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If I do this, Allie told herself, I am no better than Mary. I will have sunk to the worst possible place a person can go. After this moment, I will be a cold-blooded killer and it can never be taken back.
So the question was, did Allie Johnson have the strength to sacrifice all that was left of her innocence if it meant she might save the world?
The answer came to her like a burst of courage from a wellspring deeper than she knew she had inside herself.
I would sacrifice everything I am, everything I believe, to save the living world.
And so, with tears filling her eyes, she took the cap off the syringe, found a vein in Milos’s arm, and injected a massive dose of poison into his withered body.
Mrs. Vayevsky opened her eyes to see the delivery girl looking down at her.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” the delivery girl said.
Mrs. Vayevsky was now lying on the couch with no memory of how she got there. She sat up feeling weak and light-headed. “What happened?” she asked. “Have I fainted?”
“You’re fine,” the delivery girl said. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.” She offered Mrs. Vayevsky the faintest of smiles and a glass of water, which she drank with a shaky hand. “You should rest,” the delivery girl said and she clasped Mrs. Vayevsky’s shoulder a little too hard, for a little too long. “I’d better be going now.”
“The package . . . ,” said Mrs. Vayevsky.
The delivery girl pointed. “It’s on the table there. Like I said, there’s no need to sign for it.” Then the delivery girl left, quietly closing the door behind her.
When Mrs. Vayevsky felt strong enough to stand, she went to the table to find the package had already been torn open. Had she done that before she fainted?
Inside, of all things, was a Russian nesting doll. Its familiar shape—like a squat bowling pin—and brightly painted surface, made her smile. It was the kind of simple wooden toy she had played with in her youth, a reminder of a much simpler time. On the outermost shell was the painted figure of an old man, but each shell opened to reveal a smaller, younger man inside, until finally in the very center was a wooden baby no larger than her pinky. The gift came with no card, no return address, no clue as to who sent it, or why. All the same, she knew exactly where it needed to go.
She headed to her son’s room and set all six shells of the nesting doll side by side, smallest to largest, on Milos’s desk, admiring the colors and the workmanship it had taken to create the lacquered figurines. Then, when she turned to glance at the bed, her expression changed.
Without even touching him, she knew. Without holding a mirror to his lips to check for breathing, she knew.
She sat in the chair beside the bed, wrapped her arms around her chest, and began rocking back and forth, sobbing his name over and over. She wailed with the deepest grief she had ever known . . . and yet somewhere within that grief was secret gratitude that after so many years, she had finally been given permission to cry.
CHAPTER 37
Skinless
It happened in an instant. One moment Milos was skinjacking a worker, preparing to blow the entire gas main, and the next moment, he wasn’t skinjacking at all. He was just standing on the plant floor, slowly sinking into the living world.
Something had changed.
He could sense it—a sudden lightness, a sudden disconnection. The living world, which always seemed a bit blurry and faded, seemed even more so now—one step further removed. There was a panic in Milos, and with it came a sense of irretrievable loss that he could not put into words. He tried to deny it, refused to even think about what it might mean, and he attempted to skinjack the worker again. He stepped right through the man, and out the other side. Milos did not feel flesh, nor did he hear a single thought.
“No!”
He leaped again and again, but it was like leaping at shadows. Finally Jill and Moose peeled out of their hosts, and stared at him.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jill asked.
“Nothing,” Milos insisted. “Get on with the mission.”
But neither of them moved. Now the other skinjackers were peeling out of their hosts as well, wondering what was going on, and Milos was at the center of their attention. He screamed in fury, and leaped at every living blur that moved around him, but it was hopeless.
“I’m stopping the mission,” said Jill.
“No, you can’t stop the mission. I’m the lead skinjacker. I give the orders.”
“Sorry,” said Jill, “but you can’t be the lead skinjacker if you can’t skinjack.”
Mary’s children were overjoyed that the disaster was prevented. Mary, however, was not—but she was wise enough not to show her disappointment. If Milos had been able to rupture the gas main, the resulting explosion would have taken out several residential blocks. The story would have been much different. The fact that he could no longer skinjack posed a whole set of problems she would have to quickly address.
