Shattered Sky (36 page)

“Excuse me?”

“It's like you're always on the outside. Believe me, I know. I tried to get close to Michael once—it got me killed.”

Maddy turned to Winston and Dillon, both connected to the exclusion of everything else around them.

“They started as a star,” Drew said. “And I figure in lots of ways they still are. They catch people like you and me in their orbit. We can't get away, but we can't get too close, or we burn. Best we can do is keep our orbit stable.”

Drew's ruminations tugged enough of her focus that she missed something key in Dillon and Winston's conversation, because Dillon now showed an expression of surprise, and suddenly turned from Winston, shooting a look to another body currently in orbit: Tessic.

“You mean here?” Dillon asked Tessic. “In this building?”

“In the infirmary,” Tessic said. “We'll go, when you're ready.”

“I've been ready for months.”

Maddy turned to Drew. “What are they talking about?”

Drew paused before answering. “What have you seen Dillon do?”

“Everything,” she answered.

“You haven't seen this,” Drew answered. “No one has.”

A
MONG
T
ESSITECH'S VARIOUS EMPLOYEE
perks was an infirmary and small medical clinic on the mezzanine. But today the clinic was closed and guards were posted at the doors.

In radiology, several leaded X-ray aprons covered an undefined mass on the X-ray table.

“He's in pretty bad shape,” Winston said, as he and Dillon peered in through the window of the X-ray room. “And I suppose being around me didn't help. Bacteria, algae from the lake—anything that was still alive in that foot locker grew out of control as we drove here.”

“Jeez, do you hear this conversation?” said Drew, to no one in particular. “I gotta find myself some new friends.”

The door opened, and two medical technicians who had the grim task of preparing the body exited the room. “What are we, friggin' forensic examiners now?” one grumbled to the other. He stifled himself when he saw Tessic, who had them led out, never to know the nature of their task.

“One thing I learned from Bussard,” Tessic told Dillon. “Don't let anyone see the whole picture.”

“Does that include me?” Dillon asked.

“You? Who do you think is painting the picture?”

Dillon thought to the first time he had repaired the ravages of death; the recomposition of flesh, the reanimation of spirit. It had been so difficult at first, taking such a profound focus of his will. It had always been a lonely, solitary act, both selfless and self-indulgent at once. But things had changed. Now his will was secondary, his presence dragged order from chaos
whether he chose to or not. Yet even in the graveyard, a victim of his own power, he knew his limitations. He knew there were those among the dead who did not revive—those whom he could never reanimate alone. Organ donors, perhaps, and others who were buried incomplete. Dillon could not give them new kidneys, eyes, or a heart any more than he could fill the scarred gaps in his own bullet-torn face.

But Winston could.

And no matter how little of Michael remained on that table, if they could somehow get the teeth of their curious gears to mesh, he could be restored. It would require more than their simple presence in the room. This task would require precision and control.

Dillon pulled open the door, and the stench hit him instantly, registering in his gut. Tessic quickly tugged out a handkerchief, holding it over his nose.

“You weren't kidding, were you, Winston?” Maddy said.

“You don't have to come in,” Dillon told her, but as he and Winston entered the room, Maddy, Drew, and Tessic followed in their wake.

Three video cameras had been positioned in the room, already recording.

“What are we, on satellite feed to the world?” Winston asked.

“I wish to keep a record of this,” Tessic explained. “To document what you both accomplish here.”

“Like a videotape at birth,” suggested Winston.

“Exactly.”

Winston scowled. “I hate people who videotape births.”

Dillon shuddered as he approached the table. The mass on the table had so little definition beneath the lead aprons, it was hard to believe there was anything remotely human there.

“Ready to rock?” Winston asked.

“Only if you are.”

It began the moment they pulled back the lead radiation aprons.

The broken frame on the table before them was a collection of brittle human bones, caked with rancid mud, and glistening with a dense hair-like pelt of green lake algae. That algae was the first thing to start growing again in Winston's presence, appearing to slither around the bones. Winston, having not actually seen the body before this moment, launched off into full-scale panic.

“That's not Michael!” he said. “It's not him! We got the wrong body, it's not him!”

“Shh.”

Dillon put his hand on a broken thighbone, half of which was missing. The bone, a dead gray beneath the algae, began to blanch to an eggshell white. “Winston!”

Winston shuttered his panic and reached out, touching the bone as well. Its jagged end began to stretch, marrow bubbling up from the hollow within, until it became enclosed within the smoothly curved end of the bone. The algae peeled away and slid to the table.

The process picked up speed, the two of them matching each other's rhythm. Dillon touched the skull, healing its many fractures. Winston moved the jaw into place, teeth growing to fill the empty sockets.

“Yes, I see it now!” said Winston. “It
is
Michael!”

They moved to the midsection. Crushed ribs rose into place, defining a chest cavity. From the decay that clung to the bones, Dillon was only able to re-integrate bloody fragments of organs—but with Winston's touch, those fragments cultivated, cells dividing into complete structures, until Winston
and Dillon both found themselves wrist-deep in it.

They now moved at an accelerated pace, time dilating itself around them. To those behind them, their hands moved with the agility and grace of virtuosos: four hands at the same instrument, perfectly synchronized.

All at once blood began to pulse, splattering the walls. A heart now beat at the center of an open circulatory system. Connective tissue sprouted like spider webs from joint to joint and muscle mass thickened the legs and arms, rising like dough, encasing the bones beneath. Winston pressed his fingers on empty eye sockets, and when he pulled his fingers away, a pair of eyes filled the space, lids growing closed over them. The bleeding stopped and on the flayed, red figure before them, islands of translucent skin began to grow like clouds in an empty sky, growing denser, thicker, joining one another. A scalp grew back from the forehead, darkening with hair follicles. Skin stretched to cover the body, pushing the last of the algae away, until only the midriff remained open, like a gaping abdominal wound, but dermal tissue rushed in to fill the void until the gap became a crevice, became a crack, became a navel, leaving the fully realized body of Michael Lipranski, his chest rising and falling in slow, metered breaths.

Then Tessic suddenly bolted, flying from the room with uncharacteristic speed, but he was barely noticed as all eyes were on the body before them that had formed in less than a minute's time.

Covered with blood, Winston backed away, but Dillon did not, for there was still one thing left to do. Although Michael's body was there, there was an emptiness within. Calling back the spirit of others had been an instantaneous and automatic result of bringing life to the flesh. But Michael was a shard; a soul with such huge inertia that he had to be ignited like a
furnace. Dillon pushed his thoughts forward, seeing Michael's being in his mind. Into Michael's flesh, into his cells, deeper still to the space between molecules, Dillon forced his own spark, and finally felt Michael ignite! A wave of intensity imprinted itself on every cell of his renewed body, aligning the life within into the service of a single consciousness.

M
ICHAEL FELT HIS OWN
ignition.

Void of thought or reason, knowing nothing but his own existence, he was a bullet flying down the barrel, suddenly in motion, exploding forward into a body. He felt every bit of himself at the same instant, from the tips of his toes to the tips of his fingers. He felt his shape, settled into it, and seized control of a familiar mind, remembering who he was, accepting all that went with that knowledge.

Michael opened his eyes, feeling as if he had just been hurled from a carnival ride. He didn't know whether it was he who was spinning, or the room. Dillon stood over him, out of breath and flushed as if he had just climbed a long flight of stairs. Michael tried to speak, but only gasped at first, coughing until he hacked up a bitter, foul-smelling green wad that only slightly resembled mucous. In fact, he was lying in the stuff; green muck mixing with blood, like some bizarre birth caul. And he was naked.

Reflexively, he rolled to his side, away from Dillon, floundering in the slippery mire.

“Easy, Michael.” Dillon grabbed his shoulders to keep him from sliding off the table. Dillon took off his own shirt and handed it to Michael to cover himself. Then Michael heard Winston speak. Until he heard his voice, Michael hadn't even known there was anyone else in the room.

“The temperature's dropped ten degrees in thirty seconds,”
Winston said. “Yeah, Michael's back all right.”

Back? Back from where?
Michael closed his eyes tightly, searching for a memory of the moment before, but there was none. He had no idea where he had just been, or how he got here. The past was piecing itself together now, bit by bit like the present. He remembered the dam collapsing around him and Tory. He remembered their terrified leap into the updraft which had carried them both into the sky. But Michael's control of the wind had broken down. The updraft failed them, and gravity dragged them down through the thin, icy air. Although he had clung to Tory, the force of the wind had torn her away. The last half mile he had tumbled alone. Brief pain. A blackout. And now this. It seemed many hours had passed since his last memory.

Shivering, he sat up, and turned around on the table, to see there were even more people present. Standing farther away stood a woman Michael didn't know, and Drew. Drew had an odd, lobotomized expression on his face.

“Hey,” said Drew.

“Hey,” Michael answered.

The woman beside Drew stood wide-eyed and rigid against the wall, staring at him. Michael suspected if the wall wasn't there to hold her up, she'd be on the ground.

Michael felt the temperature continue to drop as his uneasiness grew. “Toto, I don't think we're in Vegas anymore.”

“You're in Houston,” Dillon answered, with more deadpan seriousness than Michael cared for.

“I survived the fall?”

Dillon hesitated. “Not exactly.”

Only now did his mind allow him to see that both Winston and Dillon were covered in blood. The sticky mess coated their arms to their elbows, and had splattered on their clothes.

All right
, thought Michael,
I can handle this.
It was, after all, what he had hoped for. That Dillon would find his broken body in the Nevada desert, and bring him back.

He shuddered in the cold, his breath now coming in puffs of steam. “So what's this stuff I'm lying in? Some kind of ectoplasm?”

“More like pond scum,” Winston answered.

Across the room, the girl wouldn't stop staring at him. Even with Dillon's shirt clasped over himself, her stare was seriously unnerving.

“What's the matter? You've never seen a resurrected naked guy lying in green slime before?”

“Sorry.” She turned her eyes away.

“Hey, where are my clothes anyway?”

Winston offered an apologetic shrug. “Animals got 'em long before they buried you. Tough break.”

“Buried? Holy crap, they buried me?”

Dillon turned to the girl. “Where's Tessic?” he asked. Michael was sure he didn't hear him correctly.

“Gone,” she answered. “I'm amazed he actually got his legs to move. I couldn't.”

Michael struggled to capture more of his bearings. He was on an X-ray table. Was this some sort of hospital? Dillon said they were in Houston—how did he get all the way here?

“I must have been offline a few weeks, huh?” he asked.

No immediate answer. Then as he regarded Winston and Dillon, it struck him how much different they both looked. A bit taller; a harder edge to their facial features. Suddenly he knew the gist of what they were about to tell him, and thunder rolled ominously outside. He wanted to deny it all. If only for a few moments, he wanted to believe that it was just a joke.

“It's been over a year, Michael,” Dillon said.

He didn't even try to consider all the ramifications of it now. It was so overwhelming all he could do was ride it, like a wave. “Damn. Now my movie rentals are
really
gonna be overdue.”

Drew had scrounged up a hospital gown for him, and approached with it.

“What happened at the dam?” Michael asked Dillon. “Did you hold back the water? What about Okoya?”

“You'll get cleaned up, and we'll get you some clothes,” Dillon said, trying to wipe the blood from his own arms with a paper towel. “Then we'll talk.”

Dillon turned but Michael grabbed him before he could go. “How about Tory? Did you find her, too?”

Dillon slid out of his grasp. “Like I said, we'll talk later.”

Dillon left with the girl. Winston caught the door before it closed.

“Good to have you back, Michael,” Winston said, and left as well.

Now it was just himself and Drew. Drew held out the hospital gown to him. “You know the drill; slip this on, open to the back.”