Basilisk (The Korsak Brothers #2)(81)

“A theory is useless without proof,” the twelve other chimeras all murmured. I caught myself before I did the same—another Institute rule; another Institute lesson.

“What did you do, Ariel?” I demanded.

Her smile was dreamy this time. “Remember SARS, the bird flu, swine flu? They all had people in a panic, didn’t they?” She tapped a pink fingernail against the metal cylinder. “This will have them too dead to worry about panicking. I whipped it up in my lab. It’s airborne, has a seven-day incubation time so people can travel far and spread it wide, and a thirty percent mortality rate. I could’ve made it higher, but then who would we have to play with? You can’t break all your toys. That wouldn’t be very bright of us, would it? The one in the Portland airport will go off at eleven a.m. tomorrow morning. There are quite a few travelers at that time. I wonder how far it will go. How much of the world we’ll touch.”

“They’ll shut down the rest of the airports,” Stefan said.

“If they find the mechanism, but they won’t. I didn’t even go through security before I planted it. And if they did find it, did discover it was a man-made virus and not a new, natural version, which they won’t with the work I’ve done, they can’t shut them all down forever, can they? I thought it was a little much, so many people. I play, but on a smaller scale, but Wendy insisted. And when she said she’d free the rest of us, I thought it was worth it.” She frowned, only now seeing how few chimeras there were. “This is all that survived the rebellion?”

“This is all that survived Wendy,” I said quietly.

“These were the worthy,” Wendy snapped. “The rest would do as they were told, but they didn’t have the heart or the hunger to be what we were born to be. We are the birth of a new race and only the best will be part of that birth. Only the best shall have the world as their new Playground.”

“But why?” It was Saul this time; Saul who’d seen war and worse, and this was beyond him. “What’s the point to all of this? Just killing for killing’s sake? And soon you’ll get bored of that too and kill the entire world?”

Wendy didn’t answer him. Wendy didn’t talk to humans. “As for why I came after you, Michael, you have to be curious. You know you’re not important enough for my attention . . . except . . .” She did her little-girl repetition again. I didn’t know whether she was aware she was doing it or doing it for the same reason of making us psychologically ill watching and hearing her. “Except, except, except, that when I found Lily One, she told me what you were up to. She knew you for what you were from the beginning.” She hadn’t been the only one. “You’ve gotten as negligent as Bellucci’s security and have forgotten your training. I wanted you, Michael, for one reason only. You dared think you could cure us. You dared,” she said, her face crimson with fury now, “when the only cure needed is for the weak and pathetic previous stage of evolution that covers this world now to die. It’s our turn now and you thought somehow you could stop your betters. That you should stop them. You’re broken, Michael. Perverse. Traitorous. Sick. And the sick need to be put to rest, especially the sick with egos bigger than their abilities.”

I shook my head at Ariel. “You shouldn’t have told her about the cure.” She shrugged. It was a pretty shrug and the smile was dazzling, but there was more unease in her eyes as she glanced again at Wendy, then at the small number of chimeras, and then at me.

“Misha,” she said, “you know there is no cure.”

“You’ve more than earned your punishment.” Wendy was done batting around the mouse. Now it was time for the kill. “And what could be a better one than for you to watch this town, its miserable people, and your unnatural attachment die from Lily’s concoction. Then, naturally, I kill you, the cherry on top of my sundae. I love sundaes.” The tip of a pink tongue touched her upper lip. “They’re almost as good as this.”

I had an attachment to this town, but I had a stronger one and she knew it. Raynor had told Bellucci, and Bellucci had spilled his guts literally and metaphorically all in one. She knew Stefan had rescued me, that I’d lived with him since my escape from the Institute, that he was my family—a word she’d put in Peter’s mouth and in the other chimeras’ brains, but that she’d never understand herself. Understanding didn’t matter, though. She knew where she could hurt me the most.

I felt the shimmer of power hit him. Wendy, the first chimera who didn’t need to touch to kill—Wendy who had only to see or know you existed; Wendy who was trying to kill my brother right now. Trying to rip him apart from the inside out.

She failed.

He fell to his knees from the pain of cells frozen for the smallest measurement of time until I set them free again. There was a trace of blood dripping from his nose over his mouth, but he was alive. He was fine. That was until Wendy tried again. This time Saul and I fell to join him. I held her off, held her back, but I was losing ground and the other chimeras were moving forward, except for Ariel.

I thought I could do it. I genuinely believed I could. But I’d been wrong. Wendy was death incarnate. I could try until the end of my days and I would never be what she was now . . . at ten years old. I had seconds, maybe less, left before she overwhelmed the healing protection I had thrown up over the three of us. The pain was agonizing. I couldn’t lift the tranquilizer gun. I couldn’t move at all, and Saul and Stefan . . . I could feel how much worse it was for them. They couldn’t lift a finger, much less a hand with a gun in it.