I don’t know if that’s true or not, but now is not the time to dwell on old hurts.
When I step outside, I look both ways and cross the street to my car alone.
CHAPTER 22
The parking lot is completely empty as I drive up to Ziro Labs. If this really is going to be some kind of showdown, Ezekiel clearly doesn’t want an audience. Even the security guard at the desk is gone. My footsteps echo in the hallway. I’ve been inside this building every day for the last two years—I refuse to think of it as longer—but suddenly the clean white walls and the squeak of my shoes on the tiles aren’t familiar. The silence around me is ominous, and I have a moment of panic as the elevator doors shut. Too late now. I descend to the subbasement.
The hallway is as vacant as the main floor, but the glow from the last door beckons me. When I open it, everything is nearly the same as it was last time. The machine. My mother. Except now Ezekiel is there, and he’s holding her hand.
“Look,” he says with an elated smile as I walk in. He lifts my mother’s hand triumphantly. “Isn’t she perfect?”
I can’t make myself approach. She may be solid, but she’s not awake. Whatever is happening, that’s not really my mother.
“What did you do?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from trembling.
“I brought her back. I told you we were going to save the world.” Ezekiel’s gaze is glassy and unfocused. He might know I’m here, but I don’t think he’s actually speaking to me.
Something like an inky black tendril slithers out from one of his shirtsleeves, winding its way toward his hand... and my mother’s.
Indigo.
Ezekiel’s eyes widen as he looks down at their joined hands, and at least he has the sense to pull away. He laughs as he adjusts his cuffs. The black apparition slides back inside like a creature returning to its den.
“You see?” he asks. I really wish he’d stop smiling. “I told you I could control him.”
A million questions collide together in a traffic jam at the back of my throat. What does he mean by control? How long has he been Indigo? Is that really my mother? If so, how did he get her here? And what does that have to do with me and Jasper?
Finally, his focus sharpens, and his smile turns kind instead of feverish as he looks at me from across the room.
“I owe you some explanations,” he says, and for a second, I can see my stepfather. My colleague. He would never let me get hurt, if only because he loved my mother too much to let it happen. But as I glance at her still form glowing in the machine, an uneasy voice in the back of my head asks if maybe that’s exactly the problem. He loved her too much.
“Were you always Indigo?” I can’t help the way my hands clench into fists as I speak. “Were you always going to betray us?”
His expression changes to surprise and he shakes his head adamantly. “No. No of course not. I’m not Indigo. I’m only working with him for a little while.”
“Like you’re working with Walter Wolfe?” I half expected to find him here, gun at the ready while he issued threats. But it’s only me and Ezekiel, who snorts at my question.
“Wolfe has nothing to do with this. His vision is too small. He started bragging about a time machine, but he didn’t understand its potential. Thought he’d use it to steal crown jewels and buy stocks for public companies that hadn’t hit it big yet. I knew it could do so much more.” He’s back to staring down at my mother, and I want to scream at him to get away from her. Whether he’s himself or Indigo or something in between, I can’t have him corrupting her.
“So, the plans?” I ask. “The ones in his office?”
“Stole them. It wasn’t hard. We weren’t making progress fast enough, and Farah kept getting further and further away. Indigo could only provide so much support. I’m sorry for sending you on a wild goose chase, but I needed more time. Your mother wasn’t ready yet.”
The confession leaves a bitter taste at the back of my throat. His sketch. The one that jump-started the machine design. Jasper and I believed Wolfe had stolen the Ziro Machine plans, but it was the other way around the whole time. And when he says he needed more time, somehow I know he means he needed me to die some more, though I don’t understand the connection yet.
“This isn’t really about climate change, is it?” I ask. All of me is poised to run. Not that I can outrun Indigo if he makes a full appearance. But there’s something almost as menacing about Ezekiel’s mannerisms right now. Like if I ask the wrong question or upset him, he’ll leave me dead on the floor and waltz out of here with my mother to finish up whatever experiment this is somewhere else.
“It can be,” he says, looking up at the machine. “After we bring your mother back, we can do anything we want.Everything is energy, in the end. Indigo explained it to me. I found him after he...” He has to clear his throat before he keeps speaking. “After your mother died. I went to the building looking for her body, even though the authorities said it was hopeless. I found him instead. He was weak. Nearly dead himself. But he said... he promised me...” His tears catch me off guard as they spill down his cheeks. “I failed her, Morgan. I told her the light box would work. That we could trap him and no one would get hurt. But she did. The box failed, and she died, and it was my fault.”
I stumble back. The pain in his voice hurts almost as much as my heart stopping, because I know it so well. I’ve felt it, as the voices in my head tell me that it was my fault. That I was never good enough, and if I’d only found a way to be as super as she was, I might have been able to save her.
“But partnering with Indigo? That was the only solution?” I ask.
He wipes his nose with his sleeve. It’s a decidedly un-Ezekiel gesture. Indigo’s inky coils try to slip free of the cuff again.
“He said he’d tell me how to do it. All I had to do was give him somewhere to recover. I didn’t realize at the time he meant inside me, but we all have to make sacrifices. For the greater good. And what could help humanity more than bringing her back? When she’s alive again, she’ll be able to stop him,” Ezekiel says, taking her hand again. The Indigo wisps wrap around her too, spiraling quickly up her arm. The intrusion makes her ripple, like she’s reverting to her intangible form. She won’t be able to stop anything the way she is right now.
“Ezekiel!” I point, and he finally seems to notice the threat, letting go of her and shaking his arm like it’s on fire. His face contorts as Indigo realizes his intrusion has failed and turns itself back on Ezekiel. For a second, his eyes go completely black, like the pupils have consumed everything else. He flickers,becoming negative space where the light around him continues to shine, but his silhouette blocks it from passing through, before he returns to his normal, human form. Though I’m starting to wonder how much humanity is really left in him.
