Page 77 of Odder Still
Elspeth grins. They toss their wig to the side and stand with a dramatic flourish, one hand still grabbing the wall for support. “You want to bet on that?”
They draw the tiniest activated red ignit I’ve ever seen from a thick leather pouch at their waist, holding it delicately between their gloved fingers. Its glow looks as warm as it must feel against Elspeth’s skin, for they quickly place it on top of the locking mechanism, shaking out their hand once free of it. “It fuels a heat pack for my back muscles. It’s easier to keep them continuously activated instead of worrying about a transitioner,” they explain.
Next, they unwrap something small and cloth covered to reveal an eruptstone, black but for a vein of rainbow that twinkles down its center like an aurora. Leaning away from the door, they drop the eruptstone onto the ignit. The moment the two rocks collide, the ignit burns white. Light expands from it in a small orb, silent and so bright it’s impossible to see through. It covers most of the locking system, eating through the door around it. Just as soon as it had come, it vanishes. Everything its light touched is gone, leaving a clean-cut circle where nothing but air now exists. Elspeth plops into their wheelchair.
The door to the lab opens so quickly that I have to drag the chair back to stop Elspeth from being run over. Three scientists scramble out. Shadows droop beneath their eyes, and their red hair hangs in a mess of frizz and oil.
“May we go? Trenches, is the lockdown over?”
Tavish steps toward them, every bit the compassionate princeling. “How long have you been in there? Who initiated it?”
The lead scientist releases a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “The Trench has been locked for a week. Raghnaid’s orders. No access in or out, not since—well—”
My parasite rumbles, tearing through my memories as if searching for words my life has never contained. It finds only my recollection of the dying ignit and the thousand curses I’ve uttered since I first set eyes on the thing sharing my body.
“Since what?” Tavish asks.
“Go see for yourself. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” With that, the scientists leave, their footsteps rapidly vanishing down the hall. In one of the sentry monitors, half a dozen BA soldiers pace outside the front of the Findlay Inc. building.
My stomach flutters and drops, churning with a mixture of my own dread and my parasite’s fear. “It’s now or never.”
We move through an entry chamber, past hanging lab coats and marked lockers and a little table piled with empty food containers, and into the main space of the lab. Dim, blue lights illuminate the room with an eerie underwater atmosphere that matches the massive tank at its center. A glass tunnel runs through it, but rocks block its nearest side, obscuring what lies within. The lab’s ceiling stretches high above us, and the metal floor rattles faintly beneath our feet, nothing but empty air and descending darkness visible through its gaps.
I think I mean to stop, but my legs carry me up to the tank, hand extended. It thrums softly against my palm. “Elspeth, the translator?”
“Coming right up.” They remove it from their watertight bag and flip it on. Only static buzzes out. They wheel toward the tank.
“Wait—I have to do this alone.” I don’t know it until I say it, but it seems right. The aurora chose me. As much as I’m glad for Elspeth’s help, and for Tavish’s very presence, they don’t have the same connection or dependence on this exchange that I do.
Elspeth’s eyes shine with desire, but they give a terse nod and hold out the translator. “I respect that.”
I take it, tucking it against my chest, and step up to the glass tunnel that leads through the tank. The rocks rise on either side of it, but as I enter, they wane outward, giving me a clear view of the tank’s contents.
A hazy door slides down behind me, sealing me in a silent world of rainbow shimmers and water ripples. My parasite sings, not with words or tune, but with emotions, its excitement and terror and joy all rising in a crescendo as we stand amidst the Findlay auroras.
Beyond the tunnel’s glass, their feather duster worms rise as tall as me, long stalks opening to flurries of wispy tentacles swirling slowly like feathers in a breeze. Unlike the mangroves in the Murk, these auroras don’t hide within their hosts, but display themselves vibrantly in gashes of black that tear up the worms’ sides, luminous colors radiating from within. Between the darkness and the rainbows, though, stretch a different kind of wound: blurs of sickly, ashen grey striping out the auroras’ centers.
My parasite’s song turns into a sob.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Treachery in the Third Degree
In a single push, you’re on the run.
One moment of fear. One solid shove.
I pulled the trigger, even if you held the gun.
THEY’RE DYING. LIKE THE ignits, they’re degrading.
With the translator still tucked against my chest, I sink to the floor. It all fits: the ignit’s failure, the sense of wrongness I felt when connecting with the auroras in the secret lab, my parasite’s assertion that something terrible is happening, even Raghnaid’s insistence that they collect my parasite—a functioning, healthy aurora—immediately.
And it all hurts, from the love my parasite has inspired in me to the knowledge that whatever is happening here will come to the South sooner or later. To my home.
The translator buzzes, and a convoluted mess of overlapping voices rises from it.
“This one is new.”
