Burn (27 page)

“Someone call Dr. Ackerman!” I shout over my shoulder before returning my attention to him. “You crazy idiot,” I say, trying to steady my voice.

“Did we stop her?” he asks in a halting, wet whisper.

I have no idea. “
You
stopped her. She wrecked.” I nod, too, because the blood leaking from his ears reminds me that he can’t hear me.

The corners of his mouth curl up as he watches my face, but when he parts his lips, the gurgling noise he makes is almost unbearable. “Tate?”

“Yeah.” I take his hand, the one that’s twitching on the grass. I squeeze it. I’m not sure if he feels it. My eyes are burning, like the air is filled with caustic fumes. “I’m here. I’ll stay with you.”

“Scared,” he mouths, still watching my expression.

So I smile, but God, it hurts. “You’re the bravest kid I’ve ever met.”

The choked, agonized cough he lets out might be laughter, but then his face twists with pain. “Tell me,” he rasps, his chest shuddering. “Tell me it’s going to be okay.”

But then his eyes become unfocused, sliding away from me.

“It’s going to be okay,” I say, but I can barely get the words out, because his hand twitches once more before going limp in my sweaty grasp. I feel for his pulse.

And I can’t find it.

His eyes are half open. Blood is still dripping from his mouth, but his chest isn’t moving anymore. “Leo,
please,
” I whisper. “Don’t do this.”

He’s already gone. The certainty descends on me like an avalanche, burying me with a million separate impacts. I’ve only known him for a few days, but somehow, it feels like I’m losing another member of my family. A brother. I rub at my eyes, my fingers coming away wet with tears.

A humming, rumbling noise behind me snaps me back to the moment, and I turn quickly, in time to see my own death roll to a stop less than thirty feet away. It’s a dented disaster.

But the hood cannon is functional, and I’m crouched in the grass next to my dead friend, staring right down its barrel.

EIGHTEEN

I CLOSE MY EYES.

The roar of an engine makes me open them again—in time to see another Archer T-bone Ellie, right on the driver’s side. Both of the vehicles are armored, so they withstand the impact fairly well, but hers is shoved across the grass. No sooner have both vehicles skidded to a stop than Race jumps out of the third Archer, and Christina gets out of the back. Weapon drawn, Race wrenches Ellie’s door open. He shoves her to the ground and presses his gun to the back of her head.

Christina falls to her knees and throws her arms around me. She’s breathing so hard. Shaking. My head hangs. I know Leo is lying dead behind me. I know I have to face this. But I can’t make myself look at him again. And I can’t make myself look at Christina, either.

“I should never have let you come here,” I say in a dull voice. “It’s going to get you killed. Just like it got Leo killed.” My voice breaks over his name.

She only holds me tighter. “Leo did what he did to save others. He didn’t just get himself killed.” Her body shudders with a sob. “It meant something.”

“Meaning or not, he’s still dead,” I snap. “And no amount of meaning would make me feel okay if you got hurt, too.” I try to push away a vision of Christina’s body crushed like Leo’s. “I wish you’d never come here. I wish you could leave.”

She shakes her head. “Even if that were possible right now, I don’t want to hear it.”

“What do you want to hear, then?” My voice is shaking.
Because I can’t think of anything else to say.

“Tell me I’m all right,” she chokes out.

“You’re all right,” I whisper.

“Now tell me you’re all right.”

“I’m all right,” I lie.

“And tell me we’ll do this together.”

“We’ll do this together, Christina.” Despite those words, I still feel alone, carrying this collection of knowledge that feels like it should save us, failing at every turn, unable to protect the people I love.

The sob lurches out of me. “At least I don’t have to worry about Leo anymore,” I say hoarsely as tears streak my face, as I lose control completely. I’m glad he’s not here to see this. More than anything, I want to make his death count, but I don’t know how.

I am vaguely aware of Christina’s mouth against my ear, of her fingers in my hair, of her arms around me. I want to tell her I’m sorry, that I’m powerless, that I’ve failed, but I can’t even gather the syllables.

Then she takes my face in her hands. She kisses my eyes, squeezed shut to keep the world out. Her lips graze my cheeks, my temples, my mouth. She holds me steady. “If Leo was still here,” she says quietly, “he’d tell you not to give up. And he’d remind you that you’re not alone.”

“Bullshit.” I let out a raspy laugh. “If Leo were here, he’d call me a coward.” He was amazing, that skinny orphan kid, so easy to underestimate, braver than he had a right to be. My dad must have loved him. I was starting to love him, too. It feels like the whole world needs to stop and acknowledge that he’s gone. But as I raise my head, I realize it won’t.

Like it’s happening in slow motion, Race waves a bunch of guards over. They wrestle a struggling Ellie . . . who I guess isn’t really Ellie . . . into a waiting SUV. His severe face all angles, his eyes violent red, Race turns to me. Those eyes slide to Leo’s body and then flick back to my face. His mouth tightens as I shake my head.
He’s gone.
Race nods toward the SUV, inviting me to join.

I stay where I am. How can I walk away from Leo?

“I’ll stay with Leo, Tate,” Christina says quietly. “I won’t let him be alone. You need to go.”

She gives me the gentlest of pushes toward Race, away from Leo, away from everything that’s happened. I climb into the backseat of the SUV. Ellie is cuffed and trussed in the middle, with a guard on either side of her and thick plastic bags encasing her hands. She turns in her seat and looks back at me. Her eyes shine with cold curiosity.

I stare back. It occurs to me that I could reach her from here, strangle the life out of her, crush her windpipe and stop her heart, and my hands are rising from my lap when Race taps my shoulder. I pull my gaze from Ellie’s. “They’ve radioed back to the main building,” he says. “They’ll send another car to pick up the boy.” He nods in the direction of everything I’m leaving behind. “And I’m sorry,” he adds quietly.

By staying with Leo, Christina’s done me a favor. I’ve left all my heart at the crater wall, so now I’ll just be a collection of logical, emotionless thoughts, which is exactly what I need. I don’t care about the people in this vehicle. They’re moving parts in a machine, nothing soft, no nerves. Or, at least, that’s what I’ll tell myself. I breathe in and out. “Okay. And thanks.”

As we drive back to the front entrance of the main building, Race radios Angus. He says that I’m safe and breaks the news that Leo is dead. There is complete silence on the other end of the line as Race ends the call.

When we arrive, Race and I disembark and walk into the atrium ahead of the guards and the Ellie-Sicarii. Congers emerges from the administrative wing with Angus, whose normally ruddy complexion is gray. Next to him are Graham and Rufus, who have apparently been relieved of the suspicion and the handcuffs.

Angus has the scanner, and he holds it up as we approach. “It was in Ellie’s quarters, as was Ellie,” says Angus. He scrapes his knuckles along his bearded jaw. “Looks like it strangled her after it . . . did whatever it does. Her body had aged dramatically. But Brayton is still alive, though gravely ill—Dr. Ackerman is with him.”

“He won’t live much longer,” the Ellie-Sicarii comments in a quiet, calm voice.

Congers’s eyes blaze as he stares at the alien, the creature who has stolen so much from us. “Neither will you.”

It doesn’t even flinch.

“Where’s my mom?” I ask Angus. I’d expected her to be part of this.

Angus steps aside as the Sicarii is led down the hall. “She’s still in the morgue. I’ve called to tell her you’re all right. She said she needed to look at some spaceship components you dropped off?”

The Sicarii lets out a low laugh, and Race and Congers stiffen like it’s a personal insult. Graham takes in the look on his father’s face and jogs ahead to assist the guards. We follow them down the hall and into Angus’s office, where they shove the Ellie-Sicarii into a chair and cuff its wrists to the armrests. Rufus lowers himself to a chair in the corner and simply watches.

Graham helps fasten its ankles to the legs of the chair and moves back to make room for his father, who stands in front of the Sicarii. “Sorry we couldn’t let you leave just yet.”

The Sicarii arches an eyebrow. “Your posturing is amusing. By all means, continue.”

Congers’s nostrils flare, and Race steps forward. “Have you been communicating with your colleagues outside this compound?” he asks. “How much do they know about our defenses?”

“And your lack of intelligence is encouraging,” the Sicarii says.

“Why do you want the scanner?” I blurt out.

“Now that is a more interesting question.” It tilts its head, looking eerily like Brayton did this morning at breakfast—except it wasn’t Brayton; it was the creature in front of me. “I was present at the gathering when that weapon was first deployed. It was . . . impressive in both its intensity and specificity. I was the only one who escaped. I injured the one who wielded it, but he destroyed himself and the device before I could acquire either.”

Angus looks at Congers and Race. “You told us that happened hundreds of years ago.”

The Sicarii turns its smile on him. “It did.” It gives us all a speculative sort of look. “You are so lost. All of you.”

“No,” I say. “I don’t think we are. You somehow drain the telomerase from your victims—”

“We refer to them as donors,” it says.

“Donors? They let you shorten their lives willingly?”

It shrugs.

I can’t tell if the Sicarii’s nonchalance is bravado, or if it’s so old that it really doesn’t care. I think it might be the latter, because it’s clear that threats don’t impress it much. So I decide to take a different tack. “Tell us how it works.”

It seems intrigued by my curiosity. “We were driven to this out of necessity. Five hundred years ago, we were a thriving species. Much more advanced than the creatures on this planet. But our advancement came with consequences, and our world grew sick. The weather, the soil, the water. There was a worldwide famine that threatened our extinction, but we had the technology to artificially stimulate the environment into producing food once again.” Its pale blue eyes meet mine, and there is something ancient and cold behind them. “But the consequence of this irradiation was more complex than my ancestors initially realized. Infertility rates rose exponentially, and we began to age twice as quickly. We discovered that our bodies’ ability to create telomerase had been decimated. I was born among the last generation of our species, but we were all genetically damaged, destined to age quickly and die young and childless. We were a species rapidly going extinct. We tried so many things, synthesizing telomerase, injecting it, rubbing it on our skin, drinking it . . .” It sighs. “None of it worked. Until, one day, our planet was visited by an alien species from a nearby galaxy.”

Congers and Race go very still. “H2,” Race says quietly.

“You didn’t call yourselves that at the time,” it replies with a condescending smile. “But yes, they were on an exploratory mission, and they found us. We were happy to welcome them. A few weeks of experimentation was all it required for us to realize the potential of a donor species.”

“Experimentation,” Congers says in a flat voice.

Its brow furrows. “Our entire race was dying out,” it says to him. “By that time, our population was only a fraction of what it had been. What we did, we did out of necessity.”

“What you
did
was torture explorers who were there to make friendly contact!” Congers snaps.

The Sicarii ignores him, returning its attention to me. “I was part of the initial test group to take telomerase from the H2 donors. A few genetic and physical modifications were all that was required.”

It’s probably talking about those anomalous secretory glands, like the ones Mom found in the skin of George’s and Willetts’s corpses. “You somehow pull telomerase from the other body through the skin, right?”

“The process requires time and extensive physical contact, but yes. It would have been our preference to artificially siphon the required enzyme; it’s really a simple sort of chemical. But the way it works in a humanoid body is much more complicated, and our bodies could no longer create or use telomerase at all. Hence the need for a complete DNA transfer.” Which also makes them look like the person they’re leeching the telomerase from. “Unpleasant, but it allows us to prolong our own lives, though not to procreate.” For the first time, a shadow of sadness passes across the Ellie-Sicarii’s face.

“It allows you to lengthen your life—for how long?” Race asks.

It shrugs again. “I witnessed the miracle of this discovery myself, and I’m still here.”

“Are you saying you could live forever?” Angus asks, incredulous. “How long does the effect last?”

“As long as we have donors, our life spans are unlimited,” it says. “But our need for new telomerase donors has accelerated over the centuries. At first, the effects lasted for several months. Not long enough to reproduce, but long enough to thrive for a while at least. Now the telomerase from a single donor only keeps us whole for a few weeks at most. Which brings us to Earth.”

“What happened to our planet?” Graham asks suddenly, like he couldn’t hold back another second.

It stares at him, and though he’s a tall guy and the Sicarii is wearing the body of a petite young woman, it looks like it believes it could snap him in half. “Despite careful and systematic breeding, your species did not reproduce quickly enough to be a sustainable source of telomerase.”

In other words, over the last few hundred years, the Sicarii have been slowly using up the H2 population, breeding them in captivity generation by generation, and now they’re pretty much extinct. Graham’s jaw goes rigid with hatred. Congers’s hand drifts to the weapon at his belt. He draws it slowly, like he’s not fully aware he’s doing it.