My Kaiju Parasite Revived Me, But a Yandere Bought My Streaming Rights

The street was cold.

The fish hedge had been clipped recently. New growth showed pale green at the cuts. Elara walked on Caleb’s left and kept her hands in her coat pockets.

They turned at the corner.

"It was nineteen seventy-nine," she said. "Your great-grandfather’s name was Henry. He had taken Marcus’s father into the lab on a Sunday. They argued for an hour. My mother was in the next room. She was twenty-three. She had been hired as a research assistant the previous month."

"What did they argue about?"

"What you would guess. Henry wanted the pieces kept separate. Forever. He thought your grandfather was too young to understand what the Twelfth would do if it came back together. Your grandfather thought the separation was the failure. He wanted to seal it whole, which is what Marcus wants now. Three generations have had the same argument."

"Who shot him?"

"His son."

A car passed them. Elara waited for it.

"Your grandfather walked out of the lab, drove home, came back at eight in the evening with a service pistol, and shot his father once in the chest at the door of the same lab. My mother heard it. She was twenty feet away cleaning glassware. She came around the corner and your grandfather was already on his knees next to his father trying to stop the bleeding with his hands."

Caleb watched the pavement.

"Did he die?"

"He died on the floor of that lab. Your grandfather sat with the body for three hours before he called anyone. Then he called my grandfather. My grandfather was a magistrate. He recorded the death as a workplace accident, falsified the lab logs, and never spoke to your grandfather again. He attended Henry’s funeral. He did not attend your grandfather’s funeral when that came around eleven years later."

"How did my grandfather die?"

"He shot himself in the same lab. Same pistol. He left a letter for Marcus. Marcus was nineteen."

She slowed.

"Marcus has been trying to do what his father tried to do. The thing his father killed his own father for. The thing his father killed himself over because he couldn’t do it alone. Marcus has been alone for forty-six years."

"Until now."

"Until you."

They walked another block.

The neighborhood was waking up. A bakery had its lights on. Someone was wheeling a trash bin out to the curb. A dog let out two short noises from a porch and stopped.

"Why did your mother tell you this?"

"She didn’t. I read the magistrate file when I was twenty-six. My grandfather kept a copy in his safe. He left me everything. I sat with the file for three days before I called Marcus."

"What did he say when you called?"

"He said: ’I wondered when you were going to find that.’ Then he said: ’Don’t tell my son.’ I asked him which son. He said: ’Either of them.’ I have not told you until this morning."

Caleb stopped walking.

She stopped too.

"Why now," he said.

"Because the list in his folder said today. And because the list in his folder is the only honest thing he has written me in twenty years, and I have been waiting to find out what was on it for a long time."

"You’ve seen the list before."

"No. I have known it existed."

They started walking again.

She moved closer to him on the sidewalk than she had been before. Not touching. Close enough that her coat sleeve brushed his when the wind moved it.

He thought about it for a block. "My grandfather. He left a letter for Marcus."

"Yes."

"Have you read the letter?"

"No. Marcus burned it the night he turned thirty. He told me about it the next morning at a cafe on the south side of the river. He had not slept. He drank four coffees while he told me what was in it. Then he never spoke about it again."

"What was in it?"

She kept walking.

"He told his son to finish the job," she said. "He told him to find a partner who would not leave him. He told him not to have children until the job was done. He told him that if he did have children, to lie to them about everything until they were old enough to be useful, and then to stop lying all at once."

"That last part."

"Marcus has done it exactly as it was written. I have watched him do it for thirty-eight years. He has been very precise."

"He didn’t follow the part about not having children."

"No. He met your mother when he was thirty-one. He told me three days before the wedding that he was going to break the rule. He said he wanted one thing in his life that was not the job. I told him I would still be there if it went wrong."

"It went wrong."

"You were born. Then your brother was born. Then your brother’s piece activated when he was eleven. Then Marcus did the math and realized he could not protect both of you with the time he had. He stopped lying all at once, like the letter said to. He chose your brother to carry the piece because your brother’s birth defect made the augment cover work. He left the country after the augments failed and gave your mother the only story she could survive. She thinks he died in an industrial accident in two thousand nine. She thinks she is a widow."

Caleb didn’t answer.

She let it sit.

They walked another two blocks before either of them spoke.

"Elara."

"Yes."

"What’s your part?"

"I have known since I was twenty-six that your father was going to need someone at the Captain level inside the First Division who could move resources without paper. I made captain when I was thirty-one. I have been moving resources for him without paper for fourteen years. The executives know somebody on the inside is doing it. They do not know it is me. Aris has been their hunt for the last three years, and Aris is the wrong man, which is why he filed the compliance review on you. He was trying to feed them a name they could close on so they would stop looking for the real one."

"You," Caleb said.

"Yes." She kept her attention on the street ahead.

She had her hand on the strap of her coat and the knuckles were white.

"Why are you telling me this in the open?"

"Because in the safe house Iris would have heard it, and Iris is the only person in this city who would have asked me to stop. She would have been right to ask. I am telling you because I want you to know who I am when I am standing next to you on the day this falls apart."

"You think it’s going to fall apart?"

"I think your father has been alone for forty-six years and he has earned a margin of error. I think the margin is not large. I think the next two weeks are going to take pieces out of all of us we will not get back. I am telling you because if I die before Day Sixteen I want one person in this fight to know my name was on the list."

"It’s not on his list."

"It will be. He’ll add it when he sees what I did this morning."

They turned the last corner back to the safe house.

She put her hand on his arm without turning toward him.

"There is one more thing."

"Okay."

"Your mother’s apartment has been watched since yesterday afternoon. A car parked across from the entrance at fifteen-thirty hours. It is still there. The plate is registered to a holding company that filed paperwork in twenty-twenty-one and has done nothing since. I do not know whose car it is. I will know by tonight. You will not go to her apartment alone tomorrow morning. I will be there. So will Iris. We will not enter the building with you. We will be on the street."

He didn’t pull his arm away.

She didn’t move her hand.

They reached the safe house gate.

She let go of his arm before they went through it.

Iris was standing on the porch.

Iris had been standing on the porch for at least the last six minutes, based on the angle of the morning light on her sweater and the depth of the steam off the second mug of coffee in her hand. She had not been outside when they left.

"Marcus called," Iris said. "Twelve minutes ago. He wants you back at the safe house tonight at twenty-one-hundred. He has the second item on the list ready."

"He’s been busy."

"He doesn’t sleep."

Caleb went up the porch steps. At the door he turned back.

"Elara," Caleb said. "Thank you."

"Mercer." She nodded once and turned away.