Fuse (Pure Trilogy 2) (56 page)

The tech gives a smile that’s more of a twitch in one rouged cheek. “Partridge Willux,” she says. “Of course I know.”

“And you know that his father’s will and testament is in order. It’s been signed. The transfer of power to his son will be immediate. Do you understand what I’m getting at? So Partridge would like to see his father, okay”—she leans forward, reading the tech’s name tag—“Rosalinda Crandle?”

“I’ll contact Dr. Weed. I’ll ask for his permission,” she says. “Excuse me.” She hurries out of the room, which is outfitted with a camera mounted in one corner.

Partridge pulls Iralene in close. He touches her cheek lightly and hides his face by nuzzling her neck. He whispers in her ear, “I’m not going to do it. He’s not going to kill me. It doesn’t add up.”

She smiles—for the sake of the camera. She kisses him on the cheek and whispers, “You haven’t figured it out yet?”

He shakes his head.

She hugs him tightly. She cups her hand to his ear and says, “He wants to live forever. He wants his brain to continue on. His body won’t let this happen. But yours . . .”

Partridge’s chest courses with burning heat.
My body
, he thinks.
My father needs my body
. And suddenly everything clicks into place. This is why he’s transferring power to Partridge. He will
be
Partridge. He’s going to attempt a transplant. Jesus, is that what Arvin Weed’s team
of researchers figured out? Is that why he was being congratulated at the engagement party? When his father’s brain is transplanted into Partridge’s body, he wants a pinky that’s fully intact? Partridge leans into Iralene. He feels dizzy and sick. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I told you he was going to kill you. I don’t like to give any more information than I need to at any given moment. Sometimes your secrets are your only value.”

He looks at Iralene. “But that means . . . you’d be . . .”

“This was always part of his plan,” she says, her breath warm on his neck. “I was meant for you, but if he could get the transplant perfected, then . . .”

“For him?”

“It’s my role.”

“And your mother?”

“Her duty will have been served. She will no longer require resources.”

Partridge feels sick. He wants to bash the camera, punch the computer, shove over the examination table.

“You were right,” she whispers to Partridge, playing with his hair. “Willux framed my father. He put him in jail so he could have my mother. It started long ago and far away. Kill him.” Her voice is low. “Do it.”

He recognizes the pit of fury in her. He has it himself, and it burns now. For himself, for Iralene, for all the survivors and all those in the Dome who’ve lost the ones they’ve loved. For his mother and brother. Loss. So much loss.

But there are things that still don’t sit right. “His brain,” Partridge says. “It has to be deteriorating alongside all his organs, if not even faster. He had
brain
enhancements, after all. Why would he think that moving his RCD-ravaged brain into my body would work?”

Iralene pulls away and grasps his pinky. “As long as some healthy part of his brain is still intact, as long as it has conditions where it can thrive . . .”

Weed can regrow his brain from the healthy part remaining? If he can
manage this kind of re-creation with a pinky, maybe he can do it with brain tissue too. “Okay,” Partridge concedes, but there’s one fact that still doesn’t make sense. “I know why my father might want to have a scarless body to move into, but why swipe my memory? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Do you really expect to understand your father?” Iralene stares at him, steely-eyed. She places her hand on his chest. She whispers, “All I know is that you’ll have forty seconds before the capsule dissolves and releases the poison. If you don’t want the cameras to see, you should . . .” But she doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead she rises on her tiptoes and gives him a light kiss on the lips.

There’s a knock at the door.

The tech pokes her head in. “Dr. Weed wanted you to know that your father is also having a light procedure done today. Something cosmetic. He will be under. But since you haven’t seen him in a long time, Dr. Weed has indicated his approval of a short visit.”

“Good,” Partridge says. Weed. Is this some small concession? Is this, in the end, his role—to provide this small window, an opportunity for Partridge to kill his father?

“Beckley will lead you there. But first, you need to be in scrubs.”

“Is my father contagious?” This could be the worst thing you can accuse someone of in the Dome.

“No, but we don’t want you to get him sick.”

“Tell him I want to see him without all that stuff on unless he’s too weak.”

This flusters the tech even more. She looks at Iralene, who simply smiles at her. She scurries off and disappears. Finally, she returns and only nods.

“Good,” Partridge says. He feels like he’s won a small battle of wills. It’s good to keep his father a little off balance.

When they walk down the hall, Partridge notices people crowding together, whispering.

“What’s going on?” Partridge asks.

“Nothing,” Beckley whispers.

“I want to know.”

“A prisoner brought in from the outside. A wretch.” Docs are running in and out. There are technicians on hand, a few of them wearing full contamination suits.

“A wretch?” Iralene says.

“What are you talking about?” Partridge says. “How could a wretch get into the Dome?”

Beckley shakes his head and smirks. “I’ve got orders not to talk. This is high-level-clearance information.”

“But Beckley, I’m scared,” Iralene says. She stops walking and grabs hold of Beckley’s biceps. Her eyes are suddenly filled with tears. Partridge isn’t sure how she does it.

“Don’t be, Iralene,” Beckley says. “Supposedly there was an attack on the Dome, but it didn’t accomplish much. They hauled in one wretch for questioning and probably to make an example out of her.”

“Her?” Partridge says.

“Well, yeah,” Beckley says, “but you wouldn’t know it was a girl, what with her hair buzzed like it is.”

“I want to see her,” Partridge says.

“I thought you wanted to see your father,” Beckley says.

“Partridge,” Iralene says, “we should stick to the plan.”

Partridge can’t help it. He’s compelled. A girl from the outside, a girl with a buzzed head. He has to see her. He starts walking fast toward the clutch of doctors and technicians standing in front of an open door. Beckley catches up with him and jerks him backward, hard.

Partridge spins with great speed and grabs Beckley by the throat. He applies steady pressure. Partridge says in a low gruff voice, “You’re here to protect me, remember that?”

Beckley jerks his head—a slight nod.

Partridge lets go and calls out down the hall, “What’s going on here?”

The doctors and technicians glance at one another. “A medical case,” one of them says.

“I want to see the patient!” Partridge says, striding up to them.

“You can’t. There’s the possibility of contagion,” one of the doctors says.

“Contagion?” Partridge asks.

“She’s been on the outside, sir. She needs . . .” The technician stalls mid-sentence and looks around, unsure of how much he’s supposed to divulge.

“What?”

A doctor steps forward, blocking Partridge from the door. “Medical intervention.”

Mummy molds. Beautiful barbarism. A knife
.

Partridge shoves the doctor in the chest. He slams into a wall and falls to the floor. Other techs grab hold of Partridge from behind, but he shakes one loose and grabs the other’s coat until Partridge has flipped him over his back and he’s sprawled on the ground.

Partridge rushes into the room. There’s a glass window separating him from Lyda. She’s sitting on the edge of a metal examination table. She’s wearing a white suit and paper slippers.

The doctor shouts at everyone to disperse. “Go on! Go about your business!” He steps into the room. Iralene follows him with quick, mincing steps. Beckley guards the door, making sure everyone does, in fact, disperse.

The doctor lowers his voice, trying not to shout. “You can’t be in here! Do you understand me?”

Partridge ignores him.

“It’s a one-way observation mirror. She can’t see you,” the doctor says.

He knocks on the glass, and Lyda looks up.

Her dress, the feel of it in his hands as they dance under a ceiling of fake stars
.

“We have to go, Partridge,” Iralene says.

Partridge ignores Iralene. He’s staring at Lyda. Her sharp cheekbones, her blue eyes.
A child’s body fused to a mother’s body. Lyda stooping to talk to the child, cupping its chin in her hands. Lyda walking across an ashen desert, running back to him, kissing him in a gust of wind
. She’s looking in Partridge’s direction—but her eyes scan past him, almost through him. He feels that sharp pang, that vague feeling of loss and lovesickness, but now it has a name—Lyda. And that sense of grief
that made his body feel waterlogged, heavy and deadened—he knows what’s caused it: that face. Her face. “Why is she here? What’s wrong with her?”

The doctor sighs. “It seems she’s been impregnated while on the outside. We don’t know what kind of creature might be taking root. Most likely the child is the result of a rape, as we all well know what the wretches are capable of.”

Partridge feels like the wind has been pounded from his lungs. “What did you say?”

“Pregnant, sir. The wretch who was once Pure is pregnant.”

Partridge tries to swallow, but his throat is dry. His lungs are still, airless. Everything feels like it’s come to a stop: Lyda is pregnant. His eyes fill with light.
A windswept sky, a loud battle, an old weary house, a room with no roof, a rusty brass frame with no bed. Lyda and him, under his coat. Skin on skin
. “I have to talk to her.”

“Partridge, no,” Iralene says softly. Beckley walks into the room. “Tell him, Beckley. He can’t talk to the wretch! Not now!”

“Not before you see your father,” Beckley says. “There’s no way. He’s going to undergo surgery and so are you. You can’t risk contagion.”

“Get out!” Partridge says. He looks at Iralene and says, “Iralene! Get out! You know what this means to me! Get out!”

Iralene cries out. She turns, dizzily, and reaches for Beckley’s shoulder. She misses but he catches her as she stumbles out of the room, onto her hands and knees on the tile floor. The doctor rushes to her side. She looks at Partridge for a moment and then rolls her eyes back in her head and goes limp.

She’s faked it. He’s sure. Iralene might be brilliant.

This gives Partridge time to slam the door and lock it. He tries to take a deep breath but his lungs feel shallow. Lyda’s pregnant. It’s not some creature. It’s their child, together.

They’re in the wrecked subway car again. “Paper snowflakes,” he hears himself saying. “Is that all it would take to make you happy?” And Lyda whispers, “Yes. And you.” She kisses him. “This
.”

He pulls the square-shaped list from his pocket. It’s the only paper he has. He folds it into triangular sections. He tears off the tip, chews
small holes from the sides quickly with his teeth, then rips the other end jaggedly.

He takes the envelope out of his other pocket and slides the list into it. He extracts the small capsule and puts it back in his pocket. He seals the envelope.

He opens the door. There’s Iralene in the hall, having survived her fit quite well. She’s been given a folding chair. Beckley stands by her side. The doctor is holding her wrist, taking her pulse. When Partridge walks out of the room, she stands up, jerking her arm from the doctor, and walks up close to Partridge.

He hands her the envelope. She holds it to her heart with one hand and wraps her other arm around him. “Don’t ever get mad with me again,” she says.

He whispers in her ear, “Iralene, I want the girl to have this. Got it?”

Iralene nods.

“I trust you,” he says. “Do you trust me?”

She nods again. Sometimes he forgets how pretty she is, perfect really, and it catches him off guard even under all that meticulous makeup—her petite features, her pert chin, her white, shiny teeth. She’s smiling at him, but the sadness in her eyes is plain. Whatever happens next will change them. Partridge kisses her cheek. It surprises her. She touches the spot.

He turns and walks down the hall. People scatter as he approaches. Soon, Beckley’s at his side. They walk in silence. The power dynamic has shifted. Beckley’s a little afraid of him now.

He guides Partridge through the halls, then stops in front of a door.

“This is it?”

Beckley nods. Partridge can’t tell if Beckley hates him or grudgingly respects him.

Partridge opens the door and Beckley follows him into his father’s room. There’s another guard beside his father’s bed. “I need a moment alone with him,” he says to Beckley. “Take this guard with you.”

Beckley meets Partridge’s eye, and for a second Partridge wonders if Beckley is going to challenge him. Partridge holds his gaze. “I want both of you guarding the door,” he says. “I want this private time with my father protected.”

“Of course,” Beckley finally says, and he nods to the other guard. They both walk out.

Partridge walks up to the rectangular plastic tent surrounding his father’s bed. The tent itself seems to breathe. It’s alive with beeping, humming machinery, and the huff and hiss of a small iron box around his father’s ribs. This all feels familiar. Partridge has been here before.

He has to confront his father. But he can’t commit murder. He doesn’t have it in him. And he can’t believe Iralene’s story—not completely—because it still doesn’t make sense; why would his father go to the trouble of having his memory swiped if he was only going to cast his brain off?

He pulls back one side of the plastic tent. His father’s eyes are closed. His own skin is rejecting him—it’s all either raw or blackened. Both hands have curled inward and are tucked under his chin. Even in sleep, he shakes and trembles—a palsy that won’t quit.

But the sight of his father’s body, so twisted, so ruptured and wasted, shocks tears to his eyes. This is his father. This is his body. This is death. His father’s skin, festering as if scalded from within, some of it covered in a plasticine gauze. It shines.