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We burst into the auditorium guns at the ready. James goes down the middle of the row seats with Blare and I flanking him. We walk slowly, our weapons sweeping from side to side.
No one’s here, only junk. Boxes, papers strewn over an improvised work area, maps pinned to the wall. Some war room. But I guess this is how such a place is bound to look when you repudiate technology.
James throws a questioning look in my direction. I shake my head and shrug, then notice a half-open door at the back of the room. I flick my gun in that direction.
In a flash, he disappears and reappears by the door. Blare heaves an aggravated sigh and takes off after him. I’m fast on her heels. James peeks past the door, then gives us a thumbs up without even turning to look at us, and again disappears in the blink of an eye.
Blare curses and runs faster. She pushes past the door without a pause. I try to keep up, but she’s fast. My heart pounds in my ears. I breathe through my nose and out my mouth in ragged exhales. I enter the next room, looking around desperately. The area is set up with gray cubicles that once must have been someone’s eight-to-five ball and chain.
I spot Blare’s back end and make a sharp turn in her direction. I wish James had just hauled me with him. I’m not that heavy. I give it all I’ve got and shorten the distance between Blare and me. Past a narrow threshold ahead, there’s a larger space. It’s also full of cubicles, tons and tons of them.
I’m starting to think this corporate hell will never end when I spot a few figures at the end of the large area. I can’t tell if Elliot is among them. It’s hard to see with Blare in front of me and my vision bouncing with every step I take.
Suddenly, a sinking feeling settles in the bottom of my stomach. I haven’t had any premonitions in a while, but this definitely feels like one. I shake my head and keep running.
Don’t be stupid. Of course, it feels like it’s all going to the shitter. That’s all there’s been for months.
Blare slows then ducks inside a cubicle for cover when a bullet whizzes by. She points her gun over the short wall, breathing heavily and looking paler than ever. Following her lead, I run into the cubicle opposite hers and take aim. Like Blare, I’m using the gun with real bullets, the other one is holstered at my hip. The darts are for friends. Enemies get the real thing.
The scene unfolds before me like a letter full of bad news. James stands firmly, back to us, in the middle of the hall that separates two rows of cubicles. His hands are at his sides, tranquilizer gun pointed to the floor. For the life of me, I can’t understand why he wants to try the cure on Elliot. For my part, I’d just use a bullet straight through the temple.
Beyond James, the news gets worse than bad. Elliot stands opposite us, flanked by his twin dwarfs and the person we once thought was our friend: Rheema.
Elliot wears a smile on his face that has no place being there. He would be less smug if one of his barrel-chested freaks didn’t have Aydan in a chokehold, a gun pressed to the side of his head. Rheema must have told him to do this. I would also suspect Charger’s self-sacrifice if it wasn’t for the injured look in his eyes.
“Hello, James,” Elliot says with a sarcastic smile.
James says nothing.
“This boy . . . he’s one of yours, is he not?” He flicks a hand in Aydan’s direction.
“Your building is surrounded,” James says in a calm voice. “We outnumber your men since you so graciously sent most of them away to kill me.”
The Eklyptor leader looks in my direction, fully aware of my presence and Lamia’s failure to stop me. Hatred simmers in his golden eyes. I give him the peace sign. He snarls and looks away.
“Let him go.” James uses a businessman’s tone, negotiating. “Let him go and we can talk, decide what we do from here.”
Elliot scoffs. “I know about your cure, James.” He gestures toward Rheema. “I know that’s why you’re here. You want to show the world a recovered faction leader. You think that will give your weak humans hope and trust in your injection. But will you tell them it’s more likely to kill us than actually cure us? Will you be honest?”
“The cure will be perfect. We already have a different version. We also have a vaccine. You won’t be able to infect anyone else. It’s just a matter of time before we regain control. But that’s not the matter at hand, is it? That’s in the future, and you should worry about now.”
“Now,” Elliot says as if reflecting on the philosophical implications of the word. He loosens his cravat, pulls it off and dries his forehead with it, then throws it to the floor. The silk piece of fabric flutters down gently, gentler than anything “now” is likely to bring.
Blare looks pointedly in my direction. Our gazes meet. She nods, turns her shark, dark eyes on the dwarf holding Aydan. Her gaze returns to me, then flashes quickly to the second dwarf. I get her message as loudly as if she had screamed it in my ear.
I adjust my aim, point my gun directly at my target. He has a big enough chest that even a child with a toy gun should be able to hit him. I’m worried about Blare, though. Is her aim good enough to hit her target? Or will she think of Aydan as collateral damage, if it gets down to that? I shake my head and take a deep breath, deciding to trust her. She can’t be that heartless. She can’t. Aydan is our friend, our family.
“Now,” Elliot repeats while slowly removing his jacket. He also drops it to the floor. I frown at his now-casual look. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without his jacket and cravat. He looks odd, like a peacock without its plumage. It’s as cold as usual in the building, but he seems to be sweating bullets. Good, that means he understands we mean business.
“Now,” he repeats yet again, “right this second, we outnumber you.”
He smiles with self-confident pleasure, making me doubt he understands anything at all. My heart beats faster. The gun shakes in my hand. Shit. The heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach redoubles, making me wonder if Elliot has an ace up his sleeve.
The freak fiddles with his diamond-studded cufflinks, the way he always does. The action is so casual, he almost looks at ease. Besides the heavy sweat pouring down his forehead, he looks almost relaxed. I don’t like this at all.
Slowly, Elliot sticks his hand in his pants pocket. I tense. My finger hugs the trigger a little tighter, my vision blurs for a beat as I sharpen my aim. I can sense James and Blare tensing, too. A moment later, Elliot’s hand comes out, empty, and fall to his sides.
“So what’s it gonna be, Elliot?” James asks.
“It’s simple, you let us go, or we kill him.”
Aydan’s supplanter squirms and lets out a frustrated growl. All that time waiting to come out, and this is what he gets. Serves him right.
“You are not in a position to set conditions.”
I’m starting to wonder how long this standoff will last when James disappears all of sudden, turning into nothing but a blur. I reel, uncertain of what to do when Blare gives the order.
“Shoot!”
I don’t think twice and pull the trigger. My bullet hits its target before I’m done wondering whether it might hit James by accident. My dwarf gives a low grunt, takes a hand to his chest and looks at his own bloody fingers. I shoot again and again. He jerks on the spot and it takes two more shots to bring him down.
It’s only until he falls flat that I give myself time to assess the situation.
Aydan!
He’s the first one I look for. I find him on the floor, the other dwarf crumpled on top of him. He seems to be unconscious.
Oh, God!
I want to run to him, make sure he’s alright, but bullets are whizzing out of Rheema’s guns; she’s always been good at the two-handed shooting. I take cover. Blare is already low to the floor. Our gazes lock for a moment, then she runs out of her cubicle—head low, knees bent—and backtracks the way we came. Maybe she’s planning to go around?
Thoughts jumping in a stress-induced habit that will never leave me, I try to figure out what to do, where to go. But before I can decide, the shooting ceases and a dead silence falls over the place like fog. I hold my breath and listen intently. Slowly, I peek over the edge of the cubicle. What I see freezes my bones down to the marrow, even though logic tells me I shouldn’t worry.
Rheema’s guns are trained on James as he stands between her and Elliot, staring into the barrels of her double weapons.
“Are you faster than a bullet, James?” Elliot asks in his cool British accent.
“Much faster,” James says, and with that, he blurs into nothingness, knocking away Rheema’s guns in the process. An instant later, he’s behind her, the tranquilizer gun pressed to her side. There is a zip sound. Rheema jerks, her eyes going wide. A moment later her knees go weak, and she falls to the ground, James eases her fall, depositing her gently on the floor. Why James has decided to keep that traitor alive is beyond me, but I breathe a sigh of relief, anyway.
He never takes his eyes off Elliot and watches him warily, even though he doesn’t hold a gun. Elliot has always underestimated James. He had no real idea of his speed, and it seems Rheema didn’t either. James could dodge bullets all day long. Almost. Rheema is just too cocky with her double guns to accept that.
“Who is outnumbered know?” James asks, switching guns in a barely perceptible movement, forsaking the tranquilizers for the cure. “It’s time to surrender, Elliot. Your power struggle has come to an end. It’s time you accept that.”
Elliot trembles, but it’s not fear. It’s anger. He can’t believe it has come down to this. Just moments ago, he was so sure James’s head would be delivered on a platter. He probably even looked forward to torturing me with the sight of it. Now, the tables have more than turned, and it’s his head that will be on the platter soon.
“In all those years that you stood by me, lying, didn’t you learn I’m not the surrendering kind?” Elliot asks between clenched teeth. He stands so firmly, the angles of his body so precise that it sends a shiver down my spine.
He’s not scared. Not in the least. I guess I’ve underestimated him, too. James doesn’t, though. His gray eyes are dark and full of caution.
“It’s polite to ask,” he says.
“So your plan is to shoot me with that,” he points at the gun in James’s hand, “and then what? You think one Eklyptor leader will be enough to undo our confidence?”
“No. I’m familiar enough with your kind, and its arrogant boldness. I’m more concerned with giving hope to the many humans who are still fighting. It will let them know they can bide their time. Hide for a while if they have to, just until we’re ready. It won’t be long, though.” James tweaks his wrist to call attention to his dart gun. “This works well enough. I can show you.” He takes a step forward.
Elliot doesn’t even flinch. He seems almost happy to let him approach.
A strange feeling washes over me. I take a step out of the cubicle into the middle passage. My eyes dart from James to Elliot and back again. The strange feeling grows inside me, building, building. My stomach feels as if it’s been weighted down by rocks.
“James,” I say in a whisper no one but I can hear.
He takes another step closer, gun at the ready.
I shake my head. “Don’t get close to him,” I say, finally finding my voice.
He stops and nods in my direction.
I exhale through my open mouth and aim my gun at Elliot.
“Always in the middle of things, spoiling everything.” Elliot looks at me, his face disfiguring with the purest of hatreds. “You have ruined so much. You, a snotty, American girl with no manners.”
“It’s time you learn some manners of your own.” And with that, James shoots his dart and hits the Eklyptor leader right in the middle of the chest.
Elliot Whitehouse looks down at his chest, his hand jerking to the spot. He pulls the dart out and lets it fall to the floor on top of his discarded jacket. His cuffs dangle open. I frown, realizing his diamond links are missing. My eyes search around the jacket. They’re not there. Why would he take off his cufflinks? My minds races. He put them in his pants pocket, I suddenly realize.
Elliot coughs, gasps for breaths. He eases himself to the floor, taking one knee, then another. He throws his head back and wheezes in a long breath.
James takes a knee next to him, watching him warily.
“No, James,” I remind him.
Elliot staggers forward, falling into James. I rush toward them, seized by an urgent desire to pull them apart. James holds him by the shoulders and lays him on the floor.
“It’s fine, Marci,” James says.
But my chest is too tight, too full of desperation. I’m almost there when Elliot suddenly pulls up the sleeve of his right arm, revealing an extremity that looks anything but human. With a quick burst of power, something unfolds from his forearm and shoots straight into James’s jugular. It hits, faster than the eye can see, faster than James, then recoils.
A large stinger like a scorpion’s.
“No!” I scream, still running, running, running.
Blare screams as she runs over from one side, but her presence barely registers.
“James!” I cry.
Elliot laughs on the floor, his eyes full of delight as they stare at the ceiling.
“You bastard.”
I aim and shoot at his prone shape over and over again. I’m running and shooting and watching his body jerk as bullets hit his chest, making it bloodier with each impact. The gun clicks empty before I get there. Elliot is deader than dead, but if I had more bullets, I’d empty them all into him, until there was nothing left but a flowing river of blood.
I crash to my knees and slide right behind James just as he begins to fall.
He drops into my arms, his eyes opening and closing at an alarming speed.
“I—I should have listened,” he says, then goes utterly still.
* * *
“JAMES JAMES JAMES,” his name a desperate plea from my lips.
I shake him, slap him on the face. His limbs thrash for a moment then go still. Blare falls to her knees on the other side of him. She’s saying something, but I don’t know what. Her lips move in a fast litany of words with no sounds. Her fingers check the pulse at his throat. Her face disfigures after a few seconds. She recoils, turns her face away to hide the pain.
“Not James. Not James. No no no.”
All I hear is my own voice.
All I see is the swollen, red spot at his throat, the wound through which the venom entered his body.
All I feel is impotence and crippling sorrow.
I was going to move in with him. We were going to be a family.
“James.”
I put a hand on his chest, next to the “IgNiTe and FiGhT” emblem on his jacket. Warmth seeps through his jacket and into my hand. He was just here, just here. He can’t have gone far. He can’t be dead. He can’t be! If I could just . . .
My mind races then comes to a screeching halt as a desperate idea takes hold of me. But what I’m thinking is impossible, it’s—
No! This is James. I can’t hesitate.
Giving myself no more time for uncertainty, no chance to doubt, I close my eyes and reach for my skill.
Inside. Inside, I chant inside my head.
“What are you doing?” Blare asks, her voice is but a whisper in my head, a bothersome noise I must ignore.
Inside! I want to be in his blood. I want to be his blood.
Suddenly, I’m indefinite and flowing, slowly, but flowing. He’s still here, warm and malleable. Death and its cold hand have not reached him yet. I search frantically, acting fast, becoming one with James’s body, with his blood.
If I transform into his blood, I won’t be the venom and that’s how I’ll know . . .
I’ll know what doesn’t belong.
I’ll know what must be gone.
The first traces of the poison are by the wound. I become acquainted with it, become it for just an instant. Know thy enemy. It takes but a moment to understand the structure of the evil substance. I see how its molecules bind, what makes them deadly. I see how they differ from all the life-giving, life-carrying particles that make up James’s blood.
Disgusted, I push away and become one with James’s blood once more. I’m nothing else, not even Marci. Methodically, I look for what doesn’t belong. I’m complex, made out of a million different particles. I sift through what seems like chaos but is a perfectly orchestrated miracle. Slowly, the venom stands out like splinters that must be removed, foreign objects that have no business being part of me.
I pull them out, examine them. They’re strange and vile.
You don’t belong here. I recoil and push away.
Lost inside of James, my body feels far away, a mirage that was never real. Still, I sense my left hand on James’s neck, close to his wound, while my right one moves over his prone figure, directing my energy into the right places, all the quiet corners that need to roar back to life.
I seep out of the puncture at his neck, slide down the side of his neck, flowing thickly, staining the carpet, seeping into its fibers and spreading.
The poison is everywhere, so much of it. It went into his heart and from there it spread to all his organs in just a few beats of his fierce, strong heart.
I do my best, force what I can out, but soon realize I can’t get to it fast enough. It’s too much, tiny particles, everywhere. Everywhere!
My eyes spring open. Blare is staring at me in horror. My left hand is covered in James’s blood. I’m panting, sweating. I can’t even fathom how I look.
“CPR,” I burst out. “He needs CPR.” I begin pumping his chest.
One-one-thousand.
Two-one-thousand.
Three-one-thousand.
I stop, wait for Blare to help. She just stares with wide, disbelieving eyes. With a growl of frustration, I tip James’s head back and blow air into his mouth. I do this a few times before Blare decides it might do some good. Soon, she’s helping, keeping rhythm with me.
For a moment, there’s a spark of hope in her eyes, but every passing second James fails to breathe, it dies, dimming, turning to darkness.
“C’mon, James.” I count while my hands, one on top of the other, press against his sternum, willing his heart to remember what to do, to give me back the man I love like a father. “Please, James.”
Abruptly, Blares turns away, sobs into the wall of the cubicle behind her. She’s giving up on him. She can’t do that. We can’t do that.
I take up for her, blow air into James’s mouth then compress his chest.
I won’t stop. I won’t stop.
I won’t.
James’s spring eyes open.
I stop.
“James!”
He sputters, then gasps for air. Blare whirls, tears frozen on her face, mouth agape. I sit back on the floor, trembling. I laugh and cry at the same time, chest shaking out of control.
Blare helps James as I fall apart into a pile of raw emotions I’m unable to reign in.
Elliot is dead.
James is alive.
Aydan is alive.
And this is over. Over. Over.