Rebecca Levene - Kill or Cure

He was still looking out over the city. It felt almost comfortable, a distant echo of the companionship we'd once enjoyed. I remembered with sudden clarity the one time he'd come on to me, after we'd been in the bunker three weeks and it was all starting to seem hopeless. He'd pushed me up against a bench in the lab at three in the morning and kissed me with a sort of desperation.

I'd pushed him away and tried to laugh it off.

He hadn't let me, though. "I know you've got a husband," he'd said. "But you're never going to see him again. Can't I be the last man you ever fuck?"

I'd just shaken my head and gone back to work and he hadn't tried it again. I wondered if he remembered that too, or if the Voice took away all memories of failure, if you let it.

"Why would I want to do that?" he asked now.

I shrugged, not very interested in playing his games. "Because you needed all the help you could get. I'd thought – I don't know why, I guess I just assumed – that you'd taken the Cure with you when you left. But of course, you didn't plan the explosion and what wasn't buried beneath it was trapped with me." I looked at him, a slight frown on his handsome dark-skinned face, and I knew that I was right. "You recreated it, I suppose, from its remnants in your own blood. But you got it wrong. The Infected of Cuba weren't at all what you intended, and you were hoping Queen M would be able to tell you why."

There was a long silence and I thought that he was angry. He must be unused to challenges to his authority after all this time surrounded by his worshippers, people who gave themselves to the Voice that spoke through his mouth. "Yes," he said finally. "That's true. But here, at least, I've got it right."

"I don't believe you. If you had, why would you need me?"

"Who says I do?"

"Ingo, and the trouble you went to get me here. Tell me just one thing, Ash. Was this planned all along – the Cull and the Cure?"

For the first time, I saw just a flicker of uncertainty in his face. "I don't remember. I've let go of that part of my life. But Jasmine, I want you to be a part of the new life I'm making here."

"If you think I'm going to help you spread the Cure, you've forgotten who I am."

"I could never forget you. And I don't need your help – not in the way you think."

"I'm not giving you any help."

He shrugged, dismissing my objections. "The thing is, I spent all that time, wasted it, trying to recreate the Cure – when I should have realised all along that it was unnecessary. The Cure's already inside me, perfect. The answer isn't to spread it, I know that now."

"A little too late for the people of Cuba," I said bitterly.

"They wanted what I gave them – I didn't force it on them. And I wasn't the one who burnt them to death."

A helpless shudder passed through me at the memory. "You left me no choice, Ash. Better a quick death than rotting away, piece by piece."

"Did you ask them that?" He waved a hand to silence me when I would have objected. "It doesn't matter. I realised that if I wanted to spread the Cure, I didn't need to infect people with it. There's a simpler and older method than that." He turned to face me fully, arms crossed over his chest. The moon was only a sliver of light above us and his face was in darkness.

But I didn't need to read his expression to know what he meant. I looked over at the two silent guards standing just inside the doors to the balcony. I looked at the round swells of their stomachs, pulling the material of their t-shirts tight. "Children. No wonder you wanted all the men castrated. Will every single child born in this city be yours?"

He nodded. "The Cure was an extreme form of gene therapy, you know that. It changed us. It rewrote our DNA and turned it into something more… eloquent."

"And that change will be passed along to your children," I said flatly, forcing the words out past the sudden nauseous tightness in my throat.

"Like all genes, the Cure only cares about reproducing itself. Given the biological raw materials, it can build the meat machines to carry itself, to propagate itself further."

"And they say romance is dead."

He didn't even smile. "Procreation has nothing to do with love. It's more basic than that, the replication of something older and greater than us. Genes are immortal, you know that. They're the only part of us we can truly send into the future."

"Well, I can certainly see the appeal of this little arrangement for you. What I'm finding harder to grasp is why anyone else would agree to it."

He spread his arms, a theatrical gesture playing to an audience of one. "They believe in me, Jasmine. When Jim Jones told his followers to drink poison and feed it to their children, they did it gladly. Suicide bombers turned their own bodies into shrapnel, back in that wonderful world we all remember before the Cull. People will do anything if they only believe, and I'm asking them for so much less than that."

"No," I said, "not so many, not that." And then, clear and unpleasant, I saw the whole picture. "But if you gave them a watered down version of the poison you gave the people of Cuba – then they might agree. Tell me, Ash, just what is in those pills your travelling circus is handing out like sweets?"

He smiled, almost pleased that I'd understood. "Only a little something to make them more… open to suggestion. I learnt from my mistakes in Cuba. The latest version doesn't leave any lasting damage."

"I don't think Haru would agree with you." For a moment I let myself imagine him and the terrible thing that might already have been done to him, all because he'd been foolish enough to listen to me.

"Your companion?" He shrugged. "In time he'll come to understand. That's the other thing I've found. Take someone's freedom, mutilate and brutalise them, and if you offer them a way to keep their pride, to tell themselves that it was all for a purpose, they'll take it. Humans have always lived a delusional life. I'm just giving them a different dream." He paused a moment, and when he carried on his tone was more fervent, almost fevered. I could hear the Voice, resonating through every syllable. "An incomplete dream, until now. But with you…"

"I won't join you. I don't believe, and I never will."

He shook his head. "You misunderstand. I don't need your co-operation, not in the way you mean. Your value lies elsewhere – in the Cure you're also carrying. All these children I've fathered with my wives here are only half-breeds. But our children, Jasmine – they could be the first of a new race."

I shook my head, horrified. The friend I'd once known had taken my rejection and accepted it. This Ash, the servant of the crazy Voice that I knew all too well, would never take no for an answer. I backed away, hands held out in front of me to push him away.

His own lashed out, fast as a striking snake, and grasped my wrist. I tried to twist away, to break his grip but he was too strong for me. Stronger than any human should be. I didn't stop struggling though, because this was something I would never surrender to. The balcony was a hundred feet above the city. I could throw myself over it, maybe even take him with me. Anything, anything, to stop this happening.

Another step, and now I felt other arms pin me, holding me immobile.

"No," Ashok said. "No, Jasmine, I would never do that to you."

I looked him in the eye, but there was no human compassion there. For the first time I accepted that every last trace of my friend was gone. "Yes you would."

"Then let me rephrase. I don't need to do that. I have something else entirely in mind." He nodded at the women behind me and they began to drag me towards the door of the suite. I dug my heels into the thick carpet, resisting with everything that was left in me, but it was futile. They had some of Ash's crazy strength about them. I wondered if it came from the warped new life growing deep inside them.