My teeth went on edge. My dead hand made a fist.
They can’t do that.
They did do it.
Well, fucking undo it.
I’m working on that.
Working on it?
I don’t know for sure what we’re dealing with yet. Just keep it quiet for now.
I can’t keep it quiet. It’s talking in my fucking head. Get it the fuck out.
“Cal, calm down,” he said. He put his hand on my shoulder and eased me back. “Calm down. I will. Understand?”
My heart was pounding, but my gut hurt and I felt dizzy. I nodded.
“I’ll come get you in the morning,” he said. “We’ll figure it out from there.”
I nodded again.
I don’t want to come back.
I won’t let that happen.
Promise me.
“I promise,” he said. It was easy for him to say, but I believed him. I felt a little better, knowing he had my back.
“You’ve got a few hours left before sunup,” he said. “Try to get some sleep.”
I sighed and settled back. I think the drip was kicking in again. I watched him get up and walk back to the door. My brain still buzzed, even through the morphine. When I was sure he was down the hall, I cracked the bed frame with my fist.
Sleep.
I didn’t scare easy. I wasn’t so dumb I never got scared, but I didn’t scare easy. I never was scared to die, not in Bullrich and not in Juba, but lying in that bed, I was scared. I was scared to die.
I won’t let that happen.
My heart was beating fast. I tried to slow it down, but I couldn’t.
You better not, Nico.
You better not let me come back.
Zoe Ott—Alto Do Mundo
“Zoe,” a voice said.
It was dark, and I felt weightless. My arms and legs floated in the warmth that surrounded me. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt totally relaxed. I felt totally content.
“Zoe …”
I opened my eyes just a little. Nico was there. He wore slacks and a white undershirt. His clothes and his shoelaces kind of floated around him like he was underwater. His arms were out by his sides and his body was limp, like he was suspended in space. One of his arms was normal, but the other one, the one with the tattoo, was a totally different color. The skin was gray, and I could see black veins bulging underneath.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“It’s not too late,” he said.
“Too late for what?”
He didn’t answer; he just stared at me. His shirt moved, and I could see where the gray arm joined the rest of his body. There was a clean seam there, but the black veins had started to cross it and branch under his regular skin. When he opened his mouth, I could see blood on his teeth. It began to slowly drift out from between his lips, forming a cloud. I was floating too. We were both underwater, but we could both still breathe.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked him.
“It’s not too late to save them,” he said.
“They’re already saved,” I told him. “The ship blew up. We fixed it.”
Nico shook his head slowly.
The blood coming out of his mouth was turning everything pink. It started to get darker, until he seemed to turn red in front of me.
“You can still save them.”
I opened my mouth to ask who, when his face changed. His eyes bugged out and his mouth opened wide like he was trying to scream. His body convulsed in the water, muscles standing out under the skin.
“Nico?”
Black dots appeared in the whites of his eyes and began to bleed like ink blots.
“Nico!”
All at once his face collapsed, the skin pulling tight against the skull underneath until I couldn’t recognize him anymore. I screamed as his lips peeled back to show teeth and bloody gums. His eyes bulged as the skin around them sank back into the sockets. The skin around his neck wrinkled, and the whole base of his skull melted away underneath the skin.
He reached out for me, his misshapen head bobbing on the end of what was left of his shriveled neck, as black clouds began to bleed into the water around us.
I tried to scream again, but I couldn’t breathe. When I tried to take a breath I choked, and panic pricked in my chest.
I can’t breathe….
Thrashing, I began to hear a low rumbling sound. Above me, I could hear water splashing. I opened my eyes all the way and he was gone. The blood was gone and the darkness was gone too. There was light up over my head, rippling like it was on the surface of the water. There was smooth plastic under the palms of my hands, and when I kicked, my heel thumped against something hard.
Pushing off the floor, my face broke the surface of the water and I gasped. I was sitting in a tub full of warm water. It was bubbling around me. I started coughing until water dribbled out of my mouth and nose. Where the hell was I?
Looking around, I saw I was still sitting in the hot tub where Penny and I were hanging out the night before. There were empty bottles and glasses sitting on the marble edge of it. I held up my hands and saw that they were wrinkled like prunes.
I must have passed out. I’d passed out and slid underwater. How long had I been down there? I could have drowned.
“What was that?” I gasped. “What the hell was that?” I tried to stand, but the heat had me woozy. It took a minute for me to get myself up onto the edge. The marble was cold on my butt as I swiveled my legs out and put my feet down on the floor.
I slipped and almost fell, but I managed to grab the sink in time. My body felt like it weighed a ton. In the mirror, I saw that my face was dark red.
When I got my balance back, I let go of the sink and peeled off my bathing suit. I tossed it on the floor and took one of the big, white robes off the hook on the bathroom door. It was cool and soft when I wrapped it around myself.
I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. In the living room, I could hear Penny snoring on the couch. My stomach turned when the cool air hit me, and my hands started to shake a little. I ducked back into the bathroom and found an open flask that sloshed when I shook it. I tipped it back and swallowed until no more came out. It burned going down, and my stomach rolled, but it didn’t reject it. After a minute, it calmed down and I started to feel a little better, but I couldn’t get the image of Nico’s deformed head out of my mind.
What was that? We fixed this. We won.
The TV in the living room was on, but Penny was passed out, still in her bathing suit. I tossed a blanket over her and plodded off to the computer room, where the database was still up on the computer. The shades were drawn, and the lines of light around them were gray. I pulled up the chair and fell into it.
I brought up the database model and stared at it. Nothing looked any different, but it was hard to tell. The huge fractal shape looked the same, and the big dark spot in the middle was still there. The bright star still sat on the rim. Did it not work?
I tried to remember everything Penny had said the night before, but it was fuzzy. From what I could piece together, the ship they kept talking about blew up before it got to shore. Stopping the people on the ship was important. It was so important, they’d sacrificed that woman, the mean one from the elevator …element two, they called her. But that’s what she was for, wasn’t it? Hadn’t Penny said that?
There was a bottle sitting on the desktop, and I grabbed it. I took a swig from it and sighed. My throat ached and my eyes watered.
I brought up the data miner and punched in NICO and REVIVOR. That got a bunch of hits. My hand shook as I called some out on the screen at random and skimmed the passages:
Element Three will be immune to phasing, similar to a revivor, though still alive….