“Look, I said I would hand over the girl,” Walter said. “But I want to know more about what is going on here. You might very well be Rebecca’s brother, but that’s pretty much all I know about you people, and that the one who speaks through the radio is called your ‘plight.’”
“That would be me.”
Kent was looking in the general direction of Walter, his pink eyes blazing in the snow all around them.
Matt had a strong urge to vomit at that moment. He didn’t, though, but his body felt weaker than it had a few hours earlier. His mother’s NaU was slowly making its way through his system, trying to find other cells for it to feed on that weren’t already being taken up by his own NaU. The air around him felt cold, and he knew it wasn’t because of the temperature or the snow.
He didn’t want his mother’s NaU in him. His mother’s NaU made him feel dirty. It was as though he had taken out a few of his own teeth and replaced them with his mother’s.
But there hadn’t been anyone else close enough to take it except for him.
After the ambush on I-88, Matt had been the closest to his mother’s body. Danni was miles away, her body rebuilding itself in the snow. Jolie was looking for where Robbie and Becca went. That meant it was only Matt who could take the NaU.
He had levitated down the road to his mother’s corpse.
His mother was dead when he arrived. It would have caused him great mental harm to have to kill his mother. Jolie was the one who struck the blow though, so all Matt had to do was let it happen.
Her NaU started to go into a frenzy. There was an SUV parked next to her, their lights looking at her body. Inside, Matt felt a mother, along with two children. The NaU inside Carol’s body sensed them as well and gladly would have taken one of them as its new host.
Matt could have stayed back and let the NaU come out of her body and swarm over toward the SUV. Would the mother be the first choice? Or perhaps one of the children? They were younger, and perhaps the NaU would have preferred to feast on their cells than those present in their mother? The NaU could have gone into any of them, and it would have been one less thing for Matt to worry about.
But he wasn’t heartless.
He levitated over toward his mother, his orange energy flickering and radiating out of him as he did so. The mother got out of the SUV, the snow whirling around her. She looked at Matt in awe.
“Don’t worry,” he said, crouching down over his mother. Having his feet touch the ground was still an odd experience for him, and he tried not to show his discomfort in front of the SUV.
His mother’s body started to twitch, and the bright blue NaUs flowed out of her mouth and over toward Matt. They burrowed themselves into his flesh. It took everything in him not to scream.
He coughed a little and stumbled next to his mother’s body. The mother walked over toward him.
“No,” he said, putting up a hand. He got a hold of himself and reached under his mother. Her body was cold now that the NaU was out of her.
“You finally get to rest,” he said, starting to rise. There was nothing he could do about the witnesses. He could kill them, but he didn’t want to. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was no real need to rob them of their life for something like that.
Instead, he focused his NaU and decided to give them a show.
People see crazy things every day, things they can’t explain but want to. The only way that seeing all of this would make sense to the woman and her children was if they saw something familiar.
Wings made of orange light grew from his back. He made it look like he was flying as he brought his mother’s corpse into the sky. He disappeared amidst the clouds.
He didn’t want her NaU, but he took it anyway.
“Walter,” Matt said, his patience wavering, “You need to convince my sister to come out here.”
“What do you want with her anyhow?” Walter said. “Since it seems to me like you don’t have anything positive in mind for her.”
“We need her,” Jolie said. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Fine,” Matt said. “We need my sister for her NaU.”
“I figured that pa—”
“Please shut up,” Matt said. Everyone around him grew tense. Matt felt their heartbeats quicken like they always did whenever they felt like they needed to help him. When he was weak.
He took a deep breath.
“We need my sister for her NaU,” Matt said. “It is the only thing that can save us.”
“Which one?” Walter said. “The purple one or the white one?”
“Neither,” Matt said. “Those are NaUs that she took from other people, and not the one that originated within her. She has three inside of her, and it’s the first one that we need.”
“Why?” Walter said, but Matt saw the wheels turning in his head. He was almost to the truth. All he needed was a little encouragement.
“You must have noticed by now that all of us are dying,” Matt said. “Kent’s body is slowly disintegrating, Jolie is having seizures, Danni’s mind is completely shot, and I have a bunch of tumors growing inside of me. I will only last a couple of days, if that long. What have you noticed about my sister? Does she look sick? Does she look like she’s dying? Does she look phased at all by what’s happening to her?”
Matt saw it then, the realization on Walter’s face.
“Yes, my sister’s NaU, her first and original one,” Matt said, “allows her to use other people’s NaU without dying, without having her body ripped to shreds.
