I eye a stack of folded towels, trying to determine their cleanliness, then realize that it doesn’t fucking matter. I’m the fucking Conduit. I could ingest pure poison and likely never notice. Sighing, I wrap the loaf in one of the towels.
The cook steps to the fridge, then steps back to set a one-quart bottle of milk down on the counter next to my elbow.
I stop myself from thanking him. Even if he didn’t know I was fucking imprisoned, I’m not going to …
I sigh again. Knowing I need the nutrients for whatever is coming, I pop the lid on the milk, downing a swig straight from the bottle.
“Go now,” I say without looking at the cook.
“I could … help … I could be yours.”
“No,” I say harshly, turning on the rest of the gas burners. “Walk away while you still can.”
I feel the universe shift through me — or maybe this is just how acting on my own intent feels now.
I get to work on the stove. By the time I’m finished, the cook is gone and I can feel that the house is empty. My actions are once again nudged by the universe to maximize initial damage and to allow the destruction I’m leaving in my wake to spread swiftly.
I tuck the corn bread under my arm, carrying the milk bottle in one hand so that I have a free hand to flick Devlin’s lighter and set the tea towels I’ve bunched up next to the gas stove on fire. I’ve opened all the other burners but haven’t lit them.
The counter and nearest upper cabinets are already ablaze as I exit through the back patio door.
Finally, I breathe fresh air.
Unfortunately, it’s almost as swelteringly hot outside as the ever-growing blaze at my back.
The Cataclysm’s bunker base is apparently set underneath a plantation house on a seemingly vast acreage. A barn and a number of smaller outbuildings — barracks, maybe? — stand nearby, but I can’t see the main road or any neighboring houses while perched on the tailgate of a red pickup truck about a dozen yards away from the colonial monstrosity.
I know that the motorcycle club’s main operations revolve around trafficking drugs, shifters, and mages, lining up perfectly with the holding cells and the medical suite in the bunker. But it’s still somewhat surprising that the vast fields surrounding me lie utterly fallow.
Any plants in the vicinity are sickly, including the long row of century-old trees I glimpsed upon my arrival. They stand along the front of the house, clearly meant to provide shade but now half dead.
No hint of any animals, wild, farmed, or domesticated.
As if the land is dying.
Poisoned, perhaps.
By the continual presence of the malignancy that is the Cataclysm?
The truck, whose tailgate I’ve commandeered for my picnic of milk and corn bread, is the only vehicle in the vicinity. The shifters that the Cataclysm left to guard me, to guard his main base, have all fled, presumably taking all the other immediately available vehicles. Unfortunately, something is wrong with the engine of this truck. Which is probably why it’s currently on the ground next to the front left tire.
So I sit on the open tailgate, eating the corn bread and drinking the milk as I watch the obviously historically significant house burn and wait for the universe to shift.
I haven’t bothered searching any of the outbuildings yet. They’re set far enough back from the main house that if I want to torch them as well, I’ll have to trek all over the property.
I don’t much feel like trekking anywhere, though, and not just because it is seriously too hot to move. The universe allows me this moment to sit. So I sit, and I wait. I’ll know when it’s time to move.
I eat half the loaf and drink all the milk, stopping only when my belly feels distended. But for the first time in what I’m fairly certain must be weeks, what I’ve eaten was by my choice. I avoid any attempt to confirm exactly how much time I’ve lost — again. That isn’t anything I could have controlled nor that I can now change.
I know I’ll need all those choices, all of those that can be solely mine — me Zaya, not me the Conduit — to get through this … life. To continue moving ever forward until the day I meet my own successor.
Until I write her a fucking note and nothing else to mark my farewell, dumping all the power and not even a smidgen of understanding on her.
I stuff another hunk of corn bread in my mouth, as if doing so might stifle my brain.
A change of clothing would be nice, along with some actual underwear. Maybe I should have thought of that before I set it all on fucking fire.
I watch as a support beam that runs over the kitchen side of the house cracks and falls.
