MORTAL COILS (81 page)

He
hugged her back with one arm.

She
pushed away from him. Happiness that Eliot was okay was one thing; actually
hugging him was kind of gross.

Plus
something was wrong with him—above and beyond his usual geek factor, and that
they were in some fog full of monsters. A red line of infection ran up his arm,
and the skin to either side was mottled with bruises.

Rage
boiled inside Fiona. “They hurt you.”

Eliot
curled his arm inward. “It’s nothing.”

Fiona
was quite certain it was not “nothing,” but she let it drop for now. They had
more immediate problems.

“What
is all this? You brought the fog again. Do you know it’s killing people?”

Eliot
leveled at her a glare so malevolent she thought it would make Grandmother
flinch. “Yes, I know. Do you want to find the Golden Apple or not?”

Fiona
had never seen Eliot like this. He was harmless, unless you backed him into a
corner. And even then . . . well, it had never been possible for her to think
of him as threatening.

Until
now.

Something
was very wrong with her brother. Or maybe the entire world was wrong, and he
had just become a part of it.

“Yeah,”
she told him. “Let’s find the stupid thing.”

Eliot
nodded and turned his back to her, lifting his arm to play. Fiona watched,
fascinated, as the red line and bruises on his arm vanished.

He
played a new song; it was soft and slow.

An
image of a tiny leaf popped into Fiona’s mind, struggling to reach for the sun;
it had flowers and buzzing bees and swelling fruit. She smelled honey and
tasted . . .

“Apples,”
she whispered.

The
thought of food, even something as innocuous as an apple, however, made Fiona’s
stomach heave with revulsion. She steeled herself, swallowed, and was okay.

In
response to music, the mist moved, and a new path materialized.

Eliot
played and walked forward. Fiona followed.

She
marveled at his growing talent. But this new appreciation vanished when she
spotted a horseman galloping past in the gloom, sword raised over his headless
torso. An obscured sharklike figure the size of a tugboat glided along the
other side of the path.

Dull
explosions thumped in the distance. There was the popcorn crackle of gunfire,
too.

Fiona
moved closer to Eliot and saw that as he played, tears streamed down his
cheeks.

She
wanted to touch his shoulder, comfort him, but she was afraid she would throw
off his music. And what could she say to make him feel better? When she had
killed Millhouse, she had wounded her soul as well. She knew no one could talk
that hurt away.

Their
path through the fog brought them to a concrete sidewalk, and they halted
before a double set of steel doors.

Painted
on the doors was 221.

“This
is the place,” Eliot told her.

Fiona
stepped forward, a coiled thread clutched in her hand. The door looked thick
and impenetrable with metal plates bolted over the lock. An electronic keypad
and card reader glowed on the wall next to it.

How
was she going to cut through a flat door with a line stretched between her
hands?

But
did she have to do it that way? With both hands? Uncle Aaron had told her she
could cut anything if she just put her mind to it. He never said she had to
hold the string with two hands.

She
took a deep breath and pulled a span of the cotton fiber between her pinched
thumb and forefinger. She concentrated upon it with such intensity that the
rest of the world faded.

Fiona
let go of one end.

The
thread remained stiff in the air and focused into a nearly invisible line of
force.

Keeping
her eyes fixed firmly upon it, she moved the thread toward the steel door—and
inserted it like a red-hot needle into butter. She moved it up and over and
down and across, then stepped back.

The
door fell inward with a tremendous crash.

Beyond
stretched a fog-filled corridor.

Eliot
stared at the door and at the single thread in her hand, his mouth open.

Despite
everything else that was happening around them, cutting soothed Fiona. She
enjoyed it and could have done that all day.

Alarms
suddenly blared and red lights strobed inside Building 221.

“Which
way?” she asked, shouting over the noise.

Eliot
plunked a few notes of his “apple” song. The haze rippled and cleared a passage
that turned left at the first intersection.

She
led the way, thread held between her hands. Fiona glimpsed disem-bodied eyes,
reflected in the flashes of red light, peering back at her from the fog.

Come
and get me. I dare you.

Where
was that thought coming from? The last thing she wanted was more confrontation.
She just wanted to be left alone.

Or
did part of her want to cut more? Want to fight?

They
twisted through the building, then down a hallway that angled into a
subterranean portion—past doors of solid steel, some with number pads, others
with palm-print readers, others as thick as bank vaults.

Eliot
halted before a small oval door embedded in a concrete wall. Next to this was
an optical scanner and printed instructions on how to get your retina
identified.

“This
one,” Eliot said, trying to read the instructions, squinting as he did so.

Did
he need glasses?

Fiona
started reading them, too, but then stopped. No lock or scanner could stop her
tonight.

She
stretched out an arm’s length of thread, focused, and slid it through the
microscopic seam of the high-security door. Steel, titanium, high-carbon alloys
. . . those offered only the slightest resistance to Fiona.

She
traced along the door’s edge, and together she and Eliot pushed in the door.

On
the other side was a room the size of Ringo’s with rows of shelves that
stretched to the ceiling. Upon these were crates, lockboxes, and
fifty-five-gallon drums—each with a bar code and a serial number. Most bore
biohazard or radiation warning stickers . . . or both.

Eliot
walked directly to a drum on a lower shelf. “Here.”

Fiona
looked down the hallway. No creatures from the mist or military police followed
them. That was good.

Or
it was bad, depending on why no one was answering this building’s alarm.

Maybe
everyone was dead.

What
had they done? In the first trial, she had almost died rather than hurt Souhk.
And then she had murdered Perry Millhouse. Now? Eliot’s conjured fog could be
killing people. She just wanted it all to stop.

Fiona’s
strength drained from her limbs. She grasped the doorway. Her time to live was
running out.

She
limped to the drum and cut off the top.

Nestled
within, packed with Styrofoam, was a large metallic egg. She and Eliot rolled
the drum out to get a better look.

The
egg was dull silver and coated with a thick lacquer. On closer inspection, she
saw lines etched into the metal: veins that traced a web over the thing; in
places it looked like twining vines with budding orchids; other patches
appeared like a printed circuit board; some seemed like a repeating crystalline
structure that then rounded into clusters of cells, frozen in middivision,
chromosomes splayed out like the interlocked fingers of two hands.

The
artistry of the piece took her breath away.

“What
are you waiting for?” Eliot asked. “Open it.”

“It
seems a shame to ruin it.”

Nonetheless,
Fiona looped her thread around the top. Maybe she could cut off just a tiny
bit. Destroy as little as possible of this miraculous egg.

62

She
tugged her string.

The
thread slid partway into the metal—then caught.

She
had cut through solid steel that could have shrugged off a bomb blast, but this
was stronger. It was as if it were alive and fought her.

But
Fiona’s life was at stake, too. She had to get inside.

She
tightened her grip on the thread until her knuckles whitened. She sawed back and
forth, maintaining her concentration until beads of sweat dripped into her
eyes.

The
etched lines in the surface of the metal parted, and her loop snapped to a
single line as it passed through.

62.
Russian jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé crafted the legendary Fabergé eggs, making
fifty-seven of the miniature works of art in his life. One, Hypnogogia, was
never completed. According to his notes, Fabergé sent an expedition to the
Podkamennaya Tunguska River near the site of the 1908 Tunguska impact event. From
metal fragments found in river sediments he forged Hypnogogia and wrote, “It
seems one part metal, one part living, and one part light.” Fabergé left Russia
during the October Revolution, and all further notes, illustrations, and the
partially constructed Hypnogogia were lost. Gods of the First and Twenty-first
Century, Volume 6: Modern Myths, 8th ed. (Zypheron Press Ltd.).

Air
hissed into the hermetically sealed container.

The
veins and flowers etched upon the egg smoldered like burning paper, blackened,
and faded away. The metal then turned white as if rapidly oxidizing.

Eliot
crowded next to her and they both looked inside.

Cradled
in folds of black velvet was a single yellow apple. The size of a crab apple,
it had a slender stem with a single leaf. Several tiny bites had already been
taken, but its flesh was white and unblemished.

“That’s
all there is?” Eliot asked.

“What
did you expect? They said it’d be an apple. So shockingly, it’s an apple.”

But
as Fiona pulled it out, she saw the fruit’s skin was uniformly striped with
gold and silver and spotted with ruby red and jade green. It was more like a
jewel crafted and faceted by a master artisan than something that had been
grown. It was hard and cold. It smelled of honey and citrus.

Her
mouth watered. For the first time in days she felt hungry for something other
than chocolate.

“What’s
the matter?” Eliot asked. “Eat it already.”

“I
want to . . . but that’s the problem. I wanted those chocolates—more than
anything. And look what happened. And when I cut myself, I wanted to be free
from the chocolates more than anything. Everything I seem to want more than
anything turns out to be bad.”

Eliot
gave her a puzzled look.

“It’s
like I’m being manipulated,” she said. “Like they’re making me do these things.
Making me into something I don’t want to be.”

“Isn’t
that better than being dead?” Lines of anxiety creased Eliot’s face. This
wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“I
don’t know,” she whispered. “It’s complicated. It’s not just about living or
dying. It’s about living like I want to, and not becoming another Lucia . . .
or Henry . . . or Aaron.”