Indefinite Renewal Page 16

  and Nick jerked as if he had touched a live wire, hair standing on end and body tingling as his system fought to absorb so much energy so quickly, so soon after the last one that the doctor’s energy still roiled within him and he worried that he might burst from too much life, too soon

  and all movement ceased from the boy as the last of his life faded from him, the flicker going out in his frightened eyes, head dropping to his chest and then further as his body warped in on itself, becoming brittle and dry until it simply crumbled to dust

  and Nick sank to his knees, knocking over a stack of books and not caring, as he pressed both hands to his head and fought to maintain his sanity and his sense of self within the torrent inside of him, both links broken now and two new people’s energies loose inside him without any place to go. He felt that his blood had been replaced by pure energy, like some sort of electric current, and as he concentrated he thought he could feel it arcing from organ to organ, limb to limb as it lit up his whole system, body shuddering with the massive quantities of energy it was trying to control.

  Gradually his breathing slowed to a more normal rate, and his heartbeat dropped to match it, still fast but acceptable, and he opened his eyes, hand reaching out to grasp the arm of the chair for support. He was bathed in sweat, but he felt hot, as if he had been sitting in the sun, and his vision swam as he blinked and looked around. The dead professor still sat in his chair, looking almost exactly as he had when Nick had first glanced in, and he took the book that the man had been reading and placed it in his lap, face-down, at the page where he had stopped, and closed the dead man’s eyes with a shaking hand. He looked as if he had fallen asleep, and might wake up at any second.

  Then Nick glanced over at the other chair, the one he was leaning against, but there was nothing there, only a small pile of dust and what might have been a scrap of dark fabric.

  He stood up then, still shaky on his feet, hunted about until he found a trashcan half-buried under another box of books, and maneuvered the trashcan over by the chair before using one of the larger books to sweep the boy’s remains into the dim confines of the wastepaper basket. Then he replaced the trashcan in its corner, returned a few books to the chair, leaving them sprawled about as if they had been laying there for a while, and opened the door slowly, peering out through the crack.

  There was no one around, and he cautiously took a step forward, then jerked back as his foot connected with something solid but squishy. Glancing down he almost laughed to discover that the boy’s manuscript was what had made him jump—it must have fallen outside of the doorway when the boy had dropped it. Now he scooped it up and, after a minute’s hesitation, stuck it safely under his arm as he stepped out of the office and walked quickly away, leaving the door wide open and the light on.

  He hurried still more when he reached the main hall, and left the campus as quickly as he could without seeming anxious, determined to get as far away as possible before the body was found. Fortunately he hadn’t given the secretary his name, and no one else had known he was coming here today, but he still wanted to get home and try and forget about what had just happened. He felt a sharp pang as he realized that he had just killed not one, but two people—the first one he could live with, because he had needed the man’s skills, but the second had only been to save his own neck, and he felt horrible about it. Surely there must have been some other way to stop him from telling anyone? Couldn’t he have just bluffed his way out, or knocked him out or something? But he had panicked, and a man had died because of it, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Just like Amy.

  Nick shuddered at the thought. What was he becoming? And could he live with it, for the rest of his life, for however long that might last?

  A car rushed by, and he almost threw himself in front of it, an impulse to end it all before things got any worse, but then his body twisted on its own and he found himself leaping back to the safety of the sidewalk as the car swept by him, horn blaring. Get a grip on yourself, he muttered, forcing himself on in the direction of the bus stop. Dying isn’t worth it.

  Was it worth it for all of those other people? he wondered. Was my life worth their death?

  Charlie was a matter of self-defense, he reminded himself, and Amy was an act of sheer desperation, blind and unthinking. Williams was almost a mercy-killing, and the last two . . . well, they were more regrettable, but still necessary. Besides, he reminded himself fiercely, as long as he was alive they hadn’t really died, not completely—their abilities and memories and experiences would live on in him, and so he had to keep going, for their sake as well as his own. To die now, and let them die with him, would be horrible.

  The bus arrived and he climbed on, hands offering the fare automatically as he staggered to a seat and sank into it, mind still lost in moral combat.

  Was it really worth all this?

  Yes, he told himself, it really was; and even if it hadn’t been at first, it was now, when so much more was at stake and when he had already risked so much. He could feel the dull rumble of the bus beneath him, and the faint vibration from the engine as they pulled away into traffic, and he allowed himself to sag against the window, eyes gazing out unseeing at the streets rushing by.

  He needed to rest, to put all of this behind him and get back to his real world, his friends, his work, to remember who he was before he lost himself in the maze of personalities inside his head. He smiled slightly. Yes, a break was definitely in order. A quick glance at his watch revealed that it was almost five-thirty now, and he smiled wearily as he remembered that Gordo finished up around six and would be starving by the time he arrived. Perhaps they could play some pool—it had been a long time, and the idea of getting a few drinks and chatting over the clash and roll of the balls was a welcome thought.

  He still had to sit down and assimilate Alexander properly, and the unnamed student, but that could wait a few days, until he had gotten his bearings again.

  They weren’t going anywhere.

  “So now what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, do we wait for him to come to us, or do we go after him?”

  “We wait.”

  “What if he doesn’t come?”

  “He’ll come. He’s one of us now, and he knows it. He’ll come.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “Nice shot,” Gordo reluctantly admitted as Nick sunk the eight in the right side pocket, after sending it bouncing off the opposite cushion and sliding through the two remaining stripes. “Your game.”

  “Yeah, but it was close,” Nick pointed out, setting his cue down to start scooping the balls out of the pockets and regrouping them in the triangle at the far end. “You’re starting to catch up again.” This was the way it usually went—they had been playing for almost an hour now, and Gordo was starting to get back into the groove. He was a more unstable player, usually starting out slow and then improving, sometimes shooting as well as a pro and sometimes so poorly that a five-year old could beat him handily. Nick was much more consistent, far better than Gordo at the start but nowhere near a match for him when he was at his peak. Their games tended to balance out in the middle, with Nick taking the first few and his friend dominating the last ones.

  “All set,” Gordo informed him, gently removing the triangle and leaving the balls in a perfect wedge on the table. He sent the cue ball rolling down to the other end, and Nick set it up and took the break. He smiled as he leaned low to aim at a spot halfway down the left side—it had been a while since they had done this, and it felt good to get the kinks out.

  “So what’ve you been up to the last few weeks?” Gordo asked him as he moved around the table, cue in hand. “Table still open?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t sink anything,” Nick replied, then leaned back against the small table holding their drinks. “Not much—just the usual, classes and the like.” He paused to let his friend pot the red, waited until he had taken the shot. “Why?”r />
  “You just seemed distant lately,” Gordo shrugged, switching to the corner to take an abortive attempt at the green and then straightening up. “You know, you haven’t been in the office that much lately, and we’ve hardly gotten together since . . .”

  “Since Amy disappeared,” Nick finished for him, and leaned out to clasp his friend by the shoulder. “It’s okay. It still hurts, but it’s okay.” He moved back to the table and changed the subject for the moment. “I’m stripes?”

  “Yeah.” Gordo watched him shoot and sink the orange stripe in the far corner. “Very pretty.” Then he turned to study his friend. “So’s everything okay with you?”

  Nick laughed. “Sure, everything’s fine. Actually, things are going pretty well right now—Carmichael gave me an A-plus on my revision, and I’ve got this review for him, and class is pretty good.” He missed the blue stripe and stepped back. “Why?”

  Gordo shrugged again. “Just making sure.” He smiled as he aimed at the green and sent it caroming into a side pocket, causing two other balls to go spinning across the table. “It’s good to finally play again.”

  “Yeah,” Nick agreed, watching as his friend proceeded to sink three more balls in rapid succession. It was good to play again, to unwind with his friend. He felt that he had been neglecting Gordo and Hillary lately, with all off his gallivanting around to the Club, and it felt at times like his life was becoming only a distant memory to him, no more real than the memories of the other people inside his head. But that was over now, he informed himself as he returned to the table and studied all of the possibilities.

  He desperately wanted to tell his twin what was really going on in his life, to reveal everything about Daniel and the Club and the Renewed and the turns his life had taken, but he just couldn’t. He didn’t want to lay all of that on Gordo, and possibly put him at risk by revealing things that the others might prefer to be kept secret. Plus, he admitted to himself, there was the big fear that his friend might think that he was insane if he started speaking about immortals who drained the life from people. And he didn’t want to risk their friendship, so he kept his mouth shut and took the shot.

  They played for three hours altogether, then went to a cheap all-night pizza place and stuffed themselves on thin-crusted pepperoni and large Cokes. After that one question, Gordo didn’t ask if anything was wrong again, and they just talked about classes, laughing at the antics of students, doing impressions of least-favorite professors, making rude speculations about the status of Hillary’s sex life—she had had yet another date tonight, and they idly wondered whether she had taken out an ad somewhere, and if so how much it would cost to do so themselves—and generally goofing off.

  It was three a.m. when Nick finally staggered back to his own apartment, eyes swimming slightly with fatigue, stomach leaden from cheap junk food and churning with grease and spice, nerves tingling from sugar—he hardly remembered half of what they had said, and knew he would feel terrible the next day from a sugar-hangover and a stomach that was rebelling against the night’s late dinner, but he couldn’t remember the last time he had had so much fun. It had certainly been a while, and as he flipped the lock on the door and stumbled into his bedroom he vowed that it wouldn’t be as long until the next time.

  Even if he was truly immortal now, nothing else had changed, or at least nothing else had to—Gordo was still his friend, and he was going to hang out with him again, just like before. He had actually been half-afraid that the events of the past few weeks had changed him so much that they would no longer get along, but that had apparently been unfounded—he felt older, certainly, and more impressed by the value of everyday life, even though he had noticed an alarming tendency toward being less upset about others’ deaths and more accepting about the idea of killing.

  That worried him, the fact that he was now killing people simply to keep them from betraying him where a few weeks before the idea of killing appalled him, even in a life-or-death situation, but he realized that it was a result of his new relationship with other’s lives and deaths, and probably a necessary trait for someone of his nature in order to survive for very long.

  Still, he was relieved to know that his personality was essentially the same—tonight had proved that. In fact, while he had been with Gordo, all of the other thoughts in his head had receded to the background, and for a while he had been plain Nick Gordon again, out for the evening with a friend. Even Amy had faded away—he could feel her still there, but she hadn’t intruded, and he had almost been able to forget that he carried her inside his head.

  Almost.

  He flopped down on his bed with a sigh of relief. So life did go on—this was proof of that. Eventually these others’ thoughts would fade permanently to the dim recesses of his head, and no one else would ever be as insistent as these first few, so he could actually look forward to a healthy old age without having to worry about turning into some sort of mental Holiday Inn, with two dozen guests milling about asking when the next meal was and how much a room cost for the night. A smile creased his face at the thought, and he kicked off his shoes and stretched out on his bed, head comfortably ensconced in his pillow.

  For the first time in weeks, his dreams were not about people screaming or melting to ash—he dreamt that he and Hillary and Gordo had a night on the town in New York, and went to see various shows and sights before climbing the Empire State Building and dropping pennies on the antlike pedestrians down below.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Shit!”

  Nick hurled his coffee cup against the wall, then regretted it and threw himself after it, arm outstretched in a desperate attempt to catch the porcelain mug before it hit the wall. He felt his fingers scrape the edge of the handle, twitching reflexively as they clung briefly to the smooth surface, and then he rebounded off the central counter-top, body turning to keep from slamming vital organs against the hard surface as he watched the cup connect with the far wall.

  There was a faint implosion as the cup momentarily bent to fit the new shape it was forced into, and then its side gave way, crumbling in on itself as it pressed ever closer to the unyielding plaster and was flattened into a protesting lump. The hot coffee spilled out over the top as the space inside was suddenly constricted, some of splashing against the plaster and some sluicing out in an arc as if trying to reach out to Nick for rescue. The dark liquid fell short of its goal, however, and splashed noisily against the tiled floor, pooling slowly into small dark ponds and tiny rivulets.

  Nick’s eyes remained fastened on the cup itself, as it rebounded slightly from the wall now and fell away from it, dropping ever-faster to meet the floor until the two collided in a shower of porcelain dust, shiny fragments, and white-specked brown fluid.

  “Damn!” The paralysis Nick had felt while watching the mug’s spectacular demolition faded, and he grabbed a handful of paper towels off of the roll by the sink as he sank to his knees, staunching the flow of the coffee methodically winding its way across the floor. He mopped up as best he could, then went to find the broom that he was sure was buried in the hall closet, and swept up the coffee cup’s shattered remains.

  That was my favorite cup, too, he berated himself as he dumped the fragments into the trash. I’ve got to stop reacting so strongly to this shit. He leaned the broom against the kitchen wall, ready for further use, and sank back into his chair, one hand going to his hair as he took a deep breath.

  “Okay,” he muttered out loud. “So this guy still doesn’t have all the pieces I need.” He closed his eyes and pondered what to do now. “Shit!”

  Dr. Alexander’s memories had proved rather extensive, and he had sat here for the last three hours trying to absorb and understand them all, sipping his coffee and occasionally nibbling at a marginally stale bagel. Fortunately it was Saturday, and he didn’t have to be anywhere for another hour yet—he hadn’t even gotten dressed, but was sitting here in a robe and pajama bottoms. It had been three days already, and he had fina
lly decided that the time had come to go ahead and study the new memories he had acquired, and see if they had what he needed. The results had been disappointing, to say the least.

  Dr. Alexander had been an expert in the field of the mind’s latent abilities, he had discovered. The information the man had imparted through his books and lectures was the veritable tip of the iceberg, apparently. And yes, as Nick had uttered a happy sigh to discover, the man understood all about how such potential worked, and how to tap into it. He even had a fairly strong idea on how to unlock it fully, and take man’s mental powers to their full ability. There was only one problem.

  He couldn’t do it himself.

  The professor had theorized that such powers could be unlocked without any real harm to the person, and that the modern mind did have the capacity to cope with such things. He had even figured out which quadrant of the brain they were in, and which things had to be stimulated in order to awaken them. But despite all of his experiments, nothing had worked. He had tried countless time to unlock such things in volunteers, students, even himself. Nothing had worked.

  “Shit!” Nick announced again. He stood up and strode angrily to the bathroom, throwing his robe and pajamas to the floor as he went. A quick twist and the water came on, and he stepped straight in, gasping in shock as the icy droplets struck his skin. Then the water warmed up and he shivered for a moment, adjusting to the change, before finding the soap and proceeding with his shower.

  What’s going wrong here? he demanded as he scrubbed himself down. Alexander had all the information he needed—why didn’t it work? He ran through the new memories again, trying to spot any break in the older man’s reasoning or gap in his theories. There wasn’t any—as far as he could tell, the experiments should have worked. Each time.