Chapter 15

The small fishing boat puttered to a stop and Mannus slipped into the icy water and pulled it ashore to sit on top of the crunchy snow-covered bank. If he hadn't had horns for brains Alexandra would have smacked him in the head for the rough ride. But she needed his muscles.

"Are these the people who'll remove my horns?" Mannus asked as he pulled the boat farther onto the bank of land. Alexandra didn't want to make any specific promises. She didn't know what the people of the local Villa were capable of and if horn removal was a practiced skill set. The remoteness of the island led her to believe Mannus wasn't going to get his wish. She just might have to find another way to fulfill her promise and keep him quiet about Nicholas' murder.

"Have the Hollowings worsened since Nicholas' death?" She stood up to climb out of the boat. Somehow, the boat was more wobbly on land than it was on the water.

"I told you, I'm not one of those crazy Pilgrims that believes in rituals and sacrifices to the Maze." Despite the gruff tone, Mannus held out his hand to Alexandra. She thought twice before touching him but climbing out of boats wasn't something she did every day. Both her feet hit land and she straightened out her cloak.

"Have they increased?" she asked again with patience. "You see the bodies when you walk by the entrance to the Maze, do you not? Have they spread outside of town?"

"They're the same. Maybe a little more since your speech about the Evolution."

More bodies Hollowed out since she had given the people hope?How could being on the precipice of the Evolution create more sacrifices among the people? And human sacrifices at that?

"More? You're sure?" Her ears buzzed with anger. Were the people she led no more than half-Cranks? She sloshed through the snow a few yards before stopping. She had no sense of intuition when she held this much anger inside. She needed to recite the digits and clear her mind.

"The Hollowings—"

"Silence!" she snapped. She went through the digits as her feet grew numb in her boots. The island was so desolate that even the sun could barely find it. Shivering, she cleared her head and connected to the infinite knowledge of the universe. Mannus' horns may have looked like antennas, but he received no information from the Infinite—except infinite stupidity, it seemed. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled. When she opened her eyes, she saw a path of trees ahead that stood out from the rest. There was no sign of any Villa, no signs of fresh footprints or even animal tracks, but it was the way.

She moved in that direction with a swish of her cloak and Mannus followed her lead. His loud, nasally, stinky breathing chipped away at her patience. Time passed. Trees passed. The brisk air seeped into her depths.

"Goddess?" Mannus moved in front of her and pointed ahead, where sunlight reflected off the surface of a window. She smiled before quickly controlling herself.

"Be on your best behavior and do not speak." It might have been better to have him wait by the boat, but she didn't yet know what help she might need carrying things back from the Villa. With any luck, she'd return to mainland Alaska with armfuls of the Cure.

Her foot stepped through something barely stronger than a spider web but too thin to see. A single CLICK accompanied her pause and Mannus tackled her from the side. Her mouth was suddenly full of snow, something she hadn't done since she was a child; it tasted no better now than it did back then. She spit it out and tried to push herself to stand but Mannus' entire weight was atop her.

"Don't move," he whispered. Not a moment later, an ax flew out of nowhere, thunking into a nearby tree. The very same tree to the right of where Alexandra had been standing. Her ears buzzed, her vision flashed with fire, a vision so real that she couldn't help but gasp for air. Mannus drew his knife and stated the obvious. "I guess they don't want visitors."

An alarm sounded from a two-story building of stone, only slightly louder than the buzzing in her head, and three women emerged from the upper-level balcony doors.

"Show yourself," the tallest of the three commanded; she held a gun on them, and even from the ground Alexandra could see it was enormous. In New Petersburg, they had banned guns years ago, and when the Evolution was complete there wouldn't be a need for such weapons. No more Hollowings. No more rituals. Humankind could finally re-advance itself to the builders of old. New technology. New systems. New life.

"I told you it wasn't a bear." The shortest of the three women's voice traveled clearest through the Alaskan air to Alexandra's ears. Something in the woman's voice struck her as trustworthy. The mist in the air seemed to amplify the words spoken.

The tallest woman fired the gun in the air as a warning, as if the ax wasn't enough. She then shouted in an extremely formal manner. "On behalf of the Godhead, we demand that you return to that which you came. This isn't an area to trespass."

Nicholas had obviously employed three misfits parading as scientists. Alexandra had no patience for such a show. "I am the Godhead!" She pushed Mannus off of her, then climbed to her feet and brushed the snow from her cloak. She'd never been so humiliated and insulted. Apparently, her trip to this remote island was a day of firsts:

The first time she was tackled to the ground by a Pilgrim.

The first time she had been threatened with a gun and an ax.

And the first time that anyone in greater Alaska didn't recognize that she was indeed one of the Godhead.

"You must recognize me!" She straightened her cloak and forced a smile. She had only ever been idolized and recognized as she walked through the crowds of Pilgrims. They not only recognized her but begged to touch her. The three women on the balcony exchanged nervous, doubtful looks between themselves and Alexandra grew impatient. "Well?"

"Forgive us, but we do not." The shortest of the three had answered.

Alexandra tried to remain stoic but the buzzing in her ears increased and her head spun. MADNESS! She couldn't lose it, not now, not when she was this close. She recited the digits within her mind. "Tell them, Mannus."

"You're speaking to the Godhead." He motioned to Alexandra with the slightest bow.

The three women didn't move. They didn't say anything. Alexandra couldn't blame them for wanting proof. In fact, it encouraged her. The Godhead's cloak would speak to her royalty once she cleared it of mud and wet snow.

She spoke in a careful but commanding voice. "Please, make us some tea, and I'll show you."

After the short one made Alexandra a cup of lukewarm green tea, she displayed her Godhead "powers" by opening a door in the Villa with a wave of her arm. She knew Nicholas would have used the same Godhead technology as the security doors in New Alexander and the chip in his hand matched that of hers. Had, anyway.

Alexandra was once naive enough to think the red-leather Coffin that held Newt's blood could only be opened by the three Pillars of the Godhead when they were all three present, but Nicholas and Mikhail had opened it without her. Opening one of Nicholas' doors without him there now brought a smile to her face. "You'll assist us now, I presume?"

The three supposed scientists looked at Mannus and each of his horns as if something didn't make sense. They exchanged glances before the tallest one asked, "Is this Mikhail?"

Alexandra wondered for just a moment if she should lie and say yes.Perhaps the presence of two members of the Godhead would be more persuasive. But one look at Mannus and anyone could see he was nothing more than the bottom rung of society. The way he breathed. The way he smelled. The way he stood right now in the presence of so many women but didn't bend to show the slightest respect.

"I'm Mannus. The horns were a bad idea."

The fact that they'd asked about Mannus meant that Mikhail had never made it to the Villa either, at least not this one. Whatever his plans were that took him on pilgrimages hopefully had nothing to do with her plan of the Evolution. She didn't really care what the man busied himself with. It was probably just killing season for him when he left. The Cure that reverted his DNA could only change Mikhail so much; it couldn't patch up the cracks in his soul or tame the madness he housed within.

Alexandra walked around the room and carefully traced her finger along the glassware of pipettes stored there, test tubes, petri dishes, beakers, until her eyes found a unit which she could only assume held what she came for. The Cure Nicholas had used on her.

"Goddess . . . ," the tallest woman stuttered, "we're sorry for the confusion, but Nicholas did not tell us of your arrival. We're not—"

"You needn't worry about Nicholas." Alexandra gently placed the red-leather box Mannus had brought onto a stainless-steel lab table. "We're here on a separate accord." She opened the Coffin. "Five vials of Newt's blood. You'll use this for a new batch of the Cure."

Surely, they'd be elated at this discovery, but instead she watched as their faces morphed into confusion. They asked for a moment and huddled, whispering fiercely . . .

"Say it. What's going on?" Alexandra demanded.

The short one answered. "These . . . these can't be Newt's vials. We already have those placed in the safe . . . the ones Nicholas sent over not that long ago." Her voice was suddenly coated with a condescending tone. As if she knew Alexandra had made a huge mistake and could not go back.

How could she have known these weren't Newt's? How could Nicholas have replaced them? She pivoted to Mannus. She looked back to the Coffin; the scientists had to be mistaken. They didn't even look that closely at them. How could they know?

Time to recover the situation. "No. You're wrong. Nicholas instructed me that these vials, Newt's blood, would be needed."

Alexandra watched the tall scientist pick up each vial and examine the labels. Alexandra wondered if Nicholas had ever trusted her with any truth, or if Newt's blood being the Cure was just yet another lie. But it felt true, known to her the way other information came through her senses, through her cells. Everything in her body vibrated at this confusion, and the three women stood just as confused in front of her. Alexandra wanted to scream and toss the Coffin against the glass window, but she restrained herself, embracing the Flaring Discipline and the Principles. She recited the digits in her mind.

"A4?" The shortest of the women nosed her way into an old scientific log. "That test subject of the Maze trials was Chuck if I'm correct." She looked up with blank, questioning eyes.

Alexandra's ears rang with anger and she spun around and slapped Mannus as if he was responsible for the buzzing alarms within her head. All the anger that trembled within her needed to go somewhere, and it went out of her palm into Mannus' cheek. She had slapped him so hard that he spit something onto the floor. "You idiot! You brought the wrong case from the study!" Mannus looked at her with surprise and genuine hurt feelings.

"Apologies my Goddess . . ." he half-heartedly said.

"Nicholas is feeling under the weather . . ." Alexandra closed the red-leather case and latched it shut. "So he must've forgotten that he'd already brought them and given Mannus the wrong . . ." She was scrambling for a solution and quickly looked around the small lab. "But while we're here—"

"Nicholas was supposed to be back here for our report last week."

"He didn't show."

"What illness does he have?"

All three of the scientists spoke at once. Alexandra searched her mind for another lie. What illness did Nicholas have? She had never once in thirty years known Nicholas to be under the weather.

She replied with the utmost confidence. "He has symptoms of dizziness. Vision black-outs. Shaking, a loud buzzing in his ears." She spelled out her own growing symptoms. "And his thoughts are foggy. Clearly." She pointed to the vials of Chuck's blood labeled as Newt's.

It was the middle-sized woman's turn to speak. "All mild symptoms of Ascension. Although . . ." She exchanged doubtful glances with the others. "I thought Nicholas was well beyond them. Perhaps the northern lights are affecting his inner brain chemistry the same way a full moon does for those who are sensitive."

"Yes," Alexandra said, but what did they mean by sensitive? What was all of this? "I can attest to the full moon causing more disruptions within the village since the full spectrum of the northern lights returned." She placed her hand on her heart. "The Hollowings have increased, you know?" She waited for the women to react but they didn't. Of course, they didn't have fears of being hollowed, they were too far removed from any society. Alexa had to find what they did fear and play into that. "The Hollowings are a sign of the end of days. Nicholas believed that once the ritual increased in frequency, we would be out of time to change the fates."

"He did say that there wasn't much time." The short one's turn.

Alexandra latched on to that. "Which is why you must help me share the Cure now."

Tall spoke next. "We can only release the vials to Nicholas, and dispensing the Cure is still being worked out by Villa One. They're using the—"

"Shhh . . ." Short elbowed Tall.

"I am the Godhead. Nicholas is not well. I will dispense them." She said it with a motherly tone but they looked at her as though she were the one with the horns sewed to her head.

Tall replied. "It's out of no disrespect, Goddess, it's simply the protocol, we do not answer to you, we answer to Nicholas. You don't have the clearance here."

Alexandra smiled her last fake smile of the day. Nicholas had taught her patience, but even this was a stretch of what she was capable of entertaining. She had been tackled, shot at, and drank the worst tea of her life. It was time to get what she came for. She threw all her powers of persuasion and command into her voice.

"Enough of this. You'll begin answering to me as of right this minute, because Nicholas is dead. He was murdered." Alexandra waited for the apologies and groveling, for them to correct their course, to serve Alexandra Romanov as their one true Goddess.

But they didn't.

Alexandra watched in stunned disbelief as each woman scurried to a different part of the lab and began packing instruments. What was going on here? What was it they feared more than her? She tried to command them. "Stop this at once!" But she and Mannus helplessly watched as they poured beakers full of liquids down drains and smashed other glass collections. "What are you doing? You're destroying it!"

Tall replied. "Yes, matter of safety. We have a plan in place for such a thing, and with your news of the Godhead's assassination, that plan is now in effect."

This was absurd, Alexandra thought. What the hell was going on?

Middle spoke up, now. "This is an offset experimental lab, and Villa X was never approved by the greater coalition to be doing any of these tests."

Alexandra had no choice but to roll with the punches, now. "It's okay, the Evolutionary Guards can protect you, you'll be safe." Her offer didn't slow down their panic. "You can't just give up and walk away from thirty years of research."

Small responded. "We're not walking away. We're destroying it. In the event that anything happened to Nicholas, this Villa was to be destroyed. . . . And Goddess . . ." Short walked over to a safe in the wall. After typing in a code, she reached in and, instead of pulling out a vial or a collection of manuals or journals or studies she handed Alexandra a single envelope, "This is for you."

Alex, stunned into the most unusual silence of her life, looked down at the envelope. Her name had been scribbled across the front in a very familiar handwriting. Nicholas.

Alexandra held the envelope tightly in her hand.

She could already feel the vibration of the letter, some I Told You So from Nicholas about Newt's vials not being in the case, about switching the labels. Something about how she should have had more patience. But she wouldn't let his words control her anymore. She folded the envelope into three and put it in her cloak pocket.

The women continued to pack up what was left of "Villa X" and Alexandra looked to Mannus with a desperate plea. His hand inched closer to his knife. She had no more time for games and counted on the fact that he had killed for his Goddess before and that he might do it again. True to her wishes, the horned man grabbed the tallest woman and held his knife against her throat.

But his words surprised her. "Stop the emergency shutdown, and inject me already." His voice was just as rough as the way he handled the woman's life in front of him.

Alexandra could work with this. "Not so rough, Mannus, these faithful employees of Nicholas are our new friends and perhaps they'd like to be employed in a new way." She held her palms open, faceup, showing she had nothing to hide. Her power of persuasion only needed to work long enough for one of the three women to trust her. "Every end is indeed just a new beginning, and while this ends the reign that Nicholas had over your studies we can begin to now make history together. Don't you want your hard work to be a part of the turning point of humanity?" She fed them a gentle smile. "We can bring you to New Petersburg and—"

Mannus went off the rails. "We can't fit five people in that boat. You'll inject me now. Here."

Alexandra stepped up to him. She squeezed his elbow with two fingers, just between the bones where it pinched him enough to lower his knife. Would all the Pilgrims of the Maze be so selfish? She needed to remember that there would be ways to sort out the worthy from the unworthy.Alaska would be seen as the great frontier once again, ahead of the rest of the world and guiding the way to the future.

"We can't just inject you." Tall rubbed her neck where the point of the knife had been just moments ago.

Alexandra wasn't leaving without getting what she came for. If she couldn't take the vials and the science back with her, she'd settle for taking it in the veins of Mannus. She walked backwards to the balcony where the woman who'd greeted them to the island had set her gun down. Her heel slipped for a moment on the tile and a white odd-shaped marble rolled from under her boot as she bent down for the gun. She picked up the weapon with strength.

"Listen . . ." She commanded everyone's attention. She didn't want to kill three people today, but would pull the trigger if it meant igniting the final stages of the Evolution. No, that was madness. But perhaps she needed those mad thoughts to drive her forward? Every person in power since the beginning of days had at one time or another done something they thought they'd never do, made a choice they wished they hadn't needed to, and this responsibility was now in Alexandra's hands.

"I don't want to hurt any of you. I want us to work together. To help the world evolve further than what has been possible. The Cranks can only be Cured physically but their souls can't be saved. They will always have a monster within them even when their DNA is reconstructed." She needed to look no further than to Mikhail for that example. "But for those of us who are able-bodied, who are ready for more—we can have it. We can have the Cure and the Evolution within one. A whole new generation without the Flare. Can you imagine what the coming generations could do without the fear of the Flare holding them back and with the advanced DNA sequencing?"

She almost laughed at the pureness of her vision. Everyone in the world living up to an infinite potential. How beautiful the world could be if they would just embrace the Cure. The three women stood there and said nothing. Alexandra lowered the weapon to reason with them. "What will you do and where will you go if the other Villa isn't supposed to know of these studies? Where will you live and work?" Again, silence from the women, so Alexandra answered for them, "In New Petersburg alongside me. With the Godhead."

"Enough of this bullshit. Give me the Cure already." Mannus cleared away beakers from a lab table with his hand. Glass shattered on the floor in a million pieces as he laid his arm on the table for an injection.

Short responded with surprising confidence. "No, we can't."

"You will," Alexandra demanded, and with the gun still in her hand, the scientists obeyed.

"Do you have the Flare? Before The Gone?" Tall asked as she inspected him with her eyes.

"Do I look like I have the Flare?" Mannus replied.

"What about fevers? Have you had any fevers lately?"

"No."

Middle, who was neither good at making tea nor taking orders, and who said the least of any of them, walked over to Alex. "This isn't perfected. He's got a sixty percent chance of falling over dead before the day is over." Alexandra didn't understand what she was talking about. "The horns," Short said. "He's got . . . predispositions."

Alexandra laughed and shook her head. "The horns aren't from his DNA, you idiot, he had those sewed on by choice."

The soft-spoken scientist looked back at the others before explaining to Alexandra, "It's not the horns, it's the DNA sequences visible in those who typically make . . . such rash decisions."

"He'll be fine." Alexandra couldn't care less if Mannus lived or died at this point. As long as they left right after his injection, he'd steer her back to the city and he would either make it back onto shore or he wouldn't. If he lived, then she'd share his story as an example for the Pilgrims of the Maze to see the potential in the Evolution, and if he died, then she would have to regulate the Cure accordingly.

Short insisted. "I will not be responsible for what will happen. If you want to end your life as you know it, fine." The woman readied a syringe and handed it to Mannus.

"Yes. I want a greater life!" Mannus shouted and spit flew from his chapped lips. Being on the precipice of mental power had already changed relatively mild-mannered Mannus into something Alexandra did not quite recognize.

The short woman had an incredible amount of patience. "Whatever happens is the result of your own hand. Good or bad. We don't have enough studies of how your specific DNA will change, and we should really first take your blood and then. . . . Evolution needs to happen in steps, in slow methodical steps. Creatures on Earth who've evolved have done so slowly, over time, like the environment, and this need not be any different if you want it to be successful. Because this," she motioned to the lab's contents, "this has infinite possibilities based on blood type and genetics for each person, and we simply don't know its full effect until we have a catalog of every possibility and those possibilities are as infinite as the human race."

Alexandra shifted the weight of the gun in her hands. Infinite possibilities was not something to be afraid of, it was something those of the future could embrace. "If thirty years of studies isn't enough, then what will be? It is time. The Evolution is ready." She motioned with the gun for Mannus to go ahead, to become a part of her evolution.

Mannus uncapped the syringe and hesitated for only a moment before injecting himself in the crook of his elbow, even as he stood in the middle of all that broken glass and spilled chemicals.

Alexandra watched for any change in his face. His jaw muscles tightened and his shoulders twitched. The other women seemed to hold their breath collectively as they observed and waited. His face relaxed, his jaw softened, and Alexa imagined his body cooling from the Cure. She remembered the sensation of her own Cure way back when, the way her body had felt cold and just a bit tingly before a warming band of fireworks traveled through her veins, tickling her from the inside out. Cleansing her.

And as if Mannus could hear what she was thinking, he turned to smile at her, his right cheek still red from where Alexandra had slapped him. His bottom, middle tooth was missing, but he certainly didn't seem to care.