Until the Beginning

Avery takes his hat off, sets it on the bar, and rubs his hand over his thinning hair. “So we’ve got ourselves a vigilante,” he says, the smile on his lips as cold and dead as the snakeskin on his boots. “If you’re not feeling sociable, we can get straight to business. Wouldn’t want to waste any of your time.”

 

 

He pours himself a whiskey, and then leads us through his stuffed slaughterhouse toward a door at the far end of the room.

 

We walk in silence, with only the tinkling of the ice in the glasses accompanying our footsteps. Whit hasn’t said a thing since he picked me up from the adobe camp, and that’s been fine with me. If I get started with him, I know I won’t stop, which is kind of too bad, because I’ve got an overwhelming urge to hit him hard enough to break something.

 

We pass out of the trophy room and into a hallway, where Avery stops in front of another door. A rectangular box with numbered keys is fixed to the wall next to it. Switching his drink to his other hand, Avery presses a few keys, puts his hand flat on a screen, and turns to me, once again wearing his false joviality. “Those eggheads at NASA don’t have anything on my technology.”

 

I have no clue what he’s talking about, but keep my face unreadable, and when the door swings open, I follow him in.

 

We step into a blinding white room. Everything is white: the floors, the walls, and all of the equipment inside. There are machines from wall to wall, and a low humming noise comes from a large electrical box in one corner.

 

“Welcome to the North Pole!” Avery bellows and waves his free hand around. “Now I reckon you haven’t seen anything like this before, taking into account the way you’ve been living.” He stops and winks at Whit, who is ignoring him and walking around inspecting the machines like he’s never seen them before, which I greatly doubt.

 

“This is my cryonics lab. I, like your parents and Mr. Graves here, have a great interest in preserving endangered species. However, the species I’m most concerned about is me!” He gives another laugh, and I realize that it’s not feigned: He actually thinks he’s funny.

 

He sees my blank stare, and harrumphs unhappily. “Please, do have a look around,” he says.

 

I stay where I am, and fold my arms across my chest.

 

Avery takes a mouthful of whiskey, and sets his sweating glass on a sterile white counter. He turns to me, and though there’s still a smile on his lips, his eyes have grown cold. “Miss Newhaven, there is a little boy somewhere under this roof, who has been crying because he misses his momma. It would be in his best interest, as well as your own and that of your clan, if you can find it in yourself to be amenable to any propositions that I make you.”

 

“If you so much as touch a hair on Badger’s head—” I growl, but Avery cuts me off.

 

“The boy has everything a child his age could want: warm clothes, food, toys, and a whole mountain of DVDs. And he’ll have his mommy, too, as soon as I get what I need from you. So . . . are you ready to cooperate?”

 

I ignore him and turn to Whit. “How could you do this to Badger?” I ask, controlling my fury.

 

My old mentor lifts his chin and says, “I did nothing to Badger.”

 

“Nah, that was my idea, little lady,” offers Avery, “as was the plan for bringing your clan here to our lovely ranch. Whit didn’t seem quite ready to do business with me, so I figured I needed to sweeten the deal. The only thing we were missing was you, and I didn’t yet know how important you were. But now that we’re all here, let’s get down to business.

 

“As I was saying, please have a look around.” Placing a hand on my shoulder, he steers me deeper into the room. A giant transparent tube containing a single white-leather bed lies propped on a plinth in the middle of the room. “This here compartment is for full-body cryonic preservation. I like to call it my ‘life insurance.’ Top of the line, just waiting for me to kick the bucket so they can put me into deep freeze.”

 

His grip tightening on my shoulder, he guides me to another bed: this one metal framed and cloth covered like the one I saw Whit lying in when he was in the hospital. A handful of complicated-looking devices are arranged around it. “And over here are all the fancy do-dads doctors will need to keep my organs functioning once I die in order to freeze me.” He turns to me with a broad smile. “But it doesn’t look like I’ll need that now, thanks to you and Mr. Graves.”

 

Wait, what? I turn to Whit, my eyes wide, but he pretends like he doesn’t see me. So that’s what this is all about. Avery wasn’t joking before: His interest in the elixir is personal. I should have guessed.

 

Before I have time to let this sink in, Avery steers me to a far corner of the room, where a silver metal box the size of my pup tent sits atop a table. “Being close to nature and all, you’re going to love this part,” he says.

 

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