Ashes of Foreverland (36 page)

They swam in the sea, the water warm and buoyant. Danny floated on his back, staring at the blue sky, looking for the gray static to eat a hole through it, to fall on them. It would take some time to get out of that habit.

No more lilacs
.

Somehow that fragrance pervaded Alessandra's world. The lack of that scent, oddly enough, kept him grounded in the physical world. Because of her, the Nowhere was no more. The children were quiet. No more dreams. No more suffering. They helped her with that.

And that eased the survivor's guilt.

Cyn swam into the deep and stayed under for a full minute. She emerged next to him and wrapped her arms around him. He thought about the diver, the one with the biomite body that went to the bottom of the ocean. He was the man that converted his body into biomites.

Like he built it.

And despite the bathwater temperature of the ocean, Danny felt a chill. He'd been missing the obvious.

That night, he found one of the invitations he'd received to the Institute, the one that lured him in to be captured. It was from Jonathan Deer.

Danny held it up to the mirror and read the last name.

And began to laugh.

A
nother door opened; this time a boy about the age of thirteen stepped out. One by one the children of the Nowhere stepped out of the fabricating tanks, their eyes wide with wonder. Born again into the physical world, their bodies just like they left them on the island or in the wilderness.

Only now they were better.

They were made of biomites, no different than flesh. Special biomites the government couldn't see. The same biomites that composed Jonathan's body, the body he fabricated himself so he could leave the body of flesh he despised. This one, the fabricated one, the body of biomites, felt more like his body than Harold Ballard's body ever did.

And Jonathan could use this body to look like anyone he wanted. Become whoever he wanted. He had morphed his face and body to look like many different people, had taken on many different names to make this day happen.

But inside, he had never changed.

The technicians went to the children, welcomed two hundred and three children to the world. Jonathan remained in place, eyes on the last tank at the end of the line, the door still cracked and unmoving. His heart thudded like falling stones.

He drifted through the crowd, not hearing, not seeing, watching only one tank, the only one not to open.

His legs had become numb. He locked his knees to keep from falling, afraid to reach out, to look inside and see the failure. Of all the fabrications, this was the hardest. This was the most difficult one to piece together.

She'd been through so much. So fragmented.

She was the one that saved the children, that kept their existence in the Nowhere bearable. She was the one, of all of them, that deserved to step out of that tank.

He swallowed and reached. The door swung open.

He fell back half a step and saw only her, standing inside, head bowed.

Candy red hair.

Damp gown stuck to her perfect skin.

Her eyes closed, he watched. He held his breath, vowed never to take another until sheâ

The eyelashes fluttered.

Big green eyes, vivid in color, sharp in contrast, looked upon the world. Big green eyes seeing it for the first time in what seemed like forever and fell on the young man in front of her.

Jonathan Deer was no longer the green-eyed stranger with the bent nose. He let his true features return, showed his true face. His hair brown, long and curly.

She stepped out and reached up. Her fingers brushed his cheek.

The world blurred through his tears. “Lucinda,” he said.

She whispered in his ear what he'd longed to hear since the day he woke on the island.

“Reed.”

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