“This is what I have done,” the butterfly man says. “I gave them the tools and they gladly used them. There is no hope for such a people.”
The images keep rolling, wave after wave. My skull is being filled up, synapses crackling, nerves overheating. I see things from my life, from other people’s lives: a beggar being beaten on a roadside by two men in elegant clothing. Bahima Atik smiling—bright lights—a neon frosted birthday cake—bodies leaping from the sides of a huge gray aircraft carrier as it burns. I see Mom turning slowly to face me in the kitchen, a horrible look of determination on her face.
We’d been fighting that day. Or I’d been fighting, my little one-sided duels, doing something drastic to get her attention. This time it had worked. Mom was mad. Penny was there, peeking around the corner of the kitchen counter.
“Penelope,” Mom’s saying, her voice shrill. “Do you want to know who did that to you? Do you want to know why your face looks different from all the kids at school? Because your dear sister is a manipulative, desperate, mentally deranged person. You can thank her, go on!”
But now I see a great thing: Penny’s gaze darting between us, confused and scared. Mom telling her what I had done, how she should hate me now, because I deserved it. But Penny didn’t. She came and found me afterward sitting on the dock, and she curled up next to me, and we swung our legs above the water, and after a while she smiled up at me, and scars and all she was the best-looking kid in the universe to me.
The images speed up, burning snapshots, and I see Lilly, Will, Jules, and me on the floor in the library, laughing even though there was nothing to laugh about. Us helping each other after Jellyfish Hall, holding each other up. Lilly coming back for me, and running, running into the light—
“You are unable to understand,” the butterfly man whispers. “You think you are different from the rest, but you are not. We are all follies, hopeless and doomed to repeat our mistakes forever. Every organism will fight against its own demise. Even a virus. And in the end that is what mankind is: an endless, stubborn blight.”
The pain is all there is now. It’s enveloping me, flapping in my ears like feathery gray wings. “We’re not all bad. We’re not, we—”
It hurts to talk. To breathe.
“We’ve got something else, something you can’t see, but . . . it’s there, it’s just . . .”
I can’t do this. Can’t talk anymore
“. . . one little drop of . . .”
Everything.
Starlight, darkness, divinity, love.
Somewhere far away, I hear Lilly crying. Maybe laughing.
They’re awake! she wails. Jules is awake.
Something cracks.
I’m in the cavern again, hunched on the floor. The butterfly man is arching over me, his face so close I can see the muscles under his skin, layers of bone and sinew, exposed to the air. I wriggle onto my back. Lilly’s sabre is embedded in the butterfly man’s calf. Lilly is hunched at his feet. She looks at the sabre, looks up at the butterfly man. Whirls and runs full speed away.
“Anouk?” she shouts over her shoulder. “Get up!”
The butterfly man pivots. I watch the darkness gathering around him. Brace myself for the explosion, the shock wave that will knock me out for good. It never comes. Havriel is crawling toward us out of the shadows like a huge bleeding slug. The butterfly man is watching him.
“Stop this,” Havriel rasps. “I will give you freedom if that is what you want. I will let you have the children, the palace, anything, but do not let me die. You must be reasonable!”
“I am nothing if not reasonable. That is how you made me.”
“I did everything you asked!” Havriel shrieks. He’s nearly reached us, and I can smell him, a vile, ancient stench, metal and death and rot. I see threads of black in the red dripping along his face, and they’re slithering, squirming like they’re alive. “What more is there? What do you wish for? I will give you a billion corpses!”
“You already have.”
Havriel stares at the butterfly man, heaving. His face is a mask of fear and hate and pain. He gasps and spits between his teeth. One hand goes to his chest, fingers wriggling into his waistcoat. They emerge holding a black cylinder. A red light is sliding up its length, blinking frantically.
A detonator.
He raises his fist.
“Well then,” he growls, and he smiles through the blood, red teeth, ashen lips. “Here are some more.”
“Come ON!” Lilly screams, and I feel crispy, half blind. I push myself up anyway, start dragging myself across the cavern floor. Will is a few feet in front of me. He’s standing unsteadily, cradling his bruised head in his hands. Further back in the darkness, I see Lilly. She’s got Jules by the shoulders. They’re limping toward the metal stairs as fast as they can.