Dying Light (20 page)

Springs in the mattress
poke through the thin cot, causing pain in my side.
Pain
I understand. That
people are mostly assholes, I understand. But the rest—?

“
Why twelve?” I’m not sure
why I latch onto that question of all questions. “There could be
twenty or a hundred partis. Everyone with NRD could have their own
funky power, but there’s twelve. Why?”

Gabriel sits on the bed. His suit
brushes against my leg and surprises me. I reach out and touch his
arm, finding it solid. The cot even groans under his weight. I
slide my hand from his arm to his wings, and gasp. They’re real. It
feels like I’m petting a bird, the feathers soft except for the
small ridges bisecting the center. A scent of rain overtakes the
room. I search his face, waiting for him to tell me to stop. After
all, touching someone’s wings seems incredibly intimate. He says
nothing, his green eyes wide and watching. His jaw is covered in
flesh, pink enough that it could actually have blood and bone under
there.

I pull my hand away. “So why
twelve?”

“
It is difficult to
explain, given your limited comprehension of the
universe.”

I frown.
“
Try
.”

“
Creation,” he begins. His
gaze rolls up to the ceiling, and then falls to his hands clutching
his knees. “Creation is also destruction, it is a force. It is an
energy.”

“
Still with you.” I sit up
on my elbows.

“
It is difficult to
channel such force into an organism as limited as a human being.
Each of you are born with a spark of it, the power that roots you
eternally to the universe, but to make the universe anew, you must
house more.”

“
The Big Bang?” I remember
Caldwell’s words. “The creation slash destruction force goes
through a person and boom?” I make an exploding motion with my
hands. “Well what if I don’t want the universe to go
boom?”

“
That is your
choice.”

“
But that doesn’t explain
the twelve partis or NRD.”

Gabriel’s eyes fall to his hands
again. “When something so large tries to move into such a small
space, it must often be broken into pieces, to be reassembled on
the other side.”

Gabriel shows me a simplistic image.
An orange, sliced several ways, is fed through a tiny hole that the
whole orange couldn’t have fit through. “So I have a slice of the
orange, two actually,” I tell him. “And there’s twelve slices of
this orange.”

“
Yes.” He smiles,
seemingly pleased that I’m not a total moron. “And the orange must
be made whole again.”

“
So it can explode and
juice the world.”

He frowns.

“
You chose the orange
metaphor, not me. But what about NRD? Why does it exist? Did you
really choose me because I wanted to die?”

He considers my face for another long
moment. I feel an urge to squirm. His tie fades from black to
green, tinged with red. He never has explained the reason for the
mood tie. I could ask about it now, but I feel like it would
distract him from the more important questions.

At last, he speaks again. “Energy
exchange is complex. In this case, like attracts like. You received
a piece of the orange, because in a way, you are very much like the
orange. Some humans desire only to live, to be part of creation. In
others, the desire to live is as strong as the desire to destroy.
The desire to create is equal to the desire to destroy. Both must
be present.”

His tie deepens to midnight
blue.

“
Humans believe they have
NRD because the brain, upon birth, gave them this condition.
However, this is not true.”

I sit up straighter.
“Whoa,
what
? Say
that again.”

“
Humans use science to
justify the existence of NRD. They manipulate the facts to fit the
theory. NRD occurs at death, not birth.”

That would explain why researchers
have yet to create a reliable test for NRD that would be
administered at birth.

“
But we have blood types
and magnetite and all the reasons for NRD. It’s
science.”

“
It is your limited
comprehension of a much larger force. You overlook several
factors.”

I collapse onto the cot, letting the
circulation return to my hand. “Here you go, calling us stupid
again. I’m not dumb. I understand what you’re saying.”

He blinks at me.

I throw up my hands. “There’s a giant
orange and you like, cut it up and shoved the pieces through the
tiny door known as Earth, and now you’re like trying to get the
monkeys who got a slice to kill each other and put the orange back
together again, but once we do, the orange is probably going to
blow up in our faces. Right?”

“
Things must be allowed to
die, so they may be born again. This planet is dying. Mankind is at
the end of its era. All species have their time.”

“
And what does that make
you guys—the angels? The compassionate hospice nurse?”

His eyes darken. “We are the midwives
of the new world.”

Jesse

I
must’ve fallen asleep. I wake, disoriented by the sound of
footfalls. For a moment, I think I’m back in Jeremiah’s compound,
Tate Tower. Some drill is being run or some unit is being
dispatched, and that’s the reason for all the chaos, all the
running and screaming.

But as I go to stand up, a sharp tug
yanks at my wrist. The shackle. The unfamiliar room. The white
tiles beneath my shoes, which is different from the soft gray
carpet of my room back in Tate Tower.

Caldwell still has me. And he must be
close, because Gabriel is nowhere to be seen.

The door swings inward and Caldwell
steps into the room and closes the door after him.

“
Did you just
walk
in here?” I ask,
baffled.

“
Sometimes I like to see
what happens in-between.” He yanks at the bottom of his suit as if
it has ridden up too high.

An explosion rocks the church and
plaster rains down from the ceiling.

“
They never give up, do
they?” he asks, with an air of agitation.

“
Who?”

“
Your friends,” he
says.

My heart leaps. But before I can fully
appreciate the sentiment of their rescue mission, I realize that
Ally is trying to save me. Again.

If I survive this,
I think,
I’ll have to
follow Ally everywhere. She can’t risk her life trying to save me
if I never leave her side. Nikki will
love
that.

“
Why are you smiling?”
Caldwell says. “I’m going to kill them.”

My shield brightens, shimmering to
life around me. It extends out far enough that it knocks Caldwell
back, his tie askew.

“
Thanks for reminding me
that you’re a fucking monster.” The shield glows brighter, and he
steps back, connecting with the wall behind him.

“
I need to unlock your
cuff. We’re leaving.”

“
My friends are coming,” I
say. “They’ll unlock it. Or at the very least, they’ll saw this
off, and I’ll have this cool retro bracelet. Very
Château d'If
.”

“
Do you understand what he
wants you for?”

An explosion rocks the
building
,
and he
cuts his eyes to the right. He turns his head as if he is actually
following something, and then I remember he has Liza’s vision. He
can see through anything. These walls and so called barriers are
nothing for him.

“
I should’ve left you in
The Needle.” His eyes widen at the invisible threat that is
presumably closer than before. He takes a half step away from the
door.

“
If I leave you here, he
will use you, manipulate you far worse than I ever
will.”

“
Who are you talking
about?”

“
Tate.”

“
Jeremiah?” A wave of
confusion washes over me. Did Ally go back to him? No. That seems
less likely than the fact that he simply tracked me himself and is
trying to
reacquire
me. Reacquire. Ugh. I’ve heard him use that word in the past
for people and objects that we were sent in to retrieve.

“
Who did you think I meant
by
friends
?”

Relief washes over
me.
Not Ally. Ally.

“
So you’re going to kill
Jeremiah?” I shrug, the chain rattling at my side.
“Okay.”

Caldwell gives me a curious
look.

“
He’s almost as bad as
you,” I tell him. “He’s got all these resources, but he didn’t
even
try
to save
Brinkley.”

“
Don’t leave with him or
you’ll regret it,” Caldwell threatens.

“
Or what? He’ll torture
me? Kill my friends? Kidnap my dog? Abandon me and have a whole
second family with some
other
daughter? Oh wait, no. That was all
you
.”

Caldwell growls his frustration and
disappears.

I exhale a long breath.
The church rocks again with another explosion somewhere, followed
by the
pat-tat-pat-tat
of guns going off. It never ceases to amaze me how willing
Jeremiah’s people are to fight out in the open like this. After
seeing how Caldwell does crowd control, I know why he isn’t afraid.
He’ll mind-wipe everyone back to obliviousness. Jeremiah doesn’t
have any such talents that I know of, yet clearly he’s got money.
Money must be its own superpower.

The door to my room is thrown open and
there stands Jeremiah, sweater vest and all.

“
Jesse,” he says, sighing
my name. He adjusts his glasses. “Thank god, you’re all
right.”

“
My hero,” I say with
thick sarcasm. “Get me the hell out of here.”

“
You’ll have to lower your
shield.”

“
Ha,
no
. Not happening.”

“
But I came here to save
you. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“
Save it. If I had a
dollar for every time some dude said that to me, I’d be
so
rich right
now.”

“
How am I supposed to get
you out of the building without you lowering your
shield?”

Good question.

I look down at my wrist and wonder if
I can expose just the chain. It requires a little more control than
I think I have over my shield. Threatened equals shield up. Fear
equals bigger, brighter shield.

“
I’ll try to expose just
the chain,” I tell him.

Jeremiah looks like he might refuse
me. His gaze is steady and unforgiving, but I don’t waver. I am
tired of being lied to and misled. I’m tired of the men around me
telling me what I should do with my own power.

Jeremiah issues an order for a bolt
cutter and someone barks compliance through the speaker. A wave of
heat rolls from the hall behind Jeremiah, along with the distinct
scent of something burning.

“
Where’s Alice and
Nicole?” he asks.

“
How am I supposed to
know? I’ve been catching up with dear ol’ dad.”

“
You were foolish to go
with him. You have nothing to show for it.”

The sharp truth of the assessment
pisses me off. I don’t have Winston, and Jason almost hurt Ally and
Gloria.

“
Fuck you. I have a fancy
new healing power.”

“
When will you figure out
that you have to work with people in order to achieve your
goal?”

A man appears with the bolt cutter.
“Brinkley tried to work alone, and look where it got
him.”

“
You don’t know anything
about him.” My temper flares and my shield gets bigger, knocking
Jeremiah back out of the room. The door slams shut after him, and
the terrified minion with the bolt cutter is pressed against the
wall as if I intend to crush him.

My shield shrinks as the man starts
yelling.

“
Sorry, sorry.” I throw my
palms out in apology. “I wasn’t mad at you.”

He runs his hands over his body to
make sure it’s all there. Then he picks up the cutters he dropped.
“May I?”

“
Yes, please.” I drop the
entire shield long enough for him to cut the chain quite close to
my wrist.

Jeremiah throws the door open again
and the shield goes back on, bumping the man with the
cutter.

“
Thank you,” I tell him.
“Sorry about squishing you.”

“
Follow me. I have a
helicopter waiting.” Jeremiah exits the room, the minion with the
cutter lingers behind to take up the rear.

I consider my options. I can refuse to
go with Jeremiah. He did sedate me and he wanted me to kill Jason
as badly as Caldwell did. There’s got to be some horrible reason
for that. I should slip away and find Ally and Gloria on my
own.