Blood Colony (34 page)

The Colony
2:30 p.m.

M
om?

If not for Fana’s voice, so vivid that she could be sitting next to her, Jessica never would have realized she was sleeping.

Jessica hadn’t wanted to sit down—her mother’s condition worried her, and she was waiting for confirmation that the Duharts had reached SeaTac safely—but she hadn’t been able to keep standing. Her blood gave her as much energy as a twenty-year-old, but she still hadn’t slept in two and a half days. To keep herself awake, she focused on the beeping cardiac monitor Lucas had attached to her mother’s wrist, like an oversized watch. And the dripping water in the sink.

Somehow, through it all, she was sleeping anyway.

“
MOM?
” Fana’s voice said again, a thunderclap. “
RUN.
”

Jessica gasped, her eyes flying open. She leaped to her feet and looked around the room, bleary-eyed. Her mother was sitting across the table from her with a startled expression, and Alex lay in the bed. No Fana.

Then Jessica realized that Bea’s heart monitor was beeping in a frenzy.
A heart attack?
Jessica clutched her mother’s arm, her own heartbeat racing the monitor’s flurry.

“Mom?” she said. “Just relax. I’ll c-call for Lucas—”

“Baby…didn’t you hear that?” Bea whispered with the breath her lungs hoarded from the oxygen tubes. Bea pulled her arm away from Jessica.

“Hear what?”

“That
voice,
Jessica.”

Jessica’s head cleared. She was almost afraid to say her daughter’s name, but the alertness in her mother’s eyes gave her hope. “Fana?”

Bea nodded at Jessica, her eyes wider, spilling tears.

Jessica felt gooseflesh across her arms. “I thought—”

“I heard her…too…clear as day,” Bea said. Her fingers trembled as she raised her hand, pointing. “From there.”

Alex’s bed.

Jessica’s heart tumbled as she gazed at Alex’s stock-still lump under the blanket. It didn’t make sense, but rationality was irrelevant when it came to Fana. Long ago, when Jessica had battled the faceless thing that had stolen her child’s mind for a time, an invisible force had made her hallucinate that poor Kira had come back to life to taunt her. Was that happening again? Had the force Khaldun called the Shadows followed her, parroting Fana’s voice?

That nameless thing was the closest she had ever walked to Satan. Jessica was sure of it.

Jessica stepped toward Alex’s bed. Bea pulled herself up from the table and held Jessica’s arm, leaning on her for support. Bea’s shallow, hurried breaths fluttered in Jessica’s ear.

Alex’s eyes were open for the first time since Fana had disappeared. Staring at the ceiling.

Bea gasped. “Alexis?” she said, overjoyed. It had been Alex’s voice all along!

Jessica clasped Alex’s hand and pulled it beneath her chin. “Alex? We’re here!”

But Alex didn’t blink. Her lips had fallen slightly apart, but Alex didn’t move now, except to breathe. Gently, Jessica shook her shoulder. Alex was still in a trance; Jessica could see that even without Teka’s guidance.

“She’s not back with us, Mom,” Jessica said gently.

“She
is
.” Bea sat at the edge of Alex’s bed and stroked her daughter’s forehead the way she had when they’d been children. “She sounded…like Fana. She called out…and she said to run. You…heard her.”

Jessica blinked, staring into her sister’s unseeing eyes. She moved closer, until there was only an inch between them. Did she see Alex in those eyes, or was it Fana? With everything her daughter was capable of, why should it surprise her that Fana could speak through Alex’s mouth?

“Fana?” Jessica whispered to Alex’s ear. “Is that you? We heard you. Talk to us, sweetheart. Please tell us where you are. Tell us if you’re all right.”

Alex’s lips trembled suddenly, and air forced its way from her throat. “
Run
…”

The voice was weaker, but it was Fana. As if she’d been trapped inside Alex’s body.

“Stay with her, Mom. Teka needs to hear this.”

Jessica ran to the intercoms built into her corner desk—a row of lighted buttons linked to individual underground quarters, as well as the Council House, Big House and other buildings aboveground. The buttons were assigned numbers, not names, so Jessica had to try to remember which was Teka’s. For maddening seconds, she drew a blank. Sleep deprivation, she realized.

The wild beeping of Bea’s cardiac monitor was a distraction; not only was it racing but it was also erratic. Even good excitement was bad for her mother’s heart today. And Bea’s labored breathing terrified Jessica; her mother sounded almost as if she was drowning.

Teka’s is Three.
Jessica pressed the white-lighted button but didn’t hear the gentle bell tone that preceded responses. She heard only the speaker’s empty static, unanswered.

Jessica pushed the button again, leaning close to the pin-sized microphone. “Teka? I need you right away. Fana is communicating through Alex! We hear her voice.”

Bea fought to speak. “Call that…boy…outside the door. He’ll…get him.”

“Mom, please don’t talk. Save your breath,” Jessica said. Bea’s suggestion to send her guardian, Fasilidas, for Teka was a good one, but first she hit the button to reach Lucas. Bea was her new priority, even above the miracle from Alex’s lips.

Silence again. The buttons weren’t working. A technical breakdown
now
?

“
Dammit,
” Jessica said, running to her door. Her wrist snapped painfully when she tried to turn the doorknob. Her door was locked, from the
outside
. She hadn’t realized that someone else could lock her door—or that anyone would dare.

Jessica pounded on the metallic door, angry. “Fasilidas! Open this door
right now
!” The doors were heavy and flame-proof, meant for protection, but now her quarters were a cage.

When there was no sound, Jessica felt afraid in her own home for the first time since she and Dawit had established their colony. The full depth of the drastic measure the Duharts had taken to escape washed over her in a flood, and Jessica’s knees wavered as she remembered Fana’s message:
Run
. Something had happened. Had Sanctus Cruor found them? Or government agents tipped off by Garrick Wright?

“What’s…wrong?” Bea said.

“Nothing I can’t take care of,” Jessica said.

Jessica grabbed the sat phone from the table and dialed Dawit’s number, her fingers jittery on the keypad.
Please pick up, David,
she thought.

SYSTEM BUSY, the satellite’s message said in the black viewer.

Damn damn damn.

Jessica felt her mother’s eyes on her, so she kept her face as calm as she could. Jessica’s lessons from meditation came to her:
Calm. Patience.
Thankfully, panic receded. She looped the strap of the phone’s black carrying case over her shoulder, planning to try Dawit again when she had a chance. Even if she could reach him, what could he do for her from so far away?

Jessica noticed perspiration on Bea’s forehead, and how Bea’s fingers fanned across her breastbone, a sign that she was in pain. Were Bea’s lips slightly bluish? To try to relieve Bea’s breathing, Jessica carefully adjusted the oxygen machine’s output.

“Mom, are you having an angina attack?” she said.

Reluctantly, Bea nodded. She hated to admit to pain, thinking of it as weakness. She had suffered from painful chest pains for years, even before her heart attack. Grandpa’s side of the family was dogged by heart problems; most of them died by their sixties.

Jessica unfastened the top buttons of her mother’s blouse. Alex always tried to cool Bea’s skin during her attacks, so Jessica pulled off the kimono Bea was wearing over her clothes. Bea’s thin skin clung to her collarbone, as fragile as a bird’s bones. In the robe’s pocket, Jessica found the bottles of aspirin and nitroglycerine her mother always carried with her.

“Take an aspirin,” Jessica said, although she knew Bea wouldn’t want to.

Bea shook her head. “Bothers…my stomach,” she said. “Give me…nitro. I’m fine.”

Ignoring her, Jessica opened the aspirin bottle and pressed a tablet into Bea’s palm. “Chew this first,” she said. “Then nitro.”

Bea gave her an evil eye, but she slid the pill into her mouth. When she bit into it, she made a sour face. “Give me…water.”

“Chew the aspirin. The nitro goes under your tongue. You know they work faster that way. Then you’ll get water, Mom.” Jessica had no time for her usual polite pleading.

Once Jessica was satisfied that Bea was taking her medications, she reached under the table and pulled out the gun case, unlatching it. Jessica dug out the gun her husband had taught her to shoot.

When Bea saw the gun, her face went sallow. She pursed her lips, hard.

“Mom, I don’t want to scare you, but you need to listen to me,” Jessica said slowly. “Our door is locked. I’m going to shoot it open, and then I have to see what’s going on. I need you to stay where you are and listen to every word Fana says. No matter how long I’m gone, do not move. I have to be able to find you again in a hurry. Please don’t argue with me.”

Bea’s bottom lip trembled. The pain in her eyes told Jessica that Bea wished she was the one on her feet, ready to defend her children. Bea opened her mouth, seeking more oxygen than the tubes could give her. Bea’s whisper was heartbroken. “I thought this was…the right thing.”

Somehow, Jessica smiled for her mother. She pressed her palm firmly to Bea’s clammy face. “It
was
the right thing, Mom. This is just a test. I’ll come back when I know something.”

Bea smiled back at her, trading assurances. “It’ll be…all right. You’re in…God’s hands.”

“Amen, Mom. You taught me and Alex that a long time ago. We’ll be fine.”

Jessica went to the door to bang again. Suddenly she was sweating too, swimming in nerves. “Hello?” she called out. “Is anyone out there?”

Silence again.

Jessica took a deep breath. “
Stand clear!
” she shouted. “I have a gun!”

There was no traditional safety on Dawit’s gun; the Life Brothers never drew these weapons unless they were ready to fire. But Jessica had to be careful not to engage the gun’s heartbeat targeting mode, which would seek out the first beating heart in range. She felt for the slider on the underside of the butt, making sure it was forward, in manual.
OK,
she thought.
OK.

“Stand clear!” she yelled out again. After listening for scurrying feet but hearing only her heart’s throbbing, Jessica stepped back five yards. She pulled the trigger.

The gun was silent, but the splintering metal exploded, and she jumped. The doorknob flew against the wall in the kitchenette, shattering the microwave door. Jessica fired a second time, this time at the dead bolt.

Two large, jagged holes in the door. The guns were powerful enough to pierce walls.

Behind her, Bea was breathing faster. “You OK, Mom?” Jessica said, not looking back. She kept her eyes on the door, just in case someone ran in.

“I’m…fine.”

“Take slow, deep breaths. I’ll be right back.”

With each step she took away from Bea, Jessica realized that she might never see her mother alive again. The idea made her legs heavy. But Jessica couldn’t make herself look back, even if one glance was her good-bye.

The door swung open into the hall, but it stuck in place after six inches.

Jessica pushed, and it still didn’t give. She had room to stick her head out.

Fasilidas lay on the floor outside of her door, not moving. His odd black wet suit was slick across his back. Blood. For two seconds, Jessica could only stare. She thought her eyes were fooling her.
He’s a telepath, and someone still got to him. What the hell can YOU do?

Jessica wanted to pull her head back into her quarters, slam what was left of her door shut, and barricade herself inside with Alex and Bea. But she couldn’t. She was responsible for more people than just Alex and Bea.

She had to find out if the Duharts had made it safely home. She had to check on Lucas, Jared, Abena, Sharmila and the boys. Lucas had the protection of the Living Blood, but he didn’t have a gun, and she doubted that Teferi’s wives did either. She was all they had.

Breathing fast, Jessica pounded her hip against the door to force it open wider so she could slip through. Fasilidas’s baton lay on the floor, just beyond his motionless hand; she scooped up the two-pound device, clipping it to her belt loop. She wasn’t as familiar with the baton—the row of three small buttons had been the subject of a very short lesson long ago—but she would figure it out if she had to. It emitted an energy field, like an invisible laser.

Instinct made Jessica press the crook of her elbow tightly against her nose as she held her breath, running toward Lucas’s room. Was there gas? Was that how the sentries had been disabled before they’d sensed an attacker?