“How long was I out?” I asked.
“About half an hour.” He turned on his side and smiled at me. “Are you better?”
“Yeah. Do you want to get out of here?”
“Yeah.” Sean slipped his backpack over one shoulder and pulled me to my feet with his free hand. I couldn’t believe how little strength I had. Sean had to help me over the fence. There was no way I could have hoisted myself over the top without him. When my feet touched the ground on the other side, the world went dark. Sean stayed with me. My head leaned against his chest as he cradled me in his arms. And this was how the police found us.
My memory of what happened next always remained sketchy. The police separated Sean and me, but I was reunited with Mom and Dad at the Likely Police Department. Alarmed at my weakness, Dad argued with the police officers about my being in shock and needing to see a doctor. I asked to sit in a chair in a sunny window and leaned heavily on the glass. I told the police that I had no idea who those men were or what they wanted, and I kept insisting that Sean and I were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eventually Dad made himself enough of a nuisance that we were able to leave for the emergency room. The doctors found nothing wrong with me except low blood sugar and a bump on my head. Once we got home, I changed into a tank top and shorts and went to lie on the deck in the sun. Dad thought I was crazy.
“Those lunatics could still be out here,” he said as he stood on the deck watching the lawn as if he expected it to be full of snipers. “You should be inside behind locked doors.”
Mom stopped him. “Dear, you know that Darcy has always been a flower where the sun was concerned. The sun makes her stronger. Besides, who’s going to bother us when we have a police car out front?”
“We should probably also get a private security guard in here. I could make a call and have someone over here in an hour.”
“Dear, it doesn’t look like Darcy and Sean were specific targets. They just happened to be in the vice principal’s office at the wrong time.” She lowered her voice. “That vice principal looks like a shady character to me. I’ll bet those crazy men were there for him and he just doesn’t want to admit it. The way he talked, Sean had been stabbed multiple times, and everyone knows that wasn’t true.”
Dad’s brow lowered and his mouth thinned. “Now that you mention it, he was sweating through his shirt. Remember how he said Darcy made one of the attackers pass out just by touching him? I’m making some calls. What was that vice principal’s name again?”
I stayed outside until the sun dipped low on the horizon. I even made Mom and Dad eat dinner out on the deck with me. They didn’t mind. They couldn’t seem to get enough of me, as if I had come home from a year-long journey. One of them was always at my side when I ate or relaxed in front of the television. They seemed to find every word I spoke to be endlessly fascinating, and I watched them and Riley making loaded eye contact as we chatted. Even when I was on the phone with my friends, they were listening to my side of the conversation, but I didn’t mind. Feeling like I belonged was salve on my wounds.
That night I video-chatted with Cosette, Parisa, and Gail. Leonie’s and Judah’s hacking, according to my friends, had created chaos all over the school by revealing the cyberbullies’ identities and contact information to the world. The police, who had come to lock down the school, suddenly found themselves breaking up fights between the students in the hallways, the courtyard, and the parking lots. I wasn’t surprised when I saw that it was Martin himself who had left several postings accusing me of trying to murder him. I laughed and thought that I owed Leonie and Judah one for revealing the truth.
The school remained closed the next day, but I didn’t mind. I talked to Sean on the phone and spent lots of time soaking up the rays on the deck. Riley made several cracks about me sunning myself like a lizard on a rock, but her remarks no longer had the power to upset me. Instead I felt a sense of peace that I hadn’t known since the diamonds appeared in my eyes. Now I knew who I was and what I was part of. My questions had been answered. Even though I wasn’t crazy about the answers, they were mine. By destroying the virus, Sean and I had bought humanity some time and we were both home with our loved ones. Mom and Dad gave me hugs and kisses like I was six years old again. I couldn’t help but love that.
Long after dinner, as the sun dipped low on the horizon, I found Mom putting on her shoes.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Next door. Some of us parents are getting together to talk about the security around here and at the school. We’ll be back in about an hour. Sooner if their dog starts yapping. That dog could drown out an air raid siren.”
“It’s kind of late for a meeting, isn’t it?”
“We couldn’t get together any earlier because there was a baseball game and three families have sons on the team,” Dad replied. “And I set the house alarm.” He pointed to the control panel on his way out. “Riley texted. She’ll be home any minute and I’ll be watching the house from the window until she gets here. Just keep your phone handy. We’ll be back before you know it.”
Mom and Dad each gave me a little wave as they shut the door behind them. The house suddenly seemed really big and empty, creepy because I was alone for the first time in what felt like a long while. In Geminay I was hardly ever alone. Even when no one was literally in the room with me, I could feel their presence. Without that sensation here on Earth, the world seemed strangely empty. I shrugged off the feeling, went upstairs to my room, and flipped on the light.
A Tarkwin waited for me. I knew he was a Tarkwin because his aura wasn’t the same as that of the Original People. His arms were crossed over his chest as he leaned against the wall between my two bedroom windows and watched me. My heart stopped and began again unevenly. I wondered if I could defend myself against him because I still needed a few more days of sunshine to feel strong.
The Tarkwin wasn’t as tall as Sean, but he was stockier, his arms and legs thicker. He wore a knee-length robe of dark red over black trousers and a matching cap embellished with a row of black studs. His face was weathered and wizened, like Gemmee’s, not the pale blue of the Original People. A necklace of glittering black gems reached all the way to his waist. His eyes were brown with round pupils and diamonds within them. This man could pass for human.
“I’m Koth, my lady,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice as he bowed slightly.
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to meet the missusan who could drain other missusans and be allowed to live, my lady.”
I considered screaming, but he seemed content to stay where he was, and Mom and Dad were too far away to hear me. It surprised and alarmed me that he knew so much of my business. “Why do you care?”
“Care? Of course I do not care, my lady, but I still had to come. I thought there had to be a reason that a creation such as you still lived. I thought there was a possibility you might be a creation that would listen to me.”
“What am I supposed to listen to?” I asked, annoyed that this Tarkwin was calling me a creation. I thought I had left that behind in Geminay.
“The truth about your creators, my lady.”
I couldn’t help but scowl.
“I can come up with my own truth.”
“Not from your creators, your ladyship won’t.”
My answer was a hard glare. The fact that my creators were liars didn’t mean I should believe what a Tarkwin had to say.
Koth seemed to take my silence for assent and went on. “By now they have killed all those they call the Third Mechanics, my lady. They became unnecessary once they created the virus that will kill almost every human who now lives and breathes.”
Apparently Gemmee hadn’t gotten the word to this Tarkwin that Sean and I had taken the virus. That made me glad, but I wondered if Koth had other spies in Geminay. Did he know that Gemmee was dead and that Sean had put Naomi, Remy, and the virus to the lava? I hoped he couldn’t read my feelings. I sensed a deep animosity under those eyes.
“Your ladyship has more regard for humans than most creations do.” The Tarkwin watched me carefully to see the effect of his words. “That is a failure on the part of your creators. Most Sworn Assets are designed to function only slightly more highly than human sociopaths.
It is so because it is not in your creators’ best interests for you abominations to feel for your host species. Such is the way of these parasites that call themselves the Original People.”
I felt the sting of his insult. Whether I liked it or not, the Original People were part of me. “Is that why you kill them?”
“It is, my lady.”
He looked around my bedroom, his eyes resting on my red light bulb. “You are an ignorant child. You do not understand that they keep their colonies hidden so they might avoid having justice done upon them for the harm they’ve inflicted on other species and planets. They choose the vibrant human energy you bring them because they crave the vicarious thrill of emotion. Earthlings are desirable because you are primitive technologically and easily converted into the abominations they call Sworn Assets, animated flesh such as yours. You and the other Sworn Assets are distortions of what is pure and right in the known universe. You have my pity but not my blame.”
My anger grew at his measured and unabashed insults. “I don’t want your pity. Tell me what you want or get out of here.”
“Your creators are a pestilence on the known universe, my lady. They have caused the decimation of several species and the humans are next. When humans have evolved enough to develop the technology to be aware of your creators’ presence, your creators will either inflict a plague or climatic change on the species to set them back many Earth centuries in their development. That will be the fate of the humans. It is known.”
“How it is known?”
“We know because your creators preyed on us for hundreds of thousands of Earth years until we learned to recognize their Sworn Assets and cull them from our numbers.
We have become adept at finding their foul creatures among each planet’s indigenous species.”
Okay. That was too much. I bristled. “I am not foul. I am what they made me, but I am not foul.”
Koth bowed his head, all the while his eyes on me. “You have my commiseration, my lady. As a mongrel mixture, you have been given the traits of both species. While you are not culpable, you must not be allowed to pass the parasitic genetic material to the Earthlings. We mean to rid the known universe of all traces of it.”
“They told me that I wouldn’t be able to have children.”
“They lie,” Koth said pointedly. “Humans must never learn of your creators. That would interfere with the evolution of their species. It is for humans to evolve in their own way and at their own pace.”
“Humans can’t defend themselves unless they know they have an enemy.”
“It matters not. The truth that an alien species is among them will destroy them as surely as those parasites will,” Koth said with some heat. “Humans must earn the knowledge necessary to live among the other species of the known universe. It is known.”
“What’s known?” I cried. “Humans should have the chance to defend themselves.”
“Chance? Since when does the universe grant a weak species a chance, my lady?
We Tarkwins mean to kill the parasite, not save the host.
Do you know what happened to the Tarkwin Gemmee?”
“She was discovered and met the lava. The Original People know you’re here.”
Koth’s rage flowed off of him like waves of heat. His aura turned red and purple.
“Will you help me stop your creators, my lady?”
“Not if it means wiping out either the Original People or humans, I won’t.”
Koth pulled a black glass knife from his sleeve and his diamond-shaped pupils dilated as he rushed toward me. Filled with a wild panic, I turned and ran out of my room and down the main stairs. Koth was one step behind me and I felt the fiery burn of his blade as it slashed through my shirt and lacerated the skin and muscles over my shoulder blade. The shock weakened my knees and I fell down the steps, rolling and tumbling all the way to the foyer floor. I lay weak and dazed, listening to the Tarkwin’s footfalls as he came toward me. I wouldn’t let him kill me. I wasn’t ready to die. Koth stepped off the bottom tread and I swept his leg, knocking him to the floor. His head banged on the casing of a door and the knife clattered out of his grip.
Before he could recover, I grabbed his knife. He clutched my ankle, but I jerked free. I flung the front door open and ran across the front yard, jumping the boulders around the flower beds. The house’s security system began a shrill beeping. Koth followed me in hot pursuit. I hoped he wouldn’t see the boulders and trip, but like the Original People, he could see really well in dim light. He caught up to me and grabbed the back of my shirt, tearing it and jerking me backwards. We both crashed onto the lawn beneath one of the yard lights. He grabbed me and turned me over, sitting on my stomach and clutching my wrists in one hand. I started to scream, but his other hand clamped onto my throat, cutting off my air.
The world started to go black. He released my wrists and began strangling me with both hands. I felt the deepest panic of my life. I grabbed his wrists and tried to pry his hands off of my neck, but he was too strong. I suddenly realized that this Tarkwin would really kill me. Then I remembered who I was, what he kept calling me: an abomination. Well, this abomination wouldn’t give up her life without a fight. With a powerful force of will, I sent a message to my fingertips to kill him.
I felt his body stiffen. Every muscle he possessed became rigid and hard as granite, but he didn’t die. Some of his energy, strange and bizarre, burned my hands. I pushed him off, gasped for air, and then screamed like I’d never screamed before.
“It is not possible,” Koth was saying. “It is not possible. No abomination has the power to take the life energy of one of us.”
“We abominations are full of surprises,” I said to him before getting to my feet and giving him several swift kicks in the ribs. My body was alive with his energy. I hadn’t felt this good since I drained the Mechanic back in Geminay.