Chapter 28

“We don’t have all night!” Tusks takes Azrael’s hand and presses it to the flat screen on the bio reader. A blue light runs from the top to the bottom of the screen. After a rapid set of beeps, a line of red text appears announcing: “ACCESS DENIED.”

My biodata has been invalidated. A surge of relief mixed with hurt whirls in my space. Both emotions are strong and real, and the last one tears me apart.

“What the hell?!” Tusks exclaims. “You were lying about being able to get us in.”

“They removed my access. Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.” Azrael goes on a rant, repeating the same word over and over like a scratched CD.

“Never mind you,” Tusks pushes Azrael out of the way, propelling her against the wall.

There’s a light crunch as her head bangs against it. Then her view of things changes dramatically and all I can see are blurry legs and boots. Azrael blinks and blinks, then gets back up. Tusks is in front of the elevator that leads underground to what used to be one of James’s best-kept secrets. Today, though, everything lies out in the open. The existence of Symbiots, James’s headquarters, the fight to find a cure. Everything. Azrael told them all there was to know, and it’s my fault for not being strong like Xave said I was, for getting captured and eclipsed.

Tusks slides his fingers between the closed elevator doors. If I could, I would laugh. The elevator might as well be the door to a bank vault. There’s another entrance, a way for the crew to bring vehicles in and out when Rheema works on them, but, gratefully, I never used it and don’t know how to access it from the outside, so Azrael couldn’t tell them about it. My hope is that, by now, they’ve been alerted to our presence and are well on their way out of here. Not that Tusks has any hope of prying the doors open with his bare hands.

A sudden crunching sound shatters my train of thought as well as its validity. Tusks’s massive back is bulging and his cylinder-shaped fingers are wrapped around handfuls of twisted metal. Growling between clenched teeth, he pushes the elevator doors out of the way, biceps the size of cantaloupes, veins popping everywhere like live electric wires.

The whine of twisting metal bounces against the concrete walls of the underground parking area and echoes down the elevator shaft as Tusks pushes the obstacle out of the way with one final exertion.

He whirls, face drenched in sweat. “You!” He points at a small woman, thin and short as a middle schooler. She steps away from the others, her movements jerky and tentative.

“Send the elevator up,” he orders her.

The woman gives a curt nod and, without hesitation, runs toward the ravaged opening. Azrael follows her trek, unblinking. Several yards before reaching the elevator, the woman launches into the air. A pair of white, angel-like wings spring from her back. She glides into the shaft, dives—chin tucked against her chest, head pointing straight down—and disappears into the darkness.

For an interminable minute, Azrael’s heart pounds. Tusks stands in front of the hole, feet shoulder-length apart, chest ballooning like giant bellows every time he inhales. His small eyes, almost nonexistent under his encyclopedia-sized forehead, throw furtive, furious glances this way.

A ding sends everyone’s attention to the top of the elevator door. The “up” arrow blinks red.

“Voilà,” Tigress says, shifting her weight from one slender leg to another. “Ready for action?”

Dillon, her feline partner, leans into her. “Oui,” he says with a rakish, cat-like smile. “I like the taste of vermin,” he adds with a dirty look for Azrael.

As soon as the elevator cabin appears, casting a bright light onto Tusks’s immobile shape, he orders half his team through the door, and quickly files in after the last one. Azrael follows, keeping her eyes downcast, hoping to sneak in undetected, but Tusks presses a large hand to her chest and pushes her out.

“Not you. Come in with the next group. Or stay here. That’d be better,” he sneers.

When the elevator returns a few minutes later, Azrael gets pushed out of the way as the rest of the Eklyptors rush in. When the cabin begins to descend, leaving her behind a second time, she snatches a knife out of the sheath of a bug-eyed Eklyptor.

“Hey!” he exclaims. “That’s my favorite one, you bitch.”

“Idiot,” Azrael screams, stabbing the air repeatedly as if an invisible person stands in front of her. “You wouldn’t be here without me. Oh, no, no. I deserve to go. No one else. Hope he does his speed thing on your ugly ass.”

With everyone gone, Azrael paces in front of the crumpled doors, cursing. “Gotta get in. Gotta get in.” A growl of frustration tears through her. She sticks her head into the shaft and yells, “Send it back! Send it send it send it!”

As if on cue, the cables groan and the elevator begins to climb.

“Yes!” she exclaims, gripping the knife with both hands and brandishing it in different angles.

My wisp of a being shudders. Azrael is just one crazed Eklyptor, but something about her determination sets me on edge. I have to do something to stop her. I get on the move again, trying to find a way, any way, that can give me some control over her actions.

Even before the cabin levels with the door, Azrael hops inside and frantically pushes the down arrow. “C’mon, c’mon.”

As the elevator makes its way downward, an insistent sound becomes apparent, then grows louder and louder the deeper she goes. At first, it’s just an unrecognizable screech, but soon I realize it’s the ear-splitting bellow of an intermittent alarm.

When the elevator reaches the bottom level, Azrael rushes out and—through the thick glass window—surveys the chaos below. Eklyptors run loose between pods, knocking down heavy equipment, then shooting at it. Sparks fly as servers, monitors, and electron microscopes short circuit. Glass from beakers, test tubes, light fixtures, and cubicle partitions shatters and flies in all directions. Boisterous commands ensue out of Tusks’s mouth as he orders everyone to check the entire area and find the damn vermin.

Azrael turns and takes the metal steps two at a time. Once at the bottom, she pauses, looks around, then surreptitiously turns toward the sleeping quarters, making sure Tusks doesn’t see her.

No! I have to stop her, and maybe I can. I feel sturdier now. I’ve had some time to understand the boundaries of my own brain, like a fish getting acquainted with its bowl. Determined, I scramble, speeding faster and faster still finding no hint of anything that could help, no idea of how to use this bit of strength I’ve regained. Curse words infused with all my frustration fill me. They swell and swell with no way to get out and relieve my fury. I will explode. I can feel it. Blow up until what little I’ve become scatters into less than semi-dreams.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Azrael swears. She stops abruptly, presses a hand to her mouth, looks around.

The pressure deflates.

What just …?

Did I do that? Did I make her curse? I try again, conjuring the foulest curses I can think of. I let them build, then wait.

Nothing.

Azrael shakes her head and turns down a narrow hall. From the looks of it, no one has checked this area yet. She hurries to the first door, throws it open and flicks the light switch. The room is stark, occupied by a small, unmade bed in the corner. No other signs of life but the rumpled sheets suggest that anyone has occupied the room. No discarded clothes or shoes, no wall hangings. Nothing but a sad bed. She moves to the room across the hall, goes for the door knob, but notices a movement out of the corner of her eye: the slight shift of a venetian shade behind the window of another room.

Frozen, Azrael watches the shades for more signs of life. There’s a soft metallic click. Her eyes flick to the door. It cracks open. A head pokes out.

Oso.

“Marci,” he whispers. One of his hairy arms urges Azrael to join him in the room.

No. No.

He thinks it’s me. He doesn’t know. How could he possibly know?

Azrael looks back the way she came, then tentatively approaches. When she’s close enough, Oso snatches her and wraps her in a bear hug, his wide torso obscuring the view into the room.

“You’re okay,” he says. “Aydan said they captured you, but I knew you’d escape.” He holds her at arm’s length with a nervous smile. “What the hell is going on out there? I had my headphones on and just realized the alarm is blaring. Where’s everyone?”

His gentle brown eyes examine Azrael’s face. I don’t know what he sees there, but he frowns. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, real fine, real fine,” Azrael says.

Oso’s frown deepens. His eyes flicker to the knife as it flashes in Azrael’s hand. His eyebrows shoot upward. He tries to step back, but the blade is already moving, headed straight to his abdomen—a wide, sure target in his massive torso.

No.

Not Oso.

Not him!

I cast myself outward, willing my ghostly being to grow and swell and expand … explode if necessary. Anything to give this gentle man a chance; to stop him from getting hurt, from losing it all.

He has time only for surprise. He looks so shocked, betrayed, rendered the perfect victim for a vengeful coward.

The sharp blade cuts through Oso’s stomach once …

NO. NO.

I expand and expand, thinking of the weapon in her hand, my hand, using the strength I’ve managed to gather.

… twice, three times. A strangled cry escapes from his mouth as the shock in his eyes morphs to denial.

“Marci?” he says in a weak, wet voice.

Azrael says nothing. She hasn’t shut up all night and, now, when her crazy rants could prove to Oso that this isn’t me, she remains quiet.

Oso’s face goes deathly white. He stumbles, wavers on his feet. In one swift motion, Azrael switches the grip on the knife, holds it over her head and drives it down toward his heart.

NOOOO.

I expand more and more and then … an explosion.

Suddenly, I’m infinite, covering the expanse of this universe and all others. And still I’m dissolving, becoming nothing but empty space and going dimmer, dimmer, dimmer. Whatever I was is gone in a big bang and I’m so scattered that I’ll never be one again.

And that’s okay.

I deserve to disappear, because, tonight, a good man has paid for my mistakes.