Alpha

by Jus Accardo

  “You’re—” Sera’s face paled. She even backed away another step. “We weren’t together.”

  Rabbit’s face contorted. His eyes narrowed, and his lips pulled back into a vicious sneer. “Is that what you need to tell yourself? That the whole thing was a dream?”

  “More like a nightmare,” she said, voice cracking.

  There was fear in her eyes. “It’s okay, Sera.”

  But she didn’t hear me. From the way she stared ahead, unmoving and dazed, she didn’t see me, either. She was lost in something. A memory, a feeling, something linking back to her past. Those shadows were the worst. There, but not. They lingered just beyond reach, no matter how hard she chased.

  I could help her. I could turn the light on and illuminate the feeling of dread she couldn’t quite put her finger on when she looked at Phil MaKaden—any version of him—but refused. Early on, when she’d still had her memories, she’d admitted to wanting to forget. She’d been so desperate to leave her past behind. It was the one good thing—the only good thing—I could give her. Blissful ignorance.

  “I might not know you, but part of me does remember you.” She was shaking her head. “I felt it needling me when you unlocked my cell. It’s bugged me since back at Infinity, in the lab just after we escaped. But now…just now when you looked at me like that—I remember you looking at me that way a hundred times. That anger and…and entitlement.”

  “Unlocked your cell? You’ve lost your mind,” Rabbit snapped.

  Sera laughed, nodding her head a little too enthusiastically. “Actually, I have. And even if I never get it back, I will still remember you.”

  I stepped up beside her. She was shaking, anger rolling off her like I’d never seen before. “We’re leaving,” I said. “Rabbit is off the table.”

  “Off the table,” she whispered. There were tears in her eyes, but her expression was anything but stricken. It was fierce. Deadly. “But—”

  I nodded and carefully took her hand. She tensed for a moment before catching my eye and allowing me to lead her out the front door. It still took all my willpower to leave him standing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sera

  G walked us to the front of Rabbit’s yard and gathered me close. I didn’t argue as he pulled me to him, gentle as though I was made of glass. I didn’t make a sound as he kissed the top of my head and lingered for a moment before skipping us to another Wells. I didn’t question him when he led me down the foliage-lined street and tucked us away below the shade of a large oak, or when he gently nudged me to sit on the wrought iron bench beneath it.

  For a while we just stayed like that. Just sitting under that tree, out of the sunshine in an odd sort of silence. The quiet with G had never been an issue. Now, though, it felt heavy. Maybe he was afraid I’d snap again. Lose my cool and start screaming, or worse, crying. I didn’t remember the details of my old life, but I recalled a cloudy memory of someone slapping me, someone of the male persuasion, and telling me he didn’t need to see the waterworks.

  “Whatever it is you remembered, it’s in the past,” he said softly.

  “I know that.” The words came out low, almost weak, and I hated myself for it. I’d cried in those early days at Infinity. I couldn’t remember my name, or what foods I liked, but I remembered that. I’d cried a lot. G never made me feel weak, though, and each day I cried a little bit less. Each day some of his strength seemed to seep into me. Strength was the only way to survive.

  “And even if it weren’t, I would have never let him hurt you.”

  “I know that, too.” I thought about his face when he’d taken me from the house. How his eyes had sparked with fury and his muscles wound tight. His final glance at Rabbit, a threat of something worse than death, both terrified and elated me. He was capable of bad things, dark things. Far darker than I’d imagined.

  “I just need to stop and breathe, okay? I need to think. Then we can get back to it.”

  It took a minute, but when he understood what I meant, he jumped from the bench and glared at me. “This isn’t up for debate. We’re not going to him for help. On any world.”

  It wasn’t like I wanted to. In fact, the thought of seeing Rabbit again—any version of him—actually made the acid in my stomach roil, and I had no idea why. Worse than that, though? G’s insistence. There was something off about it. “What are you not telling me?”

  “Nothing.”

  So it was back to the one-word answers? No. “Liar. Tell me.”

  He closed his eyes tight. “Don’t ask me this, Sera.”

  It was more his tone—guttural and raw—than the fact that I knew he was hiding something that made me twitch. “G—”

  He opened them and pinned me with a furious glare. “Don’t ask me again.”

  More than anything, I wanted to push it. He knew something, there was no doubt in my mind. But he was also dangerously close to the edge. The rapid rise and fall of his chest, the slightly shuttering vein in his neck, and the rigid set of his shoulders… He’d confessed to worrying about activating the serum. I didn’t want to chance being the cause of it.

  I sighed and sank back to the bench. “Fine. Okay. That leaves only one option.”

  “Cora.”

  “Not a choice I love. Also, one we’re not very equipped to deal with.” I reached across and tapped his chipped arm. “Let’s see if we can find someone who can give us a little insight.”

  “Insight? Like who?”

  I held up his arm so that he could see the translucent blue screen—Cade’s frequency. His PATH line was green. He was in the same Wells as we were.

  …

  It took almost three hours to find Cade, and by the time we did, G had deteriorated further.

  He looked like crap, and Cade must have noticed, too, because he was staring. “You okay?”

  “Sure.”

  He frowned, then rolled his eyes. “My brother used to do the same thing. We had an ATV accident when I was fourteen. On the outside everything was coming up rockets, on the inside, he walked home with four broken ribs, a broken toe, and a dislocated shoulder all without saying a damn thing.”

  “Your brother is a goddamned psychopath.”

  “Technically you’re my brother.”

  G leaned back and kicked his feet onto the empty chair beside me. “Rest my case.”

  “Anyway,” I said. I glared between the two of them then tapped the table. I hadn’t forgotten about G’s refusal to go after Rabbit again, and had no intention of letting it slide, but I knew better than to fight him outright. Especially with the poison still working its way through his system. I’d have to play the cards right. We’d filled Cade in on our little jailhouse visit from Karl and had spent the last half hour trying to decide whose deal held more weight. “Do we have a consensus?”

  “No,” G said as Cade nodded and remarked, “Yes.”

  I groaned and let my head fall to the tabletop. “This is getting us nowhere.”

  “Maybe we should switch. You guys try catching up with Dylan, and I’ll chase the tech.”

  “No.” G’s face left no room for argument. “I’m not leaving her fate up to—” He gasped and stumbled from the seat, coughing and wheezing like he couldn’t catch his breath. Doubling over, he fell to the floor.

  Cade and I both jumped up, but he was around the table and to him first. “Hey,” he said, hauling G up. “Hey, look at me. Take it easy. Deep breath. Slow.”

  G struggled several times but got the coughing under control—but not before he tried to hide the blood. “G…”

  There was so much more of it now. Small pools instead of simply a smear.

  He flashed a painful grin when he noticed me staring. “Sera, please. I’m okay. This isn’t—” The coughing started again, but it was different now. More violent with a rattling wheeze. This time he couldn’t get a handle on it.

  “Is he…” The waitress lingered a few feet from our table. “Is he all right?”

 
; “Doctor,” Cade said as he braced G’s body to keep him from flailing around. “Ambulance. He’s been poisoned. Hurry!”

  The girl paled and bolted off.

  “Is that a good idea?” We needed to get him help, but we knew nothing about this world or their medicine. “What if they do something to make it worse?”

  Cade’s brows knitted together, and his lips twisted into a grim frown. “I’m not sure anyone can make it worse at this point. We have to do something. Now. This is the only option.”

  A few minutes later, sirens blared, getting louder and louder. G had given up trying to stand and was struggling just to breathe when the EMTs came. From there, everything moved at warp speed.

  They loaded him into the back of the ambulance, ushering Cade and me inside as they slammed the doors closed. The ride to the hospital was surreal, watching them work on G as he lay there, still coughing up blood, so much blood, and hearing them talk—yet not really understanding the words. I was numb, terrified in a way that I’d never been before. All the horrible things Cora did to us, all the threats she made, none of them had shaken my very core like this. Seeing him like this stripped me down to bone.

  When we arrived at the hospital, they whisked him away and demanded that we wait in the designated area as they worked. The place was busy. Nurses and doctors hustled back and forth, breezing here and there, none stopping to talk to us. I curled up in a large chair while Cade paced the room. Back and forth. Back and forth. Every once in a while, he’d stop and look around like he’d forgotten where he was before resuming his trek. He seemed genuinely concerned.

  “You look worried,” I said when I couldn’t stand it anymore. Normally the pacing wouldn’t bother me. God knew I’d listened to G do it for as far back as I could remember. But now it was grating, making me jumpy and raw.

  Cade frowned. “I am.”

  “Me, too.”

  “He’ll be okay,” he said, finally claiming the seat across from me. “My brother is as stubborn as they come.”

  “But he’s not your brother.”

  Cade sighed. He leaned back in the chair and tilted his head toward the ceiling for a moment before sighing. “Isn’t he?” He lowered his head and pinned me with what I could only describe as an apologetic gaze. “He’s Dylan. Doesn’t matter what he calls himself or what’s been done to him. Those things don’t change who he is underneath it all. Whether he’s shattered like my Dylan or just badly bruised, he’s still Dylan.”

  “Destroyed,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. Thinking about the way he’d said it broke my heart. “He feels like he’s been destroyed. By Cora. By what she did to him…”

  “I think he’s stronger than that.”

  “Your Dylan wasn’t,” I pointed out.

  “My Dylan lost the one thing that kept him tethered. G hasn’t. He has you.”

  “He can’t wait to leave me behind.” The words, and the thought, were like acid in my belly. “He feels like he’s dangerous—and he’s right. He is. But I don’t believe he’s dangerous to me.”

  “I don’t, either.”

  “Have you come across him many times? Alternate versions, I mean?”

  “You’d think my answer would be yes, considering how long we’ve been doing this, but no. G is the first alternate version of my brother that I’ve had any real interaction with.”

  “Mr. Granger?” A tall man in a white coat poked his head out from behind the closed doors. His expression was grim.

  Cade jumped up and was across the room in three long steps. I followed close behind. “How is he?”

  The doctor frowned. He hesitated for a minute, and a sick feeling bubbled up in the pit of my stomach. He glanced between us and sighed. “Sit down. We need to talk…”

  Chapter Sixteen

  G

  “Now,” the doctor, whose name was Mitching, had returned with Cade and Sera, and had settled on the chair by the window. I’d passed out for a while, and since waking up, no one would tell me shit. “The EMTs informed me that you thought you’d been poisoned. Is that correct?”

  “Yeah.” They’d made me put on a hospital gown, and I had no clue where my clothes had gone. The smock was itchy and smelled like bleach, and I couldn’t wait for him to spill it so I could take the damn thing off.

  “We did extensive testing and discovered no trace of any type of poison in your system. We did, however, find a virus.”

  “A virus?” Sera’s lips turned downward, and she paled just a little.

  Cade, on the other hand, looked hopeful. “So you can treat it? Medication to kill it?”

  The doctor’s expression grew bleaker. I knew the answer before he even opened his mouth. “We’ve been able to stave off the symptoms with a fair amount of success by using moderate doses of adrenaline, but I’m afraid that’s just a bandage, and we’ll begin to see diminished effects sooner rather than later. We can’t treat it because we have no idea what it is.”

  “You’ve never seen it before?”

  “We’ve never encountered anything like it. It’s multiplying at an exponential rate. The virus quickly overtakes anything we give him.”

  “So, what’s the prognosis?” Though, I knew. Poison or virus, without the antidote I might as well just dig my own damn grave—which would have been fine if Sera’s life weren’t on the line as well. I needed to live long enough to make sure she was okay.

  “I’m not sure what to say.” His gaze darted to the door, and he stood. I got the feeling he couldn’t wait to get out of that room. Fingers lingering at the handle, he said, “We’ll keep you here for tests, and we’ll do our best. It doesn’t seem contagious. I have a virus specialist coming in from the city in the morning. He might know more than we do here.”

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Cade was by my side. “We have to find Dylan. Now.”

  “Yeah,” I said, throwing the covers off and swinging my legs around. The room spun for a moment before coming to a grinding halt. “That’s a great plan. Why the hell didn’t I think of it before?”

  Cade rolled his eyes then grabbed my arm. At first, I thought it was to restrain me, but I realized he’d seen me sway. It was a subtle touch to keep me from falling. Probably casual in hopes that Sera hadn’t noticed. “What we need is a trap.”

  Sera snorted. “Haven’t you guys tried that, like, a million times already?”

  “She has a point. If it were me—which, it kind of is—I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t keep falling for the same crap over and over.”

  “Exactly,” Cade said. He nodded in my direction. “Which is why this time I think we can pull it off.”

  “Why? Because of me? Not sure where you’re looking, but I’m half dead.” Right now, I wouldn’t be able to go two rounds with a two-legged cat. What good would I be?

  “What would you do? If you were in Dylan’s shoes, chasing Karl with no luck?”

  I thought about it for a minute, then sighed. “Hard to say. If it were me and Karl was proving to be impossible, I’d go full throttle at Cora.” I turned to Sera. “She said she had a way to get him back to his Ava, right? That’s what he’s after.”

  She nodded.

  “Then I’d go at her. Yeah. If it were me, I’d get tired real fast of trying to shake down someone else’s problems, and just deal with my own.”

  Cade smiled. “My thoughts exactly. So let’s work with that.”

  Maybe I was doped with the good stuff because I still didn’t understand what he was getting at. “How exactly can we work with that?”

  “Dylan is going to be hunting Cora. Everyone is hunting Karl. I say we bring everyone together. Lead them all to one place and make our stand.”

  “But where?” Sera asked. She frowned, gaze lingering on me for a moment before focusing on him. “We still need Cora to fix the chip in my head and for Dylan to hand over the antidote. Where could we convincingly lure them both that would give us the upper hand to do all that?”

  Cade’s grin widen
ed. “The one place they couldn’t go. Home.”

  …

  Cade’s plan was an outline at best. It lacked meat, but even I had to admit it started with a solid foundation. We agreed that since time was an issue, we’d have to build on it as we went. Step one? Getting me the hell out of this hospital bed. To do that? I needed drugs. Specifically, adrenaline.

  As the doctor said, it was a bandage, but it was one that worked. For now, at least. Whatever the virus was, the adrenaline kept it at bay. We didn’t know how long it would last, so acting fast was in our best interest.

  “Okay,” Cade said. We were outside a park after having skipped from the hospital. He fished into his inside pocket and pulled out a small plastic bag. He’d managed to liberate me a handful of syringes and several vials of adrenaline. I went to grab it, but Sera beat me to it. “Don’t overdo it. Remember—diminishing effects.”

  She wrapped the handles of the bag around her wrist and gave a short nod. “He won’t.”

  “We’re clear on the plan?” He’d only asked us fifteen times since we’d landed here.

  I sighed. “We find Karl and tell him we’ve tracked down a way to cloak him from Cora.”

  “We convince him that, in order for us to give him the tech,” Sera said, “he needs to come with us.”

  Cade nodded. “Bring him to my home world.” He pointed to my arm. “The frequency is programmed in.”

  “In the meantime, you’re going after Cora.” Sera tried—and failed—to hide her shudder. “You’re going to tell her you have Karl and are willing to exchange him and the flash drive for the information on how to fix my chip.”

  “This whole convoluted plan still has a lot of holes,” I said. Granted, it was all we had, but still. There were too many variables. Too many chances to fuck it all up. “This hinges on a lot of probabilities. Us tracking Karl down and convincing him to come, all in a reasonable amount of time. You being able to do the same with Cora, without her just wiping you from the face of the Earth…”

  “And Dylan,” Sera said. “You’re assuming he’ll end up following Karl or Cora. If he’s wanted for murder on your world, do you really believe he’ll skip back there?”