Marked

Chapter Forty-Three

"What do you want with me?" Rachel asked. She wrapped her arms around her body, her fear and hopelessness stealing the warmth from the room.

"I want to have a conversation with you. That is all. Maybe explain myself to you, have you see the truth."

Rachel spun on him so quick she nearly tripped. She approached his form, seemingly tangible but not really there. She pushed her hand through his chest, wishing she could rip his heart out. The pixels scattered, interrupting the illusion of perfection.

"I will never believe anything you have to say." She met his eyes. "No matter what you say to try and justify yourself, you will never have my support."

Nicolas broke eye contact, wound around the bed and sat down. His intangible presence did nothing to disturb the sheets. Instead, he seemed to hover over it like some twisted apparition, straight out of her worst nightmares.

Rachel stood against the door, her arms crossed over her chest. The ghost sensation of pain flited through her shoulder but when she moved, it was gone. How had they fixed her so perfectly?

"Your tests tell me you were infected with E-91." Nicolas observed.

"Yes, so?"

He shifted on the bed while he fingered something in his hand. "That means you know exactly how deadly and terrible the disease is."

She thought this over for a few moments. "There are worse things in this world than E-91." She finally replied. "Like you and this entire city for starters."

"That's where you are wrong, Rachel. Everything you have been taught about our world is incorrect. But that is not your fault, no one is blaming you. It's not your fault you were forced to grow up like a wild animal instead of the proper life you were meant to live."

"I wouldn't have had it any other way."

"You say that because you don't know any better."

Rachel remained silent. She watched Nicolas twiddle something between his hands again—it looked like a feather.

"Do you know what happened after E-91 spread through the world, Rachel? You were much too young but did anyone ever tell you the terrible history of our planet?"

She glared at him, not wanting to play into whatever twisted game he was playing. The corner of her mouth twitched.

"I'll take that as a no." He stood and went to one of the walls. He drew his finger in the shape of a rectangle and an image of a world map appeared. Red flags covered nearly every country; The United States, Canada and Mexico held the fewest. Europe and Asia were so deeply covered by red dots that it was difficult to see anything else.

"Do you know where China is located?"

She glanced at the map, trying to recall the old geography books she'd studied back in the compound.

"In Asia," she replied. Despite her best efforts and though she did hate him, she found herself leaning closer to the map to study it with a morbid curiosity. What had humans done to their planet?

"That's right." Nicolas dragged his finger from China, across the expanse of Eurasia. "They had too many people. So many people, in fact, that I think out of all of us, they might have just been the most desperate."

He spun on his heels, hands clasped behind his back, looking like a scholar preparing to give a lecture. "Because they had a huge military, China did good during the Great War. They swept through most of Eurasia, conquering, ravaging, taking resources for themselves. They seemed unstoppable, until they reached Eastern Europe."