VIOLET EYES Page 18

  Beep, beep.

  Midnight.

  Even before the second beep I was bending my knees, starting to spring up for a simple backward swan dive, the kind that looked so graceful on TV—and a bullet plowed through my shoulder, like a hammer swung against flesh, and I fell instead of diving, my form all gone to hell, zero scores for sure; pain wrapped itself around me. As the water rushed up, everything was black—I’m going to die—

  Impact.

  I was still fairly vertical and went deep, the water black, so black, not a speck of light anywhere, chlorine stinging my eyes and my shoulder, scouring the wound. Why did it hurt so much if I was dead? And then I realized that everything was black because Mike had killed the lights.

  I had taken a big breath, but I’d lost part of it on impact. I fought the urge to kick my way back up to the surface. There had been no cannonball splash; Dr. Frankenstein had not followed me down. He was still up there, with a gun. I had to convince him he’d killed me, and that meant no splashing or breathing too loud when I resurfaced.

  My foot touched bottom, and my downward momentum stopped.

  I tried to untense my body, to ignore the pain and drift ever so slowly up to the surface….

  My toe dragged across something.

  It caught for only a second, but it was enough to remind me: Vincent.

  I swam back down, feeling his body frantically with one hand. There. Was his chest rising and falling? I couldn’t feel any movement. I moved my hand up to his shoulder and arms. His hands were tied behind his back. They didn’t twitch under mine.

  Was he dead? He couldn’t be. I felt his chest again, while my lungs clawed for air.

  Still no movement, damn it. I should have jumped in right away. My position probably wouldn’t be any worse than it was now, wounded and in the dark, and Vincent would be alive.

  You can’t know that. Dr. Frankenstein had reduced Vincent’s air supply. It could have run out ten minutes ago while we were at the bank or slipping in egg yolk.

  But I still felt guilty for not thinking faster, being smarter. Sorry, Leona. Her image flashed into my mind, face pale, stuffed into a drawer—

  No. I didn’t have time for this. Dr. Frankenstein was coming, looking for me in the dark. He would find me easily by the splash I made coming up for air.

  A terrible thought occurred to me: Vincent was dead; if I loosed the weight from around his ankles he would float up and I could use him as a decoy.

  Bile threatened, but need overruled. With my fingers I found the rope tied to his feet and fumbled with the knot, eyes burning, lungs heaving for nonexistent air. My fingers were clumsy, my right arm numb and useless.

  Air.

  I gave up, started to kick off, then felt the rope slip through my fingers. The weight came free, but Vincent didn’t float; the air tank must have been too heavy. Blind and close to blacking out, I grabbed at the oxygen tank.

  Vincent grabbed back, coming to life underneath me, fingers manacling my wrists. He’d been faking. Faking. Oh, God, he’d never been in danger at all, had been in league with Dr. Frankenstein all along. How could I have been stupid enough to trust Leona? I needed air. I kicked, trying to blast my way to the surface, but Vincent held me back, fingers digging into my wrists, pulling me down, drowning me.

  I kicked again, clawing, forgot myself and breathed in water, choked, fought harder, choked a second time, thrashing in a death struggle.

  Whoever said drowning was a peaceful way to go obviously never tried it.

  Someone clamped something over my mouth, and I breathed in air, heaving, choking on the water still in my lungs. I sucked in two thin breaths, enough to know that there wasn’t a heck of a lot left, before Vincent pulled the mask away.

  Fair enough. He needed oxygen, too.

  So he wasn’t on Dr. Frankenstein’s side; he’d just mistaken me for Frankenstein in the dark, that was all.

  But now we’d been under the water too long. Dr. Frankenstein would know I hadn’t just dived in and come back up.

  I groped in the water and found Vincent’s arm. I touched it to his chest, then pointed.

  Vincent showed his assent by swimming off in that direction.

  I turned and swam the other way. I felt blind and very, very weak. It took effort to fight flotation and swim underwater for a distance. My wounded arm was useless, and my legs kicked mechanically without any of the strength I was accustomed to exerting. My lungs burned, craving air.

  I broke the surface near the side of the pool, not quite touching the tiles. I could hear the steady slap, slap of the water filter nearby.

  I let only my head show above the water, enough to breathe and unmuffle my ears. It was hard not to gasp in air. The urge to vomit overcame me, and I ducked below the surface to stifle the sound.

  The thought of getting vomit on my face almost made me puke again, and I quickly pulled myself along the edge of the pool, still striving not to make a sound.

  Safety lay in movement. Somewhere out there, either slowly cruising the pool or walking the perimeter, was Dr. Frankenstein, his treasure hunt turned into a manhunt.

  I needed to get out of the pool, but I lacked the strength to haul myself out quietly.

  My weakness frightened me. I wanted to cling to the side of the pool, but that was the most dangerous place right now. I made myself glide away while I still had the strength to keep my head above water. The shallow end would be easier for Dr. Frankenstein to search than the deep end, but I needed to be able to touch bottom. I took my best guess as to direction and headed down the middle of the pool, using a slow, slow sidestroke.

  Slap, slap. Slap, slap. The water filter made the only sound. In the dark it was hard to believe that three other people shared the space with me—Vincent and me in the pool, Dr. Frankenstein and Mike on the tile deck.

  Mike, where are you?

  I tried to put my feet down and almost wept with relief when my toes touched bottom. A few more strokes and I stopped, listening.

  A scuff, maybe. A small splash, impossible to judge the direction or guess whether it was friend or foe. Dr. Frankenstein had it easier that way. Everyone was his enemy.

  Standing still, I began to feel very cold—shock from the bullet wound. I had to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering. Please, Mike, if I’ve ever needed someone it’s now. I put one hand over my shoulder trying to stanch the flow of blood.

  A small wave lapped at my chin. Something was moving toward me in the water. Vincent? I would soon need help to stay on my feet.

  Ghostly currents of water caressed my skin. At the last instant I guessed what the currents meant and slipped beneath the surface, turning over into a dead man’s float.

  Water covered my ears, both muffling and intensifying sound. I stayed very, very still as Dr. Frankenstein slid through the water only a few feet away. I floated, drifting, and his hand grazed my foot.

  I felt the start go through him, water being pushed into different shapes, as his hands grabbed me, found me limp and unresisting, dead. But Dr. Frankenstein was never one to take chances. He grabbed a handful of my wet hair and pressed the gun to my temple.

  A loud splash from across the pool—Vincent getting out?—and Dr. Frankenstein fired at the sound.

  I kicked his belly with all my strength, which was not much, pushed myself underwater, and swam farther into the shallow end, scraping my arms on the rough cement.

  Behind me Dr. Frankenstein swore and fired again—must be an old gun with real bullets, to be so loud. Were you fast enough, Vincent, or did he hit you, too?

  Disjointed thoughts. I clung to the side of the pool—it was shallow enough here to kneel—only gradually becoming aware that Dr. Frankenstein was splashing far too much, firing too wildly.

  My heart lurched inside me. Mike. He had followed Dr. Frankenstein into the water and jumped him. They were fighting for the gun now.

  I could do nothing but cling to the side of the pool, my strength spent, blood washing
out of me in an imagined torrent. I was still clinging when the victor sloshed toward me. I was helpless prey if it proved to be Dr. Frankenstein. If Mike was dead, I hardly cared.

  A hand touched me, and I slipped out of reach, down into the water’s embrace.

  CHAPTER 19

  “ANGEL. Angel, you have to wake up,” Mike whispered urgently.

  I opened my eyes, but the pool remained in darkness. I could barely make out Mike’s face, scant inches from mine. I was wrapped up in a blanket and Mike’s arms. Vincent stood nearby.

  “Dr. Frankenstein?” I croaked.

  “Dead. The gun …” Mike didn’t say any more. He didn’t need to.

  “You saved my life,” I reminded him. “Vincents, too.”

  Mike ignored my words. “You’ve been shot. You fainted. How are you feeling?”

  “Pretty lousy.” I coughed weakly, aware of a burning streak in my shoulder where the bullet had torn through.

  “Can you go back in the water?” Vincent asked bluntly.

  I understood at once. He was asking me to play dead for the cameras. “Yes.” I had to; there was no choice.

  “No,” Mike said. “I don t think she should. She’s in shock already. She could drown.”

  “It’s our only chance to avoid Dr. Frankenstein’s customers,” Vincent argued. “Believe me, you don’t want to work for them.”

  His voice made me shudder. Or maybe it was the shock. “Vincent won’t talk about what they made him do,” Leona had said, “but I know it was bad.”

  I had no desire to find out for myself how bad it could be. “I can do it.”

  “It’s a delaying tactic at best. The customers will find out eventually what happened, and we don’t even know that Leona understands our scheme,” Mike protested.

  “You said she made a signal like taking a photograph. She’ll be there.” Vincent was confident of his sister’s capability.

  I was confident that Leona had understood—but not confident that she was ready and waiting in whatever communications room the live feed to Dr. Frankenstein’s customers was passing through. Her leg was broken and she’d been unconscious, possibly concussed, when we found her.

  “I can do it,” I repeated, fighting not to shiver.

  Mike snarled something but didn’t argue anymore. He and Vincent began moving the players into place. They posed Dr. Frankenstein’s body in a chair with his eyes open and the bullet hole in his heart covered by his jacket.

  They faked up a lifesaving dummy to play the part of Vincent, down at the bottom of the pool, chained to the empty oxygen tank. I was next.

  Sliding down into the water felt like going into a glacier-fed stream. I was so cold….

  Mike made me take a small ball to use as a flotation device. He towed me out to a spot in the deep end not far from the diving board, since I was too weak to swim on my own. Then he swam out to his own spot, closer to the shallow end. Vincent was responsible for the lights. I closed my eyes and hung on to the ball, drifting.

  Countdown. Five, four, three, two, one. I was facedown in the water when the lights came on. I held my breath for as long as I could, until my head started to spin and I started to lose my grip on the ball, until I couldn’t bear it, plus five seconds more.

  It was the best I could do. I came up gasping for air.

  We had to trust that the shot of three bodies would make Dr. Frankenstein’s customers believe us dead and Leona incapacitated—at least for a while. We had to trust that Leona had done her job, cutting the transmission at the right moment.

  Mike quickly swam over to me and helped me out of the pool, swaddling me in blankets a second time. “Vincent’s gone to get the first aid kit. Take this.” Mike passed me a can of Orange Crush. I swallowed down the sweet, sticky beverage gladly. I needed to replace some of the fluid I had lost.

  Vincent showed up with the kit and quickly got down to business. “I’m going to be a doctor,” he told me, gently probing the wound. “I’ve been reading books this last month. Trust me.”

  I gritted my teeth and bore the pain. I refused to faint even when he sterilized the wound.

  “There,” Vincent said, taping the last gauze pad firmly in place. “If you don’t get a fever, you should be able to avoid a trip to the hospital.”

  That was an important point. Although the riot had broken the back of the Renaissance Project, I wanted to blend into society quietly, not announce myself to radical groups—or to world powers looking for hot deals on superspies.

  “I won’t get a fever,” I said positively.

  Mike raised an eyebrow.

  I smiled an angels incandescent smile. “Renaissance genes. We don’t get sick as often as sapiens either, haven’t you noticed?”

  “Sorry I tried to drown you earlier,” Vincent said with his usual directness. “I thought you were Frankenstein, come to cut loose the air tanks.”

  “I would have done the same.” I was feeling generous.

  Mike scavenged up another car, and the three of us drove back to the old folks’ home. I waited in the car, exhausted, while Mike and Vincent carried Leona out.

  Her face was pale and harsh with pain as they laid her on the backseat of the car. To distract her on the brief drive to the deserted hospital I asked her if she’d gotten enough videotape of us playing dead for the cameras.

  “Yes,” Leona said tersely.

  “She did better than that,” Vincent said, unmistakable pride in his voice. “Tell her.”

  “It was nothing.” Leona shifted restlessly. “I found some software that let me make a loop of the videotape of darkness and splashing sounds. I transmitted that while I fixed the inconsistencies of the death shot. I inserted old footage of Dr. Frankenstein coming into the pool room before sitting in the chair where you left him so it didn’t appear as if the lights came on by magic. Then I added a voice-over spliced together from his computer message announcing himself the winner of the sapiens versus renascentia battle and saying he would soon return to his office and kill me.”

  “That doesn’t sound like ‘nothing’ to me,” I said, impressed.

  Leona shrugged. “His customers will still figure it out. We’re only buying time. You two should go. You’re wasting time here.”

  “Not until your leg is set,” I said firmly.

  We reached the hospital, and, as promised, Mike helped Vincent set Leonas leg and put a cast on it. Vincent frowned at the plaster-dipped bandages. “They must have found a better way to do this by now.”

  His words sobered me. When we left Chinchaga we would be jumping feet first into the next century.

  “Where do you guys plan to go now that you’re free?” I asked Vincent and Leona.

  Vincent and Leona exchanged glances.

  “It’s okay,” I said, sensing their distrust. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  Vincent shook his head. “No, it’s all right. We’re going to contact the underground movement. Catherine promised she’d help us look for Erin Reinders and my baby.”

  “What about you two? You’re welcome to come with us,” Leona said unexpectedly, considering our past clashes.

  I didn’t need to look at Mike to know his answer. “No, thanks.” That seemed too abrupt, so I added, “We want to make our own way, as ourselves, not as Renaissance children.” I didn’t know what we would do or what we would become, but I knew I wanted to be judged for Angel Eastland’s mistakes, not for the faults and virtues of the Renaissance subspecies.

  Leona nodded. She seemed to understand. “Good luck, then.”

  Formally, Mike and I shook their hands and left. I wished Leona and Vincent success in their search, but I would not miss either of them.

  I would, however, miss my parents and Wendy and Carl. Once things became safer, I promised myself I would find a way to meet them again, under a different name and with colored contact lenses to disguise my violet eyes.

  “Are you ready?” Mike asked softly as we walked past the town boundary,
crossing from 1987 into the future in one step.

  I had the same doubts that Mike had, the same doubts any human being would feel when entering a new world. I also had the same hopes. “I’m ready.”

  Mike kissed me softly. We would make it. I knew it.

  The newshounds found Dr. Frankenstein’s body floating in the pool and made a big ruckus over the note they found in a Ziploc bag pinned to the body:

  We would rather be your friends than your enemies.

  Don’t start a war you can’t win.

  About the Author

  NICOLE LUIKEN was born May 25, 1971. She grew up on a farm in northern Alberta (latitude 57° N). She wrote her first novel at age thirteen (it was summer holidays and there was nothing else to do). She is the author of three young adult novels (Unlocking the Doors, The Catalyst, and Escape to Overworld) and one adult thriller (Running on Instinct). She lives in Edmonton, Alberta, with her husband, Aaron Humphrey, and young son, Simon, and is currently working on a sequel to Violet Eyes. It is physically impossible for her to go without writing for more than three days in a row.

  … A GIRL BORN WITHOUT THE FEAR GENE

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  A SERIES BY FRANCINE PASCAL

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