Fear (Gone #5)(33)

Sanjit was inclined by his nature to be skeptical. But Lana had told him everything about her desperate battles with the gaiaphage. He could understand how even now she could feel the creature’s mind reaching for hers, its voice calling to her. Things that he’d have dismissed as impossible in the old world—things that were impossible—happened here.

But this was something different, or so she said. And her eyes were not filled with the barely suppressed rage and fear she showed when the Darkness reached her. Now she seemed puzzled.

Suddenly Lana grabbed Sanjit’s arm, yanked him closer, and felt his forehead with her palm. Then she released him and placed her palm on Taylor’s forehead.

“She’s cold,” Lana said, eyes gleaming.

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Sanjit said.

“Has she? Because it looks to me as if all her injuries are sealed off.”

“Then what would make her so cold?” Because now Sanjit had noticed it, too. He touched the severed legs, then Taylor’s forehead, then his own. Taylor’s legs were the same temperature as her torso.

Room temperature.

“Sanjit, turn away,” Lana said. She was already pushing Taylor’s T-shirt up and Sanjit hastily looked away.

Next he heard Lana unzipping Taylor’s jeans.

“Okay,” Lana said. “Nothing you shouldn’t see.”

Sanjit turned back and gasped. “She’s… Okay, I don’t know what she is.”

“I forget exactly what all the signs are of a mammal,” Lana said, voice level. “But there was something about giving birth to babies and then nursing them. And being warm-blooded. Taylor no longer has any of that … those…” She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. “Taylor’s not a mammal anymore.”

“Hair,” Sanjit said. “Mammals have hair.” He touched Taylor’s hair. It felt like a sheet of rolled-out Play-Doh.

“So she’s a freak?” Sanjit suggested.

“She was already a freak,” Lana said. “And none of the freaks have ever developed a second power. Or stopped being human. Even Orc seems to be human beneath that armor of his.”

“So the rules are changing,” Sanjit said.

“Or being changed,” Lana said.

“What do we do with her? She’s still alive.”

Lana didn’t answer. She seemed to be staring at the space a few inches in front of her face. Sanjit reached for her, to touch her arm, remind her she wasn’t alone. But he stopped himself. Lana’s wall of solitude was going up, shutting her off in the world she shared with forces Sanjit could not understand.

He let her be, just kept his position close by. It made him feel very isolated. His gaze was drawn irresistibly to the monstrous parody of Taylor.

Taylor’s mouth snapped open. A long, dark green, forked tongue flicked out, seemed to taste the air and withdraw. Her eyes remained blessedly closed.

Sanjit felt himself back on the streets of Bangkok. One of the beggars he’d known back in Bangkok had a two-legged dog he kept on a leash. And the beggar himself was legless and his hands were formed into two thick fingers and a stub of thumb.

Other street kids had called him a two-headed monster, as if the man and the dog were a single malformed creature. Sometimes they would throw rocks at the beggar. He was a freak, a monster. He made them afraid.

It’s not the monsters who are so completely different that are scary, Sanjit reflected. It’s the ones who are too human. They carry with them the warning that what happened to them might happen to you, too.

A part of Sanjit was telling him to kill this monstrous body. There was no way to help her. It would be an act of charity. Taylor, after all, was just one manifestation of a consciousness that would go on forever. Samsara. Taylor’s karma would determine her next incarnation, and Sanjit would earn good karma for a charitable deed.

But he’d also heard people of his religion say, You can never take a life because if you do you interrupt the proper cycle of rebirth.

“Do you ever have feelings you can’t really explain?” Lana asked.

Sanjit was startled out of his own thoughts. “Yes. But what do you mean?”

“Like … like feeling that a storm is coming. Or that you’d better not get on a plane. Or that if you turn the wrong corner at the wrong time you’ll come face-to-face with something awful.”

Sanjit did take her hand now and she didn’t refuse him. “Once I was to see a friend in the market. And it was as if my feet were refusing to move. Like they were telling me, ‘No. Don’t walk.’”

“And?”

“And a car bomb went off.”

“In the market where you didn’t want to go?”

“No. Ten feet away from the place where I was standing when my feet told me not to move. I ignored my feet. I went to the market.” Sanjit shrugged. “Intuition was telling me something. Just not what I thought it was telling me.”

Lana nodded. Her face was very grim. “It’s happening.”

“What’s happening?”

She fidgeted and dropped his hand. Then she smiled wryly and took his hand back, holding it between hers. “Kinda feels like a war is coming. It’s been coming for a long time.”

Sanjit broke out a grin. “Oh, is that all? In that case all we have to do is figure out how to survive. Haven’t I told you what ‘Sanjit’ means? It’s Sanskrit for ‘invincible.’”