“Shea,” hisses Poppy, her voice urgent.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something shift. A humanoid shape breaks away from the dark, shoulders hunched and head hanging. It’s a boy, his movements odd and quirking. His face is sunken in, his lips peeled back from his gums. With a snap of his teeth, he rushes the bars.
Shea topples back, stifling a scream.
“What is it?” demands Poppy. “What’s in there?”
“It’s my son.”
The voice is decidedly male and unnervingly close. Shea whips around, her finger depressing the trigger without meaning to. The projectile embeds itself in the wood just beside Egor van Haut’s head. He stands unbound before them, looking startlingly unperturbed.
“Well,” he says, removing his glasses to clean them, “I’m certainly glad that wasn’t another inch to the right.”
“I wish it had been,” seethes Shea.
“Do you?” Egor lifts a brow. “Whatever happened to ‘no killing’?”
“I said that before I knew what you did to Lys. You’re lucky he’s not here. I’d let him tear you apart.”
Egor replaces his glasses, his smile thin. “You really would, wouldn’t you? You’d let him do anything, even if it destroys you both. And it will. Like I told him before, you’re a cataclysm.”
“That means nothing to me,” says Shea.
“It will,” Egor assures her. “Before the end. For now, I’d like to use what little remaining time we have together to tell you a story about my son.”
The door to the stall rattles. Egor’s smile wavers.
“Nel was taken with Oliver from the very first day he and his mother appeared on my doorstep. He’d always wanted a sibling, but his mother and I had a late start. We were already old when we had him. The world was already over. We weren’t in a place to have more children, which meant Nel was a very lonely little boy. He took to following Oliver everywhere, and there wasn’t much I could do to stop it. Oliver was tolerant of it but only just.”
In the stall behind them, the boy trills.
“All Oliver has ever learned about love is that it hurts,” Egor goes on. “He doesn’t know any other way. I’m sure he thought Nel would Turn. I’m sure he thought he’d be stronger. Faster. Crueler—just like him. But the change doesn’t always take.”
Understanding worms its way into Shea. She blinks and sees her mother standing over her bed, her eyes lightless, her throat clicking horribly. The beginning of the end.
“What is he?” asks Poppy.
“Nel is a natural byproduct of the human body’s immune system,” says Egor. “It’s common knowledge that not everyone Turns. What’s less known is why. When the Rot is ingested, it knots itself so tightly along the human genome, it creates something entirely new. Some bodies accept the change. Some bodies fight.”
“Acute rejection,” Poppy cuts in. “It’s what happens when the body sees a transplanted organ as foreign and attacks it.”
“Precisely.” Egor beams over at her. “You’re a very clever young woman.”
“I read,” says Poppy.
“Yes, well, as you might imagine, there aren’t too many books on the topic. And the critical difference in this situation is that the change takes place so quickly, by the time the body recognizes what’s happening, the Rot is already coded into its DNA. It attacks itself, hollowing out until there’s nothing left but a husk.”
The boy slams into the stall door again. Shea thinks of her mother, scooped clean. Of the way she’d have done anything, said anything, sacrificed anything to preserve her. She’s come all this way in hope of a cure. She’s not all that different from Egor van Haut, clinging to hope in the dark.
“I am fond of Oliver,” says Egor. He’s watching her too closely, inspecting every blink and every breath. Taking note of her, like she’s a specimen in a jar. “He is a marvel, yes, but he is a danger. I am not oblivious to his faults, and what he did to my son is nothing compared to what he’s capable of. A cataclysm is a violent thing, you see. The damage it does is irreversible. I’m afraid I cannot, in good conscience, allow you to continue leading him down this path.”
“I’m not leading him anywhere,” says Shea.
“Oh, but you are,” Egor disagrees. “We are, all of us, balanced on the razor-thin tightrope of equilibrium. One shove from you, and everything topples into chaos.”
Push me again.
“Lys will never forgive you if you hurt me.” It comes out thin, lacking bluster.
