Chapter 23
Even with the tank disabled, we’d make no more progress that night.
The sun was up, and the Army’s Strykers were back in control of the streets. I couldn’t gather together more than a score of Genies. There were so few left. Even totally loyal to Cain as they were, some had summoned up the willpower to retreat from the battlefield as the sun rose. After all, they were little more than target practice for the Army in the daylight. The battle of Seattle was over for now.
Cain might have awoken to find a ready-made army at his disposal, but even the most devout followers were no match for an M1 Abrams.
I went to ground with what few loyal Genies I could find in the city. We tried to stay out of sight of the patrols, rest up for the coming evening. There was nothing we could do in the daylight by stay alive.
Between sprints between blown-out buildings, I let the bliss of Geneing take control of me. It was better than sleep, better than sex, better than anything I could have imagined. Every second I could spare, I let the warmth of it consume me then shook myself free of its embrace when time came to move.
But it was quickly becoming harder and harder to do so. Every time I slipped into the Geneing, I became more and more sure I would never come back. But I knew that Cain was still depending on me to marshal his attack. He was depending on me to take the battle to the Rosicrucians who’d staged the occupation of Seattle, seeking his destruction. Loyalty kept bringing me back to reality. But loyalty could only carry me so far.
In my Elysium, if I thought of Where the Wild Things Are, I came back to Earth. That was my trigger, my escape: my favorite book as a child. Funny how Geneing got into my head.
Past noon, I lay in the destruction of an old stationary store’s basement stock room and slipped off into unreality. We’d just lost a particularly persistent Stryker crew that had cost me three Genies, but I was feeling safe in that basement. I let the Geneing take over me.
But this time, instead of finding bliss in its hold, I found myself back in the living room of Vivian Montavez’s apartment.
I knew it was a dream – a warm, safe place to escape to – but something about it felt strangely real. That same eerie sensation I’d felt on first stepping foot in her apartment, I felt again. Like I was home.
I could smell coffee brewing and the sound of bacon frying from the kitchen. I looked around and the apartment looked the same. I looked at the city beyond the windows. It was a sunny day. The city wasn’t burning. There was no riot here. It was a dream, but it felt more real than reality.
“Sit down, the eggs are ready,” a woman’s voice came from the kitchen. I knew its owner, but then I didn’t know her either. I walked to the kitchen, pass the breakfast table set for two and looked at Vivian standing at the stove top. “Coffee should be ready,” she said, turning the bacon in the pan.
She was Vivian, but not that Vivian. Not the Vivian I knew. It was Vivian from before she’d died. She was wearing PJ bottoms and a sports bra, her hair a tangled mess of bed-head. She looked up and smiled at me as she sneaked a piece of bacon out of the pan and nibbled at its end.
“Ouch!” she laughed and dropped the rind back in the pan. She leaned around the stove and pecked me on the cheek. “What’s wrong? You look dazed and confused.”
“I…” I looked down at myself. I was wearing the top half of the PJ set and a pair of baggy boxer shorts. I was home, I realized. This had always been my home. I lived here with Vivian. Had for years. I opened a cupboard and took out my favorite mug, the one with the wrestling kittens on it, and poured myself a cup of coffee. I sat down at my place at the table and looked out the window.
The crazy old crone with the apartment next to us was using her window as a clothes dryer again. The Super had told her not to hanger her underwear out there...
“Here you go,” Vivian said, sliding a plate of bacon and eggs before me. Her eggs had gorgonzola, mine extra pepper.
“Thanks,” I said, picking up my fork.
“Do you have to work today?” she asked as she began to chew on her bacon.
“No, I did my four tens. I’m off until Tuesday,” I said.
Vivian laughed. “A Saturday free. A rare treat!”
“Mmm,” I said around my eggs. “What do you want to do?”
“Well, there’s plenty of work to do at the P-Patch. You can come help me.”
“Or, I can watch the game.” I smiled across the table at her.
“Or you can watch the game.” She smiled back.
Right then, I could think of nothing but how much I loved her. I’d always loved her. We were happy. Young and alive.
I never wanted it to end.
Then, like the most unwanted nightmare you could imagine, I remembered that I was Geneing. Was this what it was like for the other Genies? It was no surprise that they died of thirst and hunger. To be so...happy. Was this the small sliver of Eden that Geneing was showing to us? The simple bliss of being happy?
It was a horrible trick.
I had to wake up, I was in the middle of a war. There was no time for me to sit around and play house in my imagination with Vivian Montavez. She didn’t really exist. Not this Vivian. Vivian was nothing like this woman. Perhaps she had been once but not anymore.
The Vivian I knew was a killer. A destroyer. A monster.
I tried to think about Max and the Wild Things. But I wasn’t waking up.
What was wrong?
“We have to talk, Sasha,” Vivian said across the table.
At first I ignored her, like a TV turned to a channel I wasn’t watching. But then I realized Vivian was talking to me. The real Vivian was talking to the real me. Not the howdy doody couple we’d just been pretending to be.
“Vivian?” I asked, looking at the young, beautiful, fresh-faced girl for any signs of the woman I knew.
“Yes, Detective,” she said, sighing. “As always, there isn’t much time. So it’s best if you just listen.”
“How?” I said, looking around. “Aren’t I Geneing?”
“Yes... it’s too hard to explain. All the Genies escape to the same place, I guess. You can climb into each other’s fantasies if you know what you’re doing.”
“Is this my fantasy or yours?”
“Does it matter?” She shook her head. Her bed-head jiggled. “What’s important is that Cain can’t hear us here. He has no power here.”
“But when we’re awake?”
“He hears everything. Knows everything.”
“Fuck.” I ran a hand across my stubbly chin.
“Listen,” Vivian said, putting down her fork and leaning across the small breakfast table. “There’s one last part of Dark’s mystery left to decipher. One last task to do before everything is complete.”
“There’s more? More than decoding his book? More than finding Q?”
“Yes,” Vivian said, taking hold of my hand. “We have to destroy Cain.”
“Destroy?” I replied in shock. “But, you—”
“No, never.” Vivian interrupted.
“Then, you’re still with the NeoCons? Still with your father?”
“I’m still with the side trying to put an end to a monster.”
“But why get yourself killed? Why become like he is?”
“To find out how to truly destroy him,” Vivian went on. “Dark knew he couldn’t do it.”
“He took the Geneing. He was like me.”
“Yes, but that’s not important. He knew Cain was invulnerable. Even to sunlight. We all are. It destroys but it doesn’t kill. Dark could have burned Cain to ashes, and while one molecule was left intact, he would slowly coalesce back into his original form. It’s happened before. But Dark knew how Cain could be destroyed. Forever. I’m sure of it.”
“None of this was in his novel.”
“No. He didn’t even trust the Rosicrucians with this fact.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know.”
“You d
on’t know?” I said, incredulous. All of that? For nothing? “But you’re sure he can?”
“Yes. I am now. Now that I’m like him.”
I sighed. Disgusted.
“Look,” Vivian forged on, anger burning in her brown eyes. “I know we’re not real vampires. Real real vampires. Tebor and I. Cain said as much. The Geneing virus is a bastardization of his blood. He considers us Nosferatu-lite. When 1768 extracted the virus from Cain, they must have modified it in some fashion so they could control it.”
“Yes, the on/off triggers,” I agreed.
“But you were created directly by Cain. His bite, not from 300. You shouldn’t have them.”
“No, but Where the Wild Things Are...”
“Right...” Vivian prodded.
“It must mean that Cain has been infected by his own virus...” I said, confused. “But how can that be?”
“Dark must have infected him. Cain has a trigger,” Vivian said in disbelief.
“Cain is a Gene Genie,” I agreed. Then laughed. “Just like us all.”
“That’s how he can me destroyed,” Vivian added, excitedly. “If his consciousness is forever trapped here...” She gestured around at the apartment.
“Perhaps then, he can’t regenerate. You said he didn’t sleep like humans do. Even in death. He’s forever awake.”
“But if he’s Geneing...” Vivian trailed off, then came back, forcefully. “We just need to discover his trigger.”
What were we doing? I shook myself. Plotting against Cain? Only a few hours ago I was fighting a pitched street battle in his name. Now I was conspiring to undo him. But I felt no guilt. Vivian was right. Back in reality, I was under his control. But in the fantasy of Geneing, in my own little haven with Vivian and breakfast bacon, I was a free man. My body might be dying, but my mind was free. Again, the idea that I was glimpsing at a little sliver of Eden made me only the more curious about paradise.
“He’d have done it all in here,” I said, looking around.
“Who?”
“Dark.”
“In this apartment?” Vivian asked, confused.
“No. In his head. In his bliss. And hidden his work, even from himself. In here he was free to plot against Cain, but once he returned to reality, he’d have been a slave, just like us. No wonder there was no mention of Cain’s trigger in Dark’s writing, he wasn’t even aware of it himself. He’d have hidden it as a cypher, unconsciously somehow, even beyond his considerable powers of reason. But what?”
“You need to find it,” Vivian implored. “And you need to find it quickly. Cain is resting, but when night falls, he’ll descend on this town with vengeance. The NeoCons and the Army won’t stand against him at the height of his powers.”
“There was nothing in Q...” I was still thinking. “…nothing about a trigger for Cain. He must have pasted down the cypher through the Rosicrucians orally.”
“Are you listening, Sasha?” Vivian shook my shoulder. “There’s no time for this.”
“But once I leave this apartment,” I protested. “Cain’s power over me will return.”
“No,” Vivian said, raising from her seat. “We can fight against it when we’re together. If we focus on this apartment, on this place. We still have free will, Sasha, even with Cain’s blood in our veins.”
Vivian pulled me up to my feet, away from the breakfast table.
I resisted, shaking my head. “I’m not ready. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Can’t we wait just a few more minutes? Finish breakfast?”
“No, Sasha, it has to be now,” she pulled hard on my outstretched arms. I pulled back, pulling her in close. I took my opportunity. I’d only get one.
I kissed her.
She kissed me back.
After a long, perfect moment, she pulled away, taking a breath. “Wake up, Sasha,” she said. “And sailed back over a year, and in and out of weeks...”
“No!” I screamed.
“...and through a day, and into the night of his very own room...”