CHAPTER SEVEN

“THESE BLACK SMUDGES ARE fires.” Dr. Petrosian jabbed his finger at a single screen among a bank of a dozen, all displaying satellite imagery. “You know what for?”

I shook my head. “These are all real time? How are you—?”

“You never could focus.” He jabbed at the screen again, this time looking toward Evie for an answer.

“Burning oil derricks?” she offered.

“Hmmm. Good guess, but no. They’re funeral pyres—adkhala abadan—the ceremony of the turning. Count them.”

I answered without bothering to return my gaze to the screen being discussed. “Twenty-three.”

Petrosian paused long enough to confirm my count. “Right.” He fumbled briefly before continuing his lecture. “That’s only one tribe. Over the last month, I’ve counted 16,348. And the number is increasing exponentially.”

“Doctor, I’m truly impressed by your operation here, but I fail to see—”

“Texicas rednecks, I swear. Do you even know what the turning is?”

Evie answered before I could think of a glib response. “Tell us, Uncle Grisha.”

He took a deep breath, proceeding as if schooling children. “As those infected with the twitch begin to turn, their families perform a ceremony transitioning them from one life to the next. To be chosen to serve the desert god is viewed as a solemn blessing. The twitch is the visible sign of that blessing—the kiss of the god.

Evie pointed again at the screen. “Each of those fires represents a new twitcher?”

Petrosian nodded. “Technically, only the young men. Women and old men are killed as unworthy offerings.”

I swallowed, the old man having gained my full attention. “He’s building an army.”

“Oh, he’s always had an army. This is an invasion, a swarm, a plague soon to cover the face of the earth.”

We fell quiet for nearly a minute. Finally, Evie pointed at another screen in grayscale. It was the largest in the room. “What’s this?”

“That, my dear, is the entirety of the AOZ.”

“But it’s just—”

“A singular sandstorm sustained for over one hundred years.” Petrosian pointed at me, still talking to Evie. “That’s where your father wants to go fight a swarm of twitchers large enough to subdue the planet. And I’m the crazy one.”

“This is why I need your help—for the big picture.”

Petrosian shook his head. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told your father twenty-six years ago. No one who enters the AOZ ever comes out. No one except Rodchenko and his twitchers.”

“No one like me has ever tried.”

“Right.” Petrosian eyed me suspiciously. “Fight fire with fire.”

“More like fight a candle with napalm.”

Petrosian snorted. “Explain.”

“I’ll do you one better.” I plunged into the current of my mind. Finding the right genetic switches, I grew the hair on my head and face several inches in a split second, throwing in a streak of red for kicks.

Evie jerked. “Dad, for the love of Leone, cut it out with the hair.”

Petrosian remained grim.

“I discovered the lost gene. It unleashes the full potential of the twitch—”

“Don’t tell me you gave the desert god immortality.”

“I—”

Petrosian shook his head.

“That’s why you need to help me stop him—before it’s too late.”

“Then it’s truly over. You cooked us all, and now you want to pull out the fork?” He staggered out of the room, his head in his hands.

“Uncle Grisha.” Evie pursued him.

“There’s no point,” Petrosian continued to babble to himself. “I can’t keep my head in the sand for a thousand years. I built a life raft, dammit, not a time capsule. Five years, maybe ten—no problem—let the ravaging hordes run their course, but now?”

I hurried to keep up with them. “Grish, it’s not hopeless. There’s a plan.”

He ignored me, ducking into the kitchen for a refill of coffee. Trudging to a room that seemed to function as his private quarters, he sat on a small couch. “We can live here safely for a few decades, the rest of my natural life anyway. Eventually maintenance to the main systems will require surfacing. It’s possible you and the girl would remain immune to whatever mutations occur over that span.”

“Dr. Petrosian!” I yelled. “You’re not listening.”

Evie gave me the stink eye as she sat on the couch next to the babbling old man and put a hand on his shoulder.

He flinched, but he didn’t recoil.

“Uncle Grisha, there is another way to preserve the future of humanity.”

His voice became soft and sad, his manic energy draining from him. “Everything is stacked against us, even evolution.” He closed his eyes and shook as a subtle wave of spasms coursed through him.

Evie and I exchanged puzzled looks.

“It’s time to remove the dealer. Get me to Oleg, and I’ll do the rest. I promise. Grish.” I paused until he met my gaze.

He did so with a new steely resolve, as if a switch had flipped.

“It’s time to pick up where we left off twenty-six years ago.”

“Finish the score,” he nodded. “I should have died then anyway.”