Genesis. Volume 2

October 9, 1986. New York. Circle Base, Living Quarters. Evening. Emma sat on the edge of a hard cot and stared at her hands. They were trembling. Not from the cold—the room was warm, even stuffy, the air stale and smelling of dust and iron—but from exhaustion that had settled deep in her bones and was now seeping out in a fine, irritating tremor. Tucker's training had wrung them dry, and after that—Patel's needles, tests, endless questions. Arthur, Max, and Jenny were still holding up. Lisa had fallen asleep right in the hallway, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, her sketchbook slipped from her fingers and lay open beside her. Sasha had gone to report to Tucker. Emma wasn't sleeping. She hadn't slept for two days straight, if you didn't count the brief blackout on the bus, which couldn't be called sleep—just darkness without rest. Insomnia had been her constant companion since they'd entered the "Genesis" mansion nearly a year ago. Sometimes she felt like she'd forgotten how to close her eyes without seeing the faces she was afraid of forgetting. She reached for her jacket pocket, where the crumpled cigarette pack lay. Her fingers found the cardboard, a corner tore, and a crumb of tobacco spilled onto her thigh. She pulled her hand back. "Don't," she said aloud. "You quit." "Who are you lying to?" She looked up. In the doorway stood a guy. About nineteen, maybe twenty. Light hair disheveled, as if he'd just rolled out of bed. Brown eyes looked at her with curiosity, but without intrusion—the way you look at a stray cat that's wandered onto the porch and hasn't decided yet whether to stay. He wore a simple gray t-shirt with rolled-up sleeves and army pants with thigh pockets. Calloused hands, long fingers—a musician's or a laborer's. A red thread on his wrist, just like hers. He smelled of soap and something warm, bready. "I'm not lying," Emma said. "I quit." "I wasn't talking about the cigarettes." He nodded at her hand, still frozen at her pocket. "You told yourself 'don't,' as if that would help. But you're still going to take one out. Maybe not now. Maybe in an hour. But you will." "Are you a psychologist?" "No. Just observant." He smiled, and his smile was open, almost childlike, only the crinkles around his eyes giving away that he was older than he seemed. "My name's Liam. Liam Cross. I'm the agent Sasha is sending with you to Brookfield." Emma remembered: "Emma goes back to Brookfield. One of our agents will go with her." She'd expected someone like Tucker—grim, silent, with a face carved from stone. But this guy looked like he'd just stepped out of a college campus with a poetry collection under his arm. "You?" she asked, not hiding her skepticism. "An agent?" "What, I don't look like one?" "You look like someone who failed a literature exam yesterday." "I took it two years ago. Flunked, by the way." Liam walked into the room, stopped by the table, picked up the cold kettle. "Shakespeare turned out to be duller than I thought. Milton, though—he was something. Paradise Lost. Read it?" "No." "Too bad. Very relatable. About losing everything but not breaking." He poured tea into mugs—confidently, at home—and handed one to Emma. The mug was warm and slightly chipped. "Your friends will wake up soon. I brought food. It's in the kitchen. Nothing special—stew, bread, canned peaches. But it's hot." Emma took the mug. The tea was bitter, over-brewed, but hot. She took a sip and felt the warmth spread through her chest, thawing something clenched inside. "Are you always so..." she paused, searching for the word, "...caring?" "No. I usually only cook for myself. But you look like you've been through a meat grinder. And Tucker, I heard, didn't even feed you before training." "Tucker is a sadist." "Tucker is a professional." Liam sat on the edge of the adjacent cot, leaned back against the wall, and the springs creaked plaintively. "He thinks a hungry recruit learns faster. I won't argue, but I think a hungry recruit is just angry. And an angry recruit makes mistakes." "You think highly of yourself." "A little." He smiled again, and Emma caught herself wanting to smile back. It was strange. She hadn't smiled in weeks—since they'd left the circus and paid the Whisper. She'd forgotten how to smile, it seemed, back in Brookfield, when she realized Jack wasn't coming back. Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Then Max's voice—indistinct, but clearly unhappy. Liam listened. "That's the guy with the knife?" "Max. Yeah." "Good guy. Just jumpy. I tried to joke with him, and he almost pulled his knife." "He almost always pulls his knife." "I noticed." Liam paused. "What about you? Do you almost always reach for a cigarette?" Emma looked down at her mug. The tea was already cooling, a tea leaf floating on the surface. "You don't understand," she said, quieter than she'd meant to. "What?" "Nothing." She stood, set the mug on the table, and walked out of the room. She needed air—the kind that didn't smell of barracks, sweat, or gun oil. She walked down the hall, past sleeping Lisa, past the door where Max was explaining something to Arthur, and found an iron door marked "Exit to Stairs." She pushed it. The hinges creaked. The stairs led to the roof. Emma didn't know if she was allowed up there, and she didn't care. The roof was flat, bathed in moonlight. Below, beyond the chain-link fence, Queens sprawled—gray warehouse boxes, rusty cranes, sparse lights in windows. Somewhere far away, across the East River, Manhattan blazed with neon—alien, unreachable, its lights reflecting off the low clouds. Emma walked to the fence and leaned against the cold railing. The wind tugged at her hair, slipped under her jacket, sending goosebumps down her spine. Cold. Good. She pulled the cigarette pack from her pocket. Looked at it. Crumpled, a torn corner. Inside—three cigarettes left. She pulled one out, put it in her mouth. Didn't light it. "Are you just going to stand there with an unlit cigarette?" She didn't turn around. Liam's footsteps were quiet, but she heard them—he walked softly, almost silently. "I didn't ask for company." "I know." He stood beside her, an arm's length away. "But it's stuffy down there, and there are stars up here." "Do you always butt in where you're not wanted?" "Only when I see someone standing on a roof with an unlit cigarette. It looks like a cry for help. Just without the cry." Emma turned to him sharply. The cigarette wobbled between her lips. "I'm not crying for help. I don't cry at all. I just want to be left alone. Can you understand that?" "I can." He didn't step back, didn't take offense. He just looked at her with his brown eyes, and there was neither pity nor judgment in them. Only calm attention. "I used to think that too. Until I realized that 'left alone' wasn't what I needed." "What do you need?" "I don't know. Maybe someone who won't let me stand on a roof with an unlit cigarette." Emma wanted to say something sharp, but the words stuck in her throat. She looked at him—at his stupid smile, at his calloused hands, at the red thread on his wrist—and felt something crack inside. Not break—crack, like a crust of ice revealing living water underneath. "I have a mark," she said quietly. She pulled her red thread from under her sleeve and showed it. "See? It's not just jewelry. It's a curse. Everyone I get attached to dies." Liam looked at the thread. Then at her. "May I?" "What—may you?" He didn't answer. He just took her hand—carefully, as if handling a wounded bird—and held the thread up to the light. His fingers were warm and rough. "Red," he said. "Like mine." He showed her his wrist. "So we're in the same boat." "You don't understand. This is serious." "I do understand." His voice grew quieter, more serious. "I've lost people too. My sister. She was two years younger than me. A Feaster took her—one of the ones the Circle still can't track down. I was right there and couldn't do a thing." He released her hand but didn't step away. "After that, I decided I'd never get attached to anyone again. Because losing is the worst thing there is." "And what changed?" "Nothing." He smiled, but now the smile was different—sad, fractured. "I'm still scared. But I realized that not getting attached isn't protection. It's just another way to die. Only slower." The wind picked up. Emma shivered but didn't leave. She looked at Liam and saw something she hadn't expected: not empty bravado, not perfunctory sympathy, but real, hard-won understanding. He wasn't trying to save her. He was just standing beside her. "You've got me wrong," she said. "I'm not kind. I'm not nice. I'm mean, cynical, and I smoke." "I noticed." "I don't know how to trust. I've forgotten how." "Me too." "Then why are you here?" Liam was silent for a moment. Then he held out his hand—the one with the red thread. "Because you showed me your thread. And I want to show you mine." Emma looked at his palm. Calloused, warm, with a life line that broke off at the wrist—as if someone had slashed through it with a knife. "You're making a mistake," she said. "I know." "You don't even know what you're getting into." "I do. Into a story that started in Brookfield and will end God knows where. A story where a girl with a red thread is trying to quit smoking. A story that might kill me." He didn't lower his hand. "But for some reason, I want to be part of it." Emma felt a lump rise in her throat. She swallowed. She wanted to push him away, say something cutting, leave the roof and lock herself in her room. But instead, slowly, as if in a haze, she unwound her red thread from her wrist. "It's a mark," she repeated in a whisper. "If you put it on, you'll be bound to me. To us. To what hunts us. There's no going back." "I know." "You're an idiot." "Probably." He took the thread from her hands—carefully, as if it were something precious. And, looking her straight in the eyes, he wound it around his finger. Then he tied a knot—small, tight. "Then I'll be the exception," he said. Emma stared at the knot. At the thread that now connected them—literally, physically, like the threads on the Feaster maps she'd seen in the archive. A bond that couldn't be broken. "You don't understand what you've done," she whispered. "I do." He lowered his hand but didn't step away. "I took your curse. Now it's ours." She wanted to cry. Or laugh. Or hit him. But instead she stood, watching the moonlight fall on the knot, feeling something bloom inside her that she'd thought frozen forever. "You'll regret this," she said. "Already do." He smiled. "But I'm still glad." Emma couldn't find a reply. She just stood beside him, on the cold roof, under the indifferent stars, and listened to the wind sing in the wires. Below, at the base, her friends, training, Chicago, and war awaited her. But here and now, there was only this moment—and Liam, who had taken her curse and called it an exception. She didn't know what would happen next. Didn't know if he'd survive, if she'd survive, if any of them would. But for the first time in a long while, Emma didn't feel alone. "Thank you," she said quietly. "For what?" "For not leaving." Liam didn't answer. He just stood beside her as the moon crept slowly across the sky, and the city below lived its nocturnal life—noisy, indifferent, but somehow less alien now. Emma didn't light the cigarette. She held it in her fingers, unlit, and thought that maybe, just maybe, she really would quit. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. But someday. Definitely. When they finally came down from the roof, Liam walked her to her door. Lisa and Jenny were already asleep—one on the cot, curled in a ball, the other right on the floor, her backpack as a pillow. Emma paused at the threshold. "Liam." "Yeah?" "If you die because of me, I'll kill you." He smirked. "Deal." She closed the door, leaned her back against it, and slowly slid to the floor. The cold linoleum soothed her aching legs. In her hand, she still clutched the unlit cigarette. Emma looked at it—and crushed it in her fist. Tobacco spilled onto the floor in gray dust, and a few crumbs stuck to her palm. "Enough," she whispered to herself. "I've smoked enough." And for the first time in a long while, she almost believed what she was saying.