Revelation

Samuel still believed that getting to L.A. and taking down Carin Black was the best way to stop the xenovirus. I was no longer convinced of that. After what I had seen, the mystery behind the xenovirus had only deepened. Yes, what I had seen was in a dream. But my white eyes hadn’t been. Somehow, I was infected, but I wasn’t one of them. Once again, I was left with more questions than answers.

If there was an answer, it wasn’t to the west, with L.A. It was to the east, with the Great Blight.

The only problem was that an entire army of Blighters stood between us and that answer. And if I told the crew what I really thought, they’d think I was crazy.

Outside, I heard the roar of an engine. Gilgamesh was here.

“Ashton,” Anna said.

She stood up from the stool she had been sitting in, casting me a worried glance. I tried to let her know I’d be fine. I avoided the temptation to look in the mirror again, to make sure my eyes weren’t white. I never wanted her to see me like that again.

Anna left the room, and Samuel still held the syringe filled with my blood. I could see the purple tinge to the red. It was undeniable. Something about me had changed genetically.

When Ashton got his hands on that vial, we would all find out the truth.

* * *

Ashton arrived not too long after, toting a medical bag and wearing a white lab coat. As he entered, he offered a sympathetic smile, a smile that seemed empty of meaning. Seeing his medical bag and lab coat, for some reason, scared me more than a gun would have. His blue eyes were serious, and he brushed his long, wild hair out of them. The wrinkles on his brow and at the edges of his eyes were more pronounced than ever. He forced a tired smile.

“How are you, Alex?” He asked, pulling up the stool Anna had vacated.

“Fine,” I said, eyeing the bag. “Considering the circumstances.”

Ashton’s attention turned to the blood sample Samuel now held out to him. Ashton took it, holding it up to the light. His eyes focused. He flicked the vial twice with his index finger.

“Yeah, that’s a bit strange,” Ashton said. “The first thing I need to do is put it under the microscope. I can then confirm that the xenovirus is there. I will need to cordon off the Gilgamesh until I am done. It should be safe to handle, as long as I don’t spill anything, but in case something happens, I don’t want to risk infecting anyone else. Alex…you will come with me. Understood?”

“You think I’m going to turn.”

Ashton paused a moment before answering. “If you were going to turn, you would have done it by now. It’s been two full days since the spire. I think you are in control of yourself. Obviously, we’ll need to investigate this as much as we can. We need to keep an eye on things, and make sure you don’t display any symptoms typically found in Howlers…”

“What about the eyes, though? That’s a symptom.”

“That’s what we’re working to discover, Alex. It is likely a new strain of the xenovirus. Something that is different from the one that causes the Howlers, or the Behemoths, or anything else for that matter. Whether it’s dangerous or not, we cannot say now.”

“How could it not be dangerous?” I asked. “It’s the xenovirus.”

Then, I thought, what about the dreams I’d had, visiting alien worlds and running into the Wanderer? Despite the danger present, these dreams had been almost…peaceful. It was strange, because the xenovirus was a thing of violence, of blood, of conquest. Maybe my perception of those dreams had everything to do with my being infected with the xenovirus. If the xenovirus was a part of me, then of course I would think of it as unthreatening. Wouldn’t that be inevitable?

Then again, maybe I was just going crazy. A lot of questions haunted me. Questions barely remembered, yet important all the same. The Blighters had been behaving strangely in those dreams. The xenodragons had allowed the Wanderer and me to fly on their backs. Was it all a trick, a sham, something designed to let my guard down?

The xenoswarm was coming. If we stayed here, they would be upon us, soon. That swarm would leave a wake of destruction as it chased us across the Wasteland. It wasn’t just Augustus’s army we were chasing, now. We had to deal with the far more tangible threat of being ripped apart by a crawler, of being speared by a dragon’s talons or pecked to the bone by a cloud of flyers.

“Alex, I need you to come with me.”

Ashton had been looking at me for a while, along with everyone else. I felt like an animal in a zoo.

“Can you stand?” Michael asked.

“I think so.”

I put my feet on the deck. I found my boots sitting nearby. Samuel moved to help me put them on, but I brushed him away. I could do this myself. I slipped one foot in, then the other, and began to lace the boots. I still wore my pants and my shirt. My hoodie lay on the counter to my right side.

I went to it and pulled it on. I was standing, my legs stiff from lack of movement in the past two days. I stretched a bit, expecting to feel a bit different. I gazed in the mirror, one last time. My eyes stared back, questioning, wondering. Afraid.

I really had to pee.

“Bathroom,” I said.

They parted for me as I went to the lavatory. As I let loose, I didn’t even look down. A full minute later, I reached to flush, surprised to see yellow in that bowl rather than purple. I wondered, while I had been out, who had been cleaning up my messes. I just hoped it wasn’t Anna.

I washed my hands, drinking deeply from the tap. I gazed at myself at the mirror, at my thin face, my haunted brown eyes, my shaggy hair. I looked, and felt, crazy.

I sighed, turning for the door. I had to put all this aside for now.

Ashton was waiting for me in the hallway.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Chapter 17

We entered the bitterly cold air, air that I felt could freeze the marrow of bones. When I took my first breath, it was like being punched in the gut. It was so cold, cold beyond my wildest imaginings. Men and women were camped out here, sleeping. How many would live to see the dawn?

Both ships were parked at the top of a low hill. Below, I could see massive fires — hundreds of them — burning in the night. The people huddled in their tents and crude shelters, in their cocoons of blankets, warm breath fogging the frigid air. Wood smoke hung in the air, not from trees, but from scavenged buildings and the ruins of civilization. Civilization, I guess, wouldn’t mind getting a little more ruined.

My face and ears were numb by the time Ashton and I reached Gilgamesh’s boarding ramp. We didn’t go up the side boarding ramp. We used the wider, lower one, directly in the ship’s back. I hadn’t even known about this one until recently. It led directly into the cargo bay, and parked in that bay was a Recon, facing out.

“That’s new,” I said.

“Michael showed us where he left it,” Ashton said.

His tone of voice said that this detail wasn’t important. Given what had just happened to me, I didn’t blame him.

Still, I was curious. As we entered the bay, Ashton pulled out a small remote, clicking it. The door began to shut behind us, and warm air blasted out of a vent above. The air warmed my chilled bones. As the door continued to close, I followed Ashton to the right side of the Recon, past barrels of supplies, tools, clothing, gas masks, and fuel. This was the main difference between Odin and Gilgamesh, aside from their obvious disparity in size. Gilgamesh