David Baldacci - The Finisher

“Didn’t say. And then it happened.”

“The red light?”

The look on his face was so fearful, my heart went out to him. “’Twas fire. Fire the likes of which I ain’t never seen. It was fire that … that was alive. It … it flamed up all around Virgil, like a serpent swallowing him whole. And then … and then he floated up in the air. And then … and then … he was gone. Without making a sound.” Delph paused, staring ahead. “Not one sound,” he added in what was no more than a whisper.

I could barely draw a breath. What Delph had just described was what had happened to my parents. My parents had suffered Events right in front of me. I had seen it! Only I hadn’t known that’s what it was.

I must have been looking blankly off because I was roused only when Delph gripped my shoulder and shook me.

“Vega Jane, are you all right?”

I still couldn’t speak.

“Vega Jane?” he said in a panicked voice.

My mind drifted back to the memory. I could see the fire swallowing them whole. An Event. Holy Steeples, I had witnessed their Events.

“Vega Jane?” He shook me so hard I nearly fell over.

I finally focused on him. “I’m sorry, Delph. What happened then?” I asked in a hoarse voice, the terrible image of my parents in flames still firmly in my mind’s eye.

He paused, licked his lips. “And then I run ’cause Morrigone saw me.”

“What did she look like?”

“Like she would kill me if she could get to me. I run harder than I ever run in all my sessions. But she was faster. She was there, before I got out the door, she was. Then that’s when it happened.”

“What happened?”

“The red light.”

“But I thought the red light happened with my grandfather. It was the flames.”

“No. The red light … the red light happened to me, Vega Jane.”

I thought back to when I had been in the past at Morrigone’s home. After seeing Delph run away. She had seen me, waved her hand and there had been a blue light.

I looked at Delph. “Delph, are you sure the light wasn’t blue?”

He shook his head. “’Twas red, Vega Jane. ’Twas red. Like the fire.”

“And what happened after that?”

“My head felt all funny-like. But I was running still. I kept running. And … and then that’s all. Just running.” He turned to me, looking drained by all he had recounted. “Why did you ask if the light was blue?”

“Because that’s the color it was when Morrigone waved her hand at me.”

He looked nearly petrified by these words. “You were there?”

“But I never remembered it, Delph. It was gone until I saw it again.”

“But then why did I just remember pieces of it, then? Until now?”

“Difference between blue and red light, I guess,” I said, feeling as drained as he looked. We both seemed to have run countless miles.

But I was also thinking of something else. When I told Morrigone I had visited her home once before, she had seemed immediately tense and suspicious. Now I knew why. She had thought I remembered seeing her all those sessions ago, when she had run out all mad-looking and hit me with the blue light, erasing from my mind what I had seen.

Then something else struck me. I stared hard at Delph.

He finally said, “What is it, Vega Jane?”

“Delph, you’re not stuttering anymore.”

He looked shaken by this observation; his mouth dropped open and then a smile slowly spread over his features. “You’re right.” He smiled more broadly.

“But why?” I asked.

“The words ain’t jargoled no more, Vega Jane.” He touched his head. “In here.”

I put a hand on his arm. “The weight has lifted from you, Delph. I don’t think you’ll ever stutter again. And I’m so sorry I had to put you through that. So very sorry, Delph, because you’re my friend. My only one.”

He looked at me and then to the sky. In the Noc light he looked like a very young again, running alongside me through the woods with nary a care in his heart. And the same for me. I couldn’t even imagine what that would feel like anymore. Even though we weren’t old, we were old with all that we carried inside.

He glanced at me, and the look on his face made me want to weep.

He touched my hand with his. “You’re my friend too. And I’d take you over all other Wugs put together.”

“I’m glad we got through that together, Delph.” I paused and then decided to just say it. “My parents had Events. I saw them. They’re not at the Care anymore. They’re gone.”

He looked at me in horror. “What?”

The tears slid down my cheeks as I continued. “The fire swallowed them up. It was just like you described, Delph. I had no idea what had happened to them, but now I do.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that, Vega Jane.”

“I’m sorry you had to see what you saw too.”

I looked down at the book I still held.

“What about Outliers? Are they in the book?” I asked.

He glanced at me and shook his head. “Outliers? Load-a rubbish.”

I hiked my eyebrows. I had come to agree with him, but I had seen so much that he hadn’t. “Why?”

“If Outliers are out there, what are they waiting for, then? For us Wugs to build this stonking Wall for them to have to get over? Barmy.”

“But you’re helping to build the Wall,” I pointed out.

“And what else can I do?” he said helplessly. “Probably chuck me in Valhall if I didn’t.”

“That’s why they had to put the reward on Quentin’s head,” I said. The answer had just occurred to me, in fact.

“Why?” asked Delph. “What do you mean?”

“They couldn’t simply say he’d had an Event, or a garm had got him. Because that would not have laid the groundwork for the announcement of the Outliers.”

Delph seamlessly picked up my line of thought. “And then to the building of the Wall. ’Cause the one made the other happen.”

“Right,” I said, impressed by his logic. Gone was the mumbly-bumbly Delph with the big heart. He was now strong of both mind and body. And I was pretty sure he would need both. To survive.

What I was about to say might sound to Delph like a spontaneous thought, but I believed part of my mind had been thinking this ever since John left me.

“Delph,” I said slowly.

“What?”

“You asked me if you could come with me through the Quag?”

He kept his gaze right on me. “That’s right. I did.”

“But why would you want to leave Wormwood? It’s all you’ve ever known.”

He scoffed. “What is there here, really, Vega Jane? Forty sessions from now, what will be different about here? And who’s to say there ain’t somethin’ out there, beyond the Quag? If there ain’t been no Wug to go there, how do they know there ain’t nothin’ else? Tell me that. And now they’re putting up this bleedin’ Wall? Har!”

I was so proud of Delph at that sliver that I wanted to snog him.

“I don’t think the Wall is being built to keep Outliers out, Delph. I think it’s being built —”

“To keep us in,” he finished for me.

“Council has lied to us. Krone, Morrigone, even Thansius,” I said quietly.

He nodded absently. “I’ll go with you through the Quag, Vega Jane. On the grave of me mum, I will go with you.”

“Okay,” I said. “If we’re going to really do this, we have to have a plan.”

He glanced at me. “What sort?”

I touched Destin around my waist. “For starters, you’re going to have to learn how to fly too.”

He looked terrified. “Fly? What, up there?” he said, pointing to the sky.

“Well, that’s sort of the point of flying, Delph.”

He put his huge hands up in protest. “I never. I couldn’t, Vega Jane. I’m … I’m too big .”