THE SKY WAS black with clouds and white with flashes of lightning. The bloody face of the Moon stole glimpses of the land below whenever the wind ripped holes in the outline of the storm, keeping watch over it all.
Far below, in a windmill, two girls—both old enough to be women now, if they wanted to be, but clinging with all their might to the shattered shreds of their childhoods, which had been torn away from them too soon—arrayed a body on a slab. He had been a big man, before death made him smaller. His head was attached to his body by clever, secure stitches made of stretched tendon, intended to keep it there long enough for him to heal. His arms and legs were strapped down. Cables ran from every part of his body to a vast lightning rod, which was connected in turn to a generator powerful enough to run a city.
Jack stepped up next to the slab, reaching over to gently, tenderly brush his hair away from his eyes.
“I lied to Jill,” she said. “I told her you weren’t my father. But you are. You’re the man who raised me. You taught me what it means to be a scientist. You taught me what it means to be a person when I could have been a monster so easily. Wake up. For me. Just this once, don’t be stubborn, don’t be contrary, and wake up.”
She kissed his forehead before turning to Alexis.
“It’s time,” she said. “Start the crank.”
Alexis nodded and began turning the vast crank that would open the roof. The two halves of the door slid smoothly open, revealing the cloud-dark sky. Jack flung first one switch, and then another, and another, as the generators engaged, as the air grew thick with ozone and the various machines began to spark and flash.
Lightning lashed down from the heavens, slamming into the lightning rod, filling the windmill with electric light. Jack laughed, high and bright and for one single moment overjoyed, standing in her element and utterly at peace with herself. Alexis smiled, eyes half-closed against the glare.
The lightning faded. Alexis slowly stopped cranking. Jack flipped the switches again, this time pulling them down, cutting off the power.
“Well?” asked Alexis. “Did it work?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack. “Dr. Bleak?”
On the slab, the dead man—not so dead any longer—opened his eyes.