Extinction (11 page)

Through the old Meyer’s memories, Stranger saw conflict in duties. Saw family. Saw Trevor, and the news of his death. He saw Raj and Heather and Lila and Piper.
 

Heather.
 

And Trevor.
 

Heather.
 

And Trevor.
 

Those two mattered most. And as Stranger rolled the old memories back and forth, examining what had been cut out, he began to understand. Maybe he could even comprehend it in a way Divinity couldn’t.
 

Because after all, he was in a unique position to understand. He’d
been
the Pall. He
was
what had been cut out from this man and discarded.

Heather.
 

And Trevor.

Something began to transpire that hadn’t precisely happened to Stranger before.
 

He began to get angry.
 

But not just angry. It was a righteous sort of rage. Desperate. An itch that couldn’t be scratched, because what made him angry was long since finished. There was no making things right. Only loss. Fear. Fury. And love.
 

Love.

The difference between this first copy of Meyer and Kindred — that’s what seemed to matter most.
 

Stranger looked around with mental eyes. Tried to remember all he could. Then he realized that, with some effort, he didn’t just need to
remember
; he could actually take it in. These were records, after all. They were files, in a sense, that could always be copied.

He pulled back once finished and found himself standing in his old body, boots firmly on the floor, head now decidedly out of the clouds. He felt a bit dizzy, but otherwise fine.
 

“Satisfied?”
 

“Not at all,” Stranger said.
 

The woman acted as if he’d given an affirmative, nodding as if she understood humans. But she didn’t. The woman couldn’t see the change on Stranger’s face. She couldn’t tell read his red-hot fury, or see how this time, when he said
Not at all,
he wasn’t joking.

Heather.
 

His fists in balls at his sides, fingertips turning white from the pressure.
 

And Trevor.
 

“Now,” Divinity said, “tell us why the Lightborn matter.”

Stranger opened his hands. Made himself breathe.
 

“Because what you’re doing down there right now, they’ll see right through it.”
 

“What is there to see?”
 

“That’s it’s not a plague,” Stranger said. “It’s kabuki.”

CHAPTER 12

Lila ran out with hands that looked dipped in dark red paint. She was screaming, waving them around, spattering the floors and furniture and walls. Meyer stood and rushed over, and when he reached his daughter found that she’d dripped onto her feet as well, and was leaving prints. Her chest was spattered with thick droplets. Her pants were half-covered. Her neck looked like it had broken out in new red pimples.
 

She was screaming. Shrieking. Out of her mind. And that’s when Meyer’s nose recognized the smell in the air — dank, coppery, heavy like mildew, thick and rotten like meat.
 

It wasn’t paint or dye on her hands. It was blood.
 

“What happened?” Meyer demanded, taking Lila’s wrists and eyeing her thrashing body, resisting an impatient urge to shake her back to sense. “Where are you cut? What happened?”
 

“The bathroom! The bathroom!”
 

Piper had rushed over, but already Meyer knew he wasn’t seeing things quite right. Lila’s head was dry, and a scalp wound was the only thing other than a chest shot that might bleed anywhere near this much. She looked like she’d assisted in impromptu heart surgery, massaging someone’s heart to get it beating.
 

“LILA! What happened?”
 

Behind them, something fell to the floor and detonated like a bomb. Meyer could hear shuffling and waited, still trying to calm Lila, for the others to finish their scrambling and rush over. But whatever was happening back there apparently wasn’t about Lila and all this blood. Meyer could hear Jabari, Peers, and Kindred — he thought he could hear the television Jabari had left on to watch the city, no longer muted. Why? Why now?
 

“Lila!” Piper said. “Hold still!”
 

Checking her scalp, even though there was no blood in her hair. Checking her wrists for signs of desperate escape, but the blood mostly stopped above her palms, except for spatters. It didn’t look like she’d hurt herself; it looked like she’d been in front of someone when they’d exploded.
 

“Check the bathroom, Piper.”
 

“Lila? Where are you cut?” Piper’s head ticked around, and she seemed to count, as if sure another member of their party had met their doom. But all six were accounted for, including the dog. Other mini-bunkers throughout the palace might be occupied, but even aides and employees hadn’t come down here with them.
 

“Piper! The bathroom!”
 

Piper rushed around the corner, and there was another scream. Meyer decided that his daughter would remain upright without him and that whatever was in the bathroom required his attention more than Lila did. So he went, distantly sure that both Jabari and Peers had shouted urgently at his retreating back, fear as present behind him as it was in front.
 

Piper was in the bathroom doorway. Beyond her, a horror show. Blood wasn’t coming from a person or a some macabre aftermath. It was coming from the shower head, which Lila must have turned on and then left running.
 

The tub was draining but still heavy with an inch or more of red syrup. Tiles were covered from shoulderheight down on the far side, and the curtain, which hadn’t been tucked in, was soaking from the other side. Blood from the curtain spatter had dribbled to the floor, leaving a puddle like a murder scene. There was no drain outside the tub, so the gore had already made it nearly to Piper’s feet, inching toward the threshold.
 

The sink was dotted. So was the mirror. The walls had long streaks where Lila must have brushed them with her red fingers on the way out. The room wasn’t tiny, but the spray had made its way to half the nooks and crannies. It looked like someone had walked to the middle, swallowed a stick of dynamite, and let fly.
 

“What the hell is going on, Meyer?” Piper yelled.
 

“Meyer!”
came a voice from outside. From Jabari, he thought.
“Get in here!”
 

Then Lila: “Dad!
Dad?”
 

Meyer forced himself into motion. Moving slowly across the slick tile, he made his way to the spigot and turned it, suddenly irrationally sure that the flow would refuse to shut off. But it did, and the noise of the clotting surge (coagulating in the nozzle, fanning the spray even farther out) ceased, and the shouting and yammering and general freaking out continued from all sides as Meyer stood with his hand on the switch, heaving breath, his fine suit and shirt — and, he was sure, his face — wet with gore.
 

“Done,” he said.
 

“Done?”
Piper said, as if she didn’t understand the word.
 

“MEYER!”
came Jabari’s voice.
 

There was a stomping of feet, then a slamming as if someone had struck the wall. Then Peers’s voice: “What happened?”
 

“Dad?”
 

“Meyer!”
 

“Just a goddamned second!” Then to Piper: “I have to see what’s happening out there.”
 

“What about what’s happening in here?”
 

“It’s off now, Piper. It’s not going anywhere.”
 

“THE GODDAMNED SHOWER WAS SPRAYING BLOOD!”
 

Meyer pushed past her, fighting an uncharacteristic wave of nausea. His sinuses felt packed with meat. He could feel the greasy, organic slick of blood on his neck and hands and cheek, crawling across his skin, trying to cover him, filling his world with its rotting, suffocating reek.
 

“Meyer!”
Piper shouted from behind.
 

He saw Lila, stock still and wet with more of the disgusting, stinking flow. It was easier and more useful to be annoyed than sympathetic, so he moved her aside, his eyes telling her that now wasn’t the time, blood shower or no. He’d come back. In ten seconds, after he was done with the squeakiest wheel.
 

Peers wasn’t far from Lila, looking at her with shock, somewhere between concerned and disgusted. Everyone heard her scream, but something on the TV seemed to have grabbed the others’ attention while Meyer and Piper reacted. Now Peers was seeing what had caused Lila’s commotion, but it was clear by Kindred and Jabari’s echoing stares that whatever had happened on the television must be more pressing than the screams.
 

“What is it, Peers?”
 

He didn’t answer, but Jabari said, “Meyer. Come here.”
 

She didn’t add
hurry
, but it was implied. Meyer crossed the room, dimly aware that he was leaving his own awful trail of red footprints, and faced the television.
 

On the screen were shots from cameras in the city above — fixed-position feeds. A corded phone was lying beside it, as if someone had called Jabari on the antiquated hotline.
 

“What?” Meyer said.
 

“From the Nile to the pipes,” Jabari said, “every drop of water in Ember Flats has turned to blood.”

CHAPTER 13

“Clara!”

Clara was stopped in the middle of a street filled with commotion, people running hither and yon around her as if she was invisible. Her ears were perked, listening for something she’d almost — but not quite — heard. There were so many voices in her head already; adding Nick and Ella’s wasn’t too big a deal. But this was different. Like it was someone who mattered a lot, calling her home.

Nick came and took her by the arm. Clara didn’t shake him away, but her muscles seemed to do something that baffled his grip. It was like she was a big inert dummy and he was making the mistake of grabbing her like a seven-year-old human girl.
 

“Clara!
What are you doing?”
 

Clara’s concentration broke. The summons or call or whisper or whatever it was had faded the way desert radio broadcasts always did while on the move. It was a lonely sensation in the desert and struck Clara that way now: something anchoring her to a place or a person, dissolving like mist.

She looked at Nick, his face so very urgent. Non-Lightborn citizens of Ember Flats were streaking by on both sides, many with red hands, red fronts, even red hair and faces. None of the three children knew what had happened — but Clara, at least, kept wanting to tell the frightened, crimson-covered people that what they thought was happening actually wasn’t, and that they needn’t be afraid.
 

At least not yet.
 

“I thought I heard something.” Clara was still trying to focus, hoping to pluck the voice or sound or whatever it had been from between human shouts in the panicked streets. Whatever it was, she felt desperate for more. It was like a song she couldn’t place, or a face once seen and mostly forgotten. She didn’t know what she’d heard or which slot it occupied in her mind. She only knew it was somehow meaningful or precious, and that she longed to hear it again.
 

But it was still gone, and Nick pulling for her to get out of the traffic was impeding her concentration.
 

“You didn’t hear anything?” she asked.
 

“Same thing we heard back at that house,” Nick said. “You really want to be out here with all these people after that?”