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My jaw hangs open as I stare in disbelief at the person sitting at the kitchen table. I blink, doubting my eyes, then doubting my recollection of the last few moments out in the hall.
Yes, that was Luke I just fought, not this guy. Yes, that was Luke’s voice I heard. So where did this creature come from?
“Please, sit.” He extends a hand toward the chair across from him.
The sound of Luke’s voice in this person’s mouth makes my insides twist with a mixture of horror and surprise.
“What have you done?” My words shake with incredulity.
Even if he looks different now, the basic frame is the same, and, deep down inside, I know this is the boy I’ve known since Kindergarten. We shared classes, recess, lunch. We faced each other in challenging games of chess and played brother and sister for a short while. And that weird connection I’ve always shared with him? It’s still there. I feel it like an invisible tether between us.
He shrugs. “Nothing drastic.”
The fact that he doesn’t think it’s drastic shows me how disconnected he’s become from humanity.
Luke was always handsome. His blue eyes and blond hair like Karen’s. His tall, muscular physique like Dad’s. Such a perfect combination of their best features.
Now, however, he is . . . godlike in his perfection.
His eyes shine azure and full of life. His head is covered in silky strands of hair that look almost unreal. His cheekbones are higher and every angle in his face more chiseled. His once blond, pale lashes and eyebrows are now darker and thicker. The redness that used to lightly mark his chin and forehead have been replaced with the smoothest, most even-toned skin I’ve ever seen. But most striking of all is his posture and the lithe and graceful way he moves. Not human. It’s the only description that comes to mind.
He inclines his head to one side. “Do you like what I’ve done?”
His question reaches me, but its meaning eludes me. I’m too entranced by the smoothness of his small gesture and the flawless curve of his neck and jaw.
“You . . . you look inhuman.”
His eyes tighten at the word, a slight expression that doesn’t reveal much through his perfect, baby-like skin.
“That is because I am,” he says with a smile more dazzling than a ray of sunshine piercing your eyeballs.
In spite of the smile and his nonchalant answer, I can tell my words bothered him. He doesn’t want me to see him as anything less than human. He wants me to see him as more. But why would my opinion matter to him?
“I changed my DNA, you know? Not just my appearance,” he says in a deeply satisfied tone.
My shocked skepticism turns to total disbelief.
“I can pass this on to my offspring,” he adds, saying the last word with something close to reverence.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and my stomach twists in disgust and horror. If he can pass these changes down to his children, does that mean he can also pass down the infection? Eklyptors’ offspring are born fully human. The hosts’ DNA is never altered no matter how grotesque the agent manages to transform its vessel. This is why they need Spawners, why adult Eklyptors grow those tentacle-looking things that inject parasites into their victims’ spines. Could this ability to transform his DNA and pass it down be part of Hailstone’s grand plan to get rid of the need for human hosts? It has to be.
Questions swell inside my head. How did they figure it out? Are they already giving birth to infected babies or, more accurately, giving birth to Eklyptors? Do they plan to share this knowledge with other factions?
God! IgNiTe needs to know this!
Luke regards me with interest, waiting for me to say something. Instead, I’m horrified into silence. After a moment, he runs a hand through his hair and shifts in his seat. The change in position is smooth, like the gentle flow of a river, like the terse passage of the wind over a meadow. It’s hypnotizing.
“Tell me something, Marci. Are you happy?” There is a legitimate interest in the question. “Is this,” his hand slides through the air demonstratively, “enough?”
“Better than the alternative.” I lower my head and clench my teeth. I could kill him now. I have the gun, and we’re face to face. No morality should stop me, not like that day I had the chance to shoot him and Zara, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it because their backs were to me.
“The alternative?” he asks as if we’re talking about something that doesn’t exist, like brain-eating zombies or blood-starved vampires.
I humor him, but only because it gives me the chance to insult him. “Living trapped inside my own head, you butt wipe.”
He seems taken aback at my colorful words, then says, “Ah, that.” He makes a movement with his hand as if he’s tossing something up in the air.
“Yeah, that. Don’t play stupid,” I say. “It may still seem like I live in a trap, but nothing compares to what your parasitic cousin wants to do to me.” I poke a finger into my temple.
Azrael and its shadows stir at the mention of its stupid name. My thoughts jump in circles, then spiral down and out of the way, quickly leaving the specters behind.
Luke shakes his head, looking puzzled. “When I first came to you and Karen, I didn’t have any idea Symbiots existed. No one did. And the fact that you’re one of them, it’s just . . . so unfortunate. I’ve wondered many times why you, of all people, had to be one of them. It has made everything so complicated.” He sighs, sounding tired like an old man.
Me, of all people? What the hell is he talking about?
“Of course,” he continues, “if your agent took over now, you would know it and would, unfortunately, be aware of your exile.”
“My exile? Is that what you call it to make yourself feel better about what you do? It’s not an exile. It’s theft, imprisonment, and torture. Worse than death. Worse than anything I can imagine.”
“In some cases, yeah. But it shouldn’t have been like that for you. It isn’t like that for my host. That consciousness never developed. It didn’t have a chance. So I’ve made no one suffer. I’m not sure you can make the same claim.”
“If you’re suggesting I’ve made my agent suffer, I’ll have you know it’s been a pleasure. Nothing but payback, at any rate. This is my body, and I would do anything to keep it from falling under the control of an intruder.”
“Intruder, huh? I’d say it’s all a matter of perspective for people like you and I. All cells were there from the beginning.”
“How dare you compare who I am with what you are?”
Luke sits forward and lays both hands on the table, one next to the other. The delicate quality of his movements draws my attention to his fingers. They are longer and more slender than I remember, wrapped in smooth skin with hardly any creases around the knuckles.
I don’t know why, but his flawlessness—more than the monstrous shape of Eklyptors like Tusks or Lamia—brings my primal fears to the surface, jump-starting my fight-or-flight response. My heart speeds up. My hands sweat. And I swear the curve of the trigger under my finger feels like an inevitable solution.
Except I can’t—not the way he’s talking, sharing things I would never have imagined.
“We’re not that much different, Marci.”
“Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?”
“There’s little that could help with that particular problem.”
His candid answer, although satisfying it’s also surprising. “That makes two of you. You and Elliot should exchange medication names. A bullet between the eyes would also help. Permanently.”
“It amazes me how easily humans forget that nature also applies to them. You’re not above its laws.” He cocks his head to one side in a quick jerk, much like a bird. The movement still appears inhuman, but much more digestible than his even, fluid motions. “Are you?”
I clench my jaw. My teeth grind. I know this argument all too well. We, humans, have stayed on top and made this world our own with our savagery. We have killed and destroyed in the name of progress and science. We have driven countless creatures to extinction and continued to do so until the day we met our match.
Yes, the laws of nature—survival of the fittest—apply to all.
My argument is flawed and, in this ongoing chess match of ours, Luke still seems to have the upper hand.
Check.
“I guess we’re not,” I admit, speaking through the knot in my throat. “But that doesn’t mean we’ll go down without a fight.”
“Certainly not. This is what prey does, it flees, hoping to outrun the predator. But we all know how that turns out in the end.”
Even though at times I’ve felt that we are nothing but helpless prey, he knows well we’re more than that. “I don’t know if you got the memo,” I say with a curt laugh, “but it’s not us running scared at the moment. Could be part of the reason you’re having trouble getting some shuteye at night?”
Luke’s satisfied expression sours.
Who’s in “check” now? I smile crookedly.
“Setbacks were taken into account when we drew our plans,” he says. “We are prepared. Don’t doubt it. Seattle is only one city. The overwhelming majority of the world has offered no problems. As expected.”
Anger thrills through my body and, with an involuntary jolt of electricity, my right hand jerks up. The gun trembles in my grip as my forefinger gently caresses that tempting “solution.”
“The truth can be upsetting, can’t it?” He raises his eyebrows to the gun.
I take several shuddering breaths to calm myself. Our gazes lock. His eyes offer no signs of fear, like he doesn’t care if he lives or dies, if his perfect body thuds to the floor in the sad, abandoned kitchen of the home he so easily and thoroughly destroyed—like he knows the “laws of nature” will continue their course, with or without him.
I tell myself he doesn’t look scared because he senses my empty threats. But that’s not it, is it? He’s too sure of their plan, too confident of their success to worry about failure. If he dies, another leader will take his place as head of Hailstone, and it will be business as usual. But if I kill him, our success, the answers we need, might die with him and he understands that.
If I want to win this game, I have to be smart. Smarter than him. Something that, to this day, seems to have eluded me.
Control yourself, Marci! There are answers here.
With a growl, I put the gun down and demand, “What do you want from me?” My voice betrays the anger that still roils within my chest.
“Ah, you’re finally ready to listen. Good.” Luke stands, the chair scraping the tile floor as he does so.
I take a step back. The jitters attack me again, making my trigger-happy finger tingle. I curse inwardly. He has no weapon. He’s no threat. So toughen up, big girl!
He heads my way, his every step exact and even as if decided by some complex, split-second mathematical equation that calculates precise shoe-to-floor pressure, leg angle and distance. When he gets close, I step aside, attempt to come up with my own calculations where “X” is the safe distance between me and this alien creature I once thought I knew.
Luke stops, his shoulders perpendicular to mine. He stuffs his lithe hands inside his front pockets and looks straight ahead. His profile is breathtaking. I think of smooth marble statues, regal and undisturbed by anyone who might gawk in their direction.
“I have much to reveal to you,” he says without looking at me, “but you’ll have to come with me if you’re interested. We can’t talk about these matters here.”
“Go where?” I demand.
“Hailstone headquarters.”
I burst out laughing. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“I’m not,” he calmly says, then walks out of the kitchen and heads for the front door.
I move into the hall and stare at his retreating shadow. As he moves away from the candlelit kitchen, the angles of his shoulders appear less sharp, more human.
“Hey!”
Luke doesn’t stop. He just walks on, utilizing the same mathematical perfection.
“So you came all this way for nothing?” I yell.
Still no reaction.
An idea sparks in my mind. I dig in my jacket and retrieve a small disk from a compartment in the handheld surveillance receiver, palming it.
Just then Luke stops and gestures toward the small table in the foyer. “I have your shoebox, thought I should keep it safe.” He starts walking again.
“You bastard! That was Xave’s. How dare you?” I rush him.
Even though he hears me approaching, he doesn’t look back. When I reach him, I slap my hand to his back and push him. He staggers forward but catches his balance with little effort. He turns slowly, his annoyed gaze swiveling to mine. My eyes snap to his, away from the tiny tracker stuck to his jacket.
“Give it back!” I command, letting anger take over me. Still, I feel certain he’ll see my guilt instead and will reach over his back to snatch the tracker off.
“Come with me and you will get the box and more.”
“Why do I need to come with you?” I work myself into a bout of hysterical anger—not that it’s hard. “So you can force me to stay against my will?”
“I’m giving you a choice, in case you don’t realize it.” Luke’s words are calm, almost reasonable. My hatred for him redoubles. “If you want answers to your questions, you must come with me. If you can live without the answers, you can continue as you are. This is the one kindness I will show you, even if everyone disagrees I should give you that much.”
So he’s here against his faction’s wishes? Why?
“It’s your decision,” Luke adds.
It’s déjà vu all over again, like the day James asked me to follow him if I wanted to understand the buzzing inside my head. Except, I’m sure the answers I got then were harmless compared with whatever Luke has to offer.
“Well,” I run a hand over my mouth, trying to look conflicted, “I doubt these answers will be worth my while. I’d tell you where you can stuff them, but I’m sure you already know that.”
Luke blinks very slowly, lowers his head. “For what it’s worth, I think you would like my plans for the future. But if I tell you about them and then let you go, I don’t even know who you’d share them with first. IgNiTe? Whitehouse? I’m sure you can understand my reservations.”
I have no answer to that.
He nods, then turns to leave. When he’s facing the street, he speaks in a barely audible voice. “I have always cared for you, Marci. If you search within yourself, you will realize it’s true. I am not a monster. Just a consciousness inside a body, like you, like everyone else.” With that, he walks down the porch steps, heads toward his car and melts into darkness.