Beyond the Tower

by Maerlyn of Miria

Mark Rimer and Alison Hartley, first encountered in "Jade", then in "Ghost Dog", and again in "The Rode to the Tower," are plunged into an interdimentional conflict, the outcome of which could either save or destroy all worlds. Time is running out, and a new and deadlier enemy reveals herself. Existence is breaking. Rule Discordia! The tower trembles on its ground! New Revisions!

2. Chapter 2: Iyana's Tale 1

Chapter 1.

Iyana's Tale I:

Apocalypse 2016.

In multiple worlds held within the web supported by the three remaining beams, the scream of Los reverberated, and in all of them, evil things quaked, sensing a change coming, a change that could spell doom for their master. And those who opposed evil felt it, knew that their cause was not lost.

In one of those worlds, a young woman named Jade Joans clutched her babies to her, knowing that they would be safe, that her future ka was victory. In another world, in a future when, the tide of battle between multiple galactic races turned in favor of the few who opposed evil, opposed a race of beings who had long ago abandoned emotion and physical bodies in favor of technology and forms that were more energy than physical, and who also opposed a mutant insect species whose only aim was carnage and chaos. In yet another when, a small group of people linked hands, sealing a famillial vow, and the scent of roses and a soft echo of the song of the roses surrounding the Dark Tower reached them. They knew that, come what may, they were family, that those following them could not triumph.

In many of those worlds, a woman whose features were more bird-like than human, whose eyes burned with a cold fire, whose evil was hidden beneath the form she had long inhabited, felt a shift in the balance, felt all her plans within an ace of going wrong. She, unlike many other followers of evil, knew the cause, knew that if she didn't act soon, that her grand design would crumble.

"plans must be advanced," she thought, "and soon. In one of the worlds she inhabited, a man clad in silver light armor discharged a futuristic weapon at her and made his escape, carrying a small child. In another, the events she was focussed on went dark for a moment and several beings she had decided upon as prey slipped her grasp.

"Plans must be advanced, and soon."

Mark, Alison, and Stephen felt the wind rising around them, felt it lift them from their feet and pull them through the door. For a moment they saw the Crimson King chained into his throne and then the scene before them shimmered, changed, and solidified.

They looked about and found themselves in a vast circular court flanked by walls of some material they couldn't readily identify. Ahead of them, at some distance, the court gave way to what appeared to be the side of a mountain. Into this was built a structure which seemed to be of great importance, a structure that was topped by a tower of glowing white stone, its spiral of windows reflecting all light that struck them. Unlike the Dark Tower, this tower was topped by what appeared to be a glowing web supporting what could only be a crystal sphere which reminded the gunslingers of an ever-watchful eye. Mark thought he saw a light of a different kind, an azure light, shine out from the highest window of the tower for a moment, and then it was gone.

To the left of where the gunslingers stood, there was a dome of what appeared to be semi transparent crystal. Elsewhere, other buildings stood, giving the impression of a city, one that reminded Mark of something out of the fantasy novels he had loved to read so much in his younger days.

Immediately before the gunslingers was a fountain playing about a silver pool. The pool fed a tree the like of which the three gunslingers had never seen. Its branches were laden with flowers whose shape was almost that of a perfect sphere. Their petals were pure white and of a feathery consistency. Golden light spilled from them and the whole appeared to be more alive than anything encountered in All-World.

Between the tree and the pool stood a small group of beings whose forms were not human, but at the same time not threatening in any way, although there seemed to be several different kinds or subdivisions there represented. Three of them appeared, apart from their golden skin and large multi colored wings, to be a cross between human and some extremely beautiful avian form, the average height of these golden skinned winged ones was six to six and a half feet tall, but their bodies were more slender than any human's. Their wings fluttered every now and again, probably to maintain their balance whilst on the ground. One or two others appeared to be almost human, apart from their skin, which held some of the same golden color, while the others appeared to be smaller, wingless, less tall and slender, Mark guessed the height of these latter to be no more than three to four feet, and of a greenish or greenish brown color, the brownish hew appearing in the smallest of them.

As the gunslingers watched, another of their kind, one who appeared to be either ill or injured in some way and who was seated in a form of transport similar to a wheelchair reached toward the tree and closed its right hand on one of the flowers. After a moment the being slumped forward and appeared to be falling toward the pool, light like that from the flowers spilling from its hand, blood trickling from its mouth.

Mark ran forward and attempted to catch the creature, but a hand restrained him. His hands immediately dipped for his guns, but Stephen's hand fell on his shoulder.

"Hold," he said quietly, "you're in no danger."

"What are they?" Mark asked, looking behind himself at the being who held his left arm, a being who appeared to be shorter in stature than the others, golden in color, whose body was more bird-like than human, whose multi colored wings were half spread as if it would take to the sky at a moment's notice, and whose eyes seemed to hold all the secrets of a thousand universes.

"I've never seen their like before," Stephen replied, "but I have heard of them. They are Mirianas."

"That helps a lot," Mark said, "now could you try telling me something I really need to know, like, for example, where we are, what they are, and what we're doing here."

"I've heard of the Mirianas only in old tales," Stephen answered, "they are one of the oldest, wisest races in existence. No one in In-World, Mid-World, or Out-World knew where they came from, and after the world began to move on their visits ceased. Some believed that they died out, others thought they simply stopped coming to those they formerly instructed. As this is quite clearly not All-World, I can only guess that the tower has sent us to the world of the Mirianas for some purpose."

"What purpose could that be?" Alison asked.

"I know not," answered Stephen.

"Thanks," Mark said, "I'm glad someone knows what's going on around here."

The being who held Mark's left arm turned toward Stephen.

"Well met, gunslinger," it said in the High Speech, its voice was melodious and more bird-like than human.

"Long days, pleasant nights, wise one of Miria," Stephen responded, also using the High Speech.

"And may you have twice the number," the Miriana said, "it's been many years since one of your kind has been seen."

"Ka has sent us here for some purpose," Stephen said, "know you what that purpose might be?"

Before the Miriana could answer Stephen's question, the swarm of Little Doctors, which had up to this point remained behind the three humans, began to move, first marching like ants, then unfurling tiny butterfly-like wings and taking to the air. Their speed was incredible, almost too great for any but a gunslinger to follow. In less than a second they had covered the tree, whose flowers had begun to lose their light and color. In another moment they had covered it completely. Their song which had been silent suddenly was heard clearly. At the same time, the Miriana in the wheelchair-like transport seemed to gain enough strength to avoid what could have been a fatal fall into water the gods alone knew the depth of.

"What just happened?" inquired Alison.

"The Little Doctors sensed approaching death," Stephen answered, "and they seek to prevent it. They are healers above all else."

"The tree?" Alison asked, "is that what they sensed was going to die?"

"Mayhap," Stephen answered, "and mayhap that Miriana in the chair is connected in some way to the tree. We saw her take a flower from it and look you at her now."

"How do you know she's a female?" Mark asked.

"Years ago I had them described to me," Stephen replied, "one of them instructed my old teacher Parkus in many things, including the ability to flip from world to world. Mayhap one of these is Yuon, the wise one who instructed him the most."

"I am Yuon," the Miriana holding Mark's arm said, "you mention Parkus, gunslinger, is he well?"

"He is, Yuon," Stephen answered.

"That is well," the Miriana known as Yuon said, "now as for why you are here."

"I'd like to know that too," Mark said, "one minute we're at the top of the dark tower, then we get swept through the door and finish up here. Now I don't know everything there is to know about the tower, or ka, or other worlds, but I do know that the tower must have had some reason for sending us here instead of letting us destroy the Crimson King or throw him down from the tower or whatever it was Roland intended to do with him."

"He whom you know as the Crimson King can not be killed," Yuon said in English, "and he was imprisoned for a reason."

"Couldn't someone have made sure he couldn't do anything like try to bring down the tower?" Alison asked.

"His power couldn't be taken from him," Yuon answered, "and since only one half of him remains imprisoned in Lillin Andin, leaving his other half free, he can still cause great discord as he has done even here."

Mark intended for a moment to ask just what Yuon had called the place the Crimson king was imprisoned in, but then decided that what she had said was this race's name for the dark tower.

"I cry your pardon for my interruption," he said, now using the High Speech, "tell on."

"You have been brought here for two purposes," Yuon said, "you have already fulfilled one of those purposes by bringing the means of the Tree of Time's healing and that of Iyana."

"The Little Doctors?" Alison asked, "But they're more than just insects. They were once a human being or something closely related to one."

"I know, Alison, ka-daughter of Stephen," Yuon said gently, "Jenna will be given back her vampiric form and she will be the agent of healing for many. She will also be free of the Crimson King's taint."

"Is that possible?" Mark asked.

"It is, "Yuon answered.

"What is the second purpose for which we were sent here?" Stephen asked.

"You will be sent to Earth where you must save the lives of two who are very dear to Iyana and Cianan."

"Who?" Mark asked. In answer, Yuon indicated one of the Mirianas who were now clustered round the one, probably Iyana, in the wheelchair-like transport.

"And after that?" Stephen asked.

"Your diplomatic skill will be needed, gunslinger," replied Yuon, "there is corruption at the heart of our world and one of its victims is our queen."

"My gods," Stephen muttered, "Andelin has gone over to the Red. By the gods this can't be."

"I fear it is, gunslinger," Yuon said, "she has said that Iyana and Cianan failed on Earth and plans to see them dead. Such is against our laws, but she still intends for their deaths to occur."

"What did they fail to do?" Mark asked.

"Earth in the time you are to be sent to has been contaminated by an infection," Yuon explained, "the infection caused mutations in living humans, ending with them becoming walking dead."

"And we're going there?" Mark asked. "Great! That's just what I wanted. A trip to Down Town Zombiesville!"

"Forgive him, Yuon," Stephen said, "sometimes his sarcasm is used to cover his fear. He meant no disrespect."

"I see as much in his mind," Yuon said, "just as I see hatred for Alundar."

"Who?" Alison inquired.

"She means," explained Stephen, "the one we call the Crimson King. He has many names. One of them is Alundar."

"Now that we've got that figured out," Mark said, "how are we getting to Earth?"

"I will send you," Yuon replied.

"When?" Alison asked.

"Once Jenna has been restored," Yuon answered and approached the tree which was still swarming with Little Doctors. Her hands, as they extended toward the Little Doctors, seemed to be covered in a golden light which touched the singing insects.

A small detachment of the Doctors began marching toward the ground. When they reached it, their song suddenly stopped and they began arranging themselves into an approximation of a human shape.

Yuon knelt and lowered her hands till they almost touched the shape the insects made and the light covering them suddenly concentrated itself. In another moment, the light faded and Yuon rose, together with a young woman dressed in white, with a blood-red rose over her left breast.

"She can't live in the sunlight!" cried Alison.

"She is protected," Yuon said reassuringly.

The woman in white, Sister Jenna, moved toward Iyana, but before she had gone more than a couple of steps, Alison removed the wimple baring the Dark Bells and handed it to her. Her hair now covered, save one lock which seemed intent on escaping its confinement, Jenna made her way to Iyana and knelt beside her.

"You have taken grievous hurt," she said, "but you can be healed. As the tree grows stronger, so shall you. Rest now and forget a while your pain and fear."

As she spoke, Jenna shook her head slightly and the dark bells rang softly. At their sound, another small detachment of the Little Doctors left the tree and began making their way toward Iyana.

"Now, gunslingers," Yuon said, handing a small vial to Stephen as she spoke, "the time has come for you to begin the mission for which you were sent here. When you feel the need to return, open what I have given you, Stephen, Son of Stephen Deschain that was, and aid will be at hand."

Yuon gestured and the three gunslingers vanished, after which, she turned to Jenna.

"I know what you need," she said, "and it has been provided."

She led Jenna to what appeared to be a small tent-like construct which had been erected near the fountain. They entered it and Jenna immediately began making a series of complex gestures with her hands, accompanying them with small shakes of her head. As the dark bells rang softly, another small detachment of Little Doctors left the tree. As they entered, the interior of the tent seemed to grow in size and to change, the walls receding to a great distance on either side, the roof appearing to rise, the color changing to a soft whitish hew.

After the transformation of the pavilion was complete, Yuon exited for a moment and returned, carefully pushing the wheelchair-like conveyance carrying the injured Miriana. Jenna moved to aid Yuon in taking Iyana from the chair and placing her in a delicately woven sling composed of some material she couldn't readily identify which was suspended over one of the cots or beds that were arranged along both sidewalls of the pavilion.

After this was done, Jenna moved to the pavilion's entrance.

"You need go nowhere," Yuon said in the language of Miria, "all you need to make this place complete is here."

"How ...?" Jenna began.

"How do you understand our language?" Yuon finished for her," I gave it to you. You need give me nothing in return. It is my gift to you. Few have ever come back from the Red and fewer still have tried."

"I was never given over fully to the Red," Jenna responded, "I was only starting down the path toward it against my will when the desert sun made an end of me."

"You made a choice few have made in that situation," Yuon said softly, "most would have gone down his path gladly with the promise of some reward to come."

"His promises are hollow," Jenna said, "he demands all and gives nothing."

After Yuon departed, Jenna busied herself readying the pavilion. True to Yuon's word, she found several dozen cords of a silk-like material, each holding a string of small silver bells. These she suspended along each sidewall of the pavilion, so that when the wind blew, causing the walls to move and ripple, the sound of the bells would mingle for a moment with the song of the Little Doctors.

Yuon returned after nearly an hour, or whatever the equivalent of one was on Miria, carrying a small silver tray.

"Do you hunger?" she asked.

"I can't," Jenna answered, "I can only take blood and to bleed a Miriana would doom me to damnation."

"Only if it was taken unwillingly," Yuon said, "but this is safe for you."

Jenna doubtfully accepted the tray. On it was a cup filled with a bright golden liquid. She raised it to her lips and took an experimental sip. The drink, whatever it was, was incredibly sweet and she felt strength and energy flooding into her. For several moments she couldn't speak. It had been long and long since she had been able to take anything but the blood of the defenseless patients the other sisters took in and mercilessly killed in their sleep.

"What is it?" she asked in a hushed voice.

"the essence of life distilled into its liquid form," Yuon replied.

After Jenna had drained the cup, she turned her attention to Iyana. Her injuries were quite severe and most of them were internal, but the Doctors were preventing her from becoming worse or dying.

Jenna leaned forward and softly touched Iyana's face.

"Sleep on, Iyana, beloved of Cianan," she said, "sleep on. Grow strong. Let the Doctors do their work. You are close to the edge of death, but you are not there yet and ka willing, you'll heal. Let the death shadow leave you. Let the life return to you. Let yourself feel peace for a while."

After saying this, Jenna softly kissed Iyana's forehead, the errant lock of her hair coming loose from her wimple. Absently, she flicked it back out of sight.

"Always obstinate, that one," she said to herself with a smile.

Iyana's first sensation upon returning to consciousness was that of being inside a cloud.

"Am I flying?" she thought.

All she could see was white beauty. All she could feel was the sensation of floating or flying. She could hear distant music or was it music? She concentrated and realized that it wasn't music, but the song of insects that sounded almost, but not quite, like crickets. Their song was purer, more beautiful than the song of crickets, and accompanying this, the soft ringing of small bells.

She attempted to move, but a small cool hand touched her shoulder.

"Not yet," a voice said softly, "you're not strong enough yet, Iyana, daughter of Alai, beloved of Cianan, Mother of Niamh."

A telepathic sending accompanied the spoken words in the language of Miria and she let herself relax, but her dreams were haunted by visions of the past, the horrors that had culminated in her current situation. Again and again the images played out. Again and again the horrors drew her down to despair.

"This must stop," Jenna thought and shook her head gently.

The Little Doctors on Iyana began to move, some of them clustering more thickly over her injuries, some enveloping her head.

"Sleep," Jenna sent, "sleep Iyana. Sleep a while with no dreams to trouble it."

As Iyana relaxed and the dreams left her, Jenna mused over what she had seen thanks to her mental link with the Little Doctors. Many things, such as the metal carriage the four people, one of whom had been Iyana, only in a different form, had been riding in, were strange to her, but she understood all the events she had seen. She knew not the group known as the Corporation, but she knew their work. Their work brought degeneration, death, caused the world, perhaps many worlds, to move on. She thought of what Yuon had said about Andelin and her corruption.

"Just like before in All-World," she thought, "I sense the hand of Los in this."

In her mind, images raced, part memory, part legend. The kingdom of Eld was founded, partially thanks to the efforts of one called Maerlyn, whom some said was not human.

Great cities, Lud being the chief of them, arose and throve. Great machines toiled endlessly beneath their streets. The guardians of the beams, originally creatures of the Prim, what men called magic, although magic was an extremely generic term for what the Prim actually was, were replaced by the constructs of North Central Positronics. The Sombra Corporation became the driving force in the world, together with North Central Positronics and La Merk Industries. The great machines were given the power to think and speak, but it soon ended. The second child of Arthur Eld murdered his mother and was stripped of his body by Maerlyn. The castle of Eld was ravaged by the confrontation and became known afterwards as Castle Discordia. A great war ravaged the land; fire filled the night sky, the color of blood, the color of death. Darkness reigned for a century, the survivors caught outside mutated, moved under ground, vanished from sight and memory. Light returned, Gilead rose, bringing with it the line of the gunslingers, descendents of the Eld himself. Enemies arose and were defeated, then came John Farson, The Good Man. Gilead fell, the sisters, all but Jenna's Mother, Sofia, gone over to the Red. Jenna, only a child at the time, fell ill soon after her Mother's flight and was forced to return. Then had come the death of her Mother, her slavery, the murder of innocents in which she had participated, the start down the Red path. After what seemed like an eternity, Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger, or so she had thought at the time, had come, reminding her of her former calling, that of a healer, and she had saved his life, but the sun had come and she had reverted to her form of the Little Doctors. In that form she had remained trapped for what seemed like forever, until the ringing of the Dark Bells in Can'-Ka No Rey had awakened her soul from its long sleep and Yuon had restored her body.

She pulled back from memory and once again turned her attention to Iyana. She noticed immediately that her patient seemed stronger and was once more on the verge of awakening. This time she allowed it. The Doctors had done their work and Iyana's body was healing, growing stronger, although before another day passed, she would once again be wrapped in the blackness of coma.

Iyana awoke to the sound of singing insects. She attempted to move, but found herself in some sort of sling which swung and rocked gently with her movements.

"No, not yet, Iyana," said a soft voice, "save your strength."

"Who are you?" Iyana asked, opening her eyes and seeing a woman dressed in a white gown sitting beside her, holding her left hand. The woman wore a wimple which concealed her hair; said wimple was fringed with bells that looked grayish, as if their color had faded. Over the woman's heart was the symbol of a red rose.

"I am Sister Jenna," the woman responded, "you were near to death, but the Doctors have arrested the process."

"Where am I?" Iyana inquired, "am I dead?"

"No," Jenna said with a smile, "you're still in Ithelian."

"There's no place like this in Ithelian," Iyana said.

"This is a new place," responded Jenna, "it is a place of healing. The others used to call it Hospital, but now that it is here on Miria, Yuon has named it anew, Mihrél Elaehnin Lehña, the Place of Healing Bells."

"The others?" Iyana asked.

"That is a story for another time," Jenna replied, "Mayhap when you are healed completely you'll hear all."

"I can't be healed completely," Iyana said, "I'm infected with a Fae-made virus."

"Well do I know," Jenna said sadly, "but the Doctors are keeping the infection back as best they can. I must regularly prevent them from attempting to remove it, for they take such things into their own being and such as that would destroy them and their magic."

"Who are the Doctors?" Iyana asked.

"I'll show you," Jenna said softly and shook her head. The dark bells rang softly and a procession of the Little Doctors came into sight from beneath an unoccupied bed. Their song grew as they approached Iyana. Jenna shook her head again and the insects, each one twice the size of an ant, pure black, but beautiful, began to ascend one of the legs of Iyana's bed.

"More are needed," Jenna explained, "your strength is growing, but there are still so many hurts to heal in you."

"Does it hurt them?" Iyana asked with concern.

"Not at all," Jenna answered, "to heal is their joy. To take the hurts of others is their happiness. That is why they sing."

"It's so soothing," Iyana said.

It is, is it not?" Jenna said.

"Yes, Iyana replied.

"I saw much from your mind," Jenna said, "but I understand little. Will you, I beg, tell me what it all means?"

Iyana thought for a moment, her left hand never leaving Jenna's. She thought of how to begin, but didn't know quite how.

"Sometimes," Jenna said softly, "it is best to simply begin and allow the tale to take you where it will."

"I need it. Desperately," Iyana said at length. Throughout the course of her tale, she unconsciously returned to the times she told of, her tenses changing at such times. Her mind opened, telepathically transmitting images to Jenna so the healer could see the events unfolding before her.

"You can't understand, not possibly, not unless you've been in your life where I am forced to be now.

Drastic times call for very drastic measures.

And this is a drastic time.

I am like a bird that must stay in the air on one wing. But I am the bird who is hell-bent on doing so, no matter the odds.

My name is Iyana. It means "hope," in my language.

I'll need as much of that as I can get. At least, I will now.

The thing I fear the most and love the most can't help me here. I wonder if this is an unforeseen side-effect brought on by it, anyway. I wouldn't be surprised, the thing doing what it does. It eliminates the weak, awakens things that we wish we never had experienced in our lives...

I don't listen to them anymore. What can they know? They couldn't save me... so will the drastic measure kill me or save me? They say it's fifty-fifty.

I said, "I'd like to live, thank you."

They only looked at each other, that look that says they know something but they won't tell you. That look infuriates me! I may not be able to see it, but the silence is so full of unsaid things I'm surprised they don't fall out and smash me in the face. Another thing to leave its disfiguring mark... not to mention the infection, and on top of it, this.

I should be nearly indestructible. My immune system should be impossible to break.

Well, we've just proven that the immune system bit isn't true, haven't we?

I need it. More desperately than you think I do.

I need an antidote that doesn't exist, or didn't exist before, combined with the first infection, they battle, mutate each other or something, and tear me apart, all of which they will do while I am still alive and conscious.

Sounds pretty painful, doesn't it? Even my pain tolerance isn't that good, and I can get more-than-just-minor gunshot wounds and stay on my feet.

I know I can. I've done it before. Don't ask. There's an example of "drastic times call for drastic measures" again.

Part of it's my own natural resilience. Part of it is the fact that I'm so stubborn that you could set an army up against me and I won't fall. I'll stay standing, in tatters maybe, but standing.

The infection and my natural power made me a force to be reckoned with. Something to be feared.

And as they shared that look, something twisted inside. Well, there were things doing more than twisting, they were probably this close to bursting in the worst way as those two shared that damned look that told me they thought I was going to die, but something else did. Something in that cold, icy part of a person's soul, the bit that doesn't need infection to enhance.

It's also the part of it that no one can touch, and the part that you wish you never had to wake up. It's exhilarating when you let the full power of that coldness loose, but more often than not, you regret it.

I said, "With all your damned infections and antidotes, can't you do something other than leave me ... defenseless?" I've become quite paranoid after they've tried to kill me three times. But hey. I'm still alive. Frankly, I don't trust them either. If they're traitors, they'll take full advantage of their power, and there will be ... accidental ... complications.

It is a very, very cold world, you know.

The thought that they thought I was going to die didn't frighten me. They've told me that a few times before, not to mention that I've nearly done it more than a few times.

I sighed, and immediately regretted it. I said, "How do you know it's not brought on by the infection?"

"Well ..." one of them said. Janes, pronounced Janice. I liked Janes least of all, let alone trusted her. I'd always had a bad feeling about Janes.

"That would be complicated," said the other. He was Daniel, and he was the mind behind all of this, the initial infection, that is.

"It means that the infection would have to be weakening your defenses," said Daniel, "not strengthening them. But even the strongest fall down sometimes. ... Or it's deliberately eliminating things. It's got plans. It thinks."

"Daniel ... it's an infection. It can't think," said Janes.

"Oh, you'd be surprised. This one was designed to be more than a superbug, far, far more than that. This one may simply be testing Iyana ... or eliminating things for its own mutations ... or both," Daniel responded.

"Great, guys," I said.

"Thing is, either way, we have to take drastic measures," Daniel continued.

I swear he'd read my mind.

"But wouldn't it keep me alive?" I inquired.

"Oh, yes it would. But being alive like that would be hell," Janes replied.

"It is already, how much worse could it get?" I muttered.

The voices were distorted. My mind couldn't catch them. It was as though I were lifting mental hands through something thick and unyielding, as though my mind had to make a huge effort, leaving me physically weaker, to focus, to understand.

I fought to rise out of the heaviness. There was something constricting my breathing, and it had a harsh, chemical taste. There was something obstructing my mind, as well. I pushed against it, to no avail. I couldn't get out. I couldn't breathe.

Then the scene before shimmered, changed, became a darkened vista lit by autumn stars and a moon that was just approaching the full. A car approached, its headlights cutting great circles through the darkness. I sensed a mind within the vehicle, the mind of a man intent on pulling a job. He was approaching a small filling station and I knew that he intended not only to rob the place, but to kill as well. I also knew something else. This hadn't happened yet, but it would, and soon.

I attempted to read the mind thus exposed to me. It belonged to a young man named Kyle. Then I was inside his head, seeing what he was seeing, experiencing what he was experiencing.

Kyle sat motionless inside his beat up Chevy pickup, silently prepping himself for the mission ahead. He was in the parking lot of an aged Exxon station. Other than himself the parking lot was empty, and he could see that the road was barren for miles.

He opened the car door, and slid out. He walked, stone-faced towards the doors, gently cradling the gun he had tucked away, hidden inside his jacket pocket. The door to the Exxon opened with a cheerful jingling of three or four bells secured to the handle on the opposite side. He hated those things, especially when he was trying to pull a job, made too much noise. "Somethin' I can do ya fer?" the old man behind the counter asked politely. He had to be at least in his sixties, his hair, what remained of it, was snowy white, with just a tinge of grey on the sides. The man's face was pale and saggy; his cheeks were like those of a chipmunk, drooping and large. "You out kinda late, ain't cha? Must be goin' on, what, damn near midnight ain't it?" "Look old man, shut the hell up, or I'll blow your freaking head off!" Kyle screamed harshly, his voice going a bit hoarse toward the end. The old man, Ted, according to the name tag pinned to his shirt, tossed his hands absent mindedly into the air. "Now look young feller, why don't you put down the gun, before you do something you gonna regret." "Why don't you reach into that cash register, and hand over whatever you got," he paused, thinking carefully over his words, he immediately turned his voice into a cheerful, friendly sounding tone, "Look, I don't want to kill you, please don't make me, just give me the money and I'll leave. Then you'll have a nice story to tell your grandkids, how Pappie foiled the mean old robber." "Ain't got no grandchildren, son, my only boy died a cancer, probly six, seven years ago," Ted said, as if he and Kyle were old friends catching up over brunch. "Look, old timer, please don't make me. Please don't. Don't make me." "I ain't gonna make you do anything young feller, you got to make the call yeself." Kyle pulled the trigger, and he pulled it again, and he pulled it again. Ted hopped backwards, and fell to the floor, fell like a large chunk of raw hamburger, hitting the ground with a nauseating thump. Kyle hopped the counter, and stepped over Ted's body, not even daring to look down, not daring out of the shear terror that Ted was still looking at him, his dead eyes locked on him. As he began to pull the stacks of bills from the register he took notice for the first time of a tiny television sitting on the left side of the counter. A fat man was on it, he was obviously a news anchor, but what was the news doing on well past midnight? The fat man was sweating heavily; his tie was loose, and just barely dangling from his rolling neck. "Please remain calm, do not attempt to reach previously cited rescue stations, they may no longer be in operation," he paused for a second as a hand reached in from off-screen, the hand holding a piece of paper. The fat man looked at it for a moment, inhaled deeply, and began to read, "We have received word that this station and its nationwide counterparts will be going off the air, the government has initiated the Emergency Broadcast System. Please stay tuned and up-to-date information will be brought to you." The fat man looked into the camera, his eyes locked on Kyle's, and a wave of pity passed over them, and the transmission ended. The screen snowed out and became fuzzy. The fuzz lasted for only five or six seconds, and then it was replaced by a blank screen, and white writing began to scroll over it. Whatever the government had to say, it could wait, Kyle had to get out of here, and quick. Kyle turned to leave. He turned, and he saw Ted standing there, blood still running from the three bullet holes in his chest. Ted's mouth flexed hungrily.

Hours may have passed in what felt like the space of seconds, I didn't know. For a moment, I didn't know where I was, I didn't know what was happening. I flashed back suddenly, to the frightened mind of a little girl, a little girl frightened of monsters beneath the bed, and I had just seen one, hadn't I? A dead man returning to life, and what had the news on the TV meant?

"No!"

I don't know if I thought it or screamed it, but suddenly there was someone above me.

"Daniel!" It was Janes. "Come here!"

There were more voices, more presences around me. I tried to move, but I was too weak.

When I wake up weak and unable to breathe, it automatically brings back bad memories. This time was the worst, because it was so like that time in so many eerie similarities.

I forced my eyes open. It was too bright! I shut them quickly.

I made one last effort to push through the thickness,

And then I realized what was wrong.

Well, I couldn't move for a reason. I may have broken something.

I stopped fighting as the darkness descended back over me.

I woke up slowly. For a moment, I had no idea where I was. I was a child again, ten years old, in the year 2003. For a moment, there was no sound, and I believed, for a moment, that I really was then and there, and only realizing how dead I had been for months.

When one is locked away, no matter for what reason, one's life drains. For some it is slow, but others wilt like flowers, becoming wasted wraiths.

"She's awake," someone said quietly. It might have been Daniel. I was still struggling to fast-forward from 2003 to the present and piece things together, but with my mind still full of fuzz it was proving more difficult than I expected.

I spoke slowly, so as not to make a fool of myself. "What happened?"

"You're alive."

"You poked around while you had the chance, didn't you?"

Silence. I took that to mean yes.

I sighed. "Can't even shut my eyes without someone taking advantage of it."

"Well ... the mutation is intriguing," Daniel said, not bothering to deny the truth of what I'd accused him of.

"It's killing things to make space for its own mutations," said Janes.

"It doesn't understand life or death," said Daniel. "It has a will to survive and rids itself of the unnecessary, no matter the cost of its host. I designed it, I should know. It believes that if the host dies, it only means the host body wasn't strong enough, and so it is weeding out the weak. It will progress to a stronger host body. And since humans are so amazingly adaptable, eventually they will, in a way, mutate without the infection. An old assistant of mine thought so too, before he went rogue. In fact, it was John who first advanced the theory that the infection was able to think. If only he hadn't decided to turn against us. He was extremely brilliant."

It was chilling to listen to him say these things with such clinical detachment.

Daniel and Janes wanted to create a super-race. I'd known that already, but who was this third, this John? Neither Daniel nor Janes had ever mentioned him before and I thought I detected Hate in Janes at the very mention of the name. i would only put two and two together later as to who they were talking about.

"But there is a catch. If it is not carefully, carefully controlled ..."

I didn't like where this was going.

"It goes mad. It destroys all that stands before it. That is why we created you... you are an antidote."

I gasped. "I had it before."

"A test infection... a mutation on a known virus, a somewhat uncommon one, slow and insidious, but not quite as slow as some. It would take you five or six months to die if you were weak, which you were not."

That's why it couldn't be diagnosed. It was frighteningly similar to several near-incurable diseases, but it really was a mutant infection, a super-bug that couldn't be stopped except by the will of the individual.

Unless, of course, you start taking those afore-mentioned drastic measures, which are as likely to kill you as the infection in question.

I smiled grimly. I had the will. That much had been made clear thirteen years ago.

"You mean, you did it?" The fog was clearing from my mind.

"Yes," said Daniel.

He had no fucking remorse! I wanted to hit him in the face! I tried to sit up, but Daniel pushed me back.

"Not yet."

"You don't care!" I said, biting each word off and throwing them at him like verbal knives. "You could have cost me my life and couldn't give a shit about the fact that for every minute of those months I lived in fear ... of what I would leave behind." I wanted to kill him! But, even with my enhanced body, I was still too weak and uncoordinated to do him any damage. Blindness wasn't a problem; I was so sensitive that I didn't need sight. But that didn't keep me from picturing my victory and escape from the bowels of the old x'Raen Hive they'd made into their secret facility.

But I'd have to do it after they made sure there was no risk of secondary infections or complications. Escape was hopeless at this point.

"Iyana," said Daniel, "as much as I may seem a heartless bastard, I am not."

"Really! That's something new!"

"Really, Iyana."

When I think about it now, I wonder if maybe he knew where this was going, but he knew also that he was too far in and couldn't go back. He'd do well in a sidhe court.

I let them lay me back down and bring me nasty cardboard food (God, for a multibillion-dollar secret facility, they have shitty food!). They won't let me call out anymore, at least, not till I'm on my own, they say.

On my own, ha ha, on my own with them watching me at every turn is what I'll be.

I sighed. I'd been beaten and bruised, hurt and locked away for shame of what I was, all my life.

I'm not normal.

I know, that's obvious. But I wasn't even normal then, before they took me.

When I was seven years old, the power awakened inside of me. At such a young age, I could not control it.

It partitioned a part of my soul, the part that became associated with my past, named Jennifer.

I became Iyana then, my true name I told only to few. I was Iyana. I was hope.

At age ten, the infection hit me. I had been aware of my mortality before then; my situation was terrible at times and my poor father couldn't be trusted to drive anywhere. We would make someone go with him out of fear for him whenever he went somewhere.

But somehow, I had lived in a world where, despite hunger and other things, I had been unaware of the slower, more insidious ways to go.

Dying frightened me. Not death. Death was simply an unknown that I couldn't comprehend. I never thought: I'm going to be dead. Death could come tomorrow, or three months from now. I thought: I'm dying. My mind just couldn't comprehend death, to the point where never once did I think about death.

No, I thought: I'm dying.

Dying, the process of it and how it had come to me, was terrifying. I was not really afraid of my own pain; I could deal with that, or rather, what people would see in my eyes. Would I scare them? Would I frighten those I loved away, in my time of dying? All I know was that I had to pretend. No matter how much pain I was in, I forced a smile, a pretty fake smile, so they wouldn't think anything of it.

I'm sure I did very well; the infection was completely dismissed, due to the fact that it was not any of the infections it in some way or other resembled.

But I wasn't normal.

And I wasn't normal because I pulled through, with no help, no drugs, no drastic measures, not then, anyway, but alone. Not even normal medicine, like you would take for common, ordinary things.

I survived. I did something that, until then, was deemed impossible.

I had terrible dreams, flashbacks and such, throughout the summer and part of the autumn of 2004. Those nightmares still haunt me today, maybe only because they were dreams. Those near-death experiences, which if they continue at this rate I won't be able to count them on my fingers in a matter of months anymore, don't haunt me because of how real they were. They simply were. They happened, I survived, time marches on. That's how it went.

But the dreams ... they haunt me pretty bad. Every once in a while I'll have one of those nightmares again and wake up in a cold sweat, tangled in the blankets, a strangled scream on my lips, tasting like bitter flashbacks, voices still echoing in my head, "The world is dead, the worlds., The Tower is falling, a trillion universes are merging, and all is Discordia, all is ruin, all is ended. And all shall be Discordia, and all shall fade and die, and inward do the shadows creep across the land and sky." Then I have to remember where I am. And to know that I am in a safe place somehow isn't consoling, considering my situation.

I grew aware of the true meaning of that power at age thirteen, and only pieced the strangeness of the events together at age fifteen.

At fourteen and a half, I fell in love. I'd known lust before, but not love.

I loved Simon. But I couldn't have him, so I shut the feelings away. Eventually, I realized again that I loved him. This time, there was nothing in our way, but during the summer of 2008, we were both nearly killed in a small Maine town by something that had taken the form of a dog, and it was then that I discovered that Simon had power as well. Thanks to that, we survived, and saved the lives of a young couple we'd met in town, a couple I could sense something about, something that reminded me of... I wasn't sure at the time.

At age nineteen, I was accidentally pregnant with my first, and only, child... a baby girl. We named her Niamh, an old Celtic name.

And then when I was twenty, and the baby was only six months old, they took me away.

So it's September of 2016, and I haven't spoken to Simon for three years. My own daughter won't recognize me. I only hope they're okay. Daniel won't let anyone talk to me. He's just paranoid, I think sometimes. If I were head of such a possibly catastrophic project, I'd be so paranoid it would drive me to insanity.

I miss Simon and Niamh so much sometimes it's physically painful. I want to hold my baby again, rock her and dry her tears. Whenever I'm with Simon, my nightmares almost completely go away, though the rare one I have now and then is more intense than before.

This is exactly how I never, ever wanted it to be. I never wanted to tear my family apart. I was so paranoid about it for a time. And it seems like now that it actually happened, that's the worst thing about this whole mess. Not the pain, not the drugs, the experimentation, not the heartless coldness of Daniel and Janes. It's missing them that hurts the most.

I had to disappear. I hope they understand. I had to. There was no way I could even tell Simon why. Sometimes I dream of him and wake up reaching for what isn't there.

I wish I could have told him. Then, instead of him one day telling Niamh, "Oh, your mother just walked away one day ..." he would say, "They took her away. She'll come back one day." And Niamh, instead of becoming hopeless of my return and resentful that I, who gave her life, who helped to bring her into this world, simply abandoned her, she would look for me.

They won't look for me. It's been three years. Simon has probably moved on. Niamh is in blissful ignorance of her mother's torment.

Maybe that's the best way for it to be, I try to console myself sometimes. If they knew the truth, it might hurt them more than the lie.

Maybe, if and when I ever get out of here, I shouldn't go back to Canada to look for them. Maybe I should go back to Alaska and live in some beautiful, quiet place. Then Niamh could grow up blissfully unaware of what I was, and Simon wouldn't have the burden of being unable to tell her.

I looked up at some point to see Daniel standing over me.

"You miss him, don't you?"

"Like you care," I gritted out harshly.

"You don't know how much I care."

"Fuck you!"

The insult didn't faze him; it just made him look more sorry for me, lying here in my pitiful state. I annoyed myself. My weakness was annoying. Everything about it was annoying!

"Don't look at me like you feel sorry for me," I said.

"In a few days, we can let you go."

"Let me go where? Back to my rooms, two floors down? Ha ha. That's not letting me go. Letting me go would be letting me go back to..." I stopped. They didn't know just how powerful Simon was ... and how powerful Niamh could become. Niamh could become a force that the Corporation itself would give ground against, one girl alone, with so very much potential. I had to keep my family from these heartless bastards.

"Simon and Niamh, you mean."

I sat bolt upright, ignoring the pain it caused. "How did you find that out?"

"I know a lot more than I tell them, Iyana."

He could know my name, I thought. He probably does. Shit.

"If you know that my daughter's name is Niamh, not Lilly ... then you know a lot more than I can let you know."

Daniel didn't look afraid. He just stood there, tall and almost skeletal and completely unreadable. Daniel must have been six foot six and only a hundred and fifty pounds. His face appeared to be carved out of something pale, flawless, and smooth, his eyes keen, piercing, grey lances. He wore his black hair long and held back like a sidhe royal's. He looked strangely distant, those eyes deep wells of memory ... and pain. The thought that there was a heart under the unreadable face was comforting, more than anything else here.

"You can't kill me," he said.

"Oh, really?" I said. "Try me."

"In your weakened state, I could kill you at hand-to-hand."

"If I were in my normal state ..."

"I could still kill you!" Something almost hungry passed fleetingly through his eyes.

I knew that look.

I knew what it felt like, too.

He was infected, like me.

He leaned closer to me. "I could kill Simon and Niamh, too. I know where they are. They've gone to Alaska to stay with your cousin."

They were in good hands. Ashlee wouldn't let Daniel kill my baby. And Niamh had a friend in Taylor, Ashlee's daughter, who would by now be four years old.

"I have a picture of them." Before I could shut my eyes, he'd keyed something up. There was a holo in front of me. Simon was holding Niamh, shortly after I'd left. Niamh had probably only been eight months old. Then there was Simon and Ashlee. Little Niamh was standing beside Taylor, grinning happily and holding hands with her distant cousin, laughing at something Ashlee said.

Then there was Simon, sitting alone with Niamh and Taylor, talking to them. This time, it was a video, and Daniel turned the audio on.

"... just disappeared one day. I don't know where she is."

It felt like someone had stabbed me with a flaming hot knife.

Niamh looked so tiny, so lovely. She was all dark and shining, with long, rich black hair, but her eyes! They were a pure, rich color, like burnished gold, and they had no whites. She was like a tiny dark princess with the sun captive in her eyes.

Neither of us knew where she got her beauty from. I certainly don't look like that. I'm five-six. I've lost the baby weight, and I'm now slender and fit. My skin is so pale that I might as well be glowing. I wear my deep red hair down to my waist and have multicolored eyes. The hair's called Unseelie red, and it's so dark and rich it's like spun rubies. I guess I am attractive, not pretty exactly, but attractive, because I also have a nice figure, but that's it. Her looks didn't, as far as we know, come from any of her surviving family, except, maybe, for Tatyana. I'm white as snow. Niamh is the opposite.

"Turn it off!" I cried.

"The infection's loose in Rainbow Falls, Iyana," said Daniel as he gestured and the holo flickered and vanished.

"You've been spying on them!" I said.

"No, not really. Did you hear me?"

It sank in. Rainbow Falls. Rainbow Falls, Alaska, where I'd planned to live. Simon and I had been saving every penny for the dream of that beautiful mountain village. It was where I'd found my real mother, Tatyana. Tatyana would have taken them in, but neither had the money. My dog, Lola, my cat, Shadow, my family, and their belongings would take a lot of money to move, due to the skyrocketing oil prices. They were still trying to find alternative energy sources sufficient enough for the demands that would be placed on them.

The infection would ravage Rainbow Falls first, and my poor mother, Tatyana would be dead. Though she had borne six children and was over forty, she was still a slim, delicate, dark beauty.

"We will send you back to Anchorage."

"I don't want to see that woman again!"

"Take Simon, Niamh, Ashlee, and Taylor to Canada. Simon has family there, doesn't he?"

"Yes," I said. "But I don't know..."

"Do not go to Rainbow Falls. We have the infection contained there. It shouldn't be able to get out. If we have to, we'll nuke the town."

"Nuking the town won't kill the infection and you damn well know it. You crack a few of those vials; you nuke the city, that shit in the air goes straight into the jetstream. What do you get? The apocalypse. Armageddon. Extinction."

"It'll blow the zombies to dust."

I sighed. "No use arguing with you. We'll have that discussion later. When am I leaving?"

"In a week's time."

After Daniel left, I sat a long time, thinking. I could only imagine what would soon be going on in the world, the chaos, the death, the people, some of them unwilling to leave their homes, although said homes would be besieged by the walking dead. As my physical eyes, blind though they were, closed, a picture formed in my mind, a picture of a young man in a zombie infested city, a young man accompanied by others who would soon be gone.

I had seen things all my life, not only in dreams, but in waking as well. Sometimes they came true, sometimes not, but more often than not, my visions or whatever they were were accurate to a fault. I reached for a name to put with the man I saw.

"Brian. His name is Brian."

From the balcony of the seventh floor, Brian gazed out upon the desolate city. Nothing moved. Everything was silent, sterile. He felt for a fleeting second like the world was his home, like all this was his little play world.

Until he heard the soft, but telltale moan from far below. Another of the infected people shambled down the street, bumping into the carcasses of cars and debris.

Brian raised his rifle, putting the scope to his eye. He traced back to where he had spotted the stalking figure. He found it again and pinched off a resounding shot. He scored a hit. The zombie's head exploded in a puff of red.

Nodding, briefly admiring his work, Brian decided to take a break and marched back inside the apartment. Bobby was sitting in a corner, surrounded by ammunition and dissected barrels of his miscellany of guns. Hilary sat in the corner adjacent to Bobby, picking lint from the floor. Greg stood propped up against the empty doorway that led into the bedroom, smoking a cigarette. All of them were around Brian's age. Sixteen to seventeen years of age.

"You got one," Greg said, the bags under his eyes signifying his insomnia. No one had been able to sleep much after the virus had broken out. Something had caused these people to go mad, to eat, to feed on their own family or neighbors. And now, a group of teens were trapped in an apartment on the seventh floor of a building in a zombie-infested city.

Brian nodded. "Yeah." "How many's that today?" Bobby inquired from the corner, fitting a clip expertly into an M-16.

Brian shrugged. "Two, maybe three. Dunno." He looked down at his feet, knowing everyone else in the room was feeling the same as he. This was the end. The end of everything. Right now, planes might be flying and the rest of the world was continuing as normal, but not for long. The epidemic had gotten to the extreme, done too much damage already. Los Angeles was dead, and with it, the rest of California would fall, too. "How're the supplies?" he said.

Greg motioned to the kitchen, a doorway next to the only bedroom of the apartment. "Check in there," he said, his same lifeless expression on his face.

Brian nodded. He knew what to expect. Walking slowly, he entered the kitchen. Pots with chunks of food plastered to them still sat on the stove, attracting mold and flies. The floors still had a few bloodstains from treatments from the other teen that they had brought along. He had been infected. They had killed him and tossed his body over the balcony three days ago, seconds after the infection completely took him.

Brian reached the refrigerator and stood there, looking dumbly at it, hesitant to open it. Finally, mustering his nerves, he gripped the handle and swung the door idly open. What remained of their rations were a six pack of Dr. Pepper, a loaf of stale sourdough bread, and some cheese that surprisingly hadn't started to mold yet. He then checked the pantry. There was an unopened bag of Doritos, a pack of poptarts, and four cans of Campbell's soup.

That was it. Sighing, Brian exited the kitchen sullenly. He faced Greg. Brian said, "There's not much left. It won't last. I don't know how long we plan to stay here, but the rations that we have will only provide a week's worth of sustenance. We need to move." Greg looked at him blankly, took a long pull from his cigarette and said, "I'm almost out." Brian didn't say anything. It was typical for Greg to say things off-topic when he was uncomfortable.

Brian turned to Bobby and Hilary. Bobby got up and smacked the clip into his M-16. "I don't see why the fuck not." He looked at Brian with all-honesty. "We've been here way too long and haven't killed enough of those ass-rammers. I think it's time to make a move." Brian nodded and turned to Hilary. She, too, got up. She stared at Brian for a few seconds with the same empty look in her eyes, the look of despair. She just nodded. "It only seems right," she said and turned away to hide her tears. The epidemic had really gotten to Hilary. Brian knew that the others were equally affected by the outbreak as Hilary, but she didn't have the nerves to endure it. Brian briefly contemplated whether they should just kill her and set her free of this misery. Then he pushed the thought away. Hilary was strong. And he knew that her time to shine would soon come.

Brian looked to the floor then. "S." he began, but found no words.

"We're gonna leave," said Greg. He scrunched the butt of his cigarette on the wall and shot his gaze towards Bobby. "Hand me one uh those bitches." Bobby smiled and went back to the corner and came back with a fully loaded Desert Eagle. He slapped it in Greg's hand. Then, reaching to his back pocket, he retrieved an extra clip. Greg took that as well. Bobby and his family had hunted a lot, and his father had been obsessed with guns-he had even owned an illegal gun-shop somewhere near South Central. Just after the epidemic had broken out, Bobby had raided the gun-shop using his father's key and taken anything he could.

Brian nodded, a small line of a smile that didn't reach his eyes imprinted on his boyish features. "I'll get the supplies." Brian went back to the kitchen and retrieved his Jan Sport backpack from the counter. In it he placed all the food that they had. It all surprisingly fit well. And then, in a larger pocket of the backpack, he placed their med kit. While he was doing this, he wondered what they should expect once they exited the building. Zombies, to be sure. But what about survivors? Were they-Brian, Greg, Bobby, and Hilary-the only survivors in Los Angeles? Well, if we are, he thought, we're in for a shit load of action.

When all was done and prepared, each of the survivors exchanged long stares with each other. Brian had the backpack with all their supplies slung over both shoulders. It didn't really matter if it slowed him down; because they would all die sooner or later. He also had a Desert Eagle implanted in its holster strapped around his right thigh.

Hilary had the least of the load. She had a machete shoved between her belt and her pants and a Desert Eagle in hand. When Bobby had insisted on giving her a holster, she had refused, only saying that it was much better to have a gun in hand than a gun uselessly at her side. She had an extra two clips shoved into each of her back pockets.

Greg had a dagger shoved into his boot and a revolver in hand. He also had two extra clips for his gun in his back pockets. And as an extra, he had a Desert Eagle set in its holster at his right thigh and an extra magazine for it set in another holster on his left thigh.

Bobby was the most equipped. In his hands sat confidently was his recently oiled M-16 and he had two lines of bullets crisscrossing across his chest. He had a revolver stuffed into the groin of his pants and naked bullets jingling in his left pocket. On his left thigh was yet another Desert Eagle with an unused clip stuffed into his other pocket. In his right boot was a jackknife. "Let's go," he said and they were off.

The troupe exited the apartment building. It had taken them a while to leave because the elevators were down due to the absence of electricity and they had to descend down the seven flights of stairs. They had only encountered three zombies and were surprised by the fact that the moaning fuckers hadn't come knocking on their door before.

Bobby led the party gallantly, standing up straight and waving his gun nonchalantly, an arrogant grin on his face. To him, this was all in good fun.

Brian, though, thought differently of the situation. He was scared. Scared beyond his wildest dreams. He didn't want to fight zombies. The only good way to kill a zombie was from the seventh floor of an abandoned apartment building was his philosophy. And he had good right to be scared. He, like the others, of course, had seen Dawn of the Dead.

Hilary was scared, too. She was on the verge of panic. The others knew that she was close to insanity and would not restrain her if she decided to abandon them in a frenzy of laughs of mad-enforced mirth. But she was not insane yet, and she was trying her hardest to keep her cool. And so, she lifted her Desert Eagle and scanned their surroundings.

Greg was about as nonchalant as Bobby, though he managed to keep the stupid grin from creeping up on his face. He liked this scenario. He had nothing to lose. Absolutely nothing. So, he kept his cool, his revolver in his hand, but lowered to his side. He lit another cig. "Hmmm, last one," he informed the others and managed to squeeze out the last of the fluid in his lighter. He tossed the empty canister to the side. "Boy, I better fucking enjoy this." Brian smiled at this. Greg was the same. Even during an apocalypse. Sometimes, people just never changed.

Around them were dead bodies of the zombies that Brian had taken out. Smoldering carcasses of cars were littered haphazardly everywhere and discarded miscellany flew in the desolate wind. The buildings were vacant and the streets were hard to get across considering the abandoned cars and buses. To their left, an overturned train lay against a collapsed wall of a warehouse.

Eerily, they all sighed in unison.

They marched.

They had been walking for seven minutes down Main Street before a zombie shambled out in front of them. Bobby put his hand up. "This one's mine." He shot the M-16 from the hip. An array of bullets catapulted through the air and slapped wetly into the approaching zombie. Gore and intestines leaked from the holes in its body and smoke rose through the air. The rotting creature collapsed to the ground.

The survivors cautiously advanced towards the still body. Bobby reached it and kicked its shoulder. Suddenly, the beast's head jerked up and he sputtered blood in a terrorizing growl. The zombie shot its hand at Bobby's leg and gripped it hard. Bobby lost his cool and yelped in terror.

Greg raised his revolver and shot. Half of the ghoul's head blew off, shards of skull and slabs of flesh and brains washing over the concrete street. The hand fell limp from Bobby's shin. Greg looked at Bobby haughtily. "Dumbshit." Brian chuckled. Bobby turned around and glared at him. Brian immediately shut his mouth. Bobby raised his head, scrutinizing Brian and nodded threateningly. "Yeah." Then, more moans reverberated down the street.

The survivors looked up in terror. A horde of undead, rotting bodies of putrid, gory flesh marched down the street towards their destination. The survivors.

Bobby's jaw dropped and he raised his M-16 instinctively. He shot randomly at the frontlines of the ghouls. A few fell, but the majority of them kept their pace. Then, all the survivors were shooting at the advancing undead, clouds of smoke rising from their rapidly firing weapons.

Soon, the zombies were only ten yards away. Hilary snapped. Screaming maniacally, she ran forward, throwing herself before the lines of the dead.

The ghouls poured onto her.

Brian screamed. "Jesus Christ!" He raised his Desert Eagle and shot more, taking down only a few.

Then the dead were upon them.

Greg managed to behead one as it lunged for him, splashing brains all over the street and the zombies behind it. Bobby waved his M-16 to and fro, never loosening his grip on the trigger. Three rows of undead fell before him.

That was until a zombie from his left flank shot down at him with amazing speed compared to the norm of its kind. Screaming, and still shooting wildly, he fell to the ground. The zombie was atop him. Moaning, it tore a hole into his stomach with its claws and bit a chunk of flesh from his arm. "Kill it! Kill the motherfucker!" he screamed, sheer terror and pain evident in his shrill voice.

Brian shot at the zombie, but only scored two hits out of his three. One smacked wetly into the ghoul's stomach and another hit its clawing arm. The other hit Bobby in the leg. Bobby screamed in terror-such terror that it struck a nerve in Brian, caused him to lower his weapon, to gawk at the scene that had opened up before him. Soon, Bobby's obscenities and curses were lost under the tumult of moans as the undead piled onto him, tearing him limb from limb and ripping his insides from his body.

Others shambled towards the still Brian. He seemed not to notice it, though. Thoughts of death, of horrible terror, of pain unbounded shot through his mind, but he still did not notice the approaching zombies and their clacking jaws and dripping saliva.

They were almost upon him now, and soon he would end up like Bobby and Hilary.

Then, a hand shot out and gripped his arm, turned him around and soon Brian was looking into the now-urgent eyes of Greg. "We have to go," he said and dragged Brian away from the undead forces.

Brian came to his senses then, and fired randomly into the crowd of zombies as he and Greg retreated down the street.

To nowhere.

The vision dissolved, leaving only a cold certainty in its place. What I had seen hadn't happened yet, but it would. Somewhere in the country, perhaps in the next two weeks, there would be a young man named Brian who would experience everything I had just witnessed.

"Please, let it be wrong this time," I thought, "please."

But this had been the second vision of its kind. First the robbery that had ended badly for the thief, then this. Something was bound to go wrong, and terribly so.

A week later, I boarded a plane. I'd had a tooth and ear implant installed, much to my dismay. I made them make it so that only I could turn it on. I was on an airplane from my nondisclosed location (even I didn't know it), to Anchorage.

I didn't usually sleep whilst on a plain, but this time, almost immediately after takeoff, I lost the battle with my exhaustion, one I'd been fighting since I had had the waking vision a week before, and sank into sleep. Once again, I found myself experiencing someone else's life, their possible death.

This time, the person into whose head I had gone, probably without his even knowing it, was a paramedic, one who was probably, even now, in Rainbow Falls, that is if what I had been told about the infection getting loose there hadn't been just a lie designed to keep me where the Corporation wanted me. I watched, attempted to get as much information about the situation I was experiencing as I could.

Paramedic Peter Morris was familiar with the classification, Carrier Zero. The term was used to identify the first discovered subject of a new or rare anomaly. He had read about it in a medical journal once, but never once thought he would be witness to a new case. Even now, as he sits in a corner lighting a cigarette with trembling hands, he can still recall the horrid discovery of that day about a month ago. He begins to move from the congested waiting area into the busy hall of the barely operational hospital. There has been a lot of activity for the past couple of days, a lot of shouting and confusion mixed with people trying to help one another since the first victims of the multiplying effect began.

Peter can still replay the events of that day, and since then, in chronological sequences. It was mid or late September, he was bringing in two victims of a reported sewer maintenance accident. He could still remember the deep flesh wounds and lacerations. Blood everywhere, especially around areas where the victims' clothes seemed to have been bitten and torn off. For God sake, one of them was missing a left ear. Unfortunately, one of them died while on route to the hospital; from a deep laceration on the side of his neck. What was to happen next would be the beginning of an endless repeating cycle that he would see and continue to see since then.

It came back to life! How? It doesn't make sense, it just isn't possible. He was dead when they placed him on the examination table. Michael went through the normal usual procedures, strictly routine. He recorded his observations as he made them.

"Cause of death was due to a massive hemorrhage caused by the laceration on his neck."

"Yeah, but can you identify those bite marks?" Peter continued.

"Bite marks, where?"

"Here along his forearm and shoulder."

Michael inspects closer. "Strange, maybe rats or a wild dog," is what he said rather jokingly.

Sarcastically Peter responds, "Wild dog my ass."

"If you say so," still looking at the marks, "but there's something odd about them. Will you pass me the scalpel Pete?" Michael reached over the body to receive the scalpel when it grabbed his arm and bit right into it.

Michaels' screaming is the last thing Peter can remember, but the nightmare was yet to begin. Days after, the screaming continued as violent attacks began to rise all over the city. What followed next was an alarmingly steady rise in deaths across the city from two, at the time, undetermined factors. One was a mysterious incurable illness or virus which claimed the lives of many. The other, was the one Peter was slowly nauseously getting used to. Partially eaten victims were always the result, and Peter knew exactly what was causing it. At first he thought there was no connection, but after Michael had died from the illness he realized that the events were connected. The haunting image of Michael being bitten by the reanimated corpse creeps back into his mind.

Two days later his worst fears became reality as the news media quickly confirmed that the recently dead were returning to life. The unexplainable phenomenon spread fast like wildfire as it did in those old movies. It got to a point where Peter didn't need to see it on TV; he saw it first hand as it slowly infested his neighborhood like a virus. The police and National Guard foolishly tried to intercept and quarantine certain areas of contamination, but were only met with certain death by the overwhelming, marching, hungry, growing number of zombies. The screaming and later reanimation, it was hell manifesting and spreading uncontrollably through the city streets. All of this caused by the first carrier, which then led to the first bite and more biting followed by death and reanimation.

By the end of that week it had become too dangerous to continue living in his neighborhood. Looting had run out of control, neighborhood morale had crumbled as more people died from the infectious illness and later revived. It didn't make sense staying here anymore. Peter would decide that the best course of action is to leave and try to seek out help. Where? Those things are everywhere; the entire city will soon belong to them. Whatever he decided he knew he had to leave soon.

Peter moves down through the busy hall as several medical personnel move about aiding the injured. This is where he ended up since he left his home. Where else could he go? The need to seek refuge and especially other sane survivors was important. Living in isolation under these conditions was dangerous, although he had gotten accustomed to writing down his thoughts and daily occurrences; rather than keeping it all bottled up until it drives him mad. Since he had been at the hospital a lot of patients and medical personnel have died by either infection or left and never returned. There were still a decent amount of civilians and personnel holding out here, but the situation outside was intensifying; it was looking more like his neighborhood. The doors were reinforced, but they wouldn't hold forever. All of these people are in grave danger unless they move.

Peter slowly creeps into cold storage which has now become somewhat of a morgue. Dead bodies lie stockpiled here. Some were executed to prevent later revival, others were just plain dead. They will have to move these bodies out soon. As soon as the shit clears up a bit that you can carry them out and pile them up on the side of the street. Peter moves in closer as he once again confronts the horseman of the apocalypse which unleashed this plague. Carrier Zero is still laying here, executed, for purposes of further research to understand the phenomenon. It never happened, and it's pointless to start now. You infected and destroyed everything.

"Where did you fucking come from?" Peter's voice broke the silent air, "How did you get like this?" Like it's going to answer you back.

"God, why is this happening?"

The age old question asked, and just like throughout history, will be left unanswered. A loud commotion erupts outside.

Peter quickly moves back into the hall and sees people running in all directions, some coming his way.

"Move everyone out quickly," he could hear someone yelling in the background. Peter grabs the closest guy running towards him, "What's happening?"

"They're breaking in; they're trying to move everyone out."

The guy was frantic in his response. He must have been in his mid to late twenties, but his face was pale white with fear and terror which made him appear younger, like a lost child. Peter let him go and watched him run off; as he turned he saw the first of them. More of them entered and then the screaming began again as those unable to move or frozen with terror were caught first. Peter watched as death spread within hospital walls.

He knew what he had to do, it was time to run, even though he felt like staying and letting them take him. He couldn't do that, he had to survive. Survival was his only driving force because there was nothing else. If I survive this then that will be a tale for another story, if I survive.

I woke just as the "Fasten seatbelts" sign came on, with its accompanying ping. I raised my seat to the fully upright position, did as the sign instructed, and prepared to face what the corporation had done to me and my family.

When I reached security, the Corporation guard that had come with me flashed his and my papers, and we were allowed through without molestation. He slipped away on the other side of security. He had somewhere to go.

I could hear Ashlee coming. She was with Simon, too. There were two sets of smaller footfalls that I assumed were Taylor and Niamh.

They stopped in front of me.

"Well," said Ashlee. The moment was very uncomfortable.

I moved closer to them. I'd decided. "I'll tell you why, but not here. Too risky."

No one moved. I could feel Niamh's already sharp, keen mind probing outward. It was with the cold awareness that I had glimpsed within myself only a few times before with which she contacted me. It chilled me that she could grasp that cold, icy thing at will. I mourned that she even had it. I'd been forced into it only a few times before.

I put up shields. That would surprise her. She was used to unshielded minds, unless she'd tried contacting Simon. I knew his shields to be intense.

I reached for the connection. It was still there, but he'd shut me out. I didn't push it. I just reached to him, hoping that it would speak more than words.

Little by little, the barriers went down.

"I missed you," I said. "I missed you all. Niamh, learn to be a child. The time hasn't come to forget."

Simon took one hand and little Niamh took the other, and with Taylor's hand in Niamh's and Ashlee's in Taylor's, we walked down to Ashlee's car. I sat in the backseat with Taylor and Niamh.

Niamh had shot up like a weed in the past three years, but she'd always be small, lovely, dark, and delicate like poor Tatyana.

"Now will you explain?" said Simon, turning back toward me.

"I don't know. They could have slipped into your car and planted something."

"I'm sure no one has."

I did a sweep. There was nothing there.

Niamh would never tell... I knew this... but would Taylor? She didn't have power, or superior intelligence. She was just a little child, a little child who might innocently repeat things best not repeated. I would not let Taylor's pain, and Ashlee's grief, rest on my conscience.

"Not in front of Taylor and Niamh," I said. It was terrible to exclude Taylor alone. In her small, childlike mind, even she would suspect something. And if she didn't, she'd just be jealous. I didn't want to break Taylor and Niamh's friendship.

"What is it?" said Simon.

"I'm supposed to kill whoever I tell."

Niamh looked up at me, comprehension dawning on her dark little face. "Corporation," she said. A word that she should stumble over at such a young age came out clearly.

"Exactly."

They asked no more questions.

When we arrived back at the house, we banished Taylor and Niamh from the room, and I told Simon and Ashlee everything that had happened.

"You're expecting me to believe this," said Ashlee. "You walk right out of our lives, abandoning your baby and your husband, and you expect me to believe you were taken to a secret facility and experimented on?"

"I believe her," said Simon.

"You're hopeless. Love is blind," said Ashlee.

"I expect you to believe the truth," I said. "And that's what I've told you."

"You walked out! You didn't even fucking look back!" said Ashlee. Then, quieter: "When I was thirteen, you told me you'd have my back forever. You'd told me you'd stand up for me and who I loved, and I'd do the same for you. For seven years, you did what you said you would. But then you fucking disappeared."

"Believe me, I hated every minute of it."

"If you're telling the truth, I suppose you're not even human anymore. God! You'll have mutant babies!"

Simon stood up so fast that you couldn't see it. His chair skittered backward. "Don't," he said, his voice like a dark, icy knife. And he looked pretty impressive, a full nine inches taller than Ashlee, radiating power. "I wouldn't advise it. You forget. Most of the money that pays for you to stay in this house with all your utilities and all your luxuries is mine. What do you do? You still work at Car's, and you're not good enough at that to earn a stable income. You earn barely enough money to scrape by alone, let alone raise Taylor. Keep it up and you can go live with Elke."

"Elke has her fifteenth boyfriend this year!" Ashlee cried, "I don't want to sleep in a room next to them having sex!"

"You'd probably end up having sex with the man yourself," Simon retorted, "I'm surprised you only have one child."

"Quit it! Both of you!" I said. "Just shut the fuck up!"

Ashlee stormed out. I could hear her upstairs, packing hers and Taylor's few possessions. The minutes until the door slammed and she and Taylor were gone were spent in stunned silence.

Niamh burst in, crying. I picked her up and rocked her. Her tears opened the floodgates in my own eyes. I wanted to scream. I wanted to forget all of it. I wanted to start over.

But I couldn't. That hurt the most. I could never, ever undo the damage I'd caused.

Simon sat down beside Niamh and me. I let him hold both of us while we cried.

When my tears subsided enough for me to speak, I said, "Do you really think she'll go to Elke's?"

"I don't know, Iyana, I don't know."

"What about poor Taylor? What about Niamh?"

Niamh looked up at me. "I can't be a child," she said. "I know what you saw."

Simon drew us in closer. "I don't know."

The phone rang.

"Let it ring," said Simon.

It rang again ... and again ... and again.

"Fine, I'll get it," said Simon. Removing one arm from around Niamh and me, he picked it up. "What?"

I could hear the woman yelling through the phone. She'd had it in for me for five years before I left.

"What the fuck is that bitch doing back?"

With tightly controlled anger, Simon said, "How the fuck did you get our number?" I glanced sharply at him, Niamh was in the room! but he didn't feel it.

Tabitha Mariana was the woman's name, and she hated me with a vengeance, jealous of me for having Simon. The woman was now thirty-seven at least, but she still hated me. She'd tried to kill me while I was pregnant with Niamh.

Niamh squirmed out of my grip as I was listening to Tabitha rant.

"Tia gave it to me," I heard her say. "You know, Simon, you shouldn't let her back. You don't know where she's been for the past three years. She could have been whoring for all you know."

"I don't think you have room to talk!" The dark ice was back in Simon's voice. "You really don't."

Tabitha tried to kill me because she wanted Simon. I'd kill Tia. The woman had betrayed us. She hadn't liked us for eight years, but I'd thought we had peace, if somewhat uneasy. But Tia and Luna had jumped at the chance to hurt us.

I'd never forgive them.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. By now, I thought, I should be damned indestructible. I had Tia, Tabitha, and Luna to thank for one thing... I'd survived Tabitha's poison and the others' betrayal. I was stronger for it. I was stronger for Tabitha's hate, her insistence upon making my life a living hell. I was stronger with their every unkindness.

It was a bitter gratitude, the kind you choke on, the kind that can kill you.

"Tia and Luna had no business giving out our number," said Simon.

"The bitches shouldn't have gotten it in the first place! I warned you! Hang up on the bitch!"

Simon slammed down the phone. "We're getting a restraining order against her."

"About fucking time!" I burst out. "That woman's had it in for me for what, eight years now?"

"Just about. Come here. Where's Niamh?"

I sat down beside him. "Somewhere. I'm not sure."

"If this infection is loose in Rainbow Falls ..."

I needed the cold. I needed the nothingness. The image of Tatyana, such a small and lovely woman, lying dead and broken somewhere, fed on by mutant zombies, was a terrible one.

"Tatyana and all my family will be dead ... or worse."

There was a commotion in the front of the house, and before either of us could go to see what it was, Niamh streaked into the room. "Ashlee and Taylor!" she cried. We were out to the main room in a flash, and there was Ashlee, white-faced and shaking, with Taylor hiding behind her. "Don't go out there! Oh God, don't go ou..."

Suddenly, glass and bodies and debris were flying. I didn't need to call up the terrifying, icy abyss; it came, crashing over me with the force of a tidal wave. I opened up farther, and let the full force of nightmares run amok.

Something heavy landed on me. I spun with its momentum and flung it with all the force it had hit me with. I heard it hit the wall with an ominous cracking sound. I saw lights, flickering and dancing, and I realized it was fire. Smoke and dust filled the room.

There was the sound of a harsh, guttural scream. I leapt into the air and caught the edge of the window-frame, my hands holding on like a vise, and kicked the next one backward through the window. I let go, sailing through the room, kicking two of them squarely in the jaw with enough force to snap their necks on the way, and landed lightly on my feet.

Something small wrapped itself around my legs. I knew, instinctively, that it was Niamh. In a single fluid motion I flipped to avoid another body, and swung her over my shoulder.

"Run!" I screamed. "Because your life does depend on it!" The words seemed to have rent reality with their force. I hoped Taylor and Ashlee would make it out.

A hand grabbed mine and pulled. I leapt through the window, cleared the fence, and hit the ground running, Simon attached to one hand and Niamh over my shoulder.

I didn't need to look; I could feel everything around me in that icy awareness that pervaded my body.

I heard someone running after me. The footfalls were too fast and light to be one of the infected; the majority of them were far more clumsy and slow.

"Iyana! Stop!"

I spun around so fast that I lost hold of Simon and Niamh slithered off my shoulder and landed on the ground at my feet. "Were you bit?" I said. The fire was ebbing from my consciousness. I'd never learned to summon and control it at will, and until now I'd never wanted to.

Ashlee was standing there, clothes ragged, so drained of color she was ghostlike. She was holding Taylor. There was blood streaming down the little girl's face.

"Were you bitten?" I repeated.

"My baby was," said Ashlee. I heard the numbness in her voice. Her emotions were checked out. Good. She wouldn't survive any other way. I guess there's a bit of that coldness in all of us, deep in our souls in places we're too afraid to look, and that's what makes it easy to lose your mind.

"Leave her," I said.

"Why? Why should I abandon...?"

"Do you want to die?" I put all the force I'd ever heard in Daniel's voice when he put on that cold mask, and in Janes's, and in all the training I'd received in the Corporation, into my voice.

"No..."

Taylor started to squirm.

"Drop her. Now." When Ashlee made no move, I leapt forward and knocked the little girl out of her grasp. Taylor wrapped herself around Ashlee's legs, shivered, spasmed violently, and sank her teeth into Ashlee's ankle.

"What the fuck?" Ashlee swung back to hit me but I blocked her easily, and as she attacked and I continued to easily block her, I said: "One: If you're going to survive, it's always you first! That's your first fucking priority, understand? Two: You can't fight worth shit. You have to be faster, stronger, tougher, colder, or you're dead, or worse, but since you'd be checked out, it shouldn't matter. Now move or I'll drag you by your pretty little hairbows!" It was harsh, but it was what she needed. I certainly hoped I wasn't taking after Janes, though.

Stunned by my harshness and spurred by the sound of another mob in the distance, she followed me.

We slipped from shadow to shadow in the darkness. With my Corporation training, I was exceedingly better at stealth than the others. Eventually Simon picked up Niamh when she grew tired. Taylor could never have kept up with us, and it was too late to bring her back. We avoided the mobs only because of my currently heightened senses. There were parts of that cold I refused to touch, the parts I couldn't control. I was unique in my ability to control the terrible frenzies that overcame the zombies. Daniel had once said there was probably a place, buried in my subconscious, that if broken would make me fully one of them. I was constantly afraid that I would break it in my sleep. I only entered a dormant state now. It was invented by Daniel and his minions, because they'd had the same fear.

We stopped.

I recognized where we were.

"Oh, no." That traitor bitch!

I felt a rough hand cover my mouth. I bit down, hard. If I bite things and call up the rage in its most basic form, I can be contagious. I wanted this one to suffer. I knew him.

And then I let go.

I was a flurry of movement, faster than light, twisting and shrieking. In the back of my mind I was painfully aware; the infection doesn't care about bodily needs except to feed. But despite the fact that losing control made me panic, I forced myself to the back of my mind, and curled up there.

He tried to pin me down. I writhed out from under him, delivering blows to the face and chest, and taking as many in return, the infection is strategically shit, even though it has its own awareness. I could hear bones cracking in his face. I dug my nails into his eyes and ripped. Ruby-red blood and eye innards fountained. I spun, flipped, landed on his chest, and pounded his face. In the back of my mind, I started to be afraid.

ENOUGH!

The rage left me, and suddenly I was so weak and shaky I couldn't stand. I rolled off him, and collapsed.

I felt cold metal pressed against my head.

I looked up, into the face of the only person I'd ever truly hated with every fiber of my being.

She was my pseudo mother, the woman who'd taken me from my mother, my home, and my whole family when I was still a baby. Janes had cruelly unlocked those memories from my subconscious as punishment for my only failure so far once. I hated Janes and my kidnapper, but Janes I didn't want vengeance on, yet. That desire would come much later, after much had happened, after I discovered who Janes truly was, but for now I wanted vengeance on the Corporation itself.

I wanted vengeance on this one.

I didn't need to call it. It came. It came with such an intensity that for a minute, I fully lost control. I thought that I'd never regain my senses.

It was too fast for me to know what happened. All I know was that there was a whirlwind of arms, legs, hands, feet, nails, teeth, and then she was lying fifty feet away with a hole in her face.

They wouldn't be crossing me again, if they lived.

I wrenched myself back to reality. My legs gave out. Curse it! I hated being weak! Ever since the things Janes had done to me, I tried to be constantly prepared, always strong, always alert. My senses missed very little. The cold was easier to wrap myself in. The cold wasn't quite the frenzy, that is indescribable and best left so, but the cold is my last sanctuary. When one lives in a world where to stay alive is to feel nothing, what is there to live for?

But those are the thoughts of a child, an idealistic dreamer. Even though I knew there were terrible things about reality then, I had no idea what it could sink to, until now.

"They're well-armed here. We could stay," I said.

The man beside me made an unintelligible sound, but it was still a definite negative.

"Afraid of change? Is true disillusionment going to drive you insane?" I hissed. "I'll give you disillusionment." I shut my eyes, and spoke with the full force of the icy cold, so far removed from any sane awareness it was nearly like the frenzy, but it was controlled. "The mechanism of change is blind!" I was aware how inhuman my voice sounded, the sibilant, growling hiss characteristic of the infected very present, and the impact I had on the man. "It is blind, and pays little mind to what it leaves behind. At the cold hand of change comes bloodshed, destruction, pain, fear, devastation, disaster, disease, famine, death, in short, terrible times, Armageddon, the apocalypse, whatever you call it. But though change seems so blind ..." and here my voice became human again, as little by little I let the abyss go "... in fact, it has sight. It brings hope. Determination. Great things." I pulled on that energy that feeds the frenzy, and stood up.

"What do we do about them?" Ashlee asked.

"Don't even! You lured me here! You could join them!" I said. "You're infected anyway!" I strode up the driveway. Simon, carrying Niamh, followed me.

I climbed the steps. They were too stupid to hide the key. I unlocked the door and slipped in.

They'd stashed food and weapons up the ass! There was enough here to feed and protect six people for six months. But if it was just going to be Simon, Niamh, and I, we'd last for a year here.

I warded the whole place with Simon's help (I didn't trust myself feeding on the infection's energy), crawled into the bed in my room with Simon beside me, and got some well-earned sleep, or what passed for it.

When I woke, Simon stood at the gunslit fashioned from the boarded-up front window.

"It smells of infection out there," he said.

"You'd know," I said, "wouldn't you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's very distinctive."

I cast my senses outward. Despite intensive training, they'd remained stubbornly, and disturbingly, murky. They'd been trying to make me into some sort of superhuman, spy, assassin, or maybe a perversion of a superhero. I was strong and psychic to a degree, but not what they'd been looking for. I was surprised they'd sent their precious project, half-finished though it was, out into the big bad real world.

"Can't find anything. Can't even tell if they're alive." I'd discovered that, with my senses, life meant something different than it had before. Life, or the sense of it, became disturbingly like the pull of blood. Life was a scent carried on the wind. It was enticing, but since I had ultimate control, I could ignore it. I'd come to realize that the dreaded abyss had been incorporated into my conscious mind. I had control over its true form, but part of it was always in my mind, influencing everything I did. But the infection didn't register itself as "alive" for some reason.

To Simon, I knew that the sense of life was not the scent of fresh blood, but the spark of the life itself, the part of it that exists without explanation, a person's soul. He sensed their souls, I smelled their blood. Infected blood never smelled as fresh, it smelled old and dry and tainted. I wondered if it was because their blood was cold.

I went out and made breakfast. "We have to have a plan," I said when Simon came out. Then I added, "Niamh's not hungry?"

"No, not really."

It had always seemed as though Niamh was a quieter, more intelligent baby. She'd slept less. Her teeth grew in faster and she learned to walk faster than most children her age. She caught very few of the normal childhood illnesses. It almost appeared as if she flicked them away. Her eyes were a phenomenon, pure gold-on-gold, no whites. She had to wear giant specialized lenses.

Niamh came out and looked up at me. When she tried to scamper off, I caught her, and turned her back to me.

There was something subtly different about her eyes.

And then I realized. My mind's sight was surprisingly clear when I looked at her eyes. Their pure gold color was darkening into a deeper, richer shade.

She tried to squirm free. I focused even closer.

And they changed.

Her eyes weren't gold at all. Not now.

They were a pure black, whiteless, except for the stars dancing in them, stars of many colors, mostly silver, gold, white, and blue flecks.

I stood up and went to the window. There was a body standing in the yard, skin hanging and mottled, face disfigured, hairless and bleeding.

I focused my mind on its eyes.

They were sheer, glassy black. There were no whites, no stars, no flecks, no nothing. Just black orbs that reminded me of deep, smooth pits.

"We better get going," I said.

There was a beating on the door. I smelled blood; it was either a whole person, or one who hadn't turned yet.

"Who is it?" I said, putting force into my voice.

"Ashlee."

That's strange. She'd been infected. And she couldn't have come by antidote.

"Open it. It's her," said Simon.

I opened the door.

"She bit into my boot, Iyana, she didn't get my skin. Please. You need a pair of sighted eyes, no offense."

"What harm can it do? We have room," said Simon.

"Gee, I don't know," I said. "She did lead us to my jailer and her bitch boy."

"Holy shit," said Ashlee.

"Is Niamh in here?" said Simon.

"No, I don't think so," I said.

"Please, we can't leave this door open for long," said Ashlee. "Unless..."

Something grabbed her from behind. I slammed the door.

"We're not going to help her?"

"Please. They worked on my eyes, but not that much. Even they can't regrow perfect optic nerves."

"That surprises me somehow," said Simon.

There was the sound of gunshots, and then Ashlee was beating on the door. I opened it and she squirmed in.

"You need me because: I can drive, shoot a gun, and see what's happening."

"You need me," I said, "because I'm knowledgeable and enhanced."

"You need me because ... I'm powerful?" Simon finished, lamely.

"No, because you're brilliant, but I guess that too," I said. Simon really was brilliant, with a mind rivaling some of the smartest alive. If we ever broke into the Corporation, we'd definitely need him.

"We could keep people here. There's room downstairs," said Ashlee. "We could start a resistance."

"Resistance, my ass," I said. "We can't resist this. And we can't stay. I know how the infection is drawn to fresh blood, trust me. I know. We have to keep moving."

"Look at all this!" Ashlee spread her arms to encompass the whole house. "There's everything here! We could live here for months!"

"Not really. The place is easy to defend, but if we're surrounded we'd have no possible way out. We're actually very vulnerable here."

"We can take the truck. I went and got it last night. It's got a full tank of gas."

"Yeah, but how many miles a gallon does this one get?"

"With that new device, it's a hundred, isn't it?" said Ashlee.

"Pretty nice," I said. "We can make it far on that."

"Do you think Canada's safe?" Simon asked.

"Oh, for now. For the next week, maybe," I said. "The infection is like wildfire."

"We should at least see if they can contain it."

"Are you mental?" I said. "Come on. Let's pack. We have a long way to go."

"We have an endless way to go," said Niamh quietly, standing in the doorway.

I was afraid she was right.

We pushed the truck to its limits hauling ass out of Anchorage. We encountered the hysterical masses about seventy miles south of the city. The roads were swarming with Corporation people, but they couldn't contain the crowds at all.

The storms started a hundred miles south of the city. They were horrible black storms, striking with a vengeance like the wrath of God. Day turned to night and night became eternal. The storms flung upon us the fury of the heavens, heavy black clouds and dark, tainted rain falling so hard that it hurt and in such thick sheets that we were forced to pull over periodically. There was thunder that boomed so loud it shook the air in your chest and lightning so bright that night periodically turned to day for seconds at a time.

We made very little headway in the storms and the mobs. I fretted about this. I wanted to be moving. Sure, I could shut off the infection, but I couldn't eliminate its influence. I was surrounded by the smell of sweat and blood and the crackling intensity of fear, and I felt like a trapped thing, wild and skittish, like at any second I would bolt. It wore on my senses until I had a roaring migraine.

Simon seemed to sense my edginess. "There's nothing we can do."

"I'm trying, trust me," said Ashlee, maneuvering to avoid a spinning, swerving car and nearly crashing into one that cut in front of her. "Motherfucker!" she gritted out. Making for a lane that we could just barely passed through, she zipped through and made for a side street that was less crowded.

"I'm trying to stick to the back roads," she said. "It's longer, but not as long as ... shit!"

A mob had surrounded us. There were people in ragged clothes, some with noticeable bite marks that the others were trying to avoid. They beat on the windows, the sides of the truck. Their screams were unintelligible.

"Infected. Some haven't turned yet, but they're all infected," I said. Their blood smelled cold, and those who didn't had a strange, harsh, animal taint to it.

"Fine." Ashlee rammed on the accelerator. "Hold on to your butts."

We powered through the masses as they tore and beat at the truck with bloody hands and ragged nails.

The truck accelerated faster. With the pedal to the floor, we were flying at over a hundred miles an hour, and clear of the zombies, within seconds.

"Slow down! The tarp's loose!" said Niamh. She had jumped through the space between Ashlee and me and into the back seat.

Ashlee stopped so abruptly it threw me forward. She got out and went around the truck, and I could hear her cursing loudly and inventively.

"Stay with Niamh," I said. I got up and went around to find her.

"Shit!" I said, surveying the damage. "Jesus H motherfucking tap-dancing Christ on a crotch rocket!" Ashlee couldn't help but to laugh.

My telekinesis was still very weak. They'd been trying to teach me and show me how to focus my power, but I'd simply been unable. Some doors take a lot to unlock. There was food strung down the road for a mile.

"Help me," I said, "and be quick." We gathered the food and shoved it in, tying the tarp securely, but we weren't quick enough.

There was the sound of bare feet slapping in the zombies' characteristic duck-footed, clumsy gait behind us, and then something hit me in the back.

I spun and kicked the thing in the crotch. That distracted it for only a second, but it was fast enough for Ashlee to pull out her gun and shoot it in the head.

"Simon! Close the door!" Ashlee yelled, as the things swarmed in from all sides.

We circled around both sides of the truck, Ashlee holding her own with dazzling gun and knife fighting. Ashlee was terrible at hand-to-hand combat, but she was wicked with knives and guns, with a deadly accurate aim.

Ashlee scaled the side of the truck and wormed up the back window like a snake. From her place on the truck's roof, she had a greater vantage point and was less vulnerable than I was. Despite my new speed and agility, I'm not indestructible, just a little harder to kill.

I circled around to the side. "Simon!" I yelled, beating on the window. "Give me Niamh!"

Simon rolled down the window a crack. "Are you mental?" he said.

"Just do it!" Niamh was already standing up, looking at me with those dark-on-dark, glittering eyes.

"Your eyes!" said Niamh. "Your eyes."

"Give me Niamh!" I screamed, dodging a zombie. "Now!"

Wordlessly, he rolled down the window, handed me Niamh, and rolled it back up.

They seemed to shy away from Niamh, glassy eyes rolling and flicking, heads flicking from side to side worriedly. They weren't above attacking her if she were weak, I realized, but they were wary. If we couldn't get rid of them soon, they'd get rid of their wariness and become more curious.

I ran around the side, handed Niamh up to Ashlee, and jumped into the truck.

"Are you all right?" said Simon. The tenderness in his voice reminded me of old times, and I wanted to cry.

"I will be." I couldn't keep my voice from cracking.

"We'll be okay," he said as he put his arms around me. "We have to be, don't we?"

Ashlee jumped in; white-faced, started the truck up, hit the gas, and drove as fast as she could.

We were forced to stop again before another hour had gone by. The first I knew that something was wrong was when Ashlee slammed on the breaks, causing my body to strain painfully against the seatbelt. Ahead of us was another crowd of people, most of whom weren't infected, at least not yet. Even through the closed windows of the truck I could hear their voices, but they didn't sound afraid. They sounded like people in the throws of some religious rapture.

Overtopping them was a single male voice raised in what could only be the fundamentalist Christian version of public speaking. I recognized it right away, the shouting, the haranguing, the habit of twisting the tails of certain words when excited.

"We are damned-a! God has visited a curse on us-a! For all have sinned-a and fallen short-a of the glory of god-a! And it is-a written, that in the last days-a, that the dead shall rise from their graves-a, and this has happened-a! These are the last times-a! God has turned-a his face away! Man's evils have multiplied-a! Fornication-a! Drugs-a! Gambling-a! Homosexuality! God has said-a that this will not last-a and that those who do not repent-a will be destroyed-a, and it is happening-a! The dead walk among us! The graves open! The world as we have always known it is no more! There is no hope left-a! We are doomed-a!"

"Oh Jesus fucking H Christ," I said, "can someone shut him the fuck up?"

"If he doesn't do it on his own pretty soon," Simon said, "I'm sure there'll be a few deaders who'll be more than happy to do us that favor. I mean, stupid idiotic fundies, anyone?"

Ashlee made to open the driver's side door, but Simon stopped her.

"You really don't want to go out there," he said calmly.

"We've got to get him to move his people," Ashlee returned.

"Hello," Simon said, looking out the window and then back at Ashlee, "am I the only one who's noticed that he's holding his fucking prayer meeting in a graveyard, Ashlee?!"

Ashlee looked at Simon for a second and turned back to the view of the outside, showing me through her eyes what she was seeing, just in time to see a figure that was more skeletal than anything else shambling behind the fence of the cemetery the idiot fundy had chosen for his latest, and most likely last, service of the post-modern church of holy doom and gloom. The preacher didn't notice anything, probably thanks to running his mouth so loudly that a statue could have heard him, at least until the thing behind him sank its teeth into his throat. Blood spouted nearly eight feet into the air. His flock, apparently deciding a little too late that they wanted to live, made a break for the gates, but it was no good. Coming toward them from the direction we had been driving in before we'd been stopped, were about three dozen of the infected. The first of the things reached the forerunners of the disorganized evacuation, and with ragged nails, tore open the hapless woman's stomach and then lowered its head toward the wound. A flood of stinking half-liquid substance spilled out as the zombie burrowed, face first, into its victim. Others in the crowd met a similar fate. One of them made it almost all the way to the truck before a rotted thing that had once been a dog leapt from the brush at the side of the road and brought him down.

Ashlee turned away and was violently sick.

"Jesus Christ," Simon said softly, "why did they come here? Why did they listen to him?"

"Because," I said, 'they were lost. They needed someone to lead them. They chose him and he led them straight to hell. Remember Jim Jones?"

"But why here of all places?" Simon asked, still not quite able to grasp it, "why here when he knew the world was being overrun by killer undead? Can you think of anywhere that could possibly be any worse?"

"No," I answered.

Simon looked at me for a long moment and said, "Neither can I."

Ashlee was silent for a moment, then she said in a low voice, "Open the Gate, lest I cause the Dead to rise and devour the Living. Open the Gate, lest I cause the Dead to outnumber the Living. Open the Gate, lest I give the Dead power over the Living."

"What the fuck?" I asked in surprise.

"Just something I read once," Ashlee answered."

Where the hell did you pick up something like that?" Simon asked. Ashlee seemed unwilling to answer and after a moment, as if sensing this, Simon turned away from her and looked out the window again at the scene of carnage before us.

Exhaustion overcame me again a short while later, and I didn't have the strength to fight it. I lay my head on Simon's shoulder and closed my eyes. As I half-slept, I saw, once again, as if I was no more than some sort of receiver for events broadcast to some unknown viewer, yet another vision. As the others had the ring of truth, this one did, but it made no sense. The infection had supposedly been released in Rainbow Falls, but what I was seeing was quite clearly in the continental United States. Police lined a city street, and behind them...

The rain started to drizzle lightly as Dallas police setup roadblocks in the middle of downtown. The moaning, audible over the sound of scurrying policeman, became louder as the distorted figures lurched down the street towards the loose knit barricade. The officers hurriedly moved their squad cars together as a few of the creatures began getting closer. Lieutenant Richard Henderson was the onsite commanding officer, an older man with balding gray hair and a stocky build. He had been working to clean these streets since he joined the force over 20 years ago. Now everything appeared to be changing right before his eyes. These weren't criminals they were trying to stop anymore. People in business suits, doctors uniforms, hell even other cops he'd worked with half his life were being infected by those things.

"Hold your fire until they're within range", he shouted over the megaphone. The other officers prepared for the oncoming attackers, loading shells into their shotguns and taking aim over the hoods of their cruisers.

Line of sight down the block was poor, abandoned cars were strewn about the street and a city bus lay turned over on its side making it difficult to see how many of them were coming. Lieutenant Henderson winced as he spotted a few shadowy figures making their way around the corner of the bus.

"Halt! Halt! Stop or we will open fire! Take them out!"

He drew his 9mm as the officers began to unload rounds into the small crowd of ghouls. Limbs began to shred as the shotgun blasts ripped through their dead flesh. Blood oozed out from their wounds as the zombies inched closer to the police line.

"Fuck, fuck...they're not stopping Lieutenant!" cried one of the men as Henderson drained the last of his clip into the abdomen of the closest zombie.

As the ghoulish creatures made their way through the intersection towards the officers, one of the men took aim with his shotgun at the nearest zombie's skull. The slug shattered the demented being's face as it burrowed through and out the other side. Instantly its body dropped to the blood soaked pavement as the zombie horde pressed on.

"Aim high! aim high!" was shouted over the gunfire as a few of the men began reloading their weapons.

Suddenly the entrance to an office building behind the police blockade crashed open, as zombies began pouring out into the street. Henderson spun around just in time to see an endless sea of the undead flowing towards him. He raised his gun to fire but it was too late, the killers had already plowed into the cars biting and scratching at the men. Lieutenant Henderson's life drained down his neck as he watched in horror, the legions of the dead make their way through the city... it was now theirs.

When I awoke, we were well beyond the scene of the massacre in the cemetery, but still far from our goal. Under normal circumstances, it would have taken a mere twelve or so hours to reach the Canadian border from Anchorage, but now that the world had gone to nine different levels of Hell without the benefit of a handbasket, there was no way of knowing how long the drive would take.

The days passed by in a haze, one merging into another until all sense of time was lost. "Time is a face on the water," I thought at one point, not sure where the thought originated. I became drained and listless. The rain surrounding us in its dirty gray curtains merely served to further dampen our spirits. The countryside was deserted but we still stayed nowhere for more than a night, for fear of the zombies.

We reached the Canadian border at some point, and they stopped us. "We can't let anyone out," one man said. He was tall and imposing, with level gray eyes that seemed to take everything in at once. If the situation the world was currently in affected him, it didn't disturb that mask of a face, which was like a still calm pool of deep water.

I dug around in the bag at my feet and took out my Corporation papers, wordlessly handing them to him.

He looked at them.

"We've been looking for you," he said when he looked back at me. "You'll want to get out of the vehicle."

"What are you going to do?" Simon asked suspiciously.

"We've been looking for you, too, actually," said the man.

"You owe us an explanation," said Ashlee.

"It's Corporation business, and although we're Corporation, we're at the lowest level of the chain of command, so to speak. Not even we're allowed to step into that. We were just told to find Iyana, Niamh, and Simon Jaeger, no questions asked, and bring them to the Canada facility, and to let anyone with them pass without molestation. The Corporation will take care of all of you."

"I'm not going back there," I said. I felt other presences drawing near. He knew I noticed them and he knew I didn't care. "I swore never to go back there, you understand, never. Corporation orders be damned."

Anyone else would have been shocked. Something very brief, related to some form of bitter amusement, flitted across the man's face, but then his gray eyes grew more intent. He leaned forward. "I know about the infection, Iyana. I know everything." He lowered his voice further. Only I, and maybe Simon, could hear it. And perhaps it wasnt' even spoken communication at all. As I looked at him, I noticed that his lips weren't moving. He was an extremely powerful telepath, and possibly more. I sensed the power within him, and I sense something else too. Of course he knew about the infection. "I'd help you if it was possible. The Corporation is doing terrible things. They are, among other things, reconstructing something called the big combination. I don't know exactly what that is, but whatever it is; the plans for it I saw tell me it's nothing anyone wants completed. Who knows, they might reform the damned planet. If I have a say in it, it won't happen. And Iyana, I have a say in it."

"Are you offering me something?" I inquired curiously, utilizing my own formidable abilities, sending as he sent, insuring that our conversation wouldn't be heard by anyone else other than another X-infected human.

He smiled. It was a smile that contained nothing but cold, icy, freezing cold. "A way out, Iyana. The best way out you could imagine. Help me and all of this can be ended."

"Thing is, I'm not that dumb," I said sadly. "Alex, as much as you'll lie and scheme to save this world, you and I both know damned well we can't." I considered. "I think I know how to ... persuade a few."

He didn't let anything show, but I sensed a tired hope. "Rainbow Falls, by the way, was never affected. There's an Alaska facility sixteen miles outside Anchorage. They let it out, to test you. They thought they could contain it, but they were wrong. Nukes didn't work, the virus was too far spread for antivirus, and they couldn't keep the zombies in the city. There was also a secondary release state-side. Nobody knows how that one happened, but there are theories, theories concerning a small town undertaker who somehow got hold of X-infected samples and allowed them to come in contact with the corpses in the mortuary in which he worked." He halted for a moment and passed me a small cell phone. "Protected channel, highest government clearance and authorization. I'll be in Rainbow Falls. It's the key, Iyana. I think they've got antivirus there."

"Aren't you one of the types who'd steal the virus?" I inquired.

"Oh trust me. It's already taken care of itself. Stopping it depends on me," he answered.

I sighed and pocketed the phone. "Do I have a choice?" I asked.

All trace of expression left his face, and it was a stone mask.

"You don't," he stated simply.

"Who are you and what kind of clearance do you have that enables you to get government phones and antivirus and manipulate high-level Corporation staff in to getting you in to Rainbow Falls?" I asked suspiciously.

"Alexander," he said, "Alexander Forman."

I knew the name. I was told to know the name. It was his real name, but not the identity most, aside from Daniel, knew him by. He was another X-infected of the thirteen, but he'd defected from the Corporation in secret, like another had done. I suddenly remembered where I'd heard the name John in connection with the Corporation before. His name had been John davis, and he had merried a woman the Corporation had wanted eliminated. He also had defected and relocated to Castle Rock, Maine. Simon and i had met him eight years before when we'd suffered a breakdown and had stopped at an out of the way auto repair garage to deal with the problem. He was partially a subject of mystery to Daniel, but not Janes. Alexander had been at the Canadian facility, not headquarters. But then again, who knows, I thought. The Canadian facility might be the headquarters. That might be where I was for three years. I shivered. I did not want to go back there, wherever there was.

He fixed me with those level gray eyes and dared me to challenge him. He returned to "normal," the conversation between us apparently nonexistent outside of our own memories. I was starting to get an idea of how he operated, and that would be hard for most to puzzle out. "They're ordered to let you by without molestation. They're questioning right now. I can feel them questioning," he stated.

They said they'd injected thirteen people with the X Virus, five men, five women, and three children. Niamh, Simon, and I were the only three I'd known of. Here was a fourth, and little did I know, but relatively soon, I would encounter two others, but only after events occurred that would prove to be much more than life-altering. "I can smell them questioning," he said. He really was much more powerful than me. "Come with me, Iyana. Trust me. I know what they've done," he continued, the words now chiming in mine and probably simon's heads, Ashlee remaining unaware.

Niamh squirmed out of my lap and crawled across Ashlee's lap. Breath hissing faintly through her teeth, the sparks in her night-sky eyes flickering and dancing, she looked at him. She cocked her head one way, listening, and to the other, listening. She nodded jerkily, as if to some unheard question, and leapt out the window before anyone could catch her.

"Black Thirteen," she said under her breath, "mention it not, lest it hear its name and roll your way."

I jumped out and ran around the truck. "Niamh!"

Alexander was holding her. She turned that gaze to me, intent, questioning, curious, head cocked, and then turned her eyes back to Alexander. She was hissing more loudly, and then she said, "Nightstalker that is to be. Your mission will lead you to the brink of ruin, to the deepest wells of loneliness. You will not emerge victorius from your attempt. Forget not the woman ..."

Her eyes flashed white, then red, and she leapt out of Alexander's arms. Her body seemed to flex, and the little shirt tore. The skin on her back burst, revealing raw, exposed tissue. Blood poured down in a glowing ruby rain. I'd never seen blood shine and shimmer like that.

Then I realized what was strange about the moment, she was still in the air!

"Niamh!" I said, running toward her, regardless of the blood. Before my eyes her back was healing. There seemed to be a white film on her back.

As she wavered in the air, wings like miniature sails erupted from her back and carried her into the storm.

"Niamh! Alexander, I can't fly!" I said.

The wind picked up and whirled like a mad thing. I could hear Niamh somewhere in the storm. She was laughing, but it was not a human, sane sound. I shivered, and it wasn't entirely from cold. Alexander's face was blank, but something in his eyes whirled.

The wind whirled faster, whistling. The rain lashed my face, its cold soaking through my clothes and chilling me to the bone. It was raining perpendicular to the ground, so hard it hurt. The black clouds above roiled like the ash of a volcanic eruption. It was Heaven in all its wrath. Or maybe it was Hell. I could feel something wild stirring in my mind, a strange, unheard rhythm beating in my blood, making it run hot. Was this how Niamh had felt? Where did it end? Did it end? Or did it carry you so high you wanted, no, needed, to shatter apart, to lose your mind, and fly with it, and break with it, and be remade with it in miraculous healing?

I heard the sound of something slamming, and then strong arms were around me, and I was lifted off my feet. I felt the music beat faster, stronger, in my blood.

I turned to look up at Simon and in one graceful, powerful downstroke; we were carried into the air. Huge white wings surrounded us, carrying us effortlessly on the wild wind. Simon swept us higher into the storm on wings that were barely in his control anymore.

I looked down, and only then realized how far we'd gone in barely a moment. I could see Alexander standing below us.

I felt myself lift free from Simon. I didn't even need wings! I was effortless in the air! I flew higher, whirling, laughing, exultant, indestructible. With a thought, I shot straight up into the sky. I could hear the beat of the powerful wings below me, but I laughed, a clear sound in the roiling wind. No one could catch me! I was invincible!

I should have known not to show off, flipping and twirling, somersaulting and spinning, and thinking I was indestructible. I'd cleared the storm but I was so high up the air was thin and I was lighter.

A shadow fell over me, and Simon caught me, carrying me slowly back toward the storm. The music beat hotter, faster.

Suddenly the powerful wings downstroked and we were thrown into the sky.

And I discovered just how much my emotions, and the sense of them, had changed, and just how far they could go.

As we drifted down toward the ground, white wings spread above us like some giant feathery cloak, I wondered again how they could have infected Simon and Niamh, and how that could have altered things so much. There were several times they could have taken advantage and done something to Simon that I could think of. I remembered a time I'd had serious trouble with Niamh, and her heart had stopped for two minutes. She was born unable to breathe, the classification they'd given her was a "blue baby". During the first six months of her life, she was in and out of the hospital as they tried to correct her heart problems. Yet somehow she'd gotten stronger than normal.

The Corporation, confident of their abilities, could have caused Niamh's heart problem, feigning something serious when it was really caused by careful doses of different drugs that would counteract each other and cause their desired effect, things they could have easily reversed, but blamed it on something serious because they could make serious symptoms show.

Then again, I knew they'd done it blatantly and openly in 2003, but they'd made a mistake. This one wasn't a known disease, so they'd found it harder to introduce me to the infection because I was not in the hospital that whole time.

It also made it more difficult for them to reverse the drugs' effect on me. I'd had nervous damage, slight though it seemed to be, for ten years, until three years ago when they corrected it after taking me to their facility. Of course, they'd also designed it that way, I realized. It was an intentional flaw they'd caused.

Then again, they could have easily caused several things that had happened to all three of us that I could name. They'd caused Niamh's heart trouble and my undiagnosable disease, why not anything else? They were clever enough with drugs and chemicals that they could produce any desired set of symptoms, feign a disease to near perfection, feign correcting it and get away with it, so why couldn't they have caused anything more than Niamh's and my issues?

They also could have set up several other incidents to check on and carefully control the infection after introducing it. Why not cause an accident so they could induce it when they knocked you out? I must admit, the whole thing was ingenious, if cold-minded and very risky. Now I understood why evil schemes were so brilliant, because lots of the truly brilliant people were behind them. We could have gone our entire lives without recognizing it!

We landed in a billowing cloud of feathers and dust. I realized that not everyone had escaped the music that had suffused the storm.

Alexander was furious. His still, unreadable face didn't show it, but his eyes were dark grey storm clouds. "Are you MAD?" he hissed. He was one of those who got quietly angry. He was formidable in his rage. "Couldn't you have saved that for some other time?"

"Sorry. Things like that just sort of ... happen," i said simply, "you of all people should know that."

Alexander glared at us. "Another uncontrollable aspect of the mutated infection. Daniel will want to know about it." His tone implied he wasn't sure he'd mention it.

The clouds above us stirred again, thunder rumbling.

"Look, Alexander," I said. "You'll need us soon. You'll wish you'd never handed us over to the Corporation. You'll want all the backup you can get. You'll want us where you're going, no matter what we're doing."

"Look out!" Simon cried, pointing upwards.

There was a flock of huge black birds descending on us. Most of their feathers were missing, and what was left was ragged and bloody. Their beaks and talons were bloodstained, also. They descended on us in the mad frenzy of the infected, uttering hoarse shrieks. The storm picked up again. This time, its fury wasn't exhilarating, it was terrifying.

"Fly!" I screamed, but the wind had already caught Simon's wings and whipped him into the air.

Someone shot at a bird. It fell, blood fountaining everywhere. Ashlee leapt out of the truck, locking the doors and firing madly at the birds.

"Run!" I screamed. "You can't fight!"

"You can run ... but you can't hide," said Alexander quietly. A wave of sorrow intensified washed off of him. He had done anything, ruthless and cold, not caring about the means to an end. It was hard to read his intentions; but that one emotion he let escape gave me a startling insight in to who and what he was. His sorrow twisted into something bitter, like grief, and then into something ugly, rage, hate, the need for vengeance. But this cold, black, foul mood was inhuman.

It was the work of the infection.

A bird dived, pecking at my face.

I reached up, grabbed its neck, and squeezed.

The bird lay dead at my feet.

Then and there, in the middle of the chaos, I was enlightened, in a terrible, cold way. I could feel the heart of the world beating, a staccato, irregular rhythm. It hurt just to feel it.

And I felt a little bit of who Alexander was, what had driven him to what he was, what had sent him to the edge, and what had brought him back. Some might say he'd never returned. But no one could learn to know him that well. He wouldn't let them. He couldn't.

I heard a hissing behind me. I spun, and was smacked in the face by one of Niamh's wings. There was a flurry as she tried to get around her wings, and for a moment it looked as though my head was surrounded in a cloud of flapping feathers. Then, with a strange mewling sound, she grabbed hold of me, hanging off my shoulder. I picked her up, wrapped her in her big white wings, and laid her in the truck.

Something heavy landed against me. I flipped backward, pinning it.

"Oi!"

"Ashlee! Sorry!" I said, rolling off of her.

At that moment, a cry of rage came from the sky, and a shape descended on the flock of infected birds. It seemed to be partially of human shape, but there were elements of the bird in it as well. Its multi-colored wings were spread in flight, and it was clearly on the attack. In its left hand it held a sphere filled with an azure fire that seemed bright enough to consume entire worlds, in its right it held a sword whose double blade appeared to be composed of the flames of fury themselves. The shape dove on the infected birds and cut a wide swath through them. It rose, turned, and dove again, once again taking out several dozen zombie birds. It rose, turned, and dove, rose, turned, and dove, again and again, each time loosing its cry, a cry that seemed to contain all the fury of a dying world striking out at its killers. There was no sanity in that cry. In it, there was only primal rage, the need to rend, to kill, to destroy. The shape swooped again, its weapon slicing through another section of the infected flock. I saw it clearly then. It was a variation on a form I had seen many times in half forgotten dreams. Its skin was a dark golden hew, its wings of many colors. Its eyes, however, contained no soul, only primal instinct. As a crack of thunder came from overhead, it looked up from its next intended target, its eyes reflecting the lightning, and for just a moment, I saw an informing intelligence enter them. It looked directly into my eyes for a moment, and seemed to recognize me, then it returned to the attack, reducing the last of the infected birds to bloody chunks.

And then everything went up in a white flash of light.