by K Hanson
Rose sighed. “Ten dead without any hope of being helped. A couple of other critically wounded people died on me. Another eight badly wounded. And maybe a couple of dozen minor injuries that I was able to send home.”
I sucked air between my teeth. “Shit. That’s a bad hit.”
“Yeah, it’s going to be tough for all of us, especially until the wounded recover. It’s going to be a stretch to defend ourselves and just keep ourselves going, but if we get the word out to the people around us, we can probably manage.” She stared down at her desk, her eyes unfocused for a moment, and then shook her head. “Oh, and before all of that happened, we actually had something interesting to share about Amari.”
I perked up. “Oh? Do tell.”
Rose seemed to relax a bit. “We looked at the scar along her neck. The positioning is consistent with a cut to the carotid artery. She would have likely died very shortly after that, and there isn’t anything to indicate she received the medical attention necessary to recover in time.”
“Did you see anything else that might match her actually dying?”
“Hmm, without some more advanced medical equipment, we can’t do a proper evaluation.” She drummed her fingers on her desk as she bit her lip. “Obviously, we don’t really know what it feels like to die, but her description of her sensations sounds different than just falling unconscious or asleep. It sounded heavier and darker than anything I’ve heard of. I would agree that she very well could have died and has now come back. The scar also looks like it healed naturally, even though something like that would usually require stitches.”
She hesitated, pressing her lips together, and then continued. “With her permission, I cut a small slice on her hand, and it was shut within moments. Something remarkable is going on. With what I’ve seen of her, and how the night stalkers came back to life, someone is clearly doing some terrifying and remarkable research. Maybe it involves night stalker blood like your own transformation, but her healing ability exceeds even yours if she can recover from a fatal injury. It’s exciting to be able to heal people this easily and quickly, but the implications are possibly dangerous and dreadful. As a doctor, I do my best to save people from death, but I don’t believe we should cheat it once someone is dead.”
I agreed, especially if the Necromancer could also resurrect night stalkers and send them to attack settlements like Cathedral Hill
“Anything else?” I asked. I turned toward David. “Did you have any luck figuring out how they were tracking us?”
His eyes lit up, and he shoved his glasses up on his nose. “We did find something very interesting. Amari apparently had a tracker embedded just under the skin of her neck.”
“You mean like they use to tag animals sometimes?”
“Exactly like that, though this one was a bit more sophisticated. It shut off when she died, then appears to have reactivated at around the time that Amari thinks she came back. We haven’t had the chance to extract it from her, and we can’t deactivate it until we do that. We wanted your perspective before we did much of anything.”
He pulled his glasses off and wiped a smudge with a tissue as he frowned.
“Go on,” I said, nodding my chin toward him.
“Something I’m also quite curious about,” David continued, “is how they were able to control those night stalkers and get them to attack us.”
“Someone made them do it, for sure,” I said. “The gate was destroyed by a night stalker with a bomb strapped to it. They didn’t do that themselves. And I spotted some sort of device on the necks of some I was fighting, though we were in too much of a hurry to burn them to recover one. I didn’t think about it at the time.”
“A shame we couldn’t grab one of those to examine,” Rose said. “If someone can both control night stalkers and bring them back from the dead, that is not someone we want running free out there in the darkness. Are you sure they were the same people?”
“They wanted Amari back. I ran into a guy at Fort Lorraine who knew the attack was happening.”
“So, as long as I’m here, with this tracker, the rest of the people here are in danger?” Amari asked.
She shut her book and set it on the cot as she stood up. She started toward the exit.
I put a hand on her arm to stop her. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t stay here.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “If the Necromancer is willing to kill to get me, I can’t put people in harm’s way like that.”
What were our options? We could take Amari out of here and let the next wave of attackers come after us, hoping to capture and interrogate them. Obviously, that would put Amari at risk again, though it would let us pick the battlefield and set things up how we wanted them to be, all things considered.
Could we take the tracker out and just lure them to me? Though, if the tracker had shut down when Amari died, would it also turn off if removed?
Unless we somehow used the tracker, we didn’t have any other leads. I supposed I could try to track down the guy with three scars I had found at Fort Lorraine, but I imagined he was long gone by now. He wouldn’t just stick around and wait for me to question him again. And shutting the tracker down didn’t guarantee they wouldn’t stop looking for Amari. Maybe they would just attack Cathedral Hill again since that would be the last place they tracked her.
Time to decide. We could either set a trap and put Amari at risk, or give up our best chance to find the Necromancer and wait for his next attack.
CHAPTER 15
As I thought about the best strategy for finding the Necromancer, I looked over at Amari, sitting on the bed, eagerness in her eyes as she stared at me. If I asked her to serve as bait for the next attempt to get her, she would do it.
But I didn’t want to. She had been through enough. I would rather give up a chance at a lead than put her in danger. But, then again, maybe there was a different way.
“David,” I said as I turned toward him and crossed my arms, “once we get the tracker out, do you think you might be able to use the tracker and the tablet those bandits were using to reverse the signal and find where it’s going?”
David tapped his foot. “Maybe. I’ll have to see the tracker first, but that might be a possibility.”
“Let’s get that tracker out of Amari, and then go from there.”
“Fine with me,” Amari said. “The sooner I can put these people behind me, the better.”
Rose stood up from her chair and approached Amari. “Can you lie on your stomach for me, please?”
Amari situated herself on the cot so that the back of her neck was exposed.
Rose retrieved a pair of rubber gloves from a desk drawer. “Do you want me to numb it? It’s not too deep, but it could sting.”
“No, it can’t be that bad,” Amari said, turning her head to face us. “Save it for someone who will need it more than I will. Besides, it will heal soon after you take it out anyway.”
Rose snapped on the gloves. “Very well.”
She plucked an alcohol wipe off a metal cart against the wall, opened the package, and rubbed the area around the base of Amari’s neck. When she finished, she pulled out a scalpel from a tray in the cart and cleaned it with a fresh wipe.
Amari grimaced, but then closed her eyes shut and took a deep breath.
Rose pulled her stool up next to Amari and bent over her neck. Pressing the blade against her skin, she gently and slowly pulled the skin open.
Amari clenched the sides of the cot, though she didn’t make any noise.
With a small tweezers, Rose reached into the incision and extracted a small oval-shaped device, and then dropped it onto a tray on a small rolling table.
She wiped down the open incision and applied a bandage. It wouldn’t be necessary after just a few minutes, but she was a doctor and had her habits. Who was I to tell her that it was a waste of time?
“Okay, you should be good,” Rose said as she stood.
Amari blinked a few times,
and then sat up, being careful with how she moved her head. She rubbed the area near where she had been cut as she gazed over at the small device. “That thing was in my neck? Weird.”
Rose pinched the device between her thumb and forefinger and cleaned it with alcohol before handing it to David.
“Hmm, an interesting contraption.” Using another clean pair of tweezers, he held the device up to his eyes and examined it more closely. “It looks like it has shut down now that it’s outside of a living host.” He shifted just a bit to adjust the angle of light. “From what Rose and I can tell, it seems to run off of the person’s own energy, and it detects when the person it’s in has a pulse. If there is no sign of life, it shuts down after registering the last known position of the host. However, most of this is just an educated guess based on the device’s behavior and what shows up on the tablet. We’d need to dismantle and reverse engineer it to know for sure.”
I cocked my head.
“You said you thought you could reverse the signal so that we could track down where the trace is going?”
He glanced up at me. “I think so. I’ve spent some time looking through the tablet that those raiders had when they attacked us at the restaurant. With that and the device itself, I can probably find a way to track the source of all of this. But it won’t be any use if the device won’t turn on.”
I sighed. There were no easy answers, it seemed.
“So, you’re saying that we need to put it inside another person again?” I asked.
“Exactly. There’s no point in trying it otherwise since it won’t turn on. If we were back at my lab, maybe I could fix it so that it used a different source of power, but we don’t have that option right now.”
That left only one solution that I could imagine.
I let out a heavy sigh.
“Could we put it inside of me?” I asked. “Then, I could just take the tablet and follow the trail myself.”
David scratched his chin. “That could work, though it would be a bit of a risk to yourself. We haven’t had time to study the long-term effects of this thing. There’s no way to know without looking at it further if it has some other purpose aside from tracking the host.”
“We don’t have time to study it. They’ve sent people after Amari twice within the last couple of days, and I don’t expect them to give up any time soon. They know that she was last seen in this settlement, and they will be coming back harder than last time.” I remembered the forlorn faces of the guards as I talked with them at the wall. “This place can’t take another hit like that.” I turned to Rose. “I need you to put this in my arm.”
Rose grimaced and shook her head. “I don’t know if I can do that. I can’t knowingly put you in harm’s way.”
“You’re right, you might be making me a target. But right now, your home and all of the people here are the targets. You see all those people lying in the hallway?” I gestured wildly. “The ones you patched up? Along with that pile of bodies that your friends are working on burying? There will be more like those if we don’t do this. Please, I’m willing to take the risk. Not everyone in this town gets that choice.”
Rose tapped her foot, took a few deep breaths, and then nodded.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it. Switch places with Amari.”
I sat down on the cot, face to the ceiling, and Rose rolled her stool up to me. She followed the same routine of putting on fresh gloves, cleaning the area on my wrist where she would cut, and sanitizing her scalpel.
Though, when she pressed the blade to my skin, it seemed like she was much less gentle than she was with Amari. I winced as she swiped the blade, slicing through the skin just at the base of my wrist. She took the device from the tray and stuck it into the incision.
“You heal, too, right?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Good. Try not to bleed all over while it heals.”
No cute rainbow bandage for me, I guess.
As my cut closed, David grabbed the tablet from the desk and powered it up. “Ah, let’s see if we can get access to this little guy. I spent a few minutes with it before, but now I’ll really dig into it.”
He hummed to himself while he typed away on the tablet. Nobody said anything, not wanting to disturb him. Rose slumped back down on her chair.
“Do you want to rest, Rose?” I asked, sitting up. “I can escort you back to your house, if you want.”
“No, I can’t. What if someone needs me?” She blinked, though her eyes were a touch slow to reopen, as if weighed by fatigue.
“You aren’t any use to anyone if you’re falling asleep at your desk. You can barely keep your eyes open. You’ve done enough for now and deserve a rest. Go back to your place, and we’ll get you later.” I put up my hand, palm out. “And you don’t get to say no. I’ll carry you there myself if I need to.”
Rose stared at me, her eyes narrowed, and then she relaxed. “You’re right. I just don’t know when to stop.”
“I know that feeling, believe me.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Are you sure you’re good to get yourself home?”
“I am, thank you.”
I handed the copy of her key back. “Thanks for letting me clean up there.”
I left out the part about having sex in her bed. Didn’t need to make things weird.
As David worked, I stepped out of the medical station and into the main part of the cathedral, taking a quiet moment for myself. It really was quite beautiful inside. I hadn’t taken the time to appreciate it in a while. The way the lamps on the inside, and the flames outside, flickered against the stained glass produced a wide array of colors across the cathedral’s walls.
People sat next to loved ones as they lay on their cots. Some had woken up, while others were still unconscious. Some left flowers, while others just chatted, trying to cheer up their wounded friends and family.
One woman sang to what I assumed was her husband. I couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded like a hymn. And I could hear the love she had for him in her tearful voice. It stirred up all sorts of feelings in me.
I wanted something like that for myself someday.
It also made me furious that someone would do this just to get at Amari. No more people here would suffer because of this Necromancer fucker. I was going to track him down and take him out.
“Aha!” David exclaimed.
I swept back into the medical station, curtain flapping behind me.
“I think I have it,” he said. He handed me the tablet. “Just press that button there, the one labeled trace.”
I tapped it, and the screen blinked for a moment. A map of the area appeared, and then it zoomed in. A small blinking dot lit up where we were at the cathedral. Then another dot blinked into existence, indicating the location where the tracer sent its signal, and I got my bearings for where it was.
Oh, shit.
I double-checked the streets on the map, along with the distances, just to be sure.
No, I had seen it right, and I didn’t like where the dot was.
The dot was right in the middle of Falls Park, which was right at the core of the Void. Somehow, this Necromancer had set up his operation near the portal that had started all of this.
“David, are you sure this is right?” I asked, glancing up at him. “I think this signal has to be coming from somewhere else.”
He took the tablet and flipped through a few screens. “No, I’m sure this is correct. Oh…Oh my. I see why you’re concerned. This is…not good.”
Not good was an understatement. I would have to go straight into the darkest part of the night, where night stalkers roamed free, to track down a guy who could control the monsters and resurrect them after I killed them.
Fucking fantastic.
CHAPTER 16
If the tracker was right, I was about to have to go into the most dangerous part of the darkness in Sioux Falls. The Void, deep in the middle of the Eternal Dusk, sucked the light from any sour
ce, creating an oppressive darkness where light would shine only about half as far as it should. And the night stalkers thrived within it. A normal person would barely be able to see anything. Even with my enhanced vision, the air would be just a dense purple haze. I had barely survived my last trip into the Void. It was where I had received the bite that had transformed me into what I was now, in the first place.
There was no point in delaying, though. Any hesitation, and another batch of night stalkers, or something worse, could be heading our way.
I picked up the tablet with the blinking dot on it, grabbed a roll of medical tape, and strapped it to my wrist. I felt like one of those sci-fi characters with some fancy device attached to them. Of course, I was living my own crazy story.
“I’m heading out there,” I said to David and Amari.
“Anything I can do to help?” David asked.
“You’ve done more than enough. Thank you, David. Just see what you can do here to help them recover.” I gestured toward the wounded people still lying outside the medical area.
He nodded and gave me a serious smile.
Amari stepped up next to me.
“I want to come with you,” she said. “I can help.”
I took a deep breath and gave her a quick smile. “I admire your courage, Amari, but the Void isn’t a place for someone without training. I need to move fast and not worry about who is next to me.”
“I’ve saved you twice in fights now.” She stood up straight, her head held high with confidence. “I can do this.”
Her eagerness was endearing, but I couldn’t take a civilian into danger without proper preparation.
“Someday,” I said as I set my hand on her shoulder, “I’ll take you with me on a trip into the Void when you’re ready and we can afford to take it slow, I promise. But the risk is too high right now. And we have no way of knowing what we’re about to face.”
I started to head for the exit, but Amari stepped in front of me.
“I know that whatever is there is what made me this way. I’m at the center of this, and I should help you.”