Time ticked by. Bill and Cleve remained silent, thoroughly in the dark about most of what was said, but smart enough not to ask questions right now. Outside the office, every pair of eyes was aimed toward the window. Marcton glanced out at them, felt the weight of his responsibility to them, then looked back at Kendul.
Finally, Marcton said, “We do this last thing together, then you step down. I think we can agree that your views on our society leave a lot to be desired – especially in a leader. Agreed?”
Kendul turned his head, spat more blood, turned back, looked down at his boots, said, “Agreed.”
“OK,” Marcton said. “Show me.”
E I G H T E E N
This is the house in which she was born. This is the house in which she died. Well, kind of died, anyway.
Three years ago, Adelina – the daughter of the Runners’ leader – had been the first to achieve ascendance: full lead content in the body. Almost too perfect to be true. But she had never thought anything was perfect, and she was right about that – especially in this case.
She’d been in bed when the change came upon her. It had happened differently than it had for Henry Kyllo. For Adelina, it was swift and agonizing, completing in a matter of hours rather than days. She had gone to bed looking as she normally did, but when she woke up the next morning, sixty percent of her body had metallized overnight. She woke up screaming and didn’t stop until her father and Kendul burst into her room. Kendul had been visiting as he occasionally did – secretively – for a shot or two of single malt scotch, maybe a cigar.
When Palermo saw her, he froze. As he watched, she began thrashing madly, the increased weight of her body causing the cheap wooden bed frame to crumple under her as she chopped at its sides with her metal hands and feet. It thumped to the floor, and that sound was what finally snapped Edward out of his paralysis.
He turned and ran for the phone, dialed as fast as his shaking hands would allow. Barked at a woman on the other end of the line over the soulcrushing sounds of his only daughter in horrendous pain: “She’s changing!” he yelled. “Get over here and help me. I don’t know what the fuck to do!”
Before she could answer him, he’d hung up.
Sandra Beiko, Palermo’s second-in-command at the time, arrived twenty minutes later. Palermo explained what he could as she came inside. By the time they got up the stairs, the first wave of Adelina’s change was complete. She was huddled in a far corner of the room, now roughly seventy-five percent metal and rock, and about twice her original size. Her breathing had regulated, and she appeared to be in – very understandable – shock.
Over the next ten hours, they watched her grow bigger and bigger. Watched her cycle through incoherent rage, pleading for it to stop, then sleep, then back to rage. Watched her body transform into something beautiful, something horrifying.
The three of them stood in awe, Beiko murmuring the closest thing she had to religious prayers, while Kendul just watched with rapt attention, perhaps the faintest glimpse of jealousy and envy in his eyes. More than faint, Palermo thought. He wishes he was her. He wants to be her, wants to go through this. That was the first time Palermo thought that maybe this was not a good thing, that maybe this was not something to aspire to. A certain blackness crept into his mind when he looked at Adelina. A bleak otherworldliness. Despair, desperation.
But there was something somehow worse than even that in Kendul’s eyes – something bordering on the predatory.
The only one of them without either of these reactions was Palermo, of course. This was his daughter, and he just felt sick to his stomach. He was the only one to immediately see the fundamental change in her personality. She was losing control of who she was.
When Adelina was nearly the size of her small bedroom, Palermo took Kendul aside, talked out in the hallway while Beiko stayed inside the bedroom.
“Kendul, we have to stop this.”
“Stop it, are you insane? This is what–”
“I know, and I don’t care. This is my daughter. Something’s… happening to her. She’s changing on the inside, as well. I can feel it. Even when she can’t speak, it’s in her eyes. It’s like there’s someone else inside her now. If we don’t stop it, I think she’s going to disappear. Maybe not physically, but mentally. Emotionally. I can’t…” Tears formed in Palermo’s eyes. He hung his head.
Kendul put a hand on Palermo’s shoulder. “I feel it, too. Something is… off. Corrupted. But we need to see this through. We need to see what she becomes. This is historic. I know you understand that.”
That’s when the screaming began. Not from Adelina this time.
Palermo flung the door to Adelina’s bedroom wide open, looked up to see Beiko flailing around in both of Adelina’s giant hands – his daughter whipping her back and forth like a rag doll.
Palermo stepped forward, yelled, “Adelina, stop! Stop it!”
Adelina turned toward the sound of her father’s voice. Like a dog, she tilted her massive head ever so slightly one way, then stopped shaking Beiko.