pernicious sort.
Oh I knew this place.
If I had died on Keeper’s Island, if Zach had truly put a knife in my heart, then I had gone to the afterlife I so richly deserved. If any location in the whole galaxy could qualify as Hell, it was this place: my own personal version of fire and brimstone, my Tartarus—the ore extraction and processing refinery in orbit around Mars that served as prison, gulag and concentration camp for countless thousands of humans, including my mother and father, who had died here within six months of their imprisonment.
I was inside Deimos Prison.
How the hell did I end up on Deimos?
Pressure in my ears, a feeling like dunking my head underwater, and some noise or motion or the way that the glittering iron dust settled on the floor made me irrationally certain that Merlin would be the next person to walk through the door.
He was.
I stared at my handler, trying to decide whether or not he could be a hallucination.
He nodded at me as if acknowledging the strangeness of it all, a look of relief coming over his features. “Thank God. I was worried you weren’t going to come back.” He was tired and haggard from lack of sleep and arguing, bags under his eyes, strain in his voice. He was beautiful, so beautiful I could only stare at first, caught up in the way his skin drank in the light and the endless depths of his eyes, as if they held all the stars and galaxies that ever were or ever would be spinning in endless pirouettes. His beauty made me want to weep.
“Weaver?” His eyebrows drew together, his expression worried for me. I saw love in those eyes; not lust or desire for possession but a pure, sweet joy, blazing bright as a star.
Words wouldn’t come. Language seemed so unwieldy. It took every ounce of control not to reach out to him telepathically. Instead I took his hand, pulling him back out the open door into the space station hallway, which was all chaos and cacophony, men and women running to and fro, the smell of soot and fire smoke like a dagger to the nose. I danced over bodies and ducked over limbs, understanding without knowing how just when I needed to dodge or weave.
The invisible tide retreated and I was left stranded again on the island of meaning. I stumbled over a guard with his head in his hands, his arm bleeding from a shiv wound, looked around me and saw the clear evidence of riots, guards in retreat, prisoners left to fend for themselves, less an evacuation than every man and woman running for the life rafts to escape a decompressing ship. Life support would not hold forever.
“Ripples,” I murmured, looking around me with wild, wide eyes.
“Weaver,” Merlin said as he squeezed my hand, “What’s going on?”
“The effect comes in waves,” I repeated. “Ripples in synchronization, crossing each other, negating and amplifying. Contraction and expansion.”
“I don’t understand. What happened to you on Keeper’s Island?”
I shook my head. I was losing it again. The tide was coming back in. I knew I couldn’t function like this. Something had to be done. I knocked a cup of coffee out of a security officer’s hand, understanding without knowing how that I had just saved her life. There was nothing I could do for her partner. She swore at me and Merlin shouted apologies back as I began to run. The air was hazy and thick with all the consequences that ever could be, my mind scattering, fracturing, racing along in a thousand different directions while I ran headlong to a single inevitable result.
I ran until I reached the docks, looking out the window towards the center of the station ring, at the few ships that had not already abandoned their posts, to the Nova-class carrier that was not painted in Sarcodinay colors but all midnight black, the twinkling lights of its hull a mimic of the stars. I stopped.
I heard Merlin’s gasping next to me and I flashed to memories of Duncan, out of breath after an afternoon’s workout, the same golden glow about his soul. The world pulsed around me and I was exhaling as someone else inhaled. I felt the rhythm of that ebb and flow and in the moment of sanity between crest and base I realized that I had felt this same cadence all my life the same way I didn’t think about my pulse but it was always there.
I opened the door to the airlock tunnel at the same time that the door on the far side opened and since I was, in that moment, fully me, it was only logical that I knew that the man who appeared down the long hall would be tan-skinned, blond-haired and blue-eyed. Well named too, since Vanessa had been quite right and he did indeed have the face of an angel.
[Gabriel/Mallory]
He stared at me. I was still easily fifty meters away, but I could see that he was holding onto the railing to support himself, as if he’d forgotten how to walk. He looked staggered, drunk. He touched my mind. I touched his.
[How you see the world—how can you stand it?]
[It’s all I’ve ever known.]
He exhaled; I inhaled. The universe expanded or contracted, depending on one’s point of view. We both flinched. It was stronger. I felt like we were two magnets being held together positive to positive. Any moment we would be sent hurtling away from each other and I wondered if we would rip the fabric of space/time when we did. The air shimmered between us. The universe held its breath.
[Can we?/How do we?/I’m not sure—No/Maybe/Can’t/Yes]
Gabriel staggered back on board the ship and the airlock doors on his end began to close. He was shouting and I was shouting and I was grabbing Merlin and dragging him back from the hall opening and punching the emergency doors closed and the air was full of crackling energy and ozone as I shoved us both prone behind a cargo lift full of ore crates as the large black ship made a sudden, unplanned jump to hyperspace.
There was quiet. My perceptions were my own.
The universe and I exhaled together.
I raised myself up on my elbows and stared out the floor-length windows to the spot where the black Nova-class had made its emergency jump. I felt Merlin’s warmth next to me and his arm moving around me in a gesture of comfort when I realized that my cheeks were wet from tears. I lowered my head to his shoulder and let the sobs wrack through me. My brother. After all these years of being alone, adrift, I had a brother—a brother I could never touch, never approach. Zaladin had been right: I could never seek him out.
It wasn’t safe.
“What am I?” I whispered through the tears, certain as I had ever been certain of anything that no amount of Sarcodinay genetics could explain what had just happened.
Merlin reached inside his coat and handed me a handkerchief. “I don’t know,” he said. “Something new. Which is why you may be the only person out there who can fix this.”
I looked at him and I must have had the question in my eyes. He smiled a sad, quiet smile. “It’s not just what you do. It’s what you are.”
“And what is that?”
He hopped up to his feet and offered me a hand. “Would it be terribly sentimental if I said ‘hope’?”
I sniffed and rubbed my nose. “Yes. Sappy, sentimental, and bathetic.”
“Oh dear. I’d best not say that then. Let’s head back to Elevator Control, shall we? I have someone there I think you’ll very much like to meet. Plus, baked goods. I made brownies. Brownies are delicious.”
I nodded. “Is Vanessa okay?”
Merlin nodded. “She’s fine. Worried about you of course, but fine.”
That left one question, the one question I knew I couldn’t delay. “Did he kill Shana?”
Merlin hesitated.
“He did, didn’t he? She said he would.”
“Yes. She’s dead.”
When the vision came this time, I was ready for it.
ggg
“We could start a war?” Kaj-Shae Threllis suggests. “What of these three countries? The United States, Russia and China? All three have nuclear-based explosive capability. They could do a lot of damage.”
I look up from the files I’ve been perusing. Threllis hadn’t been my first choice for an assistant, but he has his uses. Plus, he is easy to manipulate, whi
ch is always a bonus. “I don’t want them to be in the middle of a military response when we arrive, Threllis. And nuclear weapons are so indiscriminate.”
He picks up a film. “What about this problem they have with reanimated dead tissue?”
I stare at him. “What?”
Threllis flips the film towards me. I see what is on it and sigh, shaking my head. “No, Threllis. That’s a lie.”
“A lie?” He looks at the page. “Zombies are a lie?”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s one of humanity’s little quirks. They tell each other lies as a form of entertainment. It’s called ‘fiction.’ Zombies don’t really exist.”
“I...” He stares down. “But there’s so much evidence. Books, vids...”
“Fiction.” I repeat again. “Lies. Remember that. We’re dealing with a culture that lies for fun.”
He looks shocked, disgusted, deeply upset. “What horrible creatures...”
I look over his films on zombie ‘movies’ and books, smile as I pick one up. “I don’t think zombies are the answer, but ironically, they’re not far off.”
He raises an eyebrow. “They’re not?”
“Find the truth in the lies. Zombies aren’t real. But disease? Oh, diseases are real. And clearly, they’re terrified of the idea of an epidemic beyond their ability to control.” I lean forward. “Since they want it so badly, let’s give it to them.”
SIXTEEN.Jester
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Campbell said as he met us at the door, his face so full of surprise that I might have just thrown