One hand on my knee and the other on the cool brick wall, I managed to get to my feet and follow Mari into the bunker.

  “We need to throw them off our scent,” Mei said, pulling the vault door shut. Once the latch was secure, she headed to the table and hauled the strap of her messenger bag over her head, setting the bag on the table. She opened the flap and reached inside, then tossed me a neon-blue Gatorade and a high-performance protein bar.

  I glanced at the label—peanut butter and chocolate—then tore the packaging open. I alternated gulps of Gatorade with bites of the protein bar. It was a terrible combination, but I couldn’t deny that I became steadier and stronger with each successive swallow.

  I pulled out one of the chairs and spun it around to sit backwards. It was less about the retro-hip pose and more about needing the support of the chairback under my arms to keep me upright and eating.

  “How long do we need to sit here?” I asked as I chewed.

  Mei leaned back against the kitchen counter. “The longer we go without Heru being tuned into our locations, the longer it will take him to lock onto us again.”

  I nodded, jaw weary but still chewing.

  “Oh shit . . .” I stood, dropping the final bite of the protein bar and abandoning my drink on the table. “I can’t believe I didn’t—he already knows where I’ll be headed . . . or at least Nik does. They’ll be watching Garth’s family.” I shook my head, backing up a step. I felt like I’d been punched in the chest. I also felt like the world champion of the moronic arts. “It doesn’t matter how long we wait,” I said, “they’ll be expecting us to go there—in a minute or in an hour, it doesn’t matter. Nik’s probably already got one of those damn combo-At domes up around their place.”