Extinction (29 page)

Lila was gone. Just …
gone
.
 

Kindred looked back to the shore where he’d left Piper and Peers. He could only see silhouettes. He glanced toward the dock, seeing now that there was no way to go around the huge obstruction. Lila had crossed as far as she could on the tied-off rope, but then it vanished beneath the section of roofing. She’d faced a choice: crawl hand over hand around its outer edge until she came back to the dock, or swim for it.
 

Swim
underwater
.
 

Kindred looked at the place where Lila had vanished, feeling uncertain. With the bulk of metal above, it’d be nearly impossible to see down into the already murky water. How would she find him, if he really was there — something that, now that Kindred could see the alternatives, seemed almost for sure? And how, if
he
tried, would he find Lila?
 

She’d have had nothing to hold, only blindly swimming, trying to find Meyer and free him. He’d been under water for almost a minute by now. Would he be unconscious? If the chances of Lila making it were slim, the odds of her making it out while dragging a 180-pound man were nil.

You’re supposed to go under. This is where you save the day.
 

But the voice of conscience was merely a whisper. He
should
, but what was the logical point? He wouldn’t be able to see them, or hold his place against the undertow with nothing to cling to. And if one or both of them were somehow hung up, he probably wouldn’t be able to free them. There was a knife in the pack, but it was still in the car, where Lila had left it. Kindred had only his hands.
 

Going for them was stupid. It would mean trading two casualties for three. He’d die too, then Piper and Peers would be alone.

You’re supposed to go under.

His mind showed him Trevor, Heather, and a dozen others lost along the way.
 

Maybe one minute gone. Then a minute and ten seconds.
 

He broke the surface, clawing for purchase under the large flap of metal. To Kindred’s surprise, he found that Meyer’s guideline was not only unbroken beneath it but simple to grab and hold. He kicked his feet in the current, using the line to move hand over hand along the large thing’s underside. It was dark, but once Kindred’s eyes were open and mostly adjusted to the water’s assault, he could see enough to navigate, his own breath assiduously held.
 

There was the dock.
 

The floatation barrels, two with big gashes in the sides, flooded.
 

One of the submersibles, still in its slip, banging against the dock, obviously battered.
 

And there was —
 

Something hit him. Hard. Kindred’s head spun, and his hand slipped from the line. Semiconscious and losing air, he scrabbled for a handhold, but beyond the rope it was all slippery metal. He dragged his fingers along it, feeling the slower, near-shore current tug him toward the dock’s bent structure, beneath it.

The water became darker.
 

Darker.
 

He stopped caring about the water. Stopped caring about the fear. It was easier to let it go.
 

Instead of two people dead, now there’d be three.
 

But at least I did something
.
 

The last of the light bled from Kindred’s world. He felt the water. He felt it carry him away, like flying.
 

And someone or something, maybe God, maybe whatever was out there, was saying,
You did it. You did something. You —

— ’d better not fucking give up now!
I didn’t get him just to lose you!”
 

And there was a slap.
Hard
. God wasn’t supposed to slap people.
 

“Move. Give me room.”
 

A strong hand on his wrist. The last of the flying sense became a feeling of dragging. His shirt was untucked, grit and gravel scooped into the back of his pants by the hard line of his belt.

Kindred blinked, a vision before his eyes. At first he thought he was seeing himself from above, the way those woo-woo nut jobs in Meyer’s memory said you saw yourself when you died. Then he saw that the man had the start of a salt-and-pepper beard, whereas Kindred was shaven. And he wasn’t looking down. Rain was still pelting his face —he was looking up at Meyer, who’d dragged him to shore.
 

There was a rope around Meyer’s waist, its end frayed as if sawed. Lila was behind him, big brown eyes wide and wet, the backpack knife in her hand. Beyond them, only partially visible, was the popped top of what could only be a freed submersible. Just in time. The river was visibly rising, water surging as if shoved by an oncoming wave of titanic proportions.

Kindred’s mind spun through the past few minutes.
 

How he’d reacted when Piper told him to go after Meyer. How he’d reacted when Lila had gone in. The time he’d spent ruminating on Heather and Trevor rather than acting. The recollection of his death, which hadn’t actually happened. And most of all, the way he’d watched the black water, coolly deciding he’d serve them best by saving himself.
 

Kindred closed his eyes. Everything was spinning. Everything hurt.

“You’re okay now,” Meyer told him. “You’ll live.”
 

Kindred decided the second half of Meyer’s statement was true.
 

But the first was so obviously false.

CHAPTER 34

The Ember Flats town square was less quaint than its name implied. The city had started large by the time it officially started at all, like Heaven’s Veil. One day the Astrals came down, helped build the palace, then the walls that kept it safe, and called it the Capital of Capitals. It had since grown further, packing tighter and rising in height rather than expanding outward. Now the town square was a place where four roads crossed in a giant tic-tac-toe board, and instead of making the block between them fit for building, it became green space. But it was always packed, and by the time Clara arrived with the Lightborn, it was as if every citizen had come to the one block of land, pressing so close to the vessel’s invisible shield that the air crackled with warning static.
 

But there was no pushing or shoving. The Astrals were seeing to that, patrolling the crowd with weapons Clara hadn’t seen since Heaven’s Veil — and plenty of Reptars in tow.
 

On their way across the otherwise empty city, Clara had made a mental count of Lightborn. It had been for practice navigating their shared mental space if anything. And in that common field of thought, she’d counted thirteen distinct nodes, over and over and over again. In the mental sameness, thirteen spots with their own unique sense of self — and maybe, if her experience so far was any guide, their own secrets. Just thirteen of them. Same as the bodies in their group, with Logan at its head.

In the square, water had risen to the height of an adult knee, halfway up Clara’s thighs, surging as it rose. Clara kept thinking of what Josh had said about the ice caps: something she’d already seen inside her mind because the man in boots kept showing it to her.
 

She’d seen rising water claim Canadian shores. Same in Ireland and Scotland, in the Ukraine, in Sweden and Finland and Norway. She’d seen the waves crumble cliffs and obliterate fjords. And feeling the force tugging her legs now, it was hard to keep her mind off the idea that propagation only took so long, and that it was only a matter of time before the waves came here, too.

“How long, do you think?” Ella said beside her.

Clara didn’t bother to ask what Ella was talking about. She knew. They were holding minds the way some little girls held hands.
 

“I don’t know.”
 

“Are we getting on the boat?”
 

“I don’t know, Ella.”
 

There was a surge in the water from the city’s north. In seconds, it rose to Clara’s waist. She and Ella gripped each other, and in the square ahead the crowd muttered then shouted. Mothers held their children tight, lifting those who could be carried out of the water, and the liquid unknown.
 

A few scattered screams. A few jabbering words of panic.
 

But the surge stopped, the rise arresting at its new level.
 

“If we’re not getting on the boat, why are we here?”
 

But Clara didn’t feel like opening her mind the rest of the way, or pandering to Ella’s questions. She liked Ella and the others, but there was something different between Clara and the rest of them. Nick had said as much, and Ella had told her the same. Clara was
brighter
. A Lightborn among Lightborn, able to maintain balance without the collective, able to reach where the others could not, to keep those thoughts safe.
 

“Shh, Ella. Listen.”
 

Logan’s strong features and bold eyes were fixed on Ella.
 

“Yes,” he said. “Listen.”

The Astrals’ vessel lay in the heart of the square. Up close, it didn’t look like Noah’s Ark at all, except that it happened to be an enormous boat in the center of a flooding city. It was more like a miniature cruise ship without the amenities and logos, metal on the bottom, wood and steel sharing space at the deck and quarters.
 

Beside the Ark was a platform.
 

And on it was an Astral contingent — Titans and a woman Clara knew wasn’t as human as she appeared — next to Viceroy Jabari and a handful of human assistants. There was a microphone set up, and one of the assistants kept reading names into it, seemingly directed by Mara. Each name brought a person from the crowd, who came to a long gangplank like a tongue from the vessel’s side. A Titan by the gangplank nodded as the person passed, and with some activity on the platform a section of air shimmered and turned green long enough for the chosen to pass through. Then the whole thing would repeat, one by one by one.
 

With each person, the assistant read a profession or credential:
 

Civil engineer.

Microbiologist.
 

Civic leader.
 

Mother.
 

Mother.

And
mother
.
 

But Clara could hear other credentials that the viceroy and her team weren’t daring to speak aloud.
 

With the exception of a librarian and a physician, there were no women over the age of thirty-five. And Jabari’s logic said,
Humanity needs fertility
.
 

The ratio was skewed for gender. There were three times as many women as men. And Jabari’s logic said,
Men can father as many children as there are women willing to carry them.

And Clara heard: Eadric Khouri, obstetrician. Taavi Kalb, gynecologist.
 

At the surface were trends of rebuilding societies. Minds that Mara seemed to be saving for history’s sake: an archivist, a storyteller, a chess master, a scholar in the study of memory. And below it all a single trend:
reproduction
.
 

Go forth and multiply.

Mara’s logic said:
Diversity prevents the chance of quasi-inbreeding — of unfavorable recessive genes finding their matches. We can’t have heart defects. We can’t have cancer markers. We can’t have high cholesterol. We can’t have diabetes.
And within Jabari’s radiating mindscape, Clara saw a cloud of internal strife. She saw the viceroy’s guilt. Her hatred of eugenics. Her recognition that what she was doing wasn’t different from when the Nazis tried to “purify” the world, alongside the acknowledgement that she had to do it anyway.
 

The only difference between me and Hitler,
Clara heard on the wind
, is that the Astrals are doing the killing for me
.
 

Fahim Khoury, mother.

Jacki Sarkis, mother.

Raakel Naser, mother.

Paavo Bitar, nurse and mother.
 

Clara felt Jabari’s pain in her chest like a knife. A knife that Clara, even from where she stood, knew Jabari would prefer to use on herself.
 

And children were called.
Many
children. Women and kids came first, this time out of necessity. If there was an extinction coming, survivors needed two things most: healthy children and the potential to multiply.

Then it hit Clara.
 

Why they were here.

Why she’d felt so compelled to come.
 

“We need to get on that boat.”

Logan turned to Clara. “What?”
 

She didn’t bother to repeat herself. Of course he’d heard her.
 

“Listen to who she’s picking! It’s all about the future of the species.” Clara sent the collective all the mercenary, triage images her mind could find: hard decisions made by leaders to preserve the greater good.