“Can’t they just get an Earthbound scientist to study the new virus and create a new vaccine?”
“No. All a creator can do is make more of the current vaccine. The one they have now took them many lifetimes to develop. Coming up with a new one would take so long that by the time it was ready, it would be worthless; there would simply be no one left. What they need is someone who’s extremely powerful to study both the virus and the old vaccine and transform the useless strands of genetic material within the current vaccine into something that can effectively fight the mutation.”
I stare at him with wide eyes. “It sounds impossible.”
“It almost is,” Daniel says. “You would need to have broken into the most top-secret vault in the Reduciata headquarters and stolen a vial of their vaccine, for starters. Then you would have to find an extremely powerful Transformist and pair her with a state-of-the-art lab including a few pieces of technology that haven’t even been invented yet.” He stares at me unblinkingly for several long seconds. “Luckily,” he says in barely more than a whisper, “I have all of those things.”
I feel cold and alone sitting on this couch and being stared at by a stranger. Ignoring any semblance of social acceptability, I rise from the couch without a word and walk over to Logan. I bury my face in his chest, and after a half second’s hesitation, he wraps his arms around me and rocks me very slowly back and forth.
Is this it? The secret I’ve literally been killed for? Something . . . something about it feels wrong. But this has got to be it.
With my ear pressed against Logan’s chest I can hear his heart; it’s pounding. I don’t know how to read him right now, and even trying to listen to Rebecca’s voice in my head isn’t helping. What I do know is that he makes me feel stronger, and that I can’t do this—any of this—without him.
Mark was right. I can save the world.
No, I can possibly save the world. No pressure, right?
After a while—when I know I’m back in control of myself—I turn and cross my arms over my chest. I lean very slightly against Logan—not enough for Daniel to notice, but enough to draw courage from him.
Goodness knows my own reserves are empty.
I try to think clearly—look at this rationally. Is it such a big deal to just help him? I mean, look how much he’s helped me. Us. That reminds me . . .
“Where did you get the painting, Daniel?”
He raises an eyebrow, and I can tell that he thinks he knows what I’m talking about but doesn’t want to say anything until he’s sure.
“The painting that awakened Logan.”
“Ah,” he says with a smile. “The painting that turned our lights off.”
I know he’s trying to bait me—to distract me—but that assertion is too much. “Why would that have anything to do with the power outage?”
“The moment of resurging is . . . quite extraordinary. While it generally accompanies both parties remembering each other, it is, in fact, a separate thing. It’s a moment of total acceptance in both Earthbounds’ minds. When that moment happens there is often a manifestation of power—our powers overflowing as they recharge, I suppose is the best way to say it. But you, Tavia, are so much stronger than any Earthbound we’ve seen in centuries. I suspect that in that moment you unconsciously created a flow of pure energy that transferred to the electrical conduits of our building, and let’s just say they were not equipped to handle such a large surge.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “Blew every fuse in the place. A price we’re most happy to pay, mind you.”
I think of the way I accidentally made my hair grow, and his explanation makes a horrendous kind of sense. But I’m not so easily put off. “The painting, Daniel. I know where it was last. How did you come to have it?”
His laugh breaks off. “I have spies everywhere, Tavia. Even in the heart of the Reduciata. I have to. How else would I have known you were captured?”
“So you took it?”
“I sent for it.”
He’s being cryptic. But do I want a full explanation in front of Logan? Do I want him to say he got it from the Reduciate boy I was in love with?
“Did you get anything else from the Reduciata? When you rescued us, I mean?” I ask, remembering for the first time that there’s something else they have that I desperately want.
“Besides the two of you, with your limbs all attached?” he asks dryly.
“I’m not saying I’m ungrateful,” I say quickly. “But, did you . . . I had a backpack, and it was—”
Before I can get the words “kind of important” out, Daniel is already shaking his head. “We barely made it out with the two of you. Besides, I suspect you can replace anything you need. Can’t you?”
“It—” I don’t dare reveal the braid’s existence. Not even after all this. “There was a journal,” I settle on. “And some files.”
His forehead wrinkles in concern. “I admit, I’m not pleased things like that fell into Reduciate hands. But I suppose if we had to make a trade, we got the better end of the bargain. Anything else important that you were carrying?”
Nothing important, nothing that can’t be replaced—except my memories, the ones contained in Sonya’s braid. The Reduciates wouldn’t know what the braid was. They probably threw it away. The thought makes me want to cry.
I change the subject instead.
“Sammi and Mark didn’t trust you,” I say. “Why not, and why should I?”
Daniel’s face crumples, and I try to hide my surprise at his reaction. “I suspect you’ll understand this better now that you’ve reunited with Logan, but contrary to what many Earthbounds think, even with the entire force of the Curatoria behind me, finding an Earthbound’s diligo is hardly an easy task.” He pauses and seems to be pushing away a grief that doesn’t match the cheerful, if businesslike, man we’ve seen thus far. “I haven’t found mine in two lifetimes,” he finally chokes out. “I don’t know where she is, how old she is, how many times she’s died.” He looks up at me, and his eyes are no longer the sparkling, friendly eyes I was surprised to see when we first walked in. They’re hollow and dull. “If we don’t stop this virus, my beautiful angel could run through all seven of her lives in a matter of months. Before this one, I lived two lifetimes alone, running the Curatoria because that’s what we agreed long ago that we should do. But I don’t want to live another four that same way, knowing that nothing but lonely centuries and endless death await me.”
My breathing is ragged, but I try to hide it—try to act like I wasn’t facing similar thoughts only days ago. “Why would that make them not trust you?”
His eyes drop and he looks guilty. “I’m afraid desperation has led me to make some choices I would not have a hundred years ago. I’ve risked lives on ventures that had a sadly low chance of success, and I’ve done it in the name of the Curatoria when in truth it was all very personal. I’m not saying I don’t have regrets, or that I was never wrong,” he adds as he once again lifts his chin and meets my eyes. “But maybe you’ll understand that in a way Sammi and Mark never could. They simply don’t comprehend the depth of love between two Earthbounds. Technically, the risks I took, the rules I broke, were for everyone’s benefit. Everyone will be facing this same dilemma in a very short amount of time. But I won’t lie to you and say I was thinking of everyone. I was only thinking of her.”
He resumes his seat on the couch and looks almost sheepish as he raises his hand to gesture at me. “And now I’ve brought you into my headquarters. An immensely powerful young Transformist who refuses to take our oaths. Many would say that is the stupidest thing of all. But Tavia, you are our last hope, and I’m tired of lying to everyone and saying there are things we can do. There is nothing we can do. There is only what you can do.”
I’m still not convinced. “How did you even know the Reduciata captured us? It seems to me that it would have been
easier to nab us from Phoenix rather than infiltrate a secret Reduciate holding facility.”
“The opposite, actually,” Daniel says, a touch sheepish.
I stare silently, waiting for him to explain himself.
He glances around him, as though expecting to see someone. “This is extremely confidential information, but I want you to be able to trust me.” He hesitates. Then, “It has taken several years, but I have a spy who lives right in the Reduciata headquarters. A compound, really. He’s not senior enough to get much of the information I wish I had, but I’m trying to be patient. He wasn’t able to find out where you had run away to, but he did discover that they knew. I made one of the hardest decisions I have ever made as the leader of the Curatoria. To sit back and do nothing. To let them do my work for me. I was all but certain they wouldn’t kill you—that they needed you as badly as I do.”
“You gambled with my life.”
“I had to,” Daniel says, and it’s the sharpest tone he has used thus far. He takes an unsteady breath. “Somehow, they knew where you would go. They knew where Logan was. I let them do my work for me, essentially. And then, as soon as I could, I sent a team and got you both out of there. I’m afraid it was the best I could do. The best we could do.”
I’m silent for long seconds, trying to sort everything out in my head. Finally, I settle on the true heart of the matter. “Would you have killed Sammi and Mark and Elizabeth yourself just to get me here?”
“Yes,” Daniel says without hesitation.
“And Logan?”
“You were useless to me without him.”
“Because my ability to transform the vaccine wouldn’t have been permanent,” I reply, not letting myself cringe at the word useless.
“Exactly.”
I pause, then with my heart in my throat I ask, “Would you have taken down an entire plane full of people to get me here?”
He pauses and then looks up at me. “I believe I would have,” he whispers.
“Then how are you any better than them?”
“Because they want you to save their elite. I want you to save everyone.”
THIRTEEN
His gaze is so fixed, so intense, I can’t look at it for very long, and I shift my focus to my shoes and simply say, “I need some time to think about it.”
“Of course you do,” Daniel says, and as though there were an audible snap, his face returns to the pleasant man who greeted us at the door. “While you are deciding, may I ask that you both go to our medical wing and have full-body scans?”
“Why would we do that?” The hairs on my arms rise at the thought of going back to what is essentially a hospital. To let them look at my brain.
“I don’t like the conditions you were kept in at the Reduciata base,” he says calmly, as though I hadn’t just snapped at him. “You have bruising on your head—Audra told me,” he says, raising his hands before I have a chance to accuse him. “Everyone here reports to me, and I’m afraid you’re just going to have to get used to my, shall we say, protective governing style.”
I bite my tongue and think of Audra. She’s okay. I don’t think I would mind her checking me out.
“I ask it of everyone,” he says. “There’s a reason our Earthbounds generally live at least into their nineties despite their human bodies. Constant medical evaluation and preventive care that only the Earthbound can give.”
It makes sense but . . .
“I got you out of there,” Daniel says, pinning me with a gaze that says, you owe me one. “The least you can do is give me the peace of mind that you were rescued unscathed. Or, at least, without permanent damage. The basic care our doctors were able to give you on the helicopter was only for obvious damage. But I’d like to be sure you both are in as perfect health as we can get you.”
He’s right. And I did hit my head pretty hard. Would it really hurt anything?
“I guess that would be fine,” I say, looking at Logan for confirmation, but he clearly doesn’t feel the same hesitation I do.
“I think it’s a good idea.” He places a hand at my waist, and I feel better. “I fell pretty hard when the explosion happened at my old house. A checkup can’t hurt, right?” he says, but this question is only for me.
“Guess not,” I say, squirming with guilt over the arson that killed his family. Not that it was my fault, but if I had only . . . that’s a road I just can’t go down.
“Great! Let’s get this over with then,” Daniel says in a surprisingly chipper tone.
“So, you have a whole medical department?” I ask as we all stand and turn toward the door.
“Where do you think all the very best doctors in the world come from?” Daniel asks, casually grabbing a set of keys from a hook on the wall and depositing them in his pocket.
“You just keep a bunch of doctors around?”
“About half the ones we have. And of course, we have an exceptionally advanced medical facility as well.”
“Why?”
Daniel looks up at me now. “Research, mostly. Studying Earthbound anatomy. Finding cures for incurable diseases. Figuring out a way to introduce these treatments to the medical world without being discovered for who we really are. A doctor with the powers of an Earthbound can do so much more than any human doctor, you understand?”
I do now.
“So, Daniel?” I pause when he turns back to look at me. “I need to know the truth. Am I a guest or a prisoner?”
He holds his hands out to the side. “Do you see any bars?”
“Do you think I’m stupid enough to believe that’s what matters?” I say in the same even tone.
He’s silent for a few seconds, and then a sheepish smile emerges. “All right, it’s only fair I be straight. We’re in a remote location. For our security. It’s not like you can walk out a front door to some main street in a town somewhere. But beyond the inherent complication of our location, yes, you are free to go at any time. But I hope you won’t.” Daniel escorts us out of his office back to the tiny entryway, and I expect the solemn woman to return to lead us upstairs, but when the elevator doors open, Daniel steps in with us.
“Oh. I—I assumed—”
“That I don’t go out among the masses?” he says with a chuckle. “I do enjoy my privacy sometimes, thus the apartment on the lowest floor, but I think it’s important that the Curatoriates see me, know me. I’m no better than them; I simply do more paperwork,” he says with a grin.
As the elevator begins to rise I realize something I missed only a minute ago.
He told me I’m free to go, but he didn’t show me the way out.
Before I can consider that thought further, the elevator doors open to the atrium. I’m instantly surprised to see that it’s not the semi-chaotic milling of people we saw only an hour ago. Everyone—and I’m pretty sure by the sheer numbers that it is everyone—is gathered around a bank of enormous flat-screen televisions that weren’t there earlier.
The bristly woman from before is wading through the crowd, and her eyes look frantic until they light upon Daniel. I glance at Logan, and we speed our steps until we’re close enough to hear the words of the reporter as the screen switches to a satellite image of . . . the ocean? I don’t see anything unusual until the man’s nearly frantic words finally worm their way into my consciousness.
“As you can see, there is nothing, nothing, where only yesterday over a million people lived. It’s hard to comprehend how something this extreme could be anything but a hoax, but a written statement from the president confirms that these satellite images are real and accurately portray what can only be described as the most devastating natural disaster in recorded history. We’re being told that the loss of life is expected to be nearly total in a radius that best estimates suggest is many thousands of miles. There’s hope that some survivors will be found among the literally tons of
wreckage and debris floating free in the water, but even if rescue vessels find them, they’re unsure they can reach them in time.”
“What happened?” Daniel asks a middle-aged woman beside him with tears streaking down her face.
“The Pacific Islands,” she says, gesturing at the television. “They’re gone.”
“Gone?” I ask. “What do you mean gone?” Surely even the most powerful Destroyer in the world couldn’t do something like this. It’s too big, too vast.
Too deadly.
“Shh,” the woman says, as the camera goes back to the reporter.
“Scientists are at a loss to explain this incident as ships filled with research technology are even now making their way across the Pacific Ocean to the place where Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, and dozens of smaller islands once were. At the moment the only speculation that has been reported is a massive settling of the tectonic plates beneath these island paradises. The north and east coasts of Australia have been put on tsunami watch and ocean wildlife is also expected to suffer from this massive disruption. Even now, no one can be certain what the secondary consequences of this incident will be.”
“This isn’t right,” I say, staring as the screen goes back to the empty ocean. “There’s nothing natural about this at all. There can’t be.”
“Reduciates?” Logan whispers.
But I shake my head. “It’s too big. It’s more than that, it’s—” But my words cut off as Daniel pushes by me, through the crowd. Toward the grand staircase. He climbs about four steps and lifts his arms in the air for attention.
“Curatoriates, let’s not panic. Obviously this is a tragedy we need to examine and research to figure out how we can help. What we can do.” He lists some names and points into the crowd. “Please join me in our computer lab; we need to find the facts they aren’t releasing to the public.” More names. “Make a rescue team. Get out there as fast as possible and do whatever you can. Whatever they need. Go.”