The End and Other Beginnings Read online

  “Like you said,” Atleigh replied. “It was Chloe.”

  He nodded, and they turned onto Small Pine Boulevard.

  When Sean Larson got home from the office, he set down his briefcase, wiped the sweat that had gathered along his hairline, and shrugged off his digital skin. It was only then that he turned on the lights in his kitchen and confronted a young man perched on his island countertop.

  “You know,” Sean said, “that’s marble. I’d rather you not scratch it.”

  “Scratching is the least of your problems, Sean,” the young man replied. “I’ve had several glasses of water here, and I assure you, I did not use a coaster.”

  “That’s rude,” Sean pointed out. “And so is coming into a man’s house without being invited.”

  The young man shrugged, and Sean spotted the silver gleaming under his shirt collar.

  He did not spot the young woman who had been hiding in the laundry room closet, coming up behind him, her needleknife held aloft and ready to slit his alien form open at the thorax.

  Unfortunately for her, however, he heard the squeak of her shoe on the floor, and the slight creak as she applied pressure. He twisted around, throwing an elbow, hitting nothing but throwing her off, so her knife only scraped his shoulder. He ignored the sharp pain, and grabbed the girl’s wrist, shoving her up against the refrigerator.

  She had short, coppery hair. Fierce brown eyes. Freckles. Familiar.

  A weight fell against Sean’s shoulders—the boy, coming to the girl’s aid. Not that she needed him, because she was already kicking him between the legs, sending a warped, twisted pain through his entire body, so he could barely breathe. The boy pulled Sean’s arms behind his back and forced him to his knees, and the girl stood over him, panting, needleknife firmly in hand.

  “You killed my mother,” she said between breaths.

  “I’m sure I did,” he said. “And?”

  “And I think a person—even a leech—deserves to know why they’re being killed,” the girl continued. “So now you know.”

  She was about to strike. He saw the clench in her hand, the resolve in her eyes. And so, with the full strength of the young man bearing down on him, he did the only thing he could think of to delay the inevitable.

  “Would you like to know why I killed your mother?” Sean asked, not unkindly.

  He could tell by the girl’s expression that the answer was yes, even if she didn’t know why, even if she had never before paused to ask herself the question.

  “She was an obstruction,” he said. “I did not target her specifically, or seek to cause you pain. I killed her because she didn’t matter to me, as you do not matter to me. Killing me will not sate you because you can’t make me care about what I did. You will walk away from this unsatisfied, regardless of what you do.”

  The girl stared at him for a few seconds, and he wondered if she would put the knife down and burst into tears. She seemed close to it, her eyes brimming with moisture.

  She lifted a hand—the one without the knife—and put it on his head, her fingers slipping into his hair. Then they curled, gripping tightly, and she wrenched his head forward. Pain burned through his scalp.

  She leaned close and whispered, “I know.”

  And then everything was gone.

  Atleigh washed her hands and weapon in the kitchen sink. Eon called in the death so the government cleanup time would come promptly after their departure. Then they gathered their things and left the house, which was now more like a coffin for Sean Larson, also known as Soldier.

  Mom had told her, once, that every death she brought about would be a weight on her shoulders, even if it was righteous, even if it was earned. This was not a burden any person was meant to bear, and yet they bore it.

  Her hand brushed Eon’s as they walked out of the gated community, and then his caught hers and held on. She welcomed the warmth and the gentle pressure of him. He had known that Sean Larson’s death didn’t belong to him, without having to ask. He had always known things about her without having to ask.

  They walked right past the guard at the entrance, ducking under the bar intended to block cars from driving past without permission. The guard saw them this time, eyes going wide with alarm, and Atleigh waved at him. They crossed the street and walked toward Eon’s car, still parked on the grass and gravel that bordered the road.

  Only it wasn’t alone there.

  Parked behind it was a green Volvo.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Atleigh looked worn, and that was how Lacey knew it was done. The leech who had killed their mother was gone.

  “I . . .” Lacey gulped down her nerves. She had always carried stress around in her stomach, prone to vomiting before difficult exams or field tests. It had earned her the nickname “Puker” at school.

  Atleigh hadn’t let go of Eon’s hand. And Eon wasn’t flickering, wasn’t shifty—his skin was already gone, shrugged off at the first sight of her, like he was daring her to say something to him about it. Eon hadn’t said much to her, but she could tell he was fierce by the set of his jaw. That was good, Lacey thought, in some distant part of her brain. Atleigh needed somebody just as fierce as she was.

  “I couldn’t go back,” Lacey blurted out finally. “I mean, literally, I can’t. I got expelled. For fighting.”

  “They expelled you for one fight?” Atleigh said.

  “No,” Lacey said. “This was sort of a . . . last-straw situation. I actually don’t fit in so great there.”

  Atleigh blinked at her. She was hunched a little, like she was in pain. Even then, she was taller than Lacey, who had always wanted to outgrow her big sister and had never quite managed it. Some things just weren’t in the cards.

  “I think there’s too much of me here. In this.” Lacey gestured to the two of them. “And it’s like they can all see it, all the time.” Her throat tightened. “I thought I didn’t like it, but I’d miss it, if it was gone.”

  Atleigh was still just . . . staring at her. Waiting for her to get to the point, more than likely.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “If you trust him . . . I do, too. Or I’ll try.”

  “Okay,” Atleigh said.

  “Okay?” Lacey raised her eyebrows. She had expected to do more groveling than that.

  “Yeah,” Atleigh said. “Come on. It’s at least a three-hour drive to the water.”

  They bought tickets for a boat ride in Nag’s Head, Eon, Atleigh, Lacey, and the urn, which Lacey kept hidden in a sweater. The driver was a nimble arachnoid, standing on four legs and operating the boat with the other four, unaided.

  They stood at a railing facing the shore, and when the boat had picked up enough speed, Lacey unwrapped the urn, and Atleigh unscrewed the top. Her hands covered Lacey’s, and together they tipped the urn over, so the ashes spilled into the sea.

  Atleigh and Eon stood so close their shoulders were pressed together. They traded smiles, and then Atleigh cleared her throat.

  “Well, that’s done,” she said. “On to the next thing.”

  “What next thing?” Lacey asked.

  “Getting you un-expelled,” Atleigh said. “Obviously.”

  “I’m not sure you can do that,” Lacey said.

  “Sure I can. I’ll play up the orphaned-daughter-consumed-by-grief angle,” she said. “Mom would support it, I’m pretty sure.”

  The wind blew Lacey’s hair across her face, and she yanked it out of the way.

  “I don’t want to go back there. I told you, I don’t fit in there.”

  “Then don’t fit in,” Atleigh said. “Make the place fit around you.”

  “Atleigh—”

  Atleigh grabbed Lacey’s hand and looked her dead in the eyes. They were clear and focused.

  “Mom told me that when we did this, we were supposed to remember what life is,” Atleigh said. “Well, here it is: family. And when someone in your family wants something, something that’s good for them, you want it,
too, even if you don’t understand it. That ritzy space academy is your future, Lacey. So let’s get it back.”

  Lacey smiled. She wrapped Atleigh up in her arms. Eon was smiling, too, as he looked back to the shore, which was disappearing, flattening to just a dark line on the horizon.

  “Black or red?”

  The woman in the lab coat held up two small containers: one with a red substance caked inside it and one with black. It sounded like she was asking Darya a question of taste, rather than the question that defined her future. The only question, Darya believed, that would ever matter this much.

  The question was not “Black or red?” It was “Life or death?” And Darya would not have been able to answer before that moment.

  She had been seven years old when her father first realized what she could become. Her older sister, Khali, had been playing piano in the living room, an old piece by Schubert. Darya sat on the couch, humming along, a book in her lap.

  Her mother dozed in the recliner, her mouth lolling open. Darya thought about drawing a mustache on her face. She wouldn’t notice it when she awoke. She would be too dazed by the alcohol. Even at seven, Darya knew. But it was not uncommon, with the world as it was. Half her friends’ parents had the same problem.

  Darya’s father stood in the doorway, listening, a dish towel in his hands. He rubbed it over a plate to the rhythm of the notes, which came in stilted intervals as Khali tried to read the music. Darya stopped humming, irritated. The music was meant to be smooth, and it sounded like Khali was chopping it up into bits.

  Khali turned the page and adjusted her hands on the piano as she started a new piece. Darya perked up, letting the book drop into her lap. Her mother snored. Her sister began to play, and Darya stood, walked over to the piano, and stared at her sister’s hands. To her the notes sounded wrong . . . the intervals were too large, or too small; they did not mesh together in the right way.

  “That’s wrong,” she said, wincing.

  “No it’s not,” said Khali. “How would you know?”

  “Because I can hear it,” she said. “It’s supposed to be like this.”

  She reached out and shifted her sister’s index finger one note over. Then she moved Khali’s pinkie finger, and her middle finger.

  “There,” said Darya. “Now do it.”

  Khali rolled her eyes. Darya sighed as the notes came together, ringing as they touched each other.

  “Oh,” said Khali. Her skin was too dark to reveal a blush, but her sheepish expression betrayed her. “You’re right. I read it wrong. It’s supposed to be in B minor.”

  Darya smiled a little, walked back to the couch, and picked up her book again. Her father moved the towel in circles even when it started to squeak against the dry dish.

  A few weeks later, Darya’s father enrolled her in music classes. There they discovered that Darya had perfect pitch—one of the prerequisites for becoming a Hearkener.

  Khali quit piano after Darya surpassed her in skill, which took only a year. It was useless to try to play piano when you were in the same family as a potential Hearkener.

  “Come on. Today’s the day!”

  Darya yawned around her cereal. It was too early to be hungry, but her father had warned her that she would need to eat a good breakfast because today would be a long one. She was going to be tested by the Minnesota School for Hearkeners later that morning to see if she was qualified to enroll, and the test could last several hours. That was a long time for an eight-year-old.

  Her mother shuffled into the kitchen in her old robe, which was threadbare at the cuffs. She had a mug of coffee in hand, which Darya eyed suspiciously. Her mother had carried it into the bedroom several minutes ago.

  A few weeks before, Darya had found a brown bottle under the sink in her parents’ bathroom. She had sniffed it, and its contents burned her nose, and seemed to linger there for several minutes. The bottle and the coffee and her mother’s running-together words were part of a familiar pattern that she had always recognized, even before Darya had the language to describe it.

  Her mother’s eyes wandered across Darya’s face.

  “Where’re you going?” she asked.

  “I’m taking Darya to get tested,” Darya’s father said, too brightly.

  “Tested for what?”

  “Dar has perfect pitch.” Her father set his hand on Darya’s head and tousled her hair. “She could be a Hearkener someday.”

  A Hearkener, to Darya’s mother, meant two things: being employed by the government—a stable job; and carrying an expensive piece of equipment, the implant, in your head—which meant immediate evacuation if the country was quarantined. She snorted a little.

  “D’you really think you should be getting your hopes up?” Her mother’s eyes were cold and critical. Darya couldn’t look at them. “Almost nobody becomes a Hearkener.”

  The little bubble of excitement that had risen inside Darya as soon as she woke up was gone, like it had floated away.

  Her father rose and took her mother’s arm. “Maybe you should get back to bed, Reggie. You don’t look well.”

  “I just meant,” her mother said angrily, “that I don’t want her to be disappointed—”

  “I know,” he said.

  He ushered her from the room. Darya heard the bedroom door close and muffled voices getting louder every second until something banged shut. No longer hungry, she dumped her cereal bowl into the sink without finishing.

  “Your mom’s not feeling so good, Dar,” her father said as they walked down the sidewalk in front of the apartment building. “She didn’t mean it.”

  Darya nodded without thinking.

  They would have lived in the suburbs if they could have—it was safer there, since the attacks came less frequently—but her father’s job only paid well enough for a small apartment downtown.

  The attacks had always been a part of Darya’s life. They could come from anyone, and they were waged against everyone with a pulse. That was why Darya and her sister had to wear face masks on the way to school.

  Her father had taught them both to know bio-bombs when they saw them, but their minds had a tendency to wander when they were together, and he didn’t trust them to look for bombs yet. Kids at school teased them for the masks, but they couldn’t persuade their father to let them go without. “Prove to me that you can pay attention,” he always said.

  Death was too real a possibility. Most people didn’t make it past fifty nowadays, even if they lived in the suburbs.

  Her father pulled her tight to his side as they walked, scattering old cans and bits of paper with the toes of their shoes. She craned her neck to see the tops of the buildings—they seemed so far away, though her father said they were shorter than the buildings in most cities. Most of the windows in the building next to her were blown out completely from the days when destructive bombs had been in fashion. But it was the loss of people, not buildings, that made a war destructive, and the fanatics had figured that out.

  They stopped walking and stood next to a blue sign marked with graffiti. Darya scratched her leg with her free hand and gazed up at her father. He was not a tall man, nor was he short. His skin was dark brown, like Darya’s, and his hair was black and smooth, shiny like her hair, too. He had moved to the States from India before the quarantine. India had been one of the first countries targeted when the attacks began because of its high population. Now the infection was so rampant that the borders had to be closed to prevent a worldwide epidemic. Her father’s parents had gotten infected, so they hadn’t been able to leave with him. She had never met her grandparents. She assumed they were dead by now.

  “Will the test be hard, Daddy?”

  He smiled. “Most of it will be things you already know how to do. And the rest you will be able to figure out. Don’t worry, Dar. You’ll do great.”

  A bus trundled around the corner as he finished speaking, and creaked to a stop right in front of them. The doors opened, and Darya’s father pa
id the fare. They sat down in the middle, next to an old lady who was shifting her dentures around in her mouth, and across from a middle-aged man with a mask covering his mouth and nose.

  Her father leaned in close and whispered, “Okay, so what do we do when we get on a train or a bus?”

  “Look for masks,” she whispered back. They would have been wearing masks, too, if they had not had to leave the two they owned for Darya’s mother, who had to walk Khali to school later, and Khali. Masks were expensive. But she was safe with her father, who could spot a bio-bomb anywhere.

  “Why do we do that?”

  “Because only people with masks will set off bio-bombs.” Her voice dipped even lower at the word bio-bomb, as if saying it any louder would provoke an attack.

  “Right,” he said, “and after we look for masks, what do we do?”

  “We watch.”

  The enemy could be anyone, anywhere. All that they had in common was a commitment to bringing about the apocalypse. They believed the world ought to be destroyed. They did not believe in ending their own lives. Darya didn’t understand it and didn’t want to try.

  He nodded. And they watched, both of them, as the bus bumped and thudded around corners and down streets. Darya had not seen much of the city because she spent all her travel time eyeing the people around her. She was usually in a bus, rather than a train, because buses were easier to escape from.

  “You know, when I was young, people didn’t like Hearkeners much,” her father said.

  Darya watched the man across from her. His eyes remained steady on the floor. She could hear his breaths through the slats in the mask—not loud, but louder than unfiltered breaths.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because they were seen as an unnecessary expenditure,” he said. “Not worth the cost, I mean. But the people over at the Bureau for the Promotion of Arts were very insistent that music would help a troubled world. And then when people started dying . . .” He shrugged. “Everyone started to understand why Hearkeners were so important.”

  “Why are they so important?”

  “Because what they hear . . . it’s like hearing something beyond us. Something bigger than us.” He smiled down at her. “It reminds us that there’s more going on in this world than we can see with our eyes and touch with our hands.”