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The first time Nile sees Nicky and Joe’s Marks activated is just after she breaks into Merrick’s lab using Copley’s ID card. They’ve pulled on shirts, found weapons, and are standing just inside the lab door when they do it; in a motion like a familiar dance, they raise their hands in sync and touch their fingertips to each others’ lips, arms crossed like blades in the space between them.
Now, Nile was a marine, in her past life. She knows Marks. She has seen men Marked with dozens of them, soulspots covering their faces in war masks, generals and COs and enemy targets alike who have gone into battle more times than Nile has fingers. Those Marks are one thing.
These? The Marks on Joe and Nicky? They are something else entirely.
Nile can’t help it—she stares as the lines and dots alight on their skin, luminescent blood red splashed in a ferocious pattern mirrored perfectly between them. Chin to forehead, neck to shoulders, shoulders to fingertips… every inch of skin that Nile can see is covered, and she suspects that the Marks don’t end there. They are otherworldly, the Marks of men who have survived not dozens of battles but hundreds, thousands, the two of them rising anew every time they are cut down to finish the fight. These are the Marks of a pair of warriors who cannot be claimed by death; whose next battle is never the last; who cannot be stopped, only slowed, and even then not for very long at all.
And then they turn to Andy, and Joe raises his hand to touch her chin, and Nile has just barely begun to process the idea of someone who isn’t your romantic soulmate or your parent activating your Warrior Marks when Andy’s Marks become visible and—
Good god, Nile has never been as amazed—or as terrified—as she is right now. She gapes as thousands, millions, of thread-fine red lines burst across Andy’s skin, an intricate lacework tapestry of battles fought, all woven together in beautiful patterns. She thinks about how many people Andy has killed, thinks about how many souls whose time on earth was ended the very moment they set eyes on those incredible Marks, and she feels almost dizzy with it.
Someday, she might have Marks like that. Someday, in her future, she might have more. She nearly laughs at the absurdity of it, before she realizes that Andy has approached her in turn.
“Would you like me to activate yours?” she asks, her ancient eyes unflinching as she looks down at Nile, two fingers raised.
Nile blinks, her mind going blank. The only times she’s ever had her Marks activated were when her mom activated them: once for a tournament-ending soccer game her senior year of high school, once when she went off to bootcamp, and once after that when she set off for Afghanistan. She remembers sitting with Booker, how he mentioned that he hasn’t had his Marks activated since his wife did it when he was drafted into Napoleon’s army—and she thinks, I could refuse.
She could. She could keep those touches of her mother untarnished, leave them lying dormant under her skin for the next thousand, two thousand, three thousand years. She could leave her soul untouched by these strange people with their strange ways, their countless Marks and their endless days.
But she came back. She came back to save them. And while there’s a piece of her that aches to think of her mother’s touch being overridden by the touch of these strangers, there’s a larger part that thinks… heck. This is the first day of the rest of her long, long life. Why not?
She bites her lip, raises her chin… and she nods. An understanding passes between them. Andy smiles, a touch of pride in her face, and then… just like that… she reaches forward and presses her fingertips to Nile’s chin.
The touch… it’s unlike anything Nile has ever felt before, even when her mother did this. Goosebumps erupt along her skin, following the hot, burning lines of Marks that shoot off from the point of contact. Three lines from her mother… and then a fourth, longer and thicker than the others, winding around them, encompassing them. She shudders as the heat fades, leaving her painted with the Marks of a warrior. She raises her eyes to Andy, and feels… for the first time… that she’s truly a part of this. She is one of them, their sister, and she will fight by their side for as long as they’ll have her.
“There,” Andy says, and steps back again. “We’re ready.”
“You sure about this, Boss?” Joe asks, eyes flickering down to the bullet wound in her side.
Andy’s jaw clenches, grim. “We walk out of here like always,” she says.
“Not yet, we don’t,” Nile says. She turns to Booker, who is standing off to one side, the gun in his arms cradled close to his chest. His large, sad eyes find hers, and he tilts his head in a question.
Nile grits her teeth, and raises her hand. “If we’re in this, we’re in this together,” she says, and takes a step toward him. It’s enough time for him to see what she means, enough time for him to pull back… but he doesn’t. His eyes are wide, staring, as she reaches forward… until they slip closed, just before she touches his chin in turn.
She’s afraid, for a moment, that it won’t work. She’s never done this before, never activated anyone’s Marks—what if she screws it up?
She finds that she needn’t have worried. It comes to her instinctively—a tug deep in her psyche, and she draws the heat up from inside of her and presses it into Booker’s skin. He takes a deep breath but does not move as the Marks light up on his face—one from his wife, a circle balanced on his upper lip, and one from Nile, a line across the bridge of his nose. He shivers as the Marks settle. Then he opens his eyes again, raising them to meet hers, then Joe’s, Nicky’s, and—finally—Andy’s.
“Together,” he says, setting his shoulders.
“Good,” Andy says, and Nile could swear there is almost a smile on her lips. Then she steps forward, leading them toward freedom.