Absynthe, page 29
He looked terrible, with deep bags under his eyes, his movements listless. He hadn’t shaved in days, creating a peculiar mismatch between the heavy stubble along his cheeks and his longer beard and mustache.
“Did it ever occur to you,” Liam said as he pulled up a chair, “that you’re working too hard?”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You need rest, Stasa.”
Stasa shoved the bottle toward Liam and lifted his glass. “That’s what the vodka is for.”
“I mean proper rest. Vodka’s no replacement for sleep. One step back to take two steps forward, as my Nana used to say.”
Stasa nodded ponderously, as if his head suddenly weighed a ton. “Doctor’s orders?”
“Doctor’s orders.”
“Then I’ll do so”—he lifted his glass and tipped his head toward the bottle—“but have a drink with me first.”
Liam nearly denied him, but then decided he could use a drink himself. He took up the bottle and clinked it against Stasa’s glass. They took a swig together, and Liam bared his teeth. The liquor was harsh, all green moss and white pepper.
“We’ve made some progress,” Stasa said while staring through the glass panel at Morgan, “but it’s too little, too late.”
“I wish there was more I could do to help.”
“Grace is helping. But even so . . .” His gaze grew more haunted by the moment. “It’s on me. It’s all on me.”
“Talking sometimes helps.”
Stasa blinked, drawing his attention back to the small office. “Hmm?”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Long seconds passed. Stasa shook his head, but then said, “I miss my old life, Liam.”
“It must have been hard, leaving it all behind.”
Stasa stared into his glass, lost in thought, then took another swallow. “Can I share a secret with you?”
“Of course.”
“Before I met Grace, I was on top of the world.”
“I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t. I came from nothing. My three sisters were killed by typhus in the slums of Budapest. Two years later, my mother was shot for being a Jew, my father for trying to defend her. By the grace of God, I was sent to America by the very envoy who witnessed their deaths. I attended school in New York. I worked my way through three college degrees in Boston. I came to Chicago and built an empire.”
“And despite all that, you agreed to join the Uprising. It was a selfless act, a thing you should be proud of.”
“Proud?” Stasa frowned, then laughed bitterly. “Let me tell you something, Liam.” He waved his glass, spilling vodka in the process. “When Grace asked me to join the Uprising, I agreed, but it wasn’t for selfless reasons. I joined because I recognized that De Pere threatened everything I’d built. I saw my empire crumbling before my very eyes.” He swallowed the last of his drink, set the glass down with a sharp clack. “I miss steak au poivre. I miss fine cigars.” He waved to the bottle in front of Liam. “I miss proper vodka.”
“That’s normal. It’s the life you were used to. Anyone would miss it.”
“It’s twisted, is what it is.”
Stasa stared at Liam hard, as if daring him to convince him otherwise. Liam wasn’t sure what to say, but then he was reminded of another time, another place. “You mind if I share a secret with you as well?”
Stasa’s gaze was sad, his silence assent.
“During the war, I was on leave with the Henchmen in Chicago. Nick Crawford had been down for days. Silent and morose. From our sessions with the Henchman serum, we knew something was up. I found him at Union Station with a ticket to St. Louis in his hand. He said he wanted to visit his family, just for a day, but I could tell it went well beyond that. He wanted out. He was ready to leave everything behind. It’d all become too much for him.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me,” Stasa said.
“Eventually, I managed to talk Nick into returning with us to Milwaukee after leave, but he fell into a deeper depression than before. He was conflicted, wracked with guilt over backing down on his plans, wracked with guilt he’d ever had thoughts of leaving in the first place. He felt like he’d betrayed both his family and the Henchmen. In our next session together, all of us, even Kohler, asked him to tell us about it, his family, his city. And he did. He told us about his parents, about Bailey and how the two of them used to get into trouble on the streets of St. Louis. We heard his words, of course, but we felt it, too.”
“Liam—” Stasa began.
But Liam cut him off. “I’ve watched you with William and Alan. I’ve watched you with Ruby. I’ve watched you with Dakota and Morgan. And what I see is a man who cares about those in his charge.” He paused, letting the words sink in. “We are all more than one thing, Stasa. You can miss your old life and still be invested in your new one.”
“But I feel like I’ll never see the old days again.”
“Maybe you won’t. Times change. People change. We lose friends and family. We make new ones along the way.” Liam had said the words for Stasa, but he couldn’t help think of Grace, of Bailey, of Stasa himself, all of whom he’d grown closer to since the wild events at the flashtrain ceremony. “In the pain of grief, of our yearning, we can close ourselves off, blinding ourselves to that which lies before us. Sometimes we don’t recognize the value of our new relationships.” Liam reached out and squeezed Stasa’s hand. “Not until we reach out and embrace them.”
For a long while, the two of them were silent. Then Stasa nodded sharply. “Thank you for that, Liam.”
“You’re welcome.”
Suddenly, Stasa sat bolt upright.
“What is it?” Liam asked.
Stasa’s gaze was restless. “Reach out . . .” His eyes went wide as saucers. “Embrace them . . .” He jolted to his feet, gripped Liam’s head with both hands, and kissed his forehead with a long, loud smack. “You’re brilliant, Liam, you know that?”
Before Liam could say another word, he was gone from the office, leaving Liam in complete bewilderment.
The following morning, Liam went to the labs to check on Stasa, but the nurse, Theresa, forestalled him. “He asked for isolation today.”
Confused but hopeful, Liam headed to the landing platforms instead to continue practicing illusions. The air was warm, even as high up as they were. Clay and Bailey were on their way. He hadn’t been able to find Alastair, but in a stroke of good luck, he was already on the platform. Like the day before, he was standing on a catwalk, and this time, he was leaning over the railing, staring straight down.
“Is everything all right?” Liam asked.
He was growing more and more concerned with Alastair’s behavior. His diagnostics had turned out fine, but his incapacitation at the hands of officers Carolan and Holohan had changed him in some fundamental way, and not for the better.
Alastair turned to face Liam, but not without one last glance down toward the ground. “I suppose I’m a bit homesick, sir. I miss the Aysanas.”
Before Liam could reply, Grace climbed up the nearby stairs and onto the platform, with Clay and Bailey in tow.
“Want to try something new?” Grace asked.
Vowing to talk to Alastair more about it later, Liam nodded. “Why not?”
She motioned them all into a rough circle. “Learning to cast illusions is only half the battle,” she said. “We’re dealing with men like Kohler and De Pere, who will work to strip them away, perhaps the moment they’re cast. You need to learn how to defeat that.”
“Okay,” Liam said. “How?”
“Try to cast an illusion of Alastair again. Clay is going to try to dispel it. Your goal is to prevent him from doing so.”
Clay’s smile was ear to ear. “Gotta warn you. I’m good.”
Liam smiled as well. It felt like their days in the Devil’s Henchmen, when Liam, Clay, and the others would compete. Who could run the fastest. Who could jump the highest in their hopper armor. Who was most accurate with rifle or grenade launcher.
“Ready?” Liam asked.
“Wrong question,” Clay said. “The question is whether you’re ready, you poor fucking sod.” He’d no sooner said the words than he devolved into a short coughing fit. Bailey looked ready to go to him, but stopped when Clay raised a hand to her and depressed a plunger on his metal sleeve.
“You all right?” Liam asked.
Clay’s fit slowly subsided. “Stop trying to distract me,” he said between breaths.
Knowing that to challenge Clay now, in front of the others, would only embarrass him, Liam suppressed his concern and summoned the illusory Alastair into being. He’d no sooner appeared, however, then he was gone again. He tried again, and the illusory Alastair popped out of existence a few seconds later. Clay smirked. Bailey chuckled. The real Alastair blinked his luminescent eyes.
From that point forward, Liam couldn’t so much as summon Alastair into being, not even for a second.
“Try something simpler,” Grace said.
Liam, frustrated, nodded and took a deep breath. He pulled a folding knife from his pocket instead—another illusion, but one that might easily be real. It remained for several seconds as Liam fought Clay’s attempts to dispel it. He could feel Clay tugging at the edges. As fast as Liam moved to stop him, Clay would dart in from another direction. The more of it that unraveled, the harder it was for Liam to maintain the illusion. Or rather, the harder it was for the others to believe it was real. The moment they sensed something awry, their minds read it as wrong, and the illusion ceased to be.
Over and over again Liam tried, summoning a buffalo nickel he withdrew from his pocket, then an illusion of the billfold that actually was in his pocket, a thing he hoped would allow him to make it more real. He even tried pulling a thread from the cuff of Clay’s sleeve, pretending he’d yanked it free. It did no more than flutter in the wind before it frayed and was gone. In hopes of throwing Clay off, he summoned an emerald green parakeet. He got so far as having it land on his outstretched finger before it faded and was gone. No matter what he tried, Clay tore his illusions apart, and he only seemed to become more adept at it with each try.
“You’re anticipating me,” Liam said, completely frustrated by then. “It’s making it easier for you.”
“Sure I am,” said Clay. “You don’t think Kohler is going to anticipate your illusions? De Pere?”
“Let’s try the reverse,” Grace said. “Try to dispel my illusions.”
Things grew even worse from there. Grace summoned the same green parakeet. Perched on her finger, she flung it into the air. It flew to Bailey, then landed on Alastair’s shoulder. With a flutter, it arced its way to Clay’s outstretched mechanikal finger. And all the while, Liam tried to dispel it, with no success. Suddenly it flew straight toward Liam and struck him on the forehead, vanishing in a burst of feathers. That Bailey and Clay began laughing only deepened the sting caused by the bird’s impact.
He felt like an utter failure. “You’re too good, Grace.”
“It’ll come.” Grace stepped forward and touched a fingertip to his forehead and the pain suddenly vanished. “But you have to understand, Kohler is as good as I am, and De Pere is better than us all. You have to be ready.”
Liam was struck by Grace’s inner strength, her determination, the way she willed the Uprising to achieve its goals.
“What?” Grace asked.
He realized the silence had gone on for too long. “You’re a good person, Grace.”
Her faint smile faded, as if she were disappointed in his words. He was about to apologize when Stasa climbed the stairs to the platform. He was disheveled. He looked more tired than when Liam had spoken with him the previous night. More worrisome was the severe look on his face. “You all better come with me.”
“What is it?” Grace asked.
“We’ve found something.” He shook his head. “Just come with me, quickly.”
Thirty-Five
“Sir, my power cells are a bit low,” Alastair said as Liam and the others headed down into the Nest. “I’d better go recharge.”
Liam nodded, vowing to check on him as soon as possible, then followed the others along the maze of hallways, stairwells, and compartments to reach Stasa’s lab. They convened in a room one level above where Morgan and Dakota were being kept. Like the room at the domes, it was divided in two. In the near side, a bank of electrical switches and readouts was situated below a wide pane of glass. Beyond the pane of glass was a sterile white environment with a technician name Jonathan, who wore blue scrubs and a mask.
Liam had taken a few meals with Jonathan. He had curly, sandy-brown hair that simply refused to be contained by his cap. He’d been with the Uprising about a year and was fiercely loyal to it, having joined after his daughter was killed in a Cabal raid.
In the compartment with Jonathan were a man and a woman. Both were strapped into stout metal chairs, which in turn were bolted to the floor. Although their identities were obscured by bulky helmets that covered half their faces, Liam soon recognized them. The woman’s dark skin tone and the deep blue veins standing out along her neck identified her as Dakota, and the man, all raw bones and hollow cheeks, was clearly Alan. From the tops of their helmets, cables stretched along the floor and into the wall adjoining the instrument panel Stasa was sitting behind.
“Our conversation last night,” Stasa said to Liam, “led to a revelation. It made me realize I needed to study the scourges and thralls, not individually, but as a connected whole. I needed to examine them while their respective bacterial strains were excited. Their helmets are currently blocking their ability to communicate with one another, but see what happens when we remove them.”
When Stasa nodded, Jonathan removed each of their helmets in turn and hung them from hooks affixed to the backs of the chairs. As in the domes, Alan’s eyes were listless, but the longer he stared at Dakota, the more riveted he became.
“Dakota has been given a sedative which prevents her from unleashing the attack you experienced at LuxCorp, but Alan is still able to sense the scourge strain within her.”
Liam’s gut churned just to look at them: Dakota staring with a predatory expression, Alan looking as though he wanted to prostrate himself before her. Liam could feel it, as well. Emanating from Alan was a sense of wonder that bordered on reverence, and it was directed at Dakota.
Dakota smiled, a grisly thing, and the feeling of reverence coming from Alan intensified. The people and the room around Liam seemed to melt away. All that was left was a feeling, not just of reverence, but of divinity. Alan stared into the pits of Dakota’s eyes as if waiting for a command, any command, that he might obey. She had become like unto a goddess; and he her most devout worshipper.
Dakota didn’t seem to revel in the adoration so much as expect it, which made it all the more chilling when she turned toward the windows and stared at Liam. It was unnerving: those jet black eyes, the reddened skin around them, the riverland of stark blue veins over her face and neck.
“Can they see us?” Liam asked.
“As in the domes, the glass is mirrored on the opposite side,” Stasa said, “but Dakota isn’t using normal sight. She senses our thoughts, even though I’ve keyed the field running through the wall to prevent it.”
Liam felt her hunger. She recognized she’d missed her opportunity to infect him in LuxCorp, and was counting the moments until she had another.
“You’ll recall the project name from the documents we recovered,” Stasa continued. “Homo servientis. We can see now its full scope. Thralls will become slaves, the scourges their masters, and the psis will carry commands over vast distances so that all can be controlled from some central point.”
“From one person,” Liam corrected, “De Pere.”
“Yes,” Stasa said, “you’re very likely right. And the scourges will be used to infect new victims as well. The three glands beneath their tongues are specialized: each contains one of the three strains so that any one scourge can transform an uninfected man, woman, or child into a thrall, a psi, or another scourge.”
The ache inside Alan to please Dakota was growing, so much so that Liam felt it as well. Every moment that passed saw Liam pitying her less, venerating her more.
“Enough,” he said.
Stasa raised a hand to Jonathan, who nodded and moved to Alan’s chair. As he was reaching for the helmet behind it, Dakota yanked on the leather straps around her wrists with a wild fury. In moments, her wrists were raw, then they were bleeding. As Jonathan darted toward her, she yanked them both free. Though her ankles were still confined, she lunged and caught Jonathan by surprise.
Stasa pressed a different button and shouted into the receiver. “Emergency! Emergency!”
Only a few seconds passed between that cry and a pair of security guards rushing into the room, but by then Dakota had Jonathan on the floor, face down. Her mouth opened. Her long tongue extended. In a flash, the white barb pierced the back of Jonathan’s neck. Unlike the time in LuxCorp, when Dakota still had some sense of her own humanity, it happened in the blink of an eye.
As the guards regained control over Dakota, it struck Liam just how far along the same transformation Morgan was. How far other scourges would be. Dakota had been tagged with a number: 0187. Morgan had been marked with 0227. It was clearly a sequence, the numbers indicative of how many scourge victims the Cabal had managed to infect and then gather in the course of their insidious project.
“How can De Pere do this?” he asked of no one in particular. “How can he want this to happen?”
Stasa, normally so unflappable, looked completely shaken. “That’s the big question, isn’t it?” he said. “The only question.” In the other room, one guard led a struggling Dakota away while the other helped Jonathan to his feet. “Our own government is fostering the creation of a bacterial strain that, if released on the general public, will destroy us. It will destroy the world.”
