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Maybe he'd be lucky. Maybe they'd kill someone else tonight.
7
Kate yawned. Tired. She'd watched the eleven o'clock news for further word of the Fielding murder but it wasn't even mentioned. James Fielding, MD, pioneering medical researcher, had been reduced to a statistic.
Sic transit gloria.
She unfolded the couch in Jack's TV room, expanding it to a bed, then went through the apartment turning out lights. In the kitchen she noticed the di
Jack had awakened around five, feeling better but still far from a hundred percent. She'd heated a couple of the frozen entrees from his fridge and wanted to know if he lived on that stuff. He'd explained that like many New Yorkers, he rarely ate in.
They ate and talked about old times, warily avoiding the subject of Jack's activities earlier in the day. Jack had faded after di
The Unity hadn't bothered her since this afternoon. It had stayed in the background, far in the background, all day, as if preoccupied. Which was fine with Kate.
She put the two di
An icy hand clutched her throat. No!
She'd meant to say it, to wail it, but her voice remained silent.
Her hand lifted the knife and held it before her, twisting the blade back and forth to catch the light. Her left hand stroked the sharp cutting edge, then touched the point.
This will do.
The Unity! Speaking to her. But how? No one else was here. She'd had to be touching them before, holding hands with their circle to hear the Voice. How—?
And then she knew and she wanted to scream.
Yes, Kate. You are of us now and we are of you.
No, please, I don't want this! Please!
You will, Kate. The closer you move toward full integration, the more you will welcome it.
Don't I get a say?
Integration is inevitable. Arguments are futile, a waste of time, and time is everything right now.
With the knife held before her, Kate turned and began walking from the kitchen.
What are you doing?
Your brother is a threat to the future. Threats must be eliminated.
No!
Kate tried to stiffen her knees, dig her heels into the floor, hurl herself against the wall, but she moved relentlessly forward, turning the corner toward Jack's room.
She made no sound, but her words were a sob in her mind. Please don't do this! Jeanette! Where are you? Stop this, I beg you!
You are not doing this, Kate. We are all doing it. Together. As one. As we will do everything.
But you're not murderers! You're all decent people! You can stop this! There must be some other way!
We are one and he ca
I can stop him. I can tell him things that will make him stop.
No. Too late. You've told him too much already. He won't trust you now.
She was in Jack's room now, standing over his bed. He lay supine before her, legs akimbo, deep in sleep. Her hand reversed its grip on the handle and Kate watched with escalating horror as it lowered the point to the fourth intercostal space just left of the sternum.
We're so glad you are a doctor. Your medical knowledge tells us the best place to strike.
God in heaven, stop this!
And then her hand was raising the knife high, and her second hand was joining and coupling with it. She felt the muscles tighten, readying a powerful two-armed thrust.
No! Kate threw every last fragment of her crumbling will into her arms. NO!
Sweat burst from her pores as the blade moved down an inch, then paused, suspended in a wavering hover.
It worked. She'd stopped it.
This is futile, Kate! You ca
Really?
Bolstered, she focused her energies more tightly on her arms. And slowly her left hand loosened its grip and fell away. And then the right hand, still clutching the knife, began to sink.
I will not kill my brother.
Panting, drenched in perspiration, she lowered the knife to her side.
A stalemate, Kate. For now. Your love for your brother overpowered us, but our love for you will overcome that. It is inevitable.
Love? Making a ma
Love has many forms. The One Who Was Jeanette fought like a tigress against inoculating you with her blood, but she was more completely integrated with us at that time than you are tonight, and we prevailed. And now that she is fully integrated her love wants you to be with us.
Jeanette had fought them… like a tigress. Kate bet she did. She wanted to cry. She could imagine Jeanette kicking and clawing all the way down the hall and into her room, crying out in anguish as the pin pierced her palm. So tragic, and yet the knowledge of Jeanette's struggle warmed her.
This is only a temporary reprieve for your brother, Kate. You are not ours yet, but by tomorrow you will be more so. And then you will not be able to resist.
Tomorrow…
Tomorrow she would murder her brother.
She tried to shout, to wake Jack and warn him, but her voice was locked. She could restrain her arms from stabbing Jack but could not wrest back control of the rest of her body.
Tomorrow…
The word followed her as she was guided from Jack's room to return the knife to the utensil drawer.
Tomorrow…
Kate was walked back to the TV room where she lay down on the fold-out bed and closed her eyes, screaming without making a sound, not even a whimper.
MONDAY
1
I'm going insane!
Not at all, Kate, cooed the soft, sexless voice in her head. Quite the opposite.
Somehow, perhaps as a way for her mind to escape the horror of her situation, Kate had fallen asleep last night. Or perhaps the Unity had made her sleep. This morning she'd been awakened by the sound of a door closing.
For one glittering, hopeful moment, she'd cradled the possibility that last night might have been a dream, a nightmare even more horrific than participating in Fielding's murder. But then, despite her desire to sleep in, her body rose from the bed.
Kate had screamed, a ragged wail of terror and anguish that remained trapped inside her skull as her body walked to the kitchen where she found a note from Jack.
GONE TO MEET SOMEONE. BE BACK SOON.
J
Since then she'd been seated here on the edge of the fold-out bed, staring at the wall for what seemed like hours. Hours of nothing.
Hardly 'nothing,' Kate. With each passing moment you are becoming incrementally further integrated into the Unity.
Even her thoughts weren't her own.
You're lying. I don't feel any different from last night.
We don't lie. We don't have to.
Kate had reins on the panic that had suffused her since awakening, but the sick cold horror of her plight was a throbbing undertone through her consciousness, steadily interrupted by blasts of helpless frustration.