Ultraviolet (17 page)

“You’re dying,” Six said suddenly. She jerked and turned to stare at him. The child’s eyes were clear and without guile as he reached up and brushed his fingers over her eyelids inquisitively. “I can see it.”

Violet swallowed and returned her gaze to the windshield, tilting her head to get out of range of his questing fingers. Outside it was just beginning to rain; the weather report said the precipitation would get heavier as the night wore on, and soon the fireworks would be chased away by the moisture. “Yeah,” she said hoarsely. “Yeah. I’m . . . winding down. I can feel it.” She shrugged again, trying desperately to appear nonchalant, like this was the last thing in the world that bothered her . . . or at least that she had accepted it. She had, right? After all, it wasn’t like she could
do
anything to stop or stall the inevitable, even with Six at her side. Whatever secrets were in his blood probably wouldn’t be revealed in time to do her any good. Stuff like that took years to figure out. She didn’t even have days. “By this time tomorrow.” Violet nodded thoughtfully, then pressed her fingers against her temple. She could hear her heart beating rapidly, that accelerated Hemophage metabolism. It was killing her. “I don’t imagine there’ll be much left.”

The boy was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he finally said, and he sounded like he meant it.

They looked at each other for a long moment, then Violet raised her left hand and spread her fingers. There was still enough light from the lessening fireworks display to illuminate the beautiful Indo-Narai script tattoos that twined around three of the fingers. “Do you read Thaihindi script?”

Six shook his head and peered quizzically at the writing. Obligingly Violet ticked off each one and folded it back into a fist as she recited its meaning. “Comrade,” she told him. “Lover. Wife.” She stopped with only her blank forefinger extended. “This one was going to say Mother,” she said quietly. Was her voice shaking? She hoped not. “But I never got that far. I got infected and all that became . . . impossible.”

The boy’s gaze was frank and liquid, blatantly melancholy for her. It was heartbreaking to realize that the only person in the world who truly sympathized with her was a child who had never experienced—and never would—all the things she had lost in her life. “So when you’re gone,” he said softly, “there really will be nothing left of you.”

That went beyond even what she expected, and Violet didn’t know what to say to that. How could this boy, raised in the emotionally cold and sterile prison of a laboratory, even understand the concept of death? Of nonexistence? Or maybe it was
because
of his upbringing that he understood it better than most adults. Eventually Violet couldn’t stop the dark smile that stretched across her mouth. “My last act was going to be to walk into the ArchMinistry of Medical Policy,” she told him, “the very
soul
of all this rot, and blow it to pieces with a bomb strapped to my chest.”

Six tilted his head and Violet could see his eyes. They were sparkling, full of questions and the reflection of the rain and the last of the fireworks. “But now you won’t.”

A chill rippled across her skin, raising the fine hairs on her arms and neck. She let a minute pass, then two, then squared her shoulders. “Oh, yes—I will.” She sucked in a breath. “Nerva may have given up, but I haven’t. Before I leave it, I’m going to take this world back to what it was. At dawn I’m going to leave you here with Garth, and I’m going to walk into that building—guards or not—and before they can gun me down, I’m going to
destroy
it.” Violet glanced at the boy and nodded slightly. “That’s what’s going to be left of
me.
”

Me, she thought, and her gaze wandered back to the blackness of the night sky overhead.

And, just for a moment, Violet closed her eyes . . . and remembered.

She is maybe twenty pounds heavier, and her hair is different—cut differently, a different shade, a whole other her. Her white nurse’s uniform is starched and bright white, smart-looking even if it has gotten a bit on the snug side across the breasts and hips because of certain recent circumstances. It is those exact same circumstances that she’s going to discuss with the doctor just before she goes on her rounds and passes out the doses of medicine carefully measured out in the syringes arranged on her tray. She has a smile on her lips and a bounce in her step, all those things now lost over the course of time’s passage and the way her life has changed.

She turns the corner and ducks into the hospital laboratory. The man she’s come to see is carefully going over a stack of X-ray films spread out on one of the light tables. His dark brow furrows in concentration as he compares one to another, then quickly scribbles notes on a clipboard to his right. Despite her best efforts at sneaking up on him, he looks up and catches her.

“Doctor,” she says as seriously as she can manage. “It’s been decided.” He stands as she approaches him. His head tilts curiously and a small smile, hardly noticeable to the unaccustomed eye, starts at one corner of his mouth. She has never seen him look so handsome. “I’m getting a new tattoo.” Standing in front of him, she holds up her hand and her splayed fingers reveal the Indo-Narai script with which he’s already so familiar. The fluorescent lights overhead make the small diamond ring on her third finger sparkle cheerfully above the words—

Comrade

Lover

Wife.

“Here,” she says softly and holds up her forefinger.

His eyes widen as the realization sinks in that she’s talking about the word “Mother,” and that means she’s going to have a baby. His smile is so filled with happiness it’s dazzling. “Oh, my God, Violet—” He can’t finish, so instead of talking, he entwines his own tattooed fingers around hers and pulls her to him for a sweet, sweet kiss—

—that breaks abruptly apart when the wild-eyed man barges into the lab and skids to a stop just a few feet away.

The intruder is tall and anemic-looking—dark eyes squinting at the lights from a bone-white face fed by ramped-up adrenaline. Violet’s instinctive impression is that he’s on drugs, an almost overdose of cocaine, PCP, or crack—no matter what the police do, they can’t seem to clean that stuff off the streets. Even so, there’s something odd about him that she can’t put her finger on, a sense of strength, energy, and danger, of clarity, that she’s never seen in the hundreds of addicts she’s seen come through the emergency room.

“One suggestion,” he snarls at her and her husband. “Stay the fuck out of my way!”

She steps back automatically as he round-shoulders his way farther into the room. His watery gaze scans the lab, then stops on the oversized stainless-steel refrigerator against the wall. A red-on-white sign warns
CAUTION: BLOOD PRODUCTS
, but this seems to be exactly what the guy is looking for. Without hesitating, he strides toward it.

And just as unhesitatingly, Violet’s husband bodily steps into the man’s path. “Hey,” he snaps. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

It happens so fast—one second her husband is speaking, the next he’s slammed against the refrigerator and the intruder’s fingers—only one-handed—are pressed so deeply into his windpipe that Violet can’t even see the attacker’s fingernails. Her husband chokes and fights, clawing at the grip on his throat. “Violet!” he manages and gestures wildly at the tray of syringes she’s set aside on the counter. “Tranq—tranquilizer!” The word seems to infuriate his attacker, who brings up his other hand and folds it around her husband’s neck, cutting off the rest of his air. Violet is paralyzed with fear, her feet leaden on the floor—never has she faced something like this, she doesn’t know what to do, what if she drops the syringe, or misses, or doesn’t even pick up the right one—

“What the hell!”

She spins helplessly and sees one of the hospital security guards standing in the doorway, a coffee cup held in one hand below his incredulous face. The attacker releases her husband and whirls to face the guard, dark, sweaty hair circling around his head like a flock of bats; as her gasping husband slides down the wall, the crazed man leaps forward. But the guard is too quick—he lets go of the coffee cup and has his gun drawn and aimed even before the cup hits the floor and shatters.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Three shots to the chest and the man goes down . . . but not before he actually lingers upright for a moment, somehow managing to turn his head enough to make eye contact with each of the three people who will watch him die, practically at Violet’s feet.

Shocked, all Violet can do is stand there and stare downward. Oddly, something on her hand tickles, and when she looks down—

—then feels her face—

—both are splattered with the dead man’s blood.

She turns her head and wordlessly locks gazes with the horrified eyes of her husband . . .

FOURTEEN

Something—some
one
—was close enough to make her eyelids open with a snap. Violet started to jerk upright behind the truck’s steering wheel when a gentle hand—Garth’s—held her in place. Jesus—she must have fallen asleep. Forcing herself to relax, she glanced to the side and saw Six, also asleep, curled into a protective ball on the passenger seat. A pressure at her wrist made her look back at Garth; he’d slid his fingers into position so he could take her pulse and now he was frowning. When he met her eyes, he looked slightly embarrassed at being caught playing mother hen. Even so, he pressed his lips together. “You’re not looking so good,” he told her. “I need to transfuse you.”

Violet started to protest, but as she tried to sit up, she realized how utterly
rotten
she felt, weak and drained of what little she had going in the reserves department. She looked up at him and nodded, then found enough energy to reach over and touch Six on the wrist to wake him up. He came out of whatever dream he was having with a jerk, and for a moment he looked around wildly, like he was ready for the worst; when the boy’s eyes focused on her and Garth, the change was instant. His eyes cleared and Violet could literally see his muscles release. More evidence, it was clear, of bad lab memories.

In the laboratory portion of the trailer, Violet settled herself as comfortably as she could on the stainless steel chair in the center. It only took Garth a few minutes to get an IV hooked up and start pumping fresh blood into her; a transfusion usually made her feel better almost immediately, but not this time. Now it was just new liquid going into her while the bad liquid went out, like the old-time dialysis sessions for kidney failure patients. Her sickness had changed over the last couple of days; now it was a strange sensation—her joints felt swollen with a sort of flulike ache, her head was achy and heavy, and she was so
tired,
despite the nap she’d just had and the fresh blood being pushed into her body.

Garth fluttered around her like a moth in front of a porch light at twilight, checking her vitals, jiggling the sterile plastic bag, consulting his portable computer, and holding up the continuing printout of her blood gases. She didn’t have to ask about the results—the darkening expression on his face said it all. “It’s not days anymore, V,” he told her in a low voice. She could hear the pain in it, the regret. “Now it’s more like . . . hours.”

She didn’t move or say anything, just stayed where she was on the cold, uncomfortable chair. She was nearly numb anyway, and it wasn’t as though the news was a big surprise.

“Maybe if you stayed,” Garth suggested hesitantly, “I could do something. Prolong you—”

“To what end?” Violet interrupted. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, waiting. If he had a good reason, something that could actually justify maintaining her miserable, sickly existence, she certainly wanted to hear it.

Instead of replying, Garth bit his lip and looked away. After a moment, he brightened and held a piece of paper up so she could see it. “Did you do this?”

Violet peered at it and it took her a few seconds to comprehend that what was on it was a mass of mathematical equations . . . at least, that’s what it looked like. She shook her head wearily. “What is it?”

Garth pulled it back and studied it again, but his expression remained bewildered. “I’m not sure,” he finally admitted. “It looks chemical, but it seems like it’s done in the old Pre-Collapse form of Western notation.”

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully, then her gaze cut toward the boy. He was off to the side, standing in front of one of the computers and gazing at it like he expected it to do something at any second. His stance—waiting—was enough to raise chill bumps on her arms. “Must have been him,” she said.

Garth shot the child an unreadable look, then gave a small nod and shoved the paper into his pocket. His face was morose.

“What is he?” Violet asked under her breath.

Unaccountably, Garth stiffened. “I know what he’s
not.
” When Violet waited for him to continue, he seemed to struggle to find the appropriate words. “He’s not someone who has a single molecule of vampiral antigen in his blood,” he said at last. Violet could easily picture Garth agonizing over how to tell her this while she and Six had been sleeping in the truck, oblivious to the rest of the world. “He’s not someone who’s any good to us. Daxus was telling the truth.”

Violet sat up on the chair, making the IV line stretch out and Garth frown at it. She felt like someone had just punched her in the gut.
“What?”

Garth folded his arms protectively, but he didn’t back down. “And if that’s not bad enough,” he continued, “the kid’s
hot,
V. Practically radioactive. He’s got a tracking device in him accurate to about a hundred yards.” Violet gasped and reached to pull the IV out of her arm, but Garth’s hand stopped her. “We’re shielded in here.”

She sank down again, feeling the cold from the metal chair back seep through the flimsy fabric of her shirt. She should have known—hell, hadn’t she already suspected it when every time she dragged Six off to a new and safe spot, a human security force showed up within minutes? Of course she had, but she’d ignored it, reluctant to face the truth. And how dangerous was that? With her free hand, she pushed her hair off her forehead, then rubbed at her eyes. They were burning with an exhaustion that the transfusion simply wasn’t chasing away. “I don’t understand,” she said at last. “Then why did Nerva want me to get him so badly? Why were the humans guarding him so closely if he’s not a vessel for a vampiral antigen?”