The Hallowed Cure, page 40
I glanced back the Cloudhopper. Amber sat leaning against it with her helmet off, eyes closed. Lincoln sat beside her, ankles crossed, eating his last sandwich. It was finally time for him to eat his delicious sandwich.
Reese stood on the other side of the building looking over the city with Caitlyn at her side. They’d all survived, and I was grateful. I was so grateful for my friends.
There was always the chance, of course, that Caitlyn was making Mia do this. Say this. That this was one last desperate attempt to gain my trust in a way I wouldn’t expect.
Yet Caitlyn had literally taken a wrench to the head. She couldn’t control anyone right now, and she’d proven that when she didn’t use her abilities to escape. She’d never have risked Reese dying in that lab just to pretend she couldn’t use her mental control on me.
If I could trust nothing else about Caitlyn, I could trust her to never risk her little sister’s life.
As the sun shone on the bandage that covered half Caitlyn’s head, and the wind ruffled the unkempt remains of her nice business attire, I did what Mia asked. I considered everything Caitlyn had done for us and for Dios, from before the Hallowed War started until now. I considered all she’d done for me.
I looked back to Mia. “What’s in the vat?”
“Oh, that,” she said, and smiled. “That’s your cure.”
Once again, I was absolutely certain I’d misheard her. “I—”
“I know you gave Saul strict orders to destroy everything and not attempt to figure out what was what,” Mia said calmly. “I also said bollocks to those orders, because you’re often stubbornly selfless.
Once we were in the data center, we reviewed everything while Lincoln and Saul held off the other Hallowed. We found out how they cure panacea poisoning.”
“No fucking way,” I whispered.
“Caley and I split off from the main force to retrieve the only vat of panacea they’d customized for such a purpose,” Mia said. “It wasn’t easy to find, but we were determined.”
“You could have died!”
“And you will die unless we find a way to cure you. Which we have. So the words you’re looking for are ‘You’re welcome’ and
‘Wow, Mia, you’re amazing’.”
I stared at the Cloudhopper again. Caitlyn glanced back at me. A faint smile crossed her features before she looked away.
This couldn’t be real. This was a feverish fantasy sprinting through my mind. Yet the world kept spinning. Mia kept staring. And the sun was still coming up in the sky.
“What do I do?” I whispered.
“So far as we could gather before we melted all the data servers, you just get in that goop and go to sleep. The unique cells inside can repair cells with panacea poisoning.”
“So it’s that easy.”
“It wasn’t that easy to synthesize. Doctor Sharpe really was a genius. Caitlyn’s going to have her techs analyze the unique panacea cells in the vat once we get back to Cloud Nine and figure out why it works. Once they do that, we should be able to create more of it.”
“So we can save others like me.”
“Of course. Though Cait did ask you not jump into the vat until they’ve analyzed it. We don’t want to contaminate the cells.”
“Right,” I agreed.
“But you can totally jump in now if you want,” Mia said. “I’ll help.”
I shook my head. “No. There’s plenty of time.”
“Right?” Mia’s eyes glistened in the morning sunlight. “We have plenty of time.”
We hadn’t seen each other in a day, and both of us had very nearly died. I pulled her into my arms, armor and all, and she hugged me just tight enough not to crush me. This was real.
I wasn’t going to die in six years, and that meant I’d have to live.
[ 34 ]
I WAS THIS LOSE TO TOSSING IT INTO THE
SEA
TWO MONTHS AFTER GRANT LEARNED HE WASN’T GOING TO DIE
As I emerged from the secret executive elevator onto the secret underground submarine station directly below Cloud Nine Engineering, the salty smell of the sea hit me with as much force as it always did. When was the last time I was down here? It had to be two years ago, right before Chief Dick tricked me into spending a week in an executive bunker.
I’d never wanted to come down here again. I’d never had any reason to come down here again. Yet here I was, today, at Caitlyn’s request, and also, the place had changed.
The narrow metal gantry leading across the sea was no longer alone. There looked to be a whole damned island down here now, an actual chunk of grassy earth with sand around its edges that made a small but pleasant beach. Instead of the distant lights that had barely lit the space two years ago, massive lamps above made it almost as bright as if the sun upstairs shone down.
There were trees, too, and not the tall, manicured things that lived in fences along the sidewalks of Lynbrook. These were wild unkempt monsters that reached for the sunlamps overhead, each easily as tall as ten of me. I’d seen trees that big before, but on Neo Tao Payoh.
I realized I was standing with my mouth hanging open. I also realized no one was around to laugh at me. I took one more look at the metal gantry to make sure it looked solid. Then I walked across
the gantry and the sea until I set foot on an underground manmade island.
Dios was a manmade island, of course. Yet our city/country was so massive that I’d never thought of it that way. It was the world where I lived, whereas this little island on the sea felt like a fake island on the sea.
Was this why Caitlyn had asked me down here? To show me her private park?
It didn’t take me long to find her. The whole island could probably fit in a single floor of Cloud Nine Engineering. Caitlyn stood at the center of the island in front of what looked to be a small, shallow lake. Except this lake was filled with glowing green panacea.
Caitlyn wore the same yellow summer dress she’d worn when we’d first met, a decision I suspected was by design. She had her back to me. I slowed as I entered the clearing at the center of the island and took a look around for anyone else. We were entirely alone down here.
It had been two months since I’d learned Caitlyn manipulated me a few times. In that two months, we’d learned Skye could communicate with the panacea drones on Neo Tao Payoh. Once Skye calmed them down, we learned they were still the people they had been ... mostly.
We couldn’t fix them. We couldn’t put them back the way they had been before they ate cloned chicken. But we and the Republic of Singapore government could agree to build a new colony on Neo Tao Payoh, Mutes and people. And Hallowed.
Thanks to Doctor Sharpe’s reckless experiments and the dickishess of Jack’s clone, we’d solved our Mute resettlement problem. No one in Dios wanted Mutes in Dios, but no one in the Republic of Singapore wanted to live on an island filled with people infected with panacea.
Yet neither the former panacea drones or our Dios Mutes had any objections to living with each other on a nice island. Most of our Hallowed clones ended up moving as well, especially those with living originals. Both they and the originals hadn’t been comfortable treading on each other’s lives.
Finally, of course, Caitlyn had negotiated an exclusive deal with the government of the Republic of Singapore to manufacture, distribute, and sell our clean power cels to mainland countries. I didn’t know much about global politics, but I knew their leaders would have been morons to pass up the giant piles of extra cash they’d now make as our exclusive partner.
Dios no longer stood alone in the world. We were allied with the Republic of Singapore, and thanks to our new alliance and Caitlyn’s charisma, we now had at least five other mainland countries clamoring to ally with us. More importantly, we had a bunch of factories churning out clean power instead of Hallowed weapons.
We were helping the world.
While most of the Hallowed clones settled on Neo Tao Payoh, a few stayed. Dean stayed, to my annoyance, with his Caley, which absolutely thrilled mine. She kept trying to talk the two of them into a double date—as in two Caleys, one Dean—and Dean’s visible discomfort at the very idea was the only real comfort I could take from the situation.
Sato number two went to the island, probably because she was the only person Sato number one trusted to defend it. So Sato two now headed up her own Hallowed Corps in Singapore, defending the island and keeping the peace.
Meanwhile, my Captain Sato had vanished again, off to travel for real this time ... or on another secret mission from Caitlyn. Neither of them would ever tell me if she was, and I didn’t care so long as Hahna was occupied. With another person, I’d simply have wanted Hahna to be happy, but that wasn’t what she wanted or needed.
What Captain Hahna Sato needed was a mission.
All in all, our crash landing on Jack and Sharpe’s zombie island had actually worked out for the best. Sort of. Sharpe probably wouldn’t agree. Nor would the Tony Frost I shot in the head with a Crater Puncher.
I walked up beside Caitlyn and stared at the tiny lake of panacea.
“New lab?”
“Not quite,” Caitlyn said quietly. “This is for something else.”
She separated her closed hands, which she’d stacked atop the other by her chest, to reveal the pure white cel Jack Griffyn had wanted from her almost a year ago. I’d almost forgotten about that baseball-sized annoyance, but Caitlyn had said she never wanted to be away from it.
“Why’d you call me down here?” I asked. “I mean, it’s a nice island, but—”
“I need your unbiased opinion,” Caitlyn interrupted.
“Why? I don’t know anything about panacea research.”
“This has nothing to do with research. It’s a question of morality, one I don’t trust myself to answer without more input.”
I remembered all the Mutes I’d killed back in the war and all the people I’d killed after. “I’m not great at morality either.”
She glanced my way. “I think you sorely underestimate yourself.”
I held her gaze. Two months out from learning she’d manipulated me, I was over it, mostly. I’d never forget what she’d done to me, but I did trust she’d never do it again, and I did agree she’d done a whole lot more for me and everyone than we deserved.
So we were good. I no longer held anything against her. “Just ask, then,” I told her. “Unless you’re going to tell me you lied to me again.”
“About that,” Caitlyn said.
I stared. “You lied to me again? ”
“I lied to everyone, not just you,” Caitlyn said defensively. “Even Reese.”
She’d lied to her own sister? “About what?”
“Mom and I agreed lying would be the best way to avoid making the decision we agreed to delay until it was time. About this.” She held up her pure white cel. “It’s not what I told you it was.”
At least that much made sense. “It doesn’t let you communicate with Mutes. You could always do that the same way you manipulated us, by talking with the panacea cells inside them.”
I’d known Caitlyn’s ability to communicate with Mutes was part of her abilities for months, subconsciously. I just hadn’t thought about it for a while, and I’d all but forgotten about her white cel.
Back when Amber first hired me to find that cel and get it to Lindsay, so Jack wouldn’t have it, I’d asked Caitlyn what it did and where it came from. She’d politely suggested I not ask that, and that had been the end of it. It hadn’t mattered, except apparently it did now.
“So what does it do?” I asked. “Summon Godzilla?”
Caitlyn’s brow furrowed.
“Cait, please tell me that thing doesn’t summon Godzilla.”
She looked to the pool of glowing green panacea at the center of this artificial island. “In the first days after I met, after Captain Sato killed Jack, I told you a story about how I first discovered panacea.
Do you recall?”
“You told me you found it in a crater on the mainland when you were thirteen,” I agreed. “Then your mom, Jack, Miguel, and all the other folks at Cloud Nine figured out it came from aliens. Then you researched it and moved all your labs to Dios to stay independent.”
“All of that is true,” Caitlyn agreed. “But there’s one part I omitted.”
“The part about Godzilla?”
“Grant.”
“Sorry.” Talking about this looked to be difficult for her.
Caitlyn lifted the white cel. “I didn’t just find a pool of panacea. I found this.”
I stared at the white cel. “Oh.”
“And it spoke to me.”
A chill I didn’t like crawled up my spine. “Like ... with a mouth?”
Caitlyn tapped the side of her head.
“With organic wireless?”
“I didn’t call it that at the time, but yes, we communicated ...
mentally, for lack of a better term. I didn’t just discover that pool, you see. I fell in.”
“You fell into a pool of panacea at thirteen years old?”
“The ice cracked while I was exploring,” Caitlyn agreed softly. “It was bubbling beneath, and I was in there a long time. I swallowed a good bit of it and got it in my lungs as well. I should have died.”
“Or turned Mute,” I said softly. “Holy shit.”
“I didn’t,” Caitlyn said. “Though I did change. And when I finally crawled out of the pool, I did so clutching this white cel I still hold. It showed me ... memories. It wasn’t speech, and it’s not exactly what we’d call telepathy. It was more that because I’d survived, I was able to remember some of what it remembered. From where it came from.”
I stared at the pure white cel. “And what does it remember?”
“Think of it like one of our long-range drones, except alien,”
Caitlyn said. “Interstellar distances remain far too vast for the expense of such a trip to be worth it, for the living, and it’s not like the aliens were dying. They were thriving. They wanted to give something back to the universe, so they sent out these messengers with an offer.”
“Which is?” This was far from the nuttiest thing I’d had to deal with since I escaped a mutated shop owner and ended up superpowered.
“The chance to end disease and heal injuries for everyone, not just Hallowed. The chance to vastly increase our lifespans for everyone on the planet, including those living now. The chance for endless clean power, as well as far greater secrets even I don’t know. Taking the deal will advance our knowledge of everything by millennia. All we had to do is say yes.”
I thought back over how Jack and the Dios City Council had infected the entirety of Dios with panacea. I thought about all Jack had done later to Dios, and all Doctor Sharpe had done on Neo Tao Payoh. I thought about the fact we’d invented a handheld cannon that let me incinerate thirty people with one shot.
“And you didn’t say yes,” I agreed. “Because the messenger also came with a warning that in the wrong hands, we’d blow ourselves up.”
“Such knowledge could easily destroy us if our civilization wasn’t ready for it,” Caitlyn agreed. “We have already misused their gift so many times. We’ve already come close to destroying ourselves, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of what the messenger offers.”
“Humanity,” I agreed. “Always overachieving.”
“So the question the messenger asked, a question directed at me, a thirteen-year-old girl, was whether to accept the power and all the consequences it offered on behalf of humanity. I wasn’t qualified to answer that question at the time, so I decided to wait and think about it.”
“And you’ve been waiting and thinking about it for ... seven years?”
“It feels like forever,” Caitlyn said quietly. “I told my mother, of course. Why wouldn’t I? She immersed herself as well and gained the same powers I did, likely due to our similarities.”
“And the messenger spoke to her?” I asked, referring to the white cel in Caitlyn’s hand.
“Never,” Caitlyn said. “Not once. It imprinted on the first person it made contact with, which made the ultimate question about whether to accept its offer fall to me.”
“But we did accept,” I pointed out. “We had a whole war because of that.”
“That was merely one way we misused panacea cells,” Caitlyn said. “What the messenger offers is far beyond that. If I agree to accept its offer, this tiny white sphere will grow into an actual representative of its kind. An alien, or, I suppose, closer to their version of an AI.”
I glanced doubtfully at the cel. “And it’s a couple of centimeters tall?”
“Most babies aren’t much bigger than that,” Caitlyn said. “This drone will grow over time. The island we’re standing on is close enough to the one the messenger showed me in its memories to support it. It will thrive here so long as no one disturbs it. I’ll ensure no one does.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “You lied to me about your white cel being an alien egg messenger. That’s fine. If you’d told me the truth I’d never have believed you, so we’re fine. All right?”
“Should I accept?” Caitlyn asked.
This was her moral question. “Why are you asking me?”
“Because I feel you’re the best person to answer it.”
That couldn’t be any further from the truth. “Ask Mia.”
“She hasn’t seen enough darkness in our world,” Caitlyn said.
“She still believes humanity is innately good. I don’t think she truly understands the horrors we are capable of.”
“And I do?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“You’ve seen more sides of us than she has,” Caitlyn said.
“You’ve endured enough trauma and loss that you could easily have become an awful person, yet you became the opposite. You fight for those who can’t fight for themselves, either because of all you’ve endured in your life or in spite of it.”
“I’m just trying to keep me and everyone else alive. That doesn’t mean you can trust me to make a call this big.”
