Chapter 29 Dimitri #2
"I'm fine." He leaned to whisper in her ear. "I need to talk to Dave in private. Not down there. I hinted that I couldn't talk because of the cameras, and he picked up on it. I asked if they wanted to see you and said that I need to check with you first."
Mattie's eyes widened. "You invited all eight of them up here?"
"I need a space without cameras, Mattie. This is the only option."
"I know, I know. It's fine." She looked down at herself, then at the hallway, then into their room through the open door.
She had the expression of a woman who had just been told company was coming, and the house was a wreck.
"But you need to tidy up first in case they want to talk inside our room.
Look at this place. The beds aren't made, our things are scattered everywhere, and I can't do it with one hand. "
Dimitri wasn't going to invite them into their room.
They could conduct the conversation out in the hallway, but in case they wanted more privacy, he needed the room to be ready, and it wasn't. The beds were unmade, the blankets tangled, the pillows askew.
Mattie's clothes from yesterday were draped over the chair.
A cup from last night sat on the floor by the bed.
Immortal speed was still a novelty, and he hadn't tested its upper limits in enclosed spaces, but his body responded before his mind fully committed to the action.
He was across the room in a blur, yanking the blanket taut on Mattie's bed, flipping the pillow, and smoothing the surface.
Then the other bed, same routine, the blankets snapped into place with a crack of fabric.
He shoved his bed further away from hers, widening the gap to a respectable distance, and scooped up the scattered clothing, folding each item with the speed of a time-lapse video and stacking them on the chair.
The shoes went under the bed. The towels went into the bathroom. The cup went out to the dresser.
The entire operation took less than thirty seconds.
Mattie stared at him.
"Show-off," she said.
Smiling, he surveyed the area with a critical eye. It wasn't going to win any interior decor awards, but it was presentable. "It's not like there's much to tidy. We don't exactly have a lot of possessions."
"Lucky us." There was a wry edge to her voice that he loved. Even in pain, Mattie's humor was a blade she kept sharp. "Alright. Call them up."
He walked to the stairwell and called down. "You can come up now."
The footsteps began immediately.
Eight sets of boots ascending in perfect unison, the synchronized rhythm echoing off the stairwell walls. The sound grew louder, closer, and Dimitri stepped back to give them space to enter the hallway.
They emerged one after another, eight different faces carrying identical expressions of neutral attentiveness.
The hallway, which had felt reasonably spacious when it was just Dimitri and Mattie eating breakfast, suddenly shrank.
Eight immortal bodies occupied a lot of space, and not just physically.
There was a presence to them, a density, as if the merged consciousness generated its own gravitational field.
All eight turned to Mattie.
"How are you feeling?" Number One asked.
Mattie was sitting up straight in her chair, her bandaged hand in her lap, and Dimitri saw her take a steadying breath before she answered. "I'm in pain, but the medication helps, and I'm alive, which I owe to you. If you hadn't come when you did…" She didn't finish the sentence. "Thank you."
They smiled at her.
All eight of them. Simultaneously.
The same smile, on eight different faces, the same degree of lip curvature, the same slight crinkling around the eyes, the same warmth that was either genuine or a masterful simulation.
Dimitri had to suppress a shiver. There was something deeply wrong about watching eight males smile in perfect unison at the woman he loved. It was like staring at an optical illusion that his brain kept trying to resolve into something that made sense and kept failing.
Mattie, to her credit, didn't flinch. "It means a lot to me," she said. "That you came to see me."
"We will always come," Number One said, and the simplicity of it was somehow worse than an elaborate promise.
Dimitri cleared his throat. "I'd invite you to sit, but as you can see—" He gestured at the hallway. Two chairs, one dresser, a narrow corridor designed for foot traffic, not hosting a committee of eight. "We're a bit short on seating."
"We are comfortable standing," Number One said. All eight bodies arranged themselves along the wall with the ease of soldiers accustomed to long watches on their feet. "And we would like to hear the explanation that you could not give us downstairs."
Straight to it, then.
Dimitri leaned against the wall opposite the Eight, positioning himself where he could see all of them while keeping Mattie in his peripheral vision. He folded his arms across his chest, then unfolded them because folded arms were a defensive posture and he didn't want to signal defensiveness.
"What I'm about to tell you has to stay between us."
Sixteen eyes regarded him with patient intensity, and then eight heads nodded.
"It will be our secret," Number One said, and as he lifted his fist to his chest, the other seven did the same.
It was a vow, and Dimitri knew instinctively that Dave would not break it.
"I've transitioned," Dimitri said. "Into immortality."
The words hung in the hallway like smoke.
Dimitri had told Petrov the same thing just yesterday, and Petrov's reaction had been shock, questions, and a grab for the vodka.
Dave's reaction was…nothing.
All eight bodies went still.
It wasn't the studied stillness of people choosing to be quiet.
This was something else, a total cessation of movement that extended to the involuntary.
No blinking. No breathing. No micro-adjustments of weight or posture.
Eight male bodies suspended in perfect stasis while the consciousness behind them processed the information.
It lasted maybe five seconds, but those five seconds were the most unnerving thing Dimitri had experienced since the night Tarik had bitten him.
Synchronized movement was unsettling. Synchronized stillness was terrifying.
"How?" Number One's voice broke the silence, and all eight bodies seemed to reboot simultaneously. A breath, a blink, a subtle readjustment of weight.
"The only plausible explanation is that I had dormant immortal genes.
I had no idea that I carried them, but then Tarik bit me the night he attacked me in the bar.
" Dimitri kept his voice steady and clinical as if he were presenting research findings rather than revealing the most profound change in his life.
"His friends pulled him off before he could pump in enough venom to kill me, and instead of dying, I transitioned. "
"And now you are immortal."
"Yes."
"Tarik intended to kill you, but instead, he gave you immortality. That's what is called irony."
"The universe has a dark sense of humor."
That almost got a reaction; the ghost of something flickered across Number One's face, a micro-expression that might have been amusement on someone who experienced amusement normally.
Perhaps it was muscle memory. Maybe the male who used to be Number One before he became part of Dave had been easily amused.
"I'm still adjusting to the changes, which is why my fighting was sloppy. I have immortal strength and speed, but zero training. I was desperate, and my body moved like it knew what to do from some genetic memory."
The Eight were quiet again, but this time, it wasn't the unnerving total stillness from before.
"Does Petrov know?" Number One asked.
"Yes. I told him yesterday after you left."
"Does anyone else know?"
Dimitri hesitated. "Mattie has known for a while now, and there were witnesses at the harbor who saw the fight. Losham may already have that information."
Eight heads nodded in unison. "We are aware of the witnesses. Losham was informed."
Dimitri's stomach dropped. "And?"
"He is curious, not alarmed. Not yet."
Not yet. Those were the operative words.
"This is fortunate," Number One said.
It took Dimitri a moment to realize that Dave wasn't talking about Losham's reaction.
"Fortunate?" he repeated.
"Your transition." All eight bodies seemed to focus on him with renewed intensity, as if he'd just become significantly more interesting. "This is fortunate. It means you will live long enough to complete your work."
Dimitri frowned. "My work? The enhancement drugs?"
"No."
"Then what work?"
"The work you haven't started yet." Number One's voice was calm, almost gentle. "The work that matters."
Dimitri opened his mouth, closed it, and looked at Mattie. She was watching the exchange with wide eyes, her good hand gripping the edge of the chair.
He turned back to Dave. "I don't understand. What work are you talking about?"
Number One regarded him with those steady, unreadable eyes.
"You are a brilliant biochemist. You understand molecular structures and genetic mechanisms better than most. Your mind is your gift, Dimitri.
The enhancement drugs were a necessity, a stepping stone, but they were not your entire purpose. "
"My purpose," Dimitri repeated. "What is my purpose?"
"We see patterns." Number One tilted his head, and seven other heads tilted at the same angle. "In the data, in the chemistry, in the way things connect. You will understand when the time comes."
"That's not an answer."
"No," Number One agreed. "It is not."
Silence filled the hallway. Not the terrifying stillness of before, but a loaded quiet that felt like the space between a question and its answer, stretched taut and humming with potential.
Dimitri looked at Mattie again. She gave a small shake of her head. I don't understand either.
He wanted to push. Every scientist's instinct in him demanded clarification. You didn't tell a researcher that his life's work was ahead of him and then refuse to elaborate.
But Dave's expression, all eight versions of it, was closed. Not hostile, not secretive, just finished. The way a professor might look when he'd delivered a lecture, and the students had to figure out the rest on their own.
"We need to talk more," Number One said. "Privately."
"This is private." Dimitri gestured at the camera-free hallway.
"This is the beginning. There is more. Things that require time and consideration, and that should not be discussed where Mattie can be burdened by knowledge that might put her in danger."
Mattie straightened. "I can handle—"
"We do not doubt your courage." Number One turned to her, and the gentleness in his voice was so unexpected that Dimitri did a double take. "We doubt the wisdom of making you a target for information that others might try to extract. What you don't know cannot be thralled out of you."
It was a valid point. Compulsion was a unique ability that only Lord Navuh and Dave seemed to possess, but thralling was something almost any immortal was capable of, and Mattie was human and susceptible to both.
"Tonight," Number One said, turning back to Dimitri. "After dark. The two of us will take a walk outside and talk."
"The two of us, being me and all eight of you."
"Yes."
The absurdity of it almost made him laugh. A stroll after dark with an eight-bodied hive mind to discuss his supposed life mission. His life had become a science fiction novel written by someone with a very strange imagination.
"Okay," Dimitri said. "I'll come down at seven-thirty."
"We will come for you."
All eight bodies straightened simultaneously, a signal that the conversation was over. Number One turned to Mattie one last time.
"Get well, Mattie," he said.
"Thank you."
Eight smiles answered her. The same disturbing, synchronized expression of warmth that shouldn't have been possible from a merged consciousness that had supposedly transcended individual emotions.
Then they filed out, one by one, their boots marking that precise, mechanical rhythm on the stairs. Eight bodies descending in perfect unison, the sound fading as they reached the main lab, and then the heavy clunk of the reinforced door opening and closing.
They were gone, and the hallway felt enormous now that it was empty of their presence.
Dimitri let out a long breath.
"Well," Mattie said. "That was unnerving."
"Which part?"
"All of it. But especially the part where the eight-bodied collective intelligence told you that your real work hasn't started yet and then refused to explain what they meant. What do you think he was talking about?"
Dimitri sat on the other chair and draped his arm over the dresser.
"I have no idea," he admitted. "And that scares me more than anything else that's happened on this island."
"More than the harbor? More than Tarik?"
"Those were physical threats. Simple to understand." He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. "Dave is talking about something he's been thinking about across eight minds simultaneously for who knows how long. And whatever it is, he thinks I'm essential to it. That's scary."
"But it also means that it's essential for him to keep you alive," Mattie pointed out. "That's good."
"I'm not sure. Given how glad they were that I was immortal now, they expect me to provide what they need for a very long time. Probably for as long as I live."