Then she was torn from him, an operative jerking her against him, a knife at her throat.

Her wide eyes were shadowed midnight in her head, the kiss of blue lost in the gloom.

However, her fear was obvious.

Parker almost gave it away with the direction of his gaze shifting behind Nevaeh when the first zombie tore the agent's head off his shoulders, the blood spattering like black spots of oil as it sprayed a ground blanketed in white.

Then they fell on him, the agents using weapons of bludgeoning instead of death. He'd not been expecting it and Nevaeh screamed for him as he struggled with consciousness, fighting five agents trained as he was.

His anxiety made him sloppy and the chain of death he'd begun wavered, trying to slip back to rest.

"No!" Nevaeh yelled in a low and deep timbre.

It twanged and his mouth fell open in awe, she had sung the perfect note of summons.

They came and suddenly, the agents were turned away from him. Parker was in the center and the five were loosely in a circle facing away from his position on the ground as dead animals' black and sightless eyes stared at them.

"Get the fuck out of here before I have them gut you," Nevaeh said in a voice that held the sincerest note of promise.

Parker was on his knees, spitting blood out of his mouth, the sting of it nothing compared to that of his ego.

She'd called the zombies. When he couldn't, Nevaeh had.

"I was going to protect you," he said, standing.

Nevaeh walked to him. No, scratch that noise, she prowled.

She was the hottest woman he'd ever known. In the middle of this mess, he wanted her again.

"I know." Nevaeh stood before him for a moment. "You'll have to get over that," she stated in a flat voice, then walked around to the agents. She swept her knee up, bent at her chest and kicked one of the operatives in the ass with her foot.

He went sprawling forward, landing face first on the frozen ground and a buck, once having been road kill, pawed the ground and neighed like a horse, shaking its head in annoyance.

"I've been wanting to do that for forever," she said, looking down at the agent who glared up at her.

Parker grinned. He stepped up beside Nevaeh and looked at men he'd stood shoulder to shoulder with, killed beside.

That was before. "Talk. Now," Parker instructed.

When Bledsoe, who was really Brenner, was finished, Parker frowned.

Only half his team was here.

The other half had been dispatched to clean a certain journalist.

One could only hope that somehow, before his death, he'd been able to get the story out.

For Tim Anderson was dead.

Of that Parker was certain.

*

revelation

Caleb

I looked from one to the other of them, Jade's small hand a block of ice in mine. I squeezed it once in assurance. "What is it?"

Jade began to cry harder and covered her eyes. "It's all my fault!"

This was fucking awful, and about more than I could handle. I grabbed her hands that were covering her face. "What... nothing's that bad... just tell me." My eyes searched the swimming water of hers.

"I told you not to wear a condom," she said mournfully.

I stood, feeling light-headed. "What?" I heard myself ask.

"It is automatic that we conduct a battery of standard blood tests upon admittance," Jezebel said somewhat helplessly. "Jade is..." she began softly.

"I'm going to have a baby," Jade said in a whisper, her knuckles white as she clenched her hands together.

I stood there for so long my feet began to feel numb, my knees locked.

I opened my mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again. Then looked at her sitting there so alone in the bed, engulfed by white and pillows and hospital smell.

I sat on the edge of Jade's bed. My hand reached out and pushed the hair away from her eyes, cupping her face with my hand, then adding the second until I cradled her face between them.

I locked gazes with her. "I knew you'd be my wife," I said.

Jade turned her head into my palm and pressed a kiss into the center.

I turned to see where Jezebel had gone but she had disappeared outside without our knowing.

I got into the bed with Jade, sucking her against me, my hand straying to her still-flat belly.

We didn't talk.

I learned a lesson that day. There was always a consequence to your actions.

Even love.

Cause and effect.

We lay together like that until my parents came and we had the hardest conversation of my life.

My mom cried and my dad listened.

In the end, they remained as they'd always been, unconditional.

It's what allowed me to become who I was meant to be.

It would be what I would pass on.

CHAPTER 20

BadJuJu

Tim pushed the glass slide across the café table, invisible bacteria climbing on and being sloughed off as he did.

The slide had an impermeable surface, receptive to fingerprint only, thumbs specifically, down to the finest microscopic component.

Anderson looked across the table and thought for the millionth time that BadJuJu, or whoever he really was, was the antithesis of what he thought a pulse-hacker should look like.

Bad sat in front of Tim, his sausage legs dangling from the booth, his girth folded over the cheap laminate of one of the only diners in Kent that was open twenty-four hours a day.

His greasy hair was swept back from a naturally occurring widow's peak that helped keep it out of his beady eyes, pressed like raisins into rising dough.

Intelligent eyes. They regarded him now.

Bad put the slide in his front pocket where an old-fashioned pen leaked onto the material, a spreading stain of black softening and darkening the bottom seam.

He was a slob. And a prodigy.

Bad leaned back, which was little more than a shift of his immense weight, the booth protesting underneath him.

"What now?" Tim asked.

Bad's eyes swept up. "We eat." His tone said how silly he thought it would be to meet at a diner and not eat.

"I don't think I can work up to that...."

"That's your problem, man."

The waitress came and Bad ordered... one of everything.

Anderson cupped his palm around his steaming old coffee, adding cream for the calcium and to counteract the bitterness.

"This will go viral to everyone who has a disc by tomorrow night," Bad expounded, a crumb from the cream cheese filled pancakes dropping from his bulbous lips and making a plopping sound as it fell into his large milk.

Bad grabbed the milk glass, taking a swig and wiped his mouth with the back of a meaty palm.

Anderson's gorge rose.

"Okay," Tim said, scooting a second slide across the table.

"What's the credit?" Bad asked, the wall of food winking in his open mouth for a moment then disappearing down the food pipe. Anderson's stomach gave a vicious turn.

He had to get out of there.

"The number we discussed."

"Good," Bad said, waving him away. "Go ahead, but..."

Tim already had his wallet in his pants, his jacket shouldered on. The weather had turned to a rare, true winter during the night. He cocked a brow at Bad.

"Watch yourself," he said in parting.

"Yeah," Tim said.

The warning followed him all the way home.

When he entered his house and the HC operative was waiting in the darkest corner of his home, Tim was almost relieved, his tension and sense of foreboding hadn't been for nothing. And here he was: a mundane.

The flash of intuition was Tim Anderson's last.

Fat lot of good it'd done.

*

Caleb

My parents and Jade and I walked out of the hospital together, Gramps and the others who'd been waiting trailing after us.

Put a fork in the whole group of us hot dogs, we were done.

If that hadn't been bad enough, the entire world started to come alive with a new piece of information: the Graysheets had been outed.

I guess there was such a thing as silver-lining. And I'd thought it was a bullshit expression.

As the sun rose, time zones came awake, pulse activated news center emergent updates were uploaded into our built-in pulse-discs. Those who had embedded chips knew the entire story, the very young and the very old who did not, received the entire story the old-fashioned way.

Pulse news.

Then there was the matter of the death of Tim Anderson.

He'd been found in his home this morning, three nail beds removed and two crushed toes for his trouble.

Gramps and I looked at each other as the billboards that used to house flat advertisements now held breaking viral news as it became live.

"Seems to me that he had something to tell," Gramps said, palming his chin while looking at the flashing boards, blasting their disconcerting news. Methods Gramps had employed most recently with similar results.

Dad nodded, too troubled for words and I wondered at his expression.

But right now, Tim Anderson was dead and soon, when the viral wave of the emergency broadcasting system, now renamed the Emergent Pulse System, came sweeping through our time zone I would know exactly what had happened, and to whom.

Even more importantly, there was me and Jade.

And the new life we'd created.

*

Zondorae

Zondorae opened his eyes to be greeted by a male and female pair of crazies.

He knew who they were and didn't bother to hold back his scorn, they'd finally caught up with him.

"Couldn't save the loud mouth journalist?" he asked in a smug voice.

Amanda swiped a tear from her eye angrily. That arrogant fucker, she thought, not giving the asshole the satisfaction of a response.

"No," Christopher said slowly. "He could not be saved before your merry troop of murderers paid him a visit."

Christopher walked slowly toward him, placing his look on the chest of a scientist that had sterilized millions of children, who had changed the very fiber of their genetics for government gain. Then when they could not be manipulated for the HC's purposes, sterilized their future.

But not all.

Christopher smiled at the fanatic scientist and Joe's brow furrowed.

"My partner and I," Christopher began, "have been playing in the Zondorae sandbox for years," he confessed easily and Joe's frown deepened into a scowl.

Christopher paced in front of the zip-tied doctor, his hands laced behind his back, his ass planted in an all-wood chair.

"You have been successful in culling the paranormal herd, Zondorae."

"I know," he answered, as if Christopher was mentally slow.

"But the mules have been saved from that fate."

Amanda smiled and Zondorae sat up in the chair like he'd been electrocuted instead of just bound.

They could see Zondorae's wheels turning furiously and it gave the duo a savage satisfaction.

The Zondoraes had made sure the boy had the special dose in eighth grade, solidifying it with the pulse dose to the girlfriend when she visited the clinic for mandatory birth control. It was handled. That horrible Nevaeh had been likewise eliminated by the dose he and his departed brother had injected her with.

No female could survive what they'd done to her. It would have incinerated her uterus.

Forget egg production, the dose was meant to pulverize her reproductive... well, everything.

Zondorae smiled.

Christopher grinned back.

He should not have been smiling, Joe thought. It was the Zondoraes' plan. It was flawless.

"You're so predictable, Joe," Parker said, entering the room in stealth, as he always did.

Old habits die hard.

Zondorae looked from the zealot pair before him then his eyes found Parker... then the bitch AFTD they'd done in.

Everything clicked and he bellowed, "What have you done?"

Amanda answered in a soft whisper, "Your question should be: what have we undone?"

"You don't know what you've accomplished!" Zondorae hissed at them.

Nevaeh looked at Zondorae, then at Parker.

Christopher looked at Parker. "Did you do it?"

Parker nodded.

Amanda looked at Nevaeh. She was almost beautiful, there was a haunting quality about her.

"What's going on?" Nevaeh asked, her normally sure manner and cocky bravado falling before their solemn expressions.

"Did you like the sex with Parker?" Zondorae asked, making an accurate stab-like guess in the dark.

Nevaeh gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.

Betrayal of an unknown variety slammed into her and she staggered back, her eyes unwittingly finding Parker's. His were grave and sad... filled with regret.

He'd never felt anything for her, it had been a fuck with a purpose.

The first light of hope she'd ever had faded and was extinguished. She backed away from the tight little group, her ass hitting the door. She turned, ripping it open.