Page 2 of The Godhead Complex
Once he saved the wretched Crank on the pavement of the alley, he’d also inject the fearless companion with the Cure and study them both, bring them into his inner circle and create the future one day at a time.
One infected, one not.
“I’d do anything to save him.Please.” She whispered without tears, “Just tell me what you want me to do.”
Nicholas palmed the two syringes in his pocket. “I’ll ask for your silence. Not just now, but as we leave the walls and for every single day beyond that. Whatever happens.”
“You have my word.” Her thoughts and intentions aligned. “Can you save him?”
“I can try. But I’ll have to inject you, too, just in case you have an asymptomatic infection.” Nicholas wouldn’t tell her of the DNAresequencingshe’d undergo, needing to know how her gifts evolved naturally, if they evolved at all.
“Anything. Please. You’re a Godsend. Thank you.”
“God is nothing but a complex, we are all Gods. You’ll soon find out.” Nicholas gently tapped the inside of her arm to find the vein. He wondered how the sequencing might align her unique strands of DNA. “You’ll come with me after this to New Petersburg so that I can keep you under observation.”
“Alaska? That’s a little far from Colorado?”
“Yes, Alaska.” Nicholas engaged the syringe slowly so as not to flood her body too quickly with the Cure. “Not bad in a Berg.” He smiled and watched her face relax. “You mustn’t make a sound when I inject him next. Not a cry, not a scream, not a shout for the world to hear. If you mutter anything louder than a sigh of relief, I will have to-”
“Of course.” She watched on and Nicholas pivoted to the Crank with skin so thick the needle needed extra force to penetrate. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Nicholas.”
“Thank you, Nicholas. We’ll forever be in your debt. My name is—”
“Doesn’t matter.” Nicholas stood up from the damp ground and put the emptied needles back in his pocket.CLICK CLACK. . . “From now on you’ll be known as Alexandra, and he’ll be known as Mikhail.”
PARTONE
Natural Selection
I don’t know what awaits us after the Gone. I guess I might ‘meet my maker’ as someone in the Glade once said. Or I might just meet myself again . . . my whole self, memories, real name, all that. Maybe at the end, the broken pieces of life all come together.
Maybe they’ll make sense. Or maybe they won’t.
Maybe it’s a little of both.
—The Book of Newt
CHAPTERONE
Forging Ahead
The flames danced higher from their nightly fire, and Isaac watched as his friends carried on in a circle around the camp as if they were all back on the island after a feast. As if everything were the same as it ever was. But, no. Everything had changed. He could see that change most in Jackie’s face, how the loss of Lacey and Carson took the spark out of her eyes. Or maybe killing a bald-headed half-Crank with her bare hands changed her. Either way, with every mile they traveled closer to the coast and farther away from the broken Grief Walker, away from Lacey and Carson, Jackie seemed further and further away too.
She didn’t talk about what happened all those weeks ago, and Isaac understood that perfectly. He never wanted to talk about losing his mom, dad, and sister either. Talking about it made it real. And it didn’t need to feel any more real than the empty space that remained in their place. Isaac half-smiled and half-frowned at Jackie, the only way he knew how to send a sympathetic but supportive look, letting her see that he knew the grief and torment of what she was going through. It wasn’t just the loss of her friends that Isaac understood all too well, but the feeling of what Old Man Frypan once called ‘survivor’s guilt’—the feeling of still being alive when those you loved weren’t. Jackie half-smiled and half-frowned right back at him.
“Hey, who wants to hear a spider bark?” Dominic stood up to stretch, and before Miyoko could push him out of the circle, he did it again. He let one rip. Since escaping the Bergs, Dominic’s gas had become the biggest weapon of destruction the group had to avoid. Trish glared at Dominic. She had a steadfast rule of not farting near the campfire.
“You’re going to catch us all on fire one day, you know.” Trish rolled her eyes and then inched closer to Sadina, intertwining Sadina’s fingers with her own. After Sadina and Isaac were kidnapped, Isaac couldn’t help but notice Trish tethered herself more than ever to Sadina, in whatever ways she could. Isaac understood that too. He was thankful for the group, but he himself felt untethered, as if a bad wind could come along and just blow everything away. Maybe because they slept outside as if they were on the run. He missed the safety of the yurt he’d built back home. He looked around at the trees and available resources; it’d take some time, but he could build a shelter here for everyone.
“Thanks for dinner, ol’ Man,” Isaac said as he collected the carved wood they used for bowls and helped clean up. Isaac had never seen Old Man Frypan happier than when they settled in between the mountains, eating rabbits and plants and cooking for everyone when he had the energy.
Minho leaned back to stretch. “You even managed to make Roxy’s stew taste better, which I swore wasn’t possible.”
“Some kind of spiky herb he added from the forest,” Roxy added as she helped Isaac clean up.
“It’s called Rosemary. I don’t know how I remember that, but I do.” Old Man Frypan inched closer to the fire.
