“Are you Tessic?” said the black teen, all attitude. It only aggravated the suspicions of the good ol’ boys with security badges.
“Get out!” Tessic said. The lead guard promptly advanced on the two teens, just as Tessic knew he would. “No,” Tessic said, stopping the guard in his tracks. “You and your men. Get out.”
The men looked to one another, clearly suffering some testicular trauma at their dismissal. The guards began to slink out, and Tessic took guilty pleasure in watching them go. When he was seventeen, all long hair and torn jeans, he would have been cast out of an establishment like this as well.
“In the future,” he told the exiting guards, “I expect you to treat visitors with common courtesy and respect—even the ones you expel.”
Once the door had closed, Tessic turned to the black teen. “Do I have the honor of addressing Winston Pell?”
Winston cracked the slightest smile. “Expecting me?”
“Not at all—but your presence is a welcome surprise.” The fact was, Tessic had an entire staff of private detectives searching for Winston and Lourdes, and they had come up empty-handed. That Winston had just fallen into his lap was just further indication of how bashert his endeavor was. Tessic could feel the hand of the Almighty in this. He offered Winston his hand, and Winston looked at it for a moment before committing to shake it. As their hands clasped, he felt Winston’s current move through him, making the hair on his arms and neck stand on end. Tessic laughed, a bit giddy from the sensation.
“So how come you dress like that?” Winston said, pointing to Tessic’s white suit. “I’ve always wanted to ask that.”
“Image is everything,” Tessic answered, “or at least my public relations staff tells me.”
The blond kid stood up behind Winston. “Excuse me,” he said, “the non-entity requests an introduction.”
“Drew Camden, Elon Tessic,” Winston said.
Tessic raised his eyebrows. “The biographer!”
Drew’s eyes lit up. “You know about that?”
“With the amount of airplay your videos of the shards received over the past year, you should have been a rich man.”
Drew sighed. “Yeah, too bad I left them in the desert, for some low-life from Vegas to find. He hit the jackpot, I got nothing.”
“Ah, well, I imagine living it was worth all the money in the world.”
“Give me all the money in the world, and I’ll tell you which I like better.”
“So,” said Winston. “I’ve heard it from a reliable source that you’ve got Dillon locked away like Rapunzel in your tower.”
Tessic considered his response, and said, “The Talmud says a man’s own chains are the strongest.”
To which Winston responded, “A man’s own chains might be the strongest, but the Talmud also says, ‘A man who puts his brother to the test is not to be trusted.’ ”
Tessic shook his head, impressed. “Extraordinary! Your gift of growth has turned your mind into a sponge for knowledge.” Tessic laughed with pleasure, in spite of all of his attempts to maintain a cool, suave demeanor. “I only ask one thing: that I be in the room for the reunion.”
Winston shrugged. “Hey, it’s your tower.”
DILLON WAS AWAKENED BY what he thought was an alarm clock, but when morning replaced his dreams, he realized nothing was ringing. Still, there was some energy in his room he could not name, just at the edge of perception.
Maddy had left the room at dawn for her regimen of exercise, and Dillon found himself relieved that she was gone before he awoke. They had shared a bed but not each other the night before. He didn’t know who was to blame, and he wondered if their relationship had become so fragile that a single change in their pattern could cause the fabric to unravel.
He scratched an annoying itch on his lip and cheek. Maddy still needed to come to terms with the fact that Dillon had found himself again. He was no longer a boy who needed rescue, but a man, more comfortable with himself than he had ever been. If Maddy truly did love him, she would come to accept that.
There was a knock at the door, and Dillon opened it to Anselm, Tessic’s valet, a good-natured Swede who had suffered to learn Hebrew. He had pledged himself into Tessic’s service after Tessic led a campaign to find the man’s daughter a marrow donor.
“Mr. Tessic asked that I should bring you this.” He gave Dillon a hand-held mirror. When Dillon looked up for an explanation, Anselm only shrugged. “It is my understanding that it is a gift to you.”
Once Anselm had left, Dillon turned it over to see if it said anything on the back, but it did not. Well, Tessic was nothing if not enigmatic. Dillon had come to find the puzzles he posed entertaining.
Dillon put the mirror down, and dressed for breakfast. As he pulled on his polo shirt, he felt the smooth flow of the fabric over his face. There was something different about it, and it registered only faintly in his mind. It was as he slipped on his socks that it occurred to him that the shirt wasn’t different at all, it was his face. Then he looked down to the mirror he had left on the edge of the dresser.
In an instant he knew, even before he picked up the mirror to look.
The face he saw reflected in the oval was not the face he had gone to bed with. That face had been shredded and paved with scars from one cheek to the other, across his lips, down to his chin. Those scars were mere shadows now, and as he touched his face, he could feel them dissolving as good skin regenerated to replace it. There was a growing ache in his mouth as well. Blood began to spill from the corners of his mouth, and by the time he reached for a towel to wipe it away, new molars had sprouted from the empty sockets left from Maddy’s bullet.
There was only one explanation for this, and now he could put a name to the presence he had felt upon waking. Forgetting about Maddy and Tessic, he raced out of the room, his shoes barely on his feet.
He hurried down the hall toward the winding staircase that led down to the penthouse living room, hearing voices below. But as he neared the stairs, his enthusiasm took on a flavor of apprehension.
He took the stairs slowly, letting the room below move carefully into his view. Maddy was there, and Tessic. Neither had seen him yet. He was surprised to see Drew Camden there, and finally Winston. Drew, the first to notice Dillon, rapped Winston on the arm, and Winston turned toward the stairs.
Dillon found himself frozen on the last step as Winston saw him. Things were changing again for him. This controlled equilibrium Tessic had so painstakingly prepared would be violated by that final step into the room. Dillon opened his mouth to speak, but found nothing to say, and he could read the same uneasy ambivalence in Winston as well. This long-awaited reunion had brought with it an unexpected fear.
“Where the hell have you been for eight months?” Winston asked, the first to break the silence.
Dillon shrugged. “Out of sight,” he answered. “And out of mind.”
And then Winston gave him the hint of a smile. “No surprise there—you’ve always been out of your mind.”
Dillon took that final step down into the room, and crossed the floor to Winston, as Winston came toward him. Caught off guard by their own momentum, they nearly toppled one another in a bruising hug. Dillon felt a charge within the embrace—a surge of energy as Winston’s power added to Dillon’s, their harmonics fitting together like a major fifth. The tingling sensation in Dillon’s face peaked, then vanished, and he knew that the last of the scars were now gone. “I was starting to think I’d never see you again,” Dillon said.
Winston pulled away at the precise moment Dillon expected he would. “All right, let’s not get all touchy-feely about it.”
Dillon laughed. Whatever else might change, some things would always stay the same. He turned to Drew, offering a quick greeting, then returned his attention to Winston. “The army had me in lockdown like King Kong,” Dillon said, and went on to explain his months of captivity. Then Winston filled him in on his travels, but it was obvious that he was dancin
g around the things that were really on his mind, as was Dillon. Finally Dillon said, “Okoya’s back.”
Winston looked away for a moment. “I know.” Dillon sensed there was more he knew, but Winston just said, “We’ll talk about it later. Tell me how you wound up here.”
MADDY WATCHED THE TWO of them in the center of the large room, feeling uncomfortably voyeuristic. This was a relationship she had no place in. For as long as she had known Dillon, he had been alone and unique. But now the dynamic had changed. He and Winston spoke as if no one else in the world existed—as if the two were part of their own private universe. They belonged with each other, and Maddy wondered if it would be this way if they came together with Lourdes, too. Would their confluence serve only to push Maddy further and further away? It was small and selfish, this kind of jealousy, but she couldn’t purge herself of it.
Make sure you know your purpose in Dillon’s life, Tessic had said. Now, as she watched Dillon and Winston, she wondered if she had any place in Dillon’s life at all. Tessic, however, didn’t appear to have any doubts of his own tenure among the starshards. Across the room, he watched in silence, content, for the time, to be an observer.
Drew, who apparently shared the curse of the periphery, came over to introduce himself to her.
“Do you live here with Tessic?” he asked.
She wanted to be angry at the suggestion, but what was the point? “No. I’m a friend of Dillon’s.”
“Ah,” said Drew. The two watched Dillon and Winston for a few more moments. Winston was relating an encounter he had had with Lourdes. Something about a cruise ship. Dillon hung on his every word. Then Drew said to Maddy, “You can’t get close to them, you know?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s like you’re always on the outside. Believe me, I know. I tried to get close to Michael once—it got me killed.”
Maddy turned to Winston and Dillon, both connected to the exclusion of everything else around them.
“They started as a star,” Drew said. “And I figure in lots of ways they still are. They catch people like you and me in their orbit. We can’t get away, but we can’t get too close, or we burn. Best we can do is keep our orbit stable.”
Drew’s ruminations tugged enough of her focus that she missed something key in Dillon and Winston’s conversation, because Dillon now showed an expression of surprise, and suddenly turned from Winston, shooting a look to another body currently in orbit: Tessic.
“You mean here?” Dillon asked Tessic. “In this building?”
“In the infirmary,” Tessic said. “We’ll go, when you’re ready.”
“I’ve been ready for months.”
Maddy turned to Drew. “What are they talking about?”
Drew paused before answering. “What have you seen Dillon do?”
“Everything,” she answered.
“You haven’t seen this,” Drew answered. “No one has.”
AMONG TESSITECH’S VARIOUS EMPLOYEE perks was an infirmary and small medical clinic on the mezzanine. But today the clinic was closed and guards were posted at the doors.
In radiology, several leaded X-ray aprons covered an undefined mass on the X-ray table.
“He’s in pretty bad shape,” Winston said, as he and Dillon peered in through the window of the X-ray room. “And I suppose being around me didn’t help. Bacteria, algae from the lake—anything that was still alive in that foot locker grew out of control as we drove here.”
“Jeez, do you hear this conversation?” said Drew, to no one in particular. “I gotta find myself some new friends.”
The door opened, and two medical technicians who had the grim task of preparing the body exited the room. “What are we, friggin’ forensic examiners now?” one grumbled to the other. He stifled himself when he saw Tessic, who had them led out, never to know the nature of their task.
“One thing I learned from Bussard,” Tessic told Dillon. “Don’t let anyone see the whole picture.”
“Does that include me?” Dillon asked.
“You? Who do you think is painting the picture?”
Dillon thought to the first time he had repaired the ravages of death; the recomposition of flesh, the reanimation of spirit. It had been so difficult at first, taking such a profound focus of his will. It had always been a lonely, solitary act, both selfless and self-indulgent at once. But things had changed. Now his will was secondary, his presence dragged order from chaos whether he chose to or not. Yet even in the graveyard, a victim of his own power, he knew his limitations. He knew there were those among the dead who did not revive—those whom he could never reanimate alone. Organ donors, perhaps, and others who were buried incomplete. Dillon could not give them new kidneys, eyes, or a heart any more than he could fill the scarred gaps in his own bullet-torn face.
But Winston could.
And no matter how little of Michael remained on that table, if they could somehow get the teeth of their curious gears to mesh, he could be restored. It would require more than their simple presence in the room. This task would require precision and control.
Dillon pulled open the door, and the stench hit him instantly, registering in his gut. Tessic quickly tugged out a handkerchief, holding it over his nose.
“You weren’t kidding, were you, Winston?” Maddy said.
“You don’t have to come in,” Dillon told her, but as he and Winston entered the room, Maddy, Drew, and Tessic followed in their wake.
Three video cameras had been positioned in the room, already recording.
“What are we, on satellite feed to the world?” Winston asked.
“I wish to keep a record of this,” Tessic explained. “To document what you both accomplish here.”
“Like a videotape at birth,” suggested Winston.
“Exactly.”
Winston scowled. “I hate people who videotape births.”
Dillon shuddered as he approached the table. The mass on the table had so little definition beneath the lead aprons, it was hard to believe there was anything remotely human there.
“Ready to rock?” Winston asked.
“Only if you are.”
It began the moment they pulled back the lead radiation aprons.
The broken frame on the table before them was a collection of brittle human bones, caked with rancid mud, and glistening with a dense hair-like pelt of green lake algae. That algae was the first thing to start growing again in Winston’s presence, appearing to slither around the bones. Winston, having not actually seen the body before this moment, launched off into full-scale panic.
“That’s not Michael!” he said. “It’s not him! We got the wrong body, it’s not him!”
“Shh.”
Dillon put his hand on a broken thighbone, half of which was missing. The bone, a dead gray beneath the algae, began to blanch to an eggshell white. “Winston!”
Winston shuttered his panic and reached out, touching the bone as well. Its jagged end began to stretch, marrow bubbling up from the hollow within, until it became enclosed within the smoothly curved end of the bone. The algae peeled away and slid to the table.
The process picked up speed, the two of them matching each other’s rhythm. Dillon touched the skull, healing its many fractures. Winston moved the jaw into place, teeth growing to fill the empty sockets.
“Yes, I see it now!” said Winston. “It is Michael!”
They moved to the midsection. Crushed ribs rose into place, defining a chest cavity. From the decay that clung to the bones, Dillon was only able to re-integrate bloody fragments of organs—but with Winston’s touch, those fragments cultivated, cells dividing into complete structures, until Winston and Dillon both found themselves wrist-deep in it.
They now moved at an accelerated pace, time dilating itself around them. To those behind them, their hands moved with the agility and grace of virtuosos: four hands at the same instrument, perfectly synchronized.
All at once blood began to pulse, splattering the walls
. A heart now beat at the center of an open circulatory system. Connective tissue sprouted like spider webs from joint to joint and muscle mass thickened the legs and arms, rising like dough, encasing the bones beneath. Winston pressed his fingers on empty eye sockets, and when he pulled his fingers away, a pair of eyes filled the space, lids growing closed over them. The bleeding stopped and on the flayed, red figure before them, islands of translucent skin began to grow like clouds in an empty sky, growing denser, thicker, joining one another. A scalp grew back from the forehead, darkening with hair follicles. Skin stretched to cover the body, pushing the last of the algae away, until only the midriff remained open, like a gaping abdominal wound, but dermal tissue rushed in to fill the void until the gap became a crevice, became a crack, became a navel, leaving the fully realized body of Michael Lipranski, his chest rising and falling in slow, metered breaths.
Then Tessic suddenly bolted, flying from the room with uncharacteristic speed, but he was barely noticed as all eyes were on the body before them that had formed in less than a minute’s time.
Covered with blood, Winston backed away, but Dillon did not, for there was still one thing left to do. Although Michael’s body was there, there was an emptiness within. Calling back the spirit of others had been an instantaneous and automatic result of bringing life to the flesh. But Michael was a shard; a soul with such huge inertia that he had to be ignited like a furnace. Dillon pushed his thoughts forward, seeing Michael’s being in his mind. Into Michael’s flesh, into his cells, deeper still to the space between molecules, Dillon forced his own spark, and finally felt Michael ignite! A wave of intensity imprinted itself on every cell of his renewed body, aligning the life within into the service of a single consciousness.
MICHAEL FELT HIS OWN ignition.