“You always have a choice,” Noah said, and clicked the safety back.
David turned his blue-gray eyes on me. “Are you willing to let him bet Daniel’s life on it?”
I tore my gaze away from them and looked at the laptop. At my brother in the bed, at Jamie in the chair. “Don’t,” I said to Noah. “Please.”
“You’re not a murderer, Noah,” his father said. “The only person you’ve ever really wanted to hurt is yourself.”
Noah let out a small chuckle. “You’re right,” he said, then turned the gun on himself.
57
NOAH
I PRESS THE GUN TO my temple. I almost literally can’t wait to do it.
There’s this damned push and pull with my father. I feel complete disdain for the man standing before me, who looks nothing like me and is nothing like me and is disgusting to me. Yet at the same time I feel the senseless obedience of a child toward him. I want him to admire me, to be proud of me. To find me worthy. It is truly pathetic.
Mara sits on the table, her legs askew, her body trembling slightly, from the drugs or something else, I don’t know. Something about her, a restrained physicality, carries an implicit threat, like a cobra the second before it strikes. She looks tigerish, a wild animal trapped and cornered. I want to unleash her, and I think this is how. Maybe she’ll be able to save her brother then.
“I would rather die for her than live without her,” I say to my father.
A smile twists his face. “You just love to play the martyr, don’t you. You can lie to her but not to me. You would do it to spare yourself the sight of watching her die, the burden of guilt that her death and her brother’s would bring you. Let’s not pretend.”
“Oh, I’m not pretending.”
“Good. Then let me tell you, as clearly and precisely as I can, what you will be doing if you pull that trigger. You will unleash a Shadow upon the world. She will trail sickness and death behind her, wherever she goes, and it will start today, with her brother. She will burn like wildfire through her family, through everyone she cares about, leaving nothing but darkness and ashes in her wake. And you will be denying the world the answer to diseases that torment children and adults alike. If you choose to live, however, you could save millions. Billions, perhaps. You could usher in a new era of humanity. All it will cost you is one life.”
Mara’s life. The price is too high.
Fuck it. I press the barrel harder against my skull. The metal is warm from my skin, and the pressure is shamefully satisfying.
“Do it then, if you’re that selfish,” my father says.
“Don’t you dare,” Mara hisses, but I barely hear her.
“If I am, it’s because you made me that way.”
“Spoken like a true spoiled brat.” The disgust is evident in my father’s voice. “No, Noah, I think the shitty childhood excuse is played out. You don’t want to be protected like a child anymore? Because you’re seventeen? Then take responsibility for your own decisions. Own your own choices. It’s more than past time for you to grow the fuck up, Son.”
“I’m not your son,” I say, cringing immediately thereafter. What a babyish thing to say. Idiotic.
My father replies, “I wish that were true.”
The words break something inside me that I didn’t even know existed.
“If you weren’t my son, your mother would still be alive. She believed in you. I’m glad she isn’t here to see this.”
My mind refuses to seize on his words, so it focuses on Mara instead. She has been mostly quiet—eerily so. She says nothing in her own defense, so I speak for her. “If anyone is responsible for the things Mara’s done, it’s you.”
“You know that isn’t true. The original owner of that dog of yours? I had nothing to do with that. Nor did I have anything to do with that teacher, who paid with her life because Mara was simply having a bad day.”
God, why doesn’t she speak? “She didn’t know what she was doing.”
“Oh, she would have killed your dog’s owner anyway. Ask her. She’ll tell you.”
“I would have killed him too,” I say, and I mean it.
My father smiles again, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “But you can’t kill anyone, Noah. Not even yourself.”
“What about her family?” I ask, hating the desperation in my voice. “They don’t deserve this.”
“No. They don’t. They’re good people who got saddled with a bad problem.”
Mara inhales sharply.
“You can’t choose your children. No one knows that better than me. But you can help her family. And so many more at that.”
“I love her.” My father thinks I’m speaking to him, but I look at Mara as I say it. There is defeat in her eyes.
“You love her the way you would love a horse no one but you could ride. Like that Arab mare I bought years ago; I thought she’d breed good hunters, but not even the stallions would go near her. Do you remember what happened?”
I wish I didn’t.
“One night Ruth couldn’t find you. It was after your bedtime, which you rarely obeyed. We searched everywhere and found nothing, until we reached the stable. The mare’s stall door was open. You’d mounted her bareback, at nine years old. We found you lying by her side near the back gate. She’d thrown you, trying to go over it, and you’d cracked your head open. You survived with no damage, thanks to what you are. The mare broke three legs and had to be put down. Do you remember?”
“Stop,” Mara says.
“I’ve never heard screaming like that from an animal. It was a terrible death. And it wasn’t her fault. It was yours.”
“Stop!” The sound of Mara’s voice is frightening. “Noah,” she says with perfect calm. “Put the gun down.”
I ignore her, of course, and so does my father. “Mara is what she is. She isn’t safe, but she is capable of love, and she loves her family, and needs you to save them for her. She would give you a reason to do it someday. She knows it. You know it. The least you could do for her is save the younger brother before that happens.” My father’s eyes narrow. “But I’m beginning to see the futility in hoping you would be brave and selfless enough to do something for someone else, for once in your short life. Part of me wishes I could let the both of you go, just to watch you come crawling back to me on your knees someday, begging me to fix her, once you finally see what she’s capable of. Once you have to start burying her bodies yourself.”
He takes a step closer to me, but not close enough to matter.
“I thought you were ready to be the man your mother hoped you would be, but I see you’re just a child, who would burn all his gifts because he can’t have the one he wants.”
“Put it down.” Mara’s tone has changed. She is begging me now. Desperate. But my hand doesn’t move.
“The syringe contains sodium pentobarbital, which will stop Mara’s heart. The knife is the one method you’ve always . . . preferred. And that gun you’re holding to your head has only one bullet.”
He’s so sure I won’t do it. Doesn’t care whether I do.
“Please,” Mara says. “Please.”
I barely hear her. All I can think is that I am nothing more than a tool to him. But a tool can’t work if it’s broken.
I pull the trigger.
58
BEFORE
London, England
THE PROFESSOR PICKED UP ON the first ring.
“Get here now,” I said. “David keeps threatening to call an ambulance.”
“Don’t let him—if anything changes, I can’t predict the outcome anymore. The ambulance might crash before the child is born. It could die while still in the womb.”
“She’s bleeding,” I said to him. My clothes were damp from the evening drizzle, and I hugged myself to stave off the chill. “It’s bad.”
“She’ll survive.” The professor’s calm was maddening. It always has been. “He’ll come when he’s ready,” he added.
That’s wha
t Naomi said. “Look, I’d feel a bit more comfortable if I had some assistance? Unless you’re busy with something more important than the potential future of the human race, or whatever it is you’re fucking around with here?”
The professor refused to be baited. “She lives. He lives. It has to be this way, Mara.” But before I could argue, I heard Naomi scream.
“Come,” I ordered him. “Come now.” I hung up the phone and rushed back into the room.
Naomi was still in bed, propped up against several pillows. Wisps of her blond hair were matted to her forehead and her pale cheeks. She looked at me with glassy eyes but managed a wry smile.
“I think my water finally broke.”
I looked down. A red stain blossomed beneath her.
“I’m calling the ambulance,” David said, his expression a mixture of wrath and terror. He’d wanted to call one from the beginning. He’d wanted Naomi in the hospital, a controlled environment. Protected. He rushed to the door and shot a dark look at me over his shoulder. “Stay with her.”
As if I would leave now, after everything. But of course David didn’t know everything. He barely knew anything.
“This.” She paused to breathe. “Sucks.” She tossed her tired head back against the pillow. “How come no one told me how much this would suck?”
“I believe I did, actually,” I said.
“It feels like he’s trying to chew his way out.”
I managed a small smile. “You’re so weird.”
“I’m fascinating. There’s a difference.” She breathed shakily and opened her eyes. The humor had left them. “I’m really scared, Mara.”
“I know. But he’s seen this,” I said to her in a low voice, one David could not hear. “I know it feels like you can’t do this, but you can. I believe in you.” The words were bitter in my mouth. I felt like a farmer leading an animal to its slaughter, holding out a sweet to tempt it to its death. That Naomi knew what she was doing, that she chose this, didn’t make me feel less guilty.
The sound of the doorbell echoed through the house just then, and I both hoped and feared that the ambulance had arrived. It hadn’t. It was the professor instead.
He followed David into the room, carrying a doctor’s bag that I recognized from half a century before. He settled in beside the bed. “May I?” he said, gesturing to the sheets. Not even so much as a hello. Bastard.
“Make it stop,” Naomi whispered as he checked her.
“Not much longer, my girl. You are doing well.”
“What about the blood?” David said angrily, trying to mask his fear. It didn’t work.
The professor did not look up. “The placenta may have detached.”
David seethed. “May have?”
The professor ignored him. “But the contractions are strong enough now that even if there were time to take her to a hospital, I wouldn’t. But Mara,” he said, turning to me. “When the baby comes, I want you to be ready to call one if we need to.”
“Is he going to die?” Naomi asked between gasps.
“He is not going to die.”
“Am I going to die?”
The professor smiled. “Not today.”
I could kill him. Sometimes I wish I had.
“Just promise he’s going to be okay,” Naomi said through gritted teeth.
The professor obliged. “I promise.”
“Swear it.”
“I swear.”
Naomi twisted in the sweat-soaked, blood-soaked sheets and screamed. David’s face was ashen. He looked so young. My heart ached for him.
“Brave girl,” the professor said to Naomi. “You know how to do this. Now I want you to start pushing.”
“Fuck. It hurts.”
“It was no different for me,” I said to her, hating the sound of my own voice, hating my false smile. “Or the millions of women before us.”
David looked shocked for a moment. “You have children?”
I have a grandchild, I almost said, which would’ve shocked him even more.
It was barely a few minutes later when the professor said, “He’s ready, Naomi. Are you?”
She nodded.
“All right, then. Give it everything.”
She did. I held one hand and David held the other.
“Good,” the professor said. “He’s almost—he’s here.”
Naomi made a sound, somewhere between a sigh and a whimper, and fell back against the pillows. David’s face was ashen, but his eyes were full of awe.
“I want to hold him,” Naomi said weakly. Then, a beat later, “Toss him here.”
“Is it—is it a boy?” David asked.
“Yes,” the professor said in the eerily silent room.
“Why isn’t he crying?” David asked, and then saw the baby. He was blue.
“Oh God,” David whispered.
“What?” Naomi said, with an animal fear in her eyes. “What is it?”
The professor worked quickly. He was afraid, too, but no one would ever be able to tell but me. I held Naomi’s hand as she asked, “Is he—is he—?”
The cord was around the baby’s neck, but the professor cut it, and a second later, the baby turned from blue to pink. He was still silent, but the professor no longer looked alarmed. “There,” he said with satisfaction. “Good boy. He’s fine,” he said to Naomi.
“Why isn’t he crying?” David asked warily.
The professor cleaned him off a bit with a towel, looking relaxed. “What reason does he have to cry?”
“I thought that was normal? That babies cry when they’re born,” David said.
“Some do, yes,” he said, and handed the child to Naomi, who watched him raptly. “He’s scrappy,” she said with a smile on her lips as she cradled him in her arms. The infant’s eyes were open and eerily alert. “My little hero.”
She was a fierce girl, ferocious, even, but at that moment, she looked completely at peace.
But David was still unsettled. “Is there something wrong with him?” He looked at the baby with suspicion.
“No,” the professor said. “Everything is right.”
“What’s his name?” I asked Naomi.
She looked at the baby, then at David. “Noah,” she said, her eyebrows raised as if daring her husband to challenge her. Wisely, he didn’t.
I looked at the little shell of the newborn’s ear, the soft, perfect skin on his cheeks, the tiny fingers on the hand that would one day extinguish my life, and I said, “Good choice.”
59
I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TIME to scream before I noticed that Noah was still standing. The gun had jammed, or something. I didn’t know and did not care.
Noah was staring at nothing. He was blank, expressionless, stunned, motionless. The gun was still at his head. His father didn’t even react.
I was going to have to fix this. I was the only one who could. I said Noah’s name and he looked at me as if I’d spoken to him for the first time in history, as if he had no idea who I was.
“Give me the gun.”
He didn’t. But he did lower his hand, and then he spoke as if we were alone.
“Let’s go look for your brother.” He took my hand in his free one.
“There’s no time,” I said calmly.
“We can torture my father until he tells us.” I thought I caught David rolling his eyes in disgust. He was clearly not threatened.
“Uh, guys?” Jamie’s voice. We both blinked, confused, until we remembered the laptop. Jamie had seen everything. “As much as I’d like to watch that, I think—I think you should be quick,” he said diplomatically. But I knew what he was thinking.
Noah acted as if he hadn’t heard him. “We should start looking.” He tugged at my limp arm. My fingers were dead weight in his. I wasn’t going to follow him. There was no point. And parts of my legs were still numb anyway. I wouldn’t get very far, even if David and Jude let me.
“I can’t walk,” I said.
“Then I’ll carr
y you.”
Noah still didn’t get it. “We’re never going to find him before—before—” I couldn’t say the word.
“Not if we don’t try.”
I forced myself to remember that for Noah, Horizons seemed like yesterday. He didn’t know what had happened since.
I’d woken up strapped to the table like an animal, but I wasn’t one. I’d done things—things I regretted and things I didn’t. I was too old to blame them on being young. My family had been too good to me for me to blame it on them. I’d made my choices by myself. Some of them had been wrong, but they were my choices. I owned them. No one else.
Noah’s father knew he would never be able to convince Noah to kill me. This display was for me, so that I could prove to Noah why I should die. No one else could do that for me.
I didn’t want to die, but maybe I should. Maybe the world would be a better place if I did.
“No,” Noah said, in response to the question I hadn’t asked out loud. I wondered for a moment if he could somehow hear my thoughts, but then I realized that he didn’t have to; he could read my face.
“I can’t let Daniel go,” I said, fighting vainly to stay calm. “I can’t let what happened to me happen to Joseph. They’ve done nothing, nothing wrong. I’ve done everything wrong.”
“Not everything.”
“You haven’t been here.” I could tell that my words stung him. “You haven’t seen—” I tipped my head in the direction of the pictures of Dr. Kells and Wayne and Mr. Ernst. “Your father isn’t lying. I did those things. All of them.”
“I’m sure they deserved it,” Noah said, a tiny smile lifting the corner of his mouth. I couldn’t smile back.
David Shaw was sick and awful, but he was right about me too. Nothing good would ever come from me. Nothing ever did. But Daniel, Joseph—they were different. They would do good. They were good. And I could save them.