Fuse (Pure Trilogy 2) Read Online Free Page B

scars beneath a stocking made to look like a second skin. Recently, she’s reverted to wrapping herself in swathes of cloth—because she’s ashamed of her skin? Or is it simply a habit? She murdered her husband—a scalpel to the back—and it messed her up good. Lyda is the only one he wants to see. Lyda.
    “Lyda, yes. Illia? I don’t know,” Mother Hestra says.
    “Where are we going?” Partridge asks.
    “Can’t say.” And with that, she heaves herself out of view. The cellar door slams shut. For a second, Partridge is blinded by the news. No more confinement. He’ll see Lyda tomorrow. Everything will be different soon; it’s coming. He can feel it. God, he misses her.
    That’s when he hears the rasp, low and heavy. And then there’s a noise like a shovel in dirt. But that’s not it either—a thick scraping noise.
    He feels like he’s not alone.
    His mother’s music box lies in the dirt. He reaches for it and sees a long black talon on a thin spoke—the leg of an insect, a massive insect—sticking out from under the plywood. It’s too big to be the beetle’s leg. Still there’s rasping.
    He puts his hand on the plywood and begins to lift it. The leg crimps, disappears from view.
    He takes a breath and yanks the plywood so hard it flips over; he forgets he’s been coded with extra strength sometimes.
    There’s the beetle. Its tail clicking against its own shell, its wings convulsing wildly and uselessly, rasping as it struggles for breath.
    It has one spiny, thick, massive leg.
    The liquid in the vial worked. The cells of its leg weren’t injured, and so, with incredible speed, the cells didn’t repair trauma—they built on healthy tissue and bone; even the ornate spikes on this one hind leg have ordered themselves perfectly. And, for some reason, this seems familiar to him—the delicacy of rebuilding a small limb. Has he ever heard of something like it before?
    Partridge doesn’t want to touch it. His hand still tingles with heat. Unwieldy, imperfect, dangerous . That’s what his mother called the serum. The beetle’s leg jerks uncontrollably, gouging a claw mark in the dirt.
    And Partridge feels a strange rush of power. He made this happen with one tiny drop of liquid. His head pounds and his ears ring, and he thinks of his father’s power. What did the old man feel when the Detonations hit—blast after blast of bright blinding light pulsing around the earth?
    My God, Partridge thinks. What if Partridge’s father loved the power of it all? What if it made him feel like he was lit up? What if it felt like this infinitesimal moment expanded exponentially, infinitely, inside of him?
    The beetle’s wings fold in tightly to its body. The leg spasms a few more times, and then the beetle digs its powerful leg into the dirt like a knife and pushes itself up. Its small legs dart beneath it, and the massive leg contracts, then extends. The beetle springs into the air and flaps its wings. The leg is too heavy for the wings to support. It falls to the ground, but the massive leg is there to soften the landing. It contracts again, springs forward, flaps, lands, contracts, springs forward . . .
    The beetle is no longer what it was moments ago.
    It’s a new species.

E L C APITAN
NEW
    I T’S BEEN SNOWING OFF AND ON , and now it’s started up again. Snow shudders down from the sky, lightly drifting between the dark trees and scrub, settling on gnarled boughs. Many of the limbs have grown thick coats of fur this cold autumn. El Capitan runs his fingers up the spindly limb of a sapling, and there it is—not a fuzzy coating of something plantlike. No, this is the downy fur you’d find on the belly of a young cat. “One day they’ll grow legs and walk off,” he says to his brother, Helmud, the weight forever rooted to his back.
    “Walk off,” Helmud whispers. He looks out over one of El Capitan’s shoulders then bobs to the other. He seems anxious today
    “Stop shifting around,” El Capitan