Arclight (16 page)

“I’ll say it again,” Dr. Wolff says. “I disagree with this decision. Adding another stimulus to the creature’s environment could be—”

“A tipping point,” Honoria says, ending the discussion. “Stay off the glass.”

The containment area is small, without any remarkable features other than the large shadow taking up one corner. Tobin moves first, then me. Honoria’s warnings fall forgotten in the instant we approach the containment wall.

“Are you going to tell Dante, or am I?” I ask.

“Tell him what?”

“I didn’t kill it.”

T
HIS
is it? The great fear? It looks so . . .
human
.

“Is it a kid?” I ask.

“A juvenile, yes, but mature enough to be a viable threat,” Honoria answers.

It doesn’t look like a threat. Barely taller than me, I doubt it weighs as much as Tobin. This Fade wearing an old pair of medical scrub pants bears no similarity to the creatures that tore down our wall.

Tobin steeples his fingers against the glass, smashing the pads into it. He cranes his neck, standing on his toes, but there’s no way to get a better view. The Fade’s got its back to us, hiding, trying to block the light from lamps on the ceiling and walls by putting its face in the corner and guarding it with its hands.

The cell’s furniture lays in shattered pieces. Claw marks mar the glass where the Fade must have tried to dig its way free. Blackened patches on the vents overhead sit perfectly spaced for fingers where it must have tried to reach the lights but burned itself.

This cell was built to hold a Fade.

Someone expected to catch one.

I tap the glass, but the only response is a ripple of the muscles across the Fade’s back. A strange sheer veil over its skin shimmers with the motion.

“Have you figured out how to kill it yet?” Tobin asks.

“We’re learning a great deal, Tobin, too much to risk by destroying our only living specimen,” Dr. Wolff says.

“You should kill it.”

The Fade’s muscles twitch beneath the veil again, and my skin warms. My heart races in time with my shallow breaths as I’m overcome with the sensation of wanting to strike out at something. It’s anger without a trigger, and I’m not entirely sure it’s mine.

“You’re hurting it,” I say.

“No.” Dr. Wolff shakes his head. “The lights cause it to go dormant, but their wavelengths have been altered from that of true sun.”

He’s wrong; the Fade’s too tense to be asleep, pulling its muscles close to control the pain. I’m familiar with the gesture, and I know just how well it doesn’t work.

“You’re torturing it,” I say.

“Good,” Tobin says. His fists clench at his sides. “Make it turn around. I want to see its face.”

“If it gets agitated, monitoring its systems becomes more difficult,” Dr. Wolff argues.

“Can’t you turn a few of the lights off?” I ask.

“They’re only at quarter power as it is.”

“But it’s in pain.”

“What makes you so sure?” Honoria asks from right behind me.

“Just a feeling.” Like the one that gives me chills from her proximity, and the clinical tone she tries to pass off as curiosity.

“Do it.”

Dr. Wolff looks up at Honoria Whit’s sharp command, but all she does is nod her head. He sighs, but crosses to the console and dims the lights; Tobin slaps his open palm against the glass.

“Hey!”

“Give it a minute,” I say

“Hey, Fade! Look at me!”

If he’d calm down enough to pay attention, he’d realize something’s happening in the cell. The unnatural lacelike shadows that screen the Fade recede, drawing into its body as they dissipate. Slowly, it relaxes and drops its hands. It twists, testing its arms and legs and neck before turning.

It’s not the kind of face I expected. There’s no damage. No rot. It’s not the desiccated corpse form of some monster from a story. Monsters I can handle, but this . . .

It looks like a teenage boy.

Stripped of its robes and bindings, the Fade has skin as pale as the ghost moths that sneak in at night when the shutters stick open. Hair hangs loose around its face with the sheen of a bird’s wing—jet-black, but reflecting other colors as it falls. It hardly looks like hair at all, more like a spray of fine crystals spun into strands. Eyes so light blue they’re almost clear look straight at—and through—me. Well-formed muscles move under skin marked with the same blackened patterns I watched security burn out of Tobin’s carpet when they turned his blood to ash. It’s calm and quiet, and tracking me as I move. I can see intelligence behind its eyes.

“I’m talking to you!” Tobin hits the glass again.

The Fade takes a step toward us.

“Look at me, not her.” Tobin slides in front of me.

The Fade startles, as though it hadn’t noticed him before. Those sharp raptor’s eyes change, turning darker around the rim so the color bleeds toward the centers. The Fade’s eyes trace along Tobin’s arm where it’s stretched out like a security bar holding me back. It steps to the side and cocks its head, angling for a better look. The movement isn’t human; it’s too fluid.

The Fade studies Tobin’s face, mirroring his stance and putting its own arm out straight. It touches the glass, tapping out its own rhythm with one finger. It concentrates on Tobin, as though it recognizes him.

“What are you doing?” Tobin asks, confused, even panicked.

Its expression never changes, but its posture falls in apparent disappointment, and it moves on from Tobin to me. A vibration pricks the hairs along my arms, and warmth spreads through my whole body. Images invade my mind like a ribbon of negative light winding its way into my memory . . . looking for something.

Know
.

I hear the word as an echo without a voice and grab my inhaler to stave off the headache drawn in its wake. I stumble backward, my head stuffed with cotton balls.

Aid. Assist
.

Two more words, clear as speech from a voice I can’t say I hear.

“What happened?”

Tobin is right beside me.

“I don’t know.”

But whatever it was, the pain’s gone. I don’t even need my inhaler.

Repentance
.

The cool breeze soothing my mind becomes a nauseating sense of shame. The Fade’s expression melts into downcast eyes and concern, its whole body on its fingertips against the glass in a pantomime of Tobin’s earlier stance.

“You’re sorry?” I ask.

Repentance
.

The answer is solid, and accompanied by a nod so slight, its hair barely falls forward.

“Sorry for what?” Tobin asks.

“It apologized,” I say. “I think it’s talking. It tried to talk to you . . . you didn’t answer.”

Dr. Wolff steps out from behind the console. Honoria circles, mumbling under her breath. Mr. Pace and the others shift in place, worrying their rifles in their hands.

“I don’t hear a voice,” Tobin says defensively.

“Neither do I.” I step closer to the glass and face the Fade. “You understand me, don’t you?”

Affirmed
.

A burst of hope and joy. Its answers aren’t really words, more declarations through feeling and image, but they’re enough to fix the idea that this Fade is definitely a
he
and not an
it
. I’ve never heard a monster ask for forgiveness.

“Do you have a name?” I ask.

He cocks his head again.

“Marina, stop. It doesn’t know what you’re saying,” Tobin says.

Oh yes, he does. Maybe not exactly, but he gets the concept.

“Let her alone,” Honoria says. “Something’s happening on the monitors.”

“I’m Marina,” I say, trying to send an impression of everything I remember about myself. “This is Tobin. Who are you?”

The next thing I hear is the sound of my own screams. Disjointed fragments of thoughts and ideas cut into my brain like razors. I see the Fade’s face and others like it. More and more, until they’re a horde.

The others disappear, leaving only two behind: the one in the cell, and beside him, a female with the same marked skin. She evaporates into steam, leaving him alone.

Understand. Aid
.

It’s a command, but I don’t know how to follow it.

“What do you want me to do?”

His answer comes as pictures out of order, upside down and backward. A mass of whispers as chaotic as a hornet’s nest.

Return . . . Taken. Lost . . . Find
.

Dichotomous thoughts shred my brain, raking from one extreme to the other. I’m being pulled apart.

“Stop!”

I tumble, so disoriented that I’d swear the floor was rushing up to meet me halfway as a warm trickle of blood runs from my nose.

“Do something,” Tobin begs. He pulls me into his lap so I can hide my face against his chest, but it doesn’t help. What I see is projecting straight into my head.

“Shield your eyes,” Honoria orders just before she notches the lights up to high power.

The images stop, and the Fade shrieks. He whirls and hits the back of the cell hard enough to dent the wall, shoulders heaving—furious beyond the pain. All those little lines and dots that make up his markings scatter into millions of individual points bursting off his body to become the veil again.

“It’s a parrot fish ,” Tobin says, and I wonder if that’s something else from one of his picture books. I thought parrots were birds.

“Not a bad analogy,” Dr. Wolff says. “The markings you saw are microorganisms that live off the host body. They’re photosensitive themselves, but also exist in such a way that they prevent the production of melanin when bonded. Under normal levels of direct light, they’ll darken the host’s skin. Under extreme conditions, the nanites extend their shielding in a more dynamic way.”

“Host? You mean they’re parasites?” Tobin asks.

“They’re the legacy of the world before,” Honoria answers bitterly. “The nanites were designed for medical use—tiny, sentient machines that could save lives when human hands couldn’t. But instead of that dream, we got this nightmare. They replicated and spread so fast, they couldn’t be contained. Their creators lost control, and then we lost everything else.”

I scramble off Tobin’s lap for a closer look. What seems like a veil from a distance is made completely of those tiny black crystals. It’s anchored to the Fade’s body with wiry lines no thicker than a piece of hair. Without the patterns, his skin’s milk white.

“Is its body alive?” Tobin asks hesitantly. “Is it human?”

“The host was, at one time. Now it’s a shell.”

“If Marina hadn’t burned me . . .”

“The Fade would have overwhelmed your system until you became this,” Honoria answers.

“Why not tell us this?” I ask.

“We would have—eventually. Children can’t understand the nature of the Fade, so we allow the rumors and ghost stories to keep their curiosity in check. When you’re older, we tell you tales that have been passed down for years—real ones about real people who were lost to the darkness. And when you cease to be children, we tell you the rest. You didn’t need to know yet.”

“You lied to us,” Tobin says, angry again.

“Would you have preferred hearing that your father has most likely become a food source for a mobile colony of parasites?” Honoria asks. “That he was little more than a carrier of a sentient virus whose only goal is to replicate and spread until there’s nothing left to consume?”

“If it’s a virus, then cure it.”

Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle I call a past start snapping into place. The only thing worth risking everything for is survival. Somehow, my people, the ones I was born to, found a way to combat the parasitic invasion that ravaged those lost to the Dark.

“That’s why they sent me into the Dark, isn’t it? My people found a way to undo it.”

I wasn’t thrown away; I was sent. And if I’m where I was meant to go, then I’m not lost. There could be others like me out there.

I’m not alone.

“That’s what we hope,” Honoria says. “It’s what our people were willing to die for, and it’s what
they’re
willing to kill for.”

She nods to the Fade, who’s still trembling under the ultra-brights. I walk over and twist a dial on the wall to dim them back down.

“Marina, don’t,” Tobin warns.

“I want to ask him some—”

The words fall off my tongue as spectral shapes form inside my brain. A random burst of synapses drags voices and faces to the surface, but they move so fast I can’t get a hold on any of them. The White Room disappears, taking Tobin, Honoria Whit, and everyone else with it.

I’m in the Dark again, and on my own.

T
EARING
branches and biting thorns. Wind in my hair and the occasional strike of dim light against my hands casting strange patterns across them. It’s cool, and the air smells different. My shoulder hurts, as though there’s a thorn stuck in it. I have the barest impression of needing something
.

I dip down in the water, hiding beneath a piece of weathered wood. Someone’s looking for me, to take me home. All I have to do is hang on until they find me
.

Heavy, running feet trample the ground nearby, and I choke on my own scream. If I scream, they’ll know where I am
.

The scene shifts. I’m running again, faster and harder, but it’s not enough. An alien noise tears through the air and I topple toward the mud. Muscles groan around the searing, puckered wound in my leg; something hot and slippery pours through my fingers and soaks my skin, but it’s too dark to see the blood
.

My focus is shot
.

The halting images turn to sounds and voices. Shouts of terror mix with reassurances that I’m safe. Behind it all, a whispered wall of static
.

I snap back to myself and I’m in the White Room with Tobin on one side, and Dr. Wolff and Honoria on the other. My hand is still on the light dial.

“What was that?” Tobin demands.

“A memory . . . I think. Have I been here before?”

“In the beginning,” Dr. Wolff says. “It was the only place we had set up for quarantine.”

“You put her in there?” Tobin asks. “Like one of them?”