I turn away from the house, realizing that I have no idea where Karen and Henry are. As stupid as it seems, I feel so much more worried about them now that they aren’t in this house where I could always perfectly picture them. In the long stretches of night as my brothers and I drove from one mission to another, I would imagine Karen perched right on the edge of the couch watching her endless real life murder mysteries and Henry pinching the bridge of his nose behind the door in his private office. I had always directed my thoughts to this house, and now the three of us are homeless in my mind, untethered.

  Then again, I can just look Henry up on LinkedIn whenever I want, and Karen is a hopeless Facebook oversharer…at least she was. They aren’t really lost to me, but I must still be lost to them.

  The alarm of my phone squawks, and I fumble to turn it off. I have one hour to reach my first detonation point. Bear let me have first pick of detonation territories, and some need brought me here, back to the beginning. The map is on my phone, but I have the location memorized. It’s only twenty minutes away from this normal, normal house.

  I give the house one more glance, eyes snagging on those wispy pink curtains in the bedroom that is no longer mine, before I get back into my rental car.

  ***

  My gaze flicks down to my phone screen, and I watch the GPS coordinates update as I walk. The air is hot, but the wind feels good on the back of my neck as my feet scuff through bleached grass. The playground has been completely redone since I was a kid, all the sand replaced by recycled bits of rubber. Still, it all feels so familiar, the basketball and tennis courts, the empty benches and bleached picnic tables. This place was squealing, tumbling happiness as a kid, and drama-laced gossiping and quick gooey glances at the basketball courts when I hit my pre-teens.

  I know that at night, this park will come alive with squealing kids tumbling down the slides on the playground and sulky teens passing joints and mono between each other away from the lights; but in the middle of the day, as the sun bears down, even the flies and bees move sluggishly through the hot air. I leave the playground far behind, crossing over empty running trails and into the wooded area of the park where we children were never allowed to go. A teenaged girl got raped right around here in these unmaintained and scraggly woods over two decades ago. It was over two decades ago, but it might as well have been yesterday for Karen. She would never let me go into the woods, as if she imagined that rapist was waiting in some hidden bunker out here, just biding his time.

  I give my phone another glance as the coordinates update with my movement. Not much farther. I still have plenty of time. Around the world, Totem members are trekking through sand and swamp and frozen tundra to their assigned spots. Some are on the other side of the globe, cloaked in darkness at this moment, but I have no doubt that they’ll find their spot. Lo was so careful when he created his map of the detonation sites. He studied the wind charts, barometer readings, and storm fronts and scoured Google Earth to discover abandoned pockets of space where our little death-carrying canisters wouldn’t be discovered.

  I find my spot, right at the base of tall maple tree.

  It took Lo weeks to coordinate this release while his chemical cocktail was created in a Mexican lab. Bear insisted that some PhD Totem member review Lo’s work and tests. The days passed, long and arduous, as we reviewed the plan over and over again and finally moved our players into place. The Totem somehow found the money for all those expensive flights, and I drove the reliable Honda rental Lo paid for across a dozen states right back here to my childhood summer days.

  The Totem scientist confirmed Lo’s findings. She suggested small scale trials, but the bodies have been piling up. The mainstream media is in hysterics about the spiking murder rates and rumors that the cause may be more than a drug epidemic. People are starting to share eyewitness accounts of seeing individuals killing victims with a single touch or setting things on fire with their mind. A terribly written self-published book, My Brother, The Monster, is floating around on Amazon filled with way too many accurate details about angels to be a work of fiction.

  Eventually, Bear agreed that we had no time for small scale trials. Only time to strike.

  My phone beeps. A gust of wind cools the nape of my neck. Out of habit, I glance around, looking for cameras, for witnesses, for that imaginary rapist, but the park is silent. Even the trees seem to be waiting in anticipation. I expect to feel scared or sad at least, but there is nothing. All of the fear and sadness have been wrung out of me.

  I let my small backpack fall from my shoulder, unzip the main pouch, and pull out one of the sixteen canisters it holds. I dig a small trench in the dirt at the base of the tree and place the canister in the shallow indentation, piling loose dirt around it to hide its metallic rim.

  “You are a very important tree,” I say to the tree solemnly.

  I pull out the safety pin from the canister. I feel Tarren’s calm, the strength of his purpose inside of me. Thank you, I think to all the memories of him that have guided me these past weeks and kept me from falling into a thousand million pieces. I bet you thought that you only trained me how to fight, how to live the life of the mission, but you also taught me how to live with a broken heart.

  I press the small button on the side of the canister, and it immediately begins to hiss as it releases the invisible microbes into the air. My instinct hollers at me to cover my nose, to turn and flee, but I stand and watch to make sure the gas is coming out. I smell it, a slight new tang in the air. Then I use my phone to log onto the secret message board that Rain set up. I see a dozen messages already posted, and I check in, using my brand new Totem call sign: Fox, D1, C.

  Poor Rain. He will think that this is Gabe checking in, while I am safely tucked away in a tiny underground bomb shelter in New Mexico. My lies are unworthy of him. I am unworthy of him, but I won’t have to worry about that for much longer.

  I can almost feel the microbes nestling inside of me, eating away at my DNA as I zip up the pack and haul it back to my shoulder. I hear the tinkle of the fifteen remaining canisters. Fifteen more targets across the northern corridor of the United States, fifteen more check-ins that detonation has been completed, and then the scales will be balanced. Then Tarren will be avenged and Gabe will be free of me. I close my eyes, wondrous at the new emotion that breaks through my lassitude.

  Relief.

  Here, in a plain little patch of dirt, I’ve started a revolution. No, that’s not right. Ended a revolution.

  Chapter 45 – Tarren

  I push my legs forward, focus on keeping each stride long and smooth, my shoulders relaxed as they swing. My ears are tuned, waiting, waiting, waiting.

  Keep going. Almost, almost…

  Each breath I suck in doesn’t feel like it holds enough oxygen. My legs are heavy. Sweat runs down my back…

  Beep, beep. The watch chirps on my wrist, and I tip my head back in relief, finally allowing my legs to shuffle into a walk. I pause the timer on my watch. The deep, steady ache rising up in my quads feels good. Muscles well used. Lungs challenged.

  I glance at my watch. An hour and twelve minutes. Slow, but not bad for my first ten mile run since…I snap my thoughts away from the memories, from the scent of pine trees in the forest that surrounded my home in Farewell. I crave these runs for their ability to clear my mind, focus me only on the physical needs of my body.

  Next time, I’ll get under an hour ten.

  I make it back to the car and press my face into the towel I keep on the front seat. The sweat has nearly evaporated from my damp skin. I notice a text message waiting on the cheap burner phone I bought at BestBuy last week using my new debit card.

  Hey T. This Gavin. Mike having BBQ tomorrow @ 1. Watch the game. Be there.

  The text includes a tiny picture of a hamburger and an address. I stare at it, wondering.

  ***

  That night, I lift myself off Danielle and quickly tuck myself back into my pants. She lays panting on the bed, her dark hair a puddle across the pillows. I stand up and zip my jeans. I can still feel the burn of her nails on the sides of my arm, the throb from the hickeys she left on my neck.

  She turns over slowly, and the dim light from the lamp paints a golden strip down the knobs of her spine, all the way to the generous curves of her hips and butt. My fingerprints are already fading from those round swells. I wish they’d stay longer.

  She smiles up at me through the tangle of her hair and absently scratches her forearm. “Leaving so soon?” she purrs.

  I answer by turning my back to her.

  “One day you’ll stay in my bed,” she says. “You’ll want to.”

  I already want to, but I can’t tell her this. Can’t show the growing weakness inside of me.

  “Are you going to Mike’s barbeque tomorrow?” she asks innocently just as I reach the door to her bedroom.

  I pause. “Spying on me?”

  “Well, if you consider going through your text messages and browser history while you’re in the shower spying…then yes.”

  “Don’t do that,” I say.

  She laughs. “I’m so proud of you. Making new buddies.” I hear movement, as if she were rolling onto her back. I imagine her heavy breasts gleaming in the lamplight. “Mike’s the guy who owns that MMA gym you’re always at, right?”

  “I wouldn’t…” I stop myself abruptly, realizing that I was about to confess, show a weakness.

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  I consider this moment, clearly seeing the two paths in front of me. I can continue playing the prisoner and walk out of the bedroom without a word. Or I can take the traitor’s path, the one that wants to….

  I turn back and lean against the wall. “I wouldn’t know what to do. What to say,” I admit flatly. Gabe could make everyone in that house his best friend in an hour. I almost, almost add this, but I can’t say his name. Not out loud. Not to her. Instead, I say, “I don’t even know what the game is they mentioned.”

  She bursts into a peal of giggles, and the light trembles across her body. “The football game,” she says. “The first game of the season is this weekend, and don’t worry about talking. Men don’t talk. They grunt at each other. Good meat…” she says in a thick, stupid voice. “Look on glowing box. Men smash men. That good. My tribe beating your tribe. Feel powerful. Manly.” She beats her chest. “Now I go sit on toilet for 20 minutes.” She grins at me. “Ah! A smile.”

  She’s right. I am smiling. I take the expression off my face and resist the urge to duck my head away as if I were caught doing something shameful.

  “Tarren?” Her voice is soft now, dangerous. I’m on my guard, immediately suspecting that the teasing about the barbeque was a ruse. “Why are you looking for houses in Idaho?”

  Because houses in Nevada don’t have basements, I think. When I first started looking into options to protect Danielle from the Cure, I searched for properties that contained existing bomb shelters, like the one Lo purchased for Maya in New Mexico. Despite the fact that Nevada was ground zero for Cold War nuclear testing, most of the old shelters have been filled in. The ones that still exist aren’t anywhere near up to grade to be completely self-contained and self-sufficient for a month. Over the last week, I’ve been playing with the idea of retrofitting an existing underground basement. It won’t be easy, especially installing a sealed ventilation system…

  “Tarren?” Her voice is angry now, but beneath the anger I sense something else. A wound. Perhaps I’m not the only one walking down the traitor’s path.

  She sees that I see her weakness, and now the pout to her lips is gone, replaced with a sharp smile. “You want to reneg on our bargain so soon? Seems like you aren’t getting tired of playing with the devil quite yet.”

  “There’s something I need to tell you.” I take a deep breath. I’ve already considered how to apprise her of the situation, but I would have preferred to have a solution to offer before explaining the Cure. “I’ve been working on something called…”

  My words stop. Everything stops. Everything except for Danielle’s hand, idly scratching her forearm. This is the second time she’s done it in the last ten minutes.

  “What?” she says as I stalk across the room. “Your aura. Tarren!” Her eyes are big and round, staring at me.

  I snatch her wrist and yank her toward the lamp.

  “Stop, stop, your aura.” She tears her wrist out of my grip and shies away from me.

  “Give me your hand,” I order her. “Now!”

  Her eyes sharpen, scarlet lips pulling into a tight scowl.

  “Please, Danielle.” I force my voice lower, try to press all my emotions down.

  She knows this is serious now. I said her name. She thrusts her wrist at me.

  “Put it into the light.” Lo wouldn’t. He needed six months at least to test Compound 731. I had time. I was supposed to have time.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Danielle says as her hand moves beneath the lamp. I stare at the chapped, flaking skin stretched across her palm, the same chapped skin that the test subjects presented within six hours of infection.

  My voice is hoarse when I can manage the words. “I’m too late.”

  Chapter 46 – Maya

  At least the itching in my palms and forearms has stopped. Too bad it morphed into this heavy, dull pain that spikes into sharp prickles every time I close my hands into fists. I’ve been driving for the last eight hours, constantly biting my lip to keep my focus on the road and away from the growing weariness that seems to be dragging my lids down with anchors.

  I really don’t want to see what’s going on with my hands, but as I sit parked on a curb, morbid curiosity gets the best of me. I pull off the black, fingerless glove from my right hand and look at the crusty mess beneath. A hard shell of scab has grown across the red, swollen creases in my palm. I push up the sleeve of my shirt, and my gaze traces the angry red veins that climb up my forearm into the nook of my elbow. The veins are tender to the touch, sending sharp waves of pain through my arm with even the gentlest graze of my fingertips.

  I have to concentrate to count the days since I pulled the tab on that first canister in Connecticut. All the sunrises and sunsets seems to blur into each other in my memory, loop upon loop. Four days. It’s been four days. I travelled across the northern corridor of the United States, stopping along the way to tuck little canisters into open fields, into pockets of slopping mud, and once even behind a squat concrete sewage treatment plant. Each time, I checked in and watched the list of completed detonations grow from sites all around the world.

  I open the door of the car. My legs seem unsure of my weight as I haul myself to my feet. I take a breath. The breeze feels good, but I know it is a lie. The wind is full of poison, all around the world. The first health alerts hit the radio this morning.

  We did it; the Totem, Lo, and one hybrid angel. All 462 canisters have been placed and detonated across the globe. Despite all the odds, the complications were few. One near arrest. One fender bender along the way. A missed train, and a few late detonations, but nothing serious.

  And now our job is done. My job is done.

  I stare at the looming wall in front of me. It’s a long shot, coming here, back to the compound in Nevada, but the house where the angels kept me in Pennsylvania is utterly destroyed. Chain gave me the address, but he didn’t tell me that I’d find a crumbled mess of old wooden beams, bright pink insulation still caught in the grass like flecks of brain, and weathered police tape fluttering around the bases of nearby trees.

  I’d stared at the wreckage, realizing that the tiny room with the slanted roof was gone forever. That should have felt good, but my body was already beginning to feel like a heavy, foreign thing. I couldn’t waste time on relief.

  The room might be gone, but the person who put me there wasn’t. My last memories under War’s hospitality are muddled, but I remember enough to know that War had left before I was rescued. He got away from that fight, but he can’t run from the air.

  I walk toward the main gate of the house. My legs resist the movement, and my vision blurs before refocusing. Even this small effort taxes my lungs. The air feels thin, as if the oxygen has been sucked out of it.

  I try to imagine what’s going on inside of me, all the little demons of this disease burrowing into my cells, gobbling up the angel parts of my DNA. Cell after cell is going offline, like an endless row of Christmas lights burning out.

  And when the last one goes out?

  According to Lo, most angels drop three days after infection. The longest holdout made it to four. That means that this is, in all probability, my very last day on earth.

  What will the final hours be like? I hadn’t asked Lo, too afraid of the gory answer. But it’s not so bad. Painful hands and arms. Jelly legs. My mind is made of a listless fog, and I am too tired to feel afraid.

  I wrap my fingers through the interlacing bars of the wrought iron gate. It all started here, at this sweeping mansion only two hours from Lo’s house. This was the spot where I stole Gabe’s grand sacrifice from him, where it all went so terribly wrong. I lean my head against the hot metal.

  Maybe we would have all done better if we’d stopped trying to sacrifice ourselves, stopped trying for the glory. But is that right? I’m not going for glory here, just an end to the angels. An end to my guilt. An end to me, so that Gabe doesn’t have to tear his soul in half trying to find a way to love the person who murdered his brother.

  Leaping over the gate would have once been the work of two seconds. I would have been up and over in a fluid rush, landing cat-soft on the other side. Now I drag my body painfully up. My hands burn when I grip the metal curlicues. One leg flops over the top, then the other, and then I slide down halfway before letting go and landing in a sloppy heap on the other side.