The fight was over quickly, almost
too
quickly—she hadn’t even worked up a sweat this time. Violet raised her head, then looked at Nerva from beneath half-lowered lids, and she knew, she
knew
, what he was going to do. He didn’t disappoint her.
The vampire’s teeth drew back in a grimace that was nothing short of vengeful and his face contorted with hatred. He knew she would be too fast for him, so he wasn’t stupid enough to think about it or give her time to get ahead of his actions. He just . . .
Let go.
Six cried out as he disappeared below the lip of the stone wall surrounding the well. The rest of the Hemophages in the chapel lunged at Violet, swords slicing through the air all around her. Now that she knew it was there, now that it consumed her whole
world,
Violet could hear the damnable clock ticking over her head as each second went by. It sounded more like cymbals in her brain than anything muted or soft, like huge waves crashing against rocks—
Tick—
Crash!
Tick—
Crash!
TICK!
CRASH!
—with each one getting louder than the one before it.
She ran through the remainder of Nerva’s Hemophage soldiers like a shark churning in a sea of bloody chum, taking down one group, then another, then another, each more viciously than the last, never forgetting the clock and the timing of it all, how absolutely
crucial
it was for her to be at the precise spot at the precise moment—
And finally, at the very last instant, only Nerva stood defiantly before her.
His blade whipped forward to meet hers and Violet easily swept his steel away with a strike that twisted her wrist and yanked the sword from his hand. It clattered off and was lost amid the bodies; Nerva spun and stared at her, his face twisted with more hatred than she had ever seen even as he realized he was looking death in the eye. In a final act of rebellion he spit at her face, but even that was denied him as Violet yanked her hand up and caught the saliva. His eyes bulged, then she slapped him, smashing his own spit against his cheek—
Right before Violet turned her sword and nearly decapitated him with its edge.
She stepped calmly through the spray of Nerva’s blood and just barely caught the rope as it jerked wildly in the air. For a heart-stopping moment it ran through her fingers like a snake made of fire, then her hand closed around it, her skin smoking as she fought to ignore the pain and stop Six’s descent. It was agony against her palm, the flesh blackening and filling the air with the sickly scent of cooking meat. Violet’s teeth clenched and she squeezed her eyes shut; she would not give in, she would not let go no matter how bad the pain, she would not—
Until, mercifully, the rope finally yanked to a stop within her grip.
Without opening her eyes, Violet began hauling the child back up, hand over hand, ignoring the agony across her palm every time she switched hands. She could tell from the way the rope felt against her uninjured hand that there he finally was, rising above the edge of the well and swaying from side to side. When she opened her eyes, her gaze met his; his eyes were wide with fear and relief, and when Violet pulled him over the side and set him on solid ground, he threw himself forward and wrapped his arms around her, holding on as tightly as he could. She jerked and started to pull away, then just surrendered and held on with everything she had. Thirty-six hours ago she would have never imagined she would hold a child like this. “I’ll get you fixed,” she promised as he buried his face against her shoulder. Violet bent her head until her cheek pressed against his close-cropped hair, and she could feel his tears smearing against the skin of her neck. “I’m going to get you fixed . . .”
And, kneeling in the middle of the blood-soaked floor of the tiny chapel, Violet held him until his tears and sobbing finally stopped.
Garth and the tractor-trailer were gone.
With Six at her side, Violet stood in the middle of the field where her comrade had been only a few hours earlier. “Gone,” she whispered to herself. Her fingers tightened around Six until the boy’s smaller ones squirmed in discomfort. “He’s
gone.
” On the one side, she couldn’t believe it, but on the other . . . of course he was gone. Hadn’t she called him herself and warned that there might have been a trace, telling him to move as quickly as possible? Garth was no fool. There was too much at risk. He would have taken her words to heart and moved out quickly, had probably had the tractor and trailer on the road literally within minutes. The fool here was her, for even thinking that he would still be here and . . . what? Waiting for her? Going to somehow fix everything at the risk of his own life and one of the extremely precious mobile lab and weapons storage units? Highly unlikely.
What now? Well, they would just have to move on themselves, keep going until . . .
Until . . .
Violet turned to look back at Six. The boy had pulled out of her grasp when it had become too painful and now she realized he’d dropped back a couple of yards, wandering off to the left. Her gaze locked on his face just in time to see him stagger slightly; his eyes met hers, then fluttered and rolled back into his head. She hurried toward him and got to the child’s side just as he sagged to the ground and started to dry heave. It was a heartbreaking thing to watch as he bent over and retched, but there was nothing Violet could do to help, nothing she could offer that would bring him any kind of relief, no medicine to stop the nausea. Her sad and sorry best was to drape her arm across his shoulder and feel his small body shudder as he tried uselessly to vomit up the nothing that was inside his stomach.
Finally, Six found the strength to raise his head and look at her. His red-rimmed eyes were watery and all the rest of the color had washed out of his face, leaving his skin as pallid and gray as the bottom half of the meta-crystal still hanging around his neck. The top half of the stone was a troubling shade of black that was rapidly moving downward. “What’s wrong with me?” Speaking was such an effort that his words came out in a gasp.
All Violet could do was shake her head and not respond. She didn’t have the heart to look the child in the face and tell him he was dying. Ages ago, when she had been a nurse, having a cold and detached bedside manner had never been her strong point. “Can you walk?” she asked after a while. His answering nod was weak but determined. “Come with me,” she said, and helped him to his feet. He stood on his own, eventually, but he was shaking at best and Violet wasn’t sure how long it would be before she’d have to carry him. She would answer his question—she
had
to—but not out here, not in the open where they were vulnerable to an attack from the human security forces at any time.
Garth’s location, now forever history, had been on the north edge of the city, where the lakefront curved around to the north and looked back at the downtown area. That northern location had given them that spectacular nighttime view of the fireworks celebration, but it also hindered, too—now it took Violet and Six almost a half hour to get back to a more populated area so she could find a place for them to hide out. It was funny how the world had evolved—the urban sprawl had evolved out. Now there were overpopulated cities or desolate fields, and not much along the lines of a middle ground. It would have been nice to leave the people and the anxiety-ridden crowds behind but still be able to find a good place to hole up while they waited for the end, but that was nothing but a wild fantasy—in the real world, the best Violet could offer the boy was an abandoned tenement about six blocks into the city zone proper, just to the west of the old line of elevated tracks that hadn’t been used in decades. It wasn’t much but Violet couldn’t hold out for better; Six’s condition had gotten noticeably worse, and if she hadn’t been holding on to him, the boy would have been staggering at her side down the pitted sidewalk like an adolescent drug addict.
With a quick glance behind them, Violet kicked in one of the side doors and dragged the boy inside, hopefully, too quickly for anyone passing by to notice or care. There wasn’t much traffic around here, at least not of the desirable kind, but people were naturally curious . . . no, naturally
nosy.
Violet slammed the door shut again, then pushed Six in front of her and into the disused lobby area, where she could make him turn and look at her. It was a good-sized room that was filled with smashed-up furniture, old trash, and construction debris, but it was also blissfully quiet and empty of anyone else. Dust motes spun in the air where their footsteps had stirred up the layer on the floor, and off to one side was what was left of an old reception desk. It was curved and wide, with a cracked and pitted dark green granite counter, and in a previous lifetime it had probably been something special to see. Now Violet blew at the heavy mantle of dust on the surface, then picked Six up and sat him on the counter so she could look him in the eye. Gray light washed over them, diluted by the heavy layer of grime over the bank of high but unbroken windows along the ceiling line above the entry door. Violet wished it were dark instead of daylight; she’d done so many difficult things in her life, but this had to rank up there with the worst of them. She almost couldn’t bear to meet his trusting gaze.
Six sat there in front of her, his shoulders slumped with illness and fatigue while his feet dangled limply over the counter’s edge. He looked so afraid and confused, yet at the same time she could see the hope in his eyes, the heartbreaking glimmer of light that told her he believed that somehow she might be able to fix everything. How could she tell him the truth? Where to begin to explain the unexplainable.
Finally, she said, “Don’t you see?” A foolish, incomprehensible start—of course he didn’t. She was dying now, not just her physical self, but her emotions. All on behalf of this small, strange boy, and she was so very, very angry. “Don’t you fucking
see?
”
But no, he didn’t. He only looked at her expectantly, silent and waiting. And as before . . .
trusting.
“That . . .
mechanism
inside you,” she croaked. “The thing your father put in you. It’s an antagonistic protein, very precise . . .” The word “father” was bad enough, but the rest . . . Her words faded. He was so very young. Was she being too technical? Did he understand any of it? Violet wasn’t sure—her doubts about whether he was able to comprehend what she was saying went all the way back to when he’d finally started talking. But back then didn’t matter right now; but she had to keep going, had to
try.
He had a right to know, damn it, to know it
all.
“It’s . . . it’s going to shut you down, Six.”
Violet stared at him and he stared back, but still, he refused to say anything. He looked like an oddly blue-eyed rabbit frozen in the headlight of an oncoming motorcycle—paralyzed and terrified but physically incapable of doing anything other than staring at its impending death with huge, liquid eyes.
God . . . he was going to make her
say
it.
She took a deep breath, and the air rushing down her throat felt like it wanted to strangle her. “It’s going to . . .
kill
you, Six. Just like that boy in the station.” Did he remember who she was talking about? “It’s going to kill you, unless I . . .” Her voice cracked and Violet struggled to steady it again. She was the adult here; she was supposed to be the stronger of the two of them, no matter what happened. “Unless I can figure some way—” She spun away. The hurt was too great—she simply couldn’t meet his huge eyes any longer. “I just need a little
time,
damn it!” Her gaze flicked wildly around the abandoned lobby. “If I could have some time, just a little more
time
—” Abruptly she stood up straighter. “Wait here,” she ordered the boy, then strode away.
A few yards down was a doorway to another room, just as trash-filled and empty of life as the lobby, but at least here she could have a little privacy. What she was about to do would take acting skills she wasn’t sure she possessed, and Violet didn’t need the boy staring at her and wondering what the hell she was up to, didn’t need him afraid that she had decided to violate his trust.
She yanked out her phone, then jammed her mouth-mic into place and reverse dialed the last call that had come in; an instant later, Daxus’s image flashed on the screen. She didn’t find it at all surprising that he might have been expecting her call.
“Hello, Violet.” His voice was smooth and disgustingly oily, the tone of the ultimate life insurance salesman.
“Come in on Three-D,” she ordered.
Violet saw Daxus smirk at her for a moment, as if she’d said something he found mildly amusing and was deciding whether or not to laugh, then he shrugged and did what she’d asked. Instantly it was like he was there with her in the dirty room of the tenement house . . . well, maybe not. It ruined the effect to see the man’s impeccably-attired figure sitting in front of her without the requisite chair beneath him—inanimate objects in the room with the call transmitter never came through on the transmission. As a result, Daxus’s image looked like it was semi-floating in midair, doing an impossible balancing act with his rear end extended and one leg folded over the other. This was why most people made sure they were standing up when they made a 3-D call; otherwise, they just looked ridiculous. Apparently Daxus simply didn’t care, and somehow that didn’t surprise Violet either.
“Well,” he said. The amazed expression on his face was so fake that Violet would have laughed if it hadn’t been a matter of Six’s life or death. “This is a surprise.”
Violet raised one eyebrow. “I doubt it,” she said sarcastically. She paused for a moment, trying to figure out how to put this, how to negotiate. Who was she kidding? Daxus wasn’t interested in negotiating, so why waste words? “I want you to turn off what was put in the kid.”
Daxus leaned back on the chair that Violet couldn’t see and folded his arms. Even floating awkwardly in the air like that, he looked absurdly comfortable. How she wished she could reach out and knock his ass onto the floor. “I wish that were possible, Violet,” Daxus said. Like everything else, the sympathy in his voice was exaggerated. “But there is no cure for the antigen.”