Dying Light (24 page)

“
Jesse?” A sweet voice
calls. A voice I would know anywhere.

“
Ally?”

“
Go inside,” Gabriel urges
again.

This time I do. I cross the wooden
walkway and place my hand on the sand-smoothed door. It groans as I
push it open. At the sound of the door opening, a pug, in all his
fat glory, comes running across the living room floor. His little
nails can’t gain traction on the wood and he slips into my legs,
colliding with my shins.

“
Come in here and taste
this,” Ally calls.

I scoop up Winston and scratch his
belly, crossing through the nautical-themed living room, into a
kitchen that features starfish décor on its sand-colored
walls.

Ally stands over the stove, stirring
something in a pot that smells delicious. Her hair is shorter,
pulled up in a messy ponytail on the top of her head. She wears a
shirt that hangs off of one shoulder and white capris.

She’s beautiful.

She smiles and offers me the spoon.
“Did you hear me? I need you to taste this.”

I go to her side at the stove and she
lifts a wooden spoon up to my lips. Spaghetti sauce. One of my
favorites.

Her eyes are wide and expectant, as if
whatever I say next is of the utmost importance. I can’t remember
the last time the most serious thing in our lives was what the hell
the spaghetti sauce tasted like—or even when we had the time to
make freaking spaghetti sauce.

“
What do you think?” she
asks, her brown eyes wide.

“
It’s perfect,” I say and
look around the kitchen. My eyes fall on a lighthouse figurine
perched on the windowsill overlooking the water. “All of this is
perfect.”

I turn to Gabriel who stands in the
doorway, his impeccable gray suit looking even more severe in this
bright airy kitchen. “What the hell is going on?” I ask
him.

“
I was just thinking we’d
have a nice dinner on the deck,” Ally says, in a perfectly sweet
tone. It’s Stepford wife-ish actually. Until I realize it’s the
lack of worry that’s weird. The Ally I’ve known all my adult life
is the same Ally who worries and frets over my every move. This
isn’t the Ally I know. Ally thinking, Ally trying to figure out how
the hell to solve this latest, greatest problem that is my
bullshit. This Ally is carefree. The only thing that seems to
trouble this Ally is how long the noodles had been
cooking.

“
Then after we watch the
sun go down, I thought we could cuddle on the couch and watch some
TV.”

She reaches up and brushes my bangs
out of my eyes. I see a huge rock on her left hand.

I glance down and see I’m wearing a
wedding band too.

“
Holy fuck,” I say. “We’re
married.”

Ally laughs, the sound high and
girlish. Unburdened. When was the last time I heard Ally laugh like
that? “It surprises me too sometimes. But I wouldn’t have it any
other way.”

She steps into my arms and clasps her
hands on the back of my neck. She kisses me, a soft sweet brush of
her lips. I practically fall down, it feels so good.

“
So?” Ally asks, her
breath hot on my lips. “What do you think?”

“
About being freaking
married?”

“
About my plan? Dinner, a
sunset, TV.”

“
It sounds perfect,” I
tell her. Too damn perfect.

“
I did promise you a
happily ever after.” She smiles and pulls out of my arms. The beach
house wavers, darkening as if the light of this world is controlled
by a dimmer switch. It refocuses and Gabriel and I are standing on
the beach, looking out over the waves, the smell of salt and fish
thick in my nose.

The beach house stands behind
us.

“
What’s going on? What is
this?”

“
This is your perfect
world.”

“
Is it?” I ask. “I mean,
sure a world without people sounds great, but like, where the hell
did the spaghetti sauce come from? There’s no one on the whole
planet? Who grew the tomatoes?”

As if on cue, a small tomato garden
crops up beside the house.

“
Oh come on.” I point at
the tomatoes. “I don’t know if those can even grow on the beach.
And what about the noodles? I’m not harvesting wheat and rolling
those little things out, man.”

“
Why do you resist every
paradise I offer you?”

“
Uh,
human
,” I say. “Don’t you know us by
now?”

“
But this is the world you
most want. You respond to this one, unlike the others.”

“
This is the first one
with Ally,” I say, and as soon as the words are out, it’s true. “I
think you were a little heavy handed with the marriage part. I
mean, do we have to be married? It’s an institution set up by white
dudes who want to make sure they aren’t playing daddy to someone
else’s kid.”

Gabriel blinks at me.

I shrug. “I’m just saying it’s a
little patriarchal.”

“
Wake up,” Gabriel says.
“He’s returned.”

I open my eyes and find myself on the
couch in The Needle. I sit up as Caldwell steps out of the corner
into the light.

“
We have a bed for you,”
he says, placing one polished shoe in front of another. “You didn’t
need to sleep on the sofa.”

I don’t even remember
falling asleep. But it’s good to know that even while I do, my
shield works.
It
shimmers purple around me.

“
What’s going to happen?”
I ask him. “We can’t keep going on like this.”

“
We continue to fish out
the partis, eliminate them until it’s only us. I think of it as
saving the best for last.”

“
I can’t let you hunt and
kill people.” I haven’t forgotten that two of the partis are my
friends.

“
I’m not hunting anymore,”
he says, coming to sit beside me on the couch. He crosses one leg
over the other in the most casual way. We could be discussing my
college education. What did Stalin’s daughter talk to her father
about?

“
Now that all of the
partis have been chosen, I don’t have to hunt them. I know who they
are.”

“
So do you have them
locked away in towers too? Are you collecting us like beanie
babies? Waiting for some moment I don’t know about?”

Caldwell stares out over
the lake, his eyes twinkling in the low lights. “I will do whatever
it takes to be the apex, Jesse. You must understand how important
this is. Humanity will no longer exist, if we do not seize this
chance. A million lives combined. A
billion
is not more important than
seizing the chance to create a new, better world.”

A billion lives.

I search the water outside the window,
trying to see what he sees. In the distance, there’s a lighthouse.
A perfect replica of the little red and white tower that I saw on
the windowsill in the beach house of my dreams. I think of Ally’s
smile. Ally’s laugh. Her lips on mine.

No, a billion lives aren’t more
important.

Only one.

Ally

I
’m about to go clean out Jesse’s room when someone interrupts
us.

“
Sorry to bother you, sir,
but he’s awake and wants to be briefed,” the guard says. He is
careful not to look at me, keeping his eyes on Nikki’s. It always
struck me as strange that those under Jeremiah’s command were
called “sir” regardless of gender.

“
Thank you,” she says.
“I’ll be right down.”

The guard gives an acknowledging nod
and then turns on his heels and exits the control room, hands never
leaving the gun lying across his abdomen.

“
I should check on Gloria
anyway,” I say, expecting Nikki to dismiss me now that Jeremiah is
awake and she’s returning to second-in-command. Whatever momentary
privilege I received for being her girlfriend has
passed.

“
Come up with me.” She
brushes the back of my knuckles with her fingertips.

I arch an eyebrow. “I’m going to ask
questions.”

“
I know,” she says with a
sly smile. “He can answer them.”

I give her a look as if this might be
a trick. She holds her smile just fine.

“
Okay,” I say. “Just for a
minute. I really do need to check on Gloria.”

Nikki leans over the control button
and pushes a number. A screen on the far right blinks, changing
from an image of the parking garage to our apartment’s kitchen.
Gloria is still sitting under the towel.

“
See?” Nikki asks. “You
have a little time.”

I let her lead me to the
elevator, appreciating the fact that she won’t let go of my hand.
It’s not exactly romantic. Too many guns are around, and the
hallway’s too white, too sterile. But it is sweet, a display of
affection I could never get from Jesse.
“What if I need my hands to karate chop someone?”
she’d ask.

We step onto the elevator, and after a
brief descent, step off again. Nikki pulls me forward by the hand,
content to lead me. She doesn’t drop my hand until we step into
Jeremiah’s room.

He’s sitting up in the bed and wearing
a dressing gown, which is interesting given that I’ve never seen
him in anything but khakis and a sweater vest.

“
Glad you’re back.” He
gives me the briefest of smiles. “I trust Nikki took good care of
you in my absence?”

“
She did.” I’m not sure
what else to say.

“
Are you here to stay?” he
asks, his gaze heavy over the rim of his glasses.

I frown. “Jesse is still with
Caldwell.”

“
He won’t give her up if
he can help it. He’s trying to get her to meld with her power
source more quickly.”

I frown. “What?”

“
Jesse sees angels.
Correct?”

I glance at Nikki accusingly, but then
realize I’ve never told Nikki about Gabriel.

“
No one told me,” Jeremiah
says as if reading my face. “I knew about them already.”

“
Just explain the
melding,” I say.

“
Jesse still sees herself
as separate from the angel. She thinks it’s her consciousness and
his consciousness. She talks to it, rather than
be
it.”

“
I’m fairly certain Jesse
is human. Not an angel.”

Jeremiah nods. “She was born human,
yes. But she’s changing.”

I want to argue that we can’t simply
override millennia of evolution. Jesse is a primate and primates
don’t simply become advanced creatures in such a short space of
time.

“
First Caldwell thought
he’d get her to accept her power by locking her in the box. It
helped her strengthen the connection she’d been denying, but she
doesn’t truly accept it as her own. I suspect that he has also
forced Jason’s power on her for similar reasons. More power, less
humanity. But he is playing a dangerous game with her.”

My heart speeds up, and I can tell
Nikki wants to take my hand, but doesn’t. Is she that scared about
appearing weak in front of Jeremiah?

“
He needs her to accept
her powers and begin the war between the partis. Jesse was the last
called, and has been dragging her feet the whole way. The danger is
that once she fully accepts what she can do, he will no longer be
able to control her. She is by far the most dangerous of all of
them, but she doesn’t know.”

“
How can you possibly know
all this?”

Nikki tenses beside me. What does she
think he’ll say?

Jeremiah looks away, picking at the
corner of the blanket draped over his lap. “You forget I’ve been
watching him for a long time.”

Nikki exhales as if she’s been holding
her breath. “Caldwell is treading a thin line with her. He needs
her to fully accept her power in order to complete the energy
transfer, and yet take it before she can use it against
him.”

I search her face.
You knew about this?

“
I think he is playing to
her need for family, love, connection. He wants her to see him as
her father. He wants to give her a reason to hesitate before
killing him.”

“
Because hesitation will
get her killed,” I say, searching both their faces. They are
sharing more information with me now than ever before, but there is
something wrong about this confessional.

“
Exactly,” Jeremiah says,
smoothing the blanket with an open palm.

“
Why are you telling me
all this?” I ask.
What do you want out of
it?

“
I’ve always been open
with you, Alice.”

“
No, you haven’t. You
never even told me you had NRD.”

“
I told you that my sister
and father had it. You knew that meant I probably would
too.”

A headache begins to form behind my
eyes. “What confuses me is your part in all this? Are you partis
too?”