Children of the Plague

Chapter Twelve: Perspectives

The colonists would see her, and she wouldn’t vanish from their memory like the Ghost they thought she was. She’d have to convince them to let her in Tina’s room, or the baby could mutate. It could become an offspring, or something worse.

Quit stalling. Yes it sucks, but not as much as letting him kill everyone in the MPC.

Suppressing her aura, she reached through the gap in the tape and took his hand. With her own protections subdued, the barrier was just as dangerous to her as it was to him, but she had to touch him to balance his Con.

That touch worked both ways. It also left her completely defenseless against his powers. If she was going to do it, it had to be now, while his mind was focused elsewhere; before he lost too much of himself to care about killing her first.

The feel of his warm hand in hers almost shattered her resolve. It reminded her that she was a real person, with a physical body, and that people needed physical contact. The simple joys in another person’s touch and voice were so easy to take for granted.

Like most pleasant things in life, these had become luxuries she could no longer afford. Now her touch could kill, and anyone who even caught a glimpse of her would quickly forget. Was that human? The colonists called her The Ghost, and in a very real way, that’s what she had become.

She squeezed Alex’s hand affectionately, registering the delicate balance of nanites versus human tissue in his body. It shifted dramatically overnight. He was already borderline. She didn’t know what would happen on the other side of that boundary, only that as he approached it, he became less Alex and more host.

Without a conscious decision to do so, her energy flowed through their connection, restructuring his nanites into human tissue, and locking them into that role. Nanites in his brain would form brain cells, and in his blood would form blood cells.

As super-powers went, Lanni’s ability to make these changes was less than spectacular. She had once seen lightning arc from Alex’s bare hand. As dull as it sounded, her power had kept both Tina’s baby and Alex from becoming mutant monsters. It was as rare as it was powerful. In all of Alex’s rapidly expanding Con cloud, her brother knew of no other being, exterminator or host, who could do what she could.

She maintained careful control of the energy flowing between them. Her body continually and steadily generated this energy. Holding it back was always easy at first, but like flood waters behind a dam, it grew increasingly difficult. If she used too little energy, Alex’s nanites wouldn’t respond. Too much, and she would neutralize what he needed to survive.

It was a quick enough process that she had never had to test her limits. Just before she let go of his hand, Alex took hold of hers with inhuman speed. Startled, she stood up and tried to pull away, but his grip was like iron.

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His eyes opened gradually, first one, then the other. An accumulated crust of eye gunk flaked and crumbled away. His dull, unfocused eyes grew bright and glassy. His cracked, peeling lips were forced apart by a dry tongue, but quickly plumped and moistened as he spoke, refreshed and replenished by his Con.

“Be careful, Lisa Ann,” he said. “I doubt I could mend you if you fell across the tape.” He spoke with a combination of his natural voice and the one that didn’t require the use of his mouth. It was simultaneously the low, raspy croak of his throat, and the high, ethereal monotone of the Con.

“Sweet Tea, Alex! Do you want to give me a heart attack?”

“That, I probably could mend, but no. I don’t want your heart to stop.”