Alicia’s eyes flickered to the large black cuff watch wrapped around her wrist. “Eight hours,” she answered after a second’s calculation. “Give or take thirty minutes.”
Ethan shook his head in bewilderment at her words, and he reached up to run his left hand through his hair. He flinched as the movement caused a jolt of pain to rock through his left bicep, and he dropped his arm again, aborting the action. “Eight hours?” he repeated. His eyes were so wide that he was sure they’d roll right out of his head. “How the hell am I still alive? How am I sitting here without wanting to tear you into pieces?” He nodded toward the curtained windows. “How am I not like those things out there?”
Alicia flicked her wrist in his direction. An object roughly the size of a thin permanent marker shot across the table between them. His hand snapped out and slapped down on top of the object before he realized he’d even done it. He lifted his palm reluctantly and was surprised to see an auto-injector on the table before him.
“What’s this?” he asked suspiciously.
“It’s your medication,” Alicia replied. She paused and studied his face for a long moment before she added quietly, “You have Michaluk, Ethan.”
Ethan let out a slow breath as his lurking suspicions were confirmed. “Fuck,” he said softly. He leaned forward to rest his forehead against the heel of his hand. “Why am I not showing symptoms?”
“I suspect you are, to some degree,” Alicia said. “You have a fever. You’ll always have an elevated body temperature compared to what you used to have. It’s not ninety-eight-point-six anymore. You’re looking at somewhere around one hundred to one hundred one.”
“Is that why I feel like shit?” he asked tiredly.
“No, you feel like shit because you got your ass handed to you by an entire horde of infected,” Alicia said matter-of-factly.
Ethan rolled the auto-injector back and forth on the table with two fingers, watching it move for a moment as he contemplated her words. “So this is a cure?”
“There isn’t a cure,” Alicia corrected. She pushed her hair back from her face and motioned to the auto-injector. “It’s a medication cocktail. The combination of medications suppresses the symptoms of the virus, basically buying us time to find a cure for it. It doesn’t work all the time. We have to get the victim the first dosage within minutes of infection. That’s why we had you isolated here. We had to make sure we got it into you fast enough. We’ve been watching you for the past eight hours to see if you’d show any symptoms. Other than elevated body temperatures, which are normal, you haven’t. If you had, we would have put you down as humanely as possible.”
Ethan sat back in his chair, moving slowly so he didn’t jar his injuries more than necessary. “How did you guys come up with this…suppression medication?” he asked.
“We’ve had some leads and some useful guidance,” Alicia said cryptically. She sat forward to look at him, and her line of thought appeared to suddenly shift. “Have you ever met a woman named Avi Geller?”
Ethan blinked, surprised by her new question. “Avi?” he repeated. “Yeah. Yeah, I know her. She was with us until…until we got into Atlanta.”
“We know about her death,” Alicia said. There was a hint of sadness in her voice, but it sounded artificial, like she was faking being disappointed at the woman’s death. Before he could analyze that any further, she covered up the emotion quickly and continued. “She went to find you late last year, when we discovered some incredibly important information in the remains of the Centers for Disease Control.”
“Wait, wait,” Ethan said quickly. He held up a hand to stop her and shook his head. “The CDC? But that’s where Avi wanted us to take her after we helped her evacuate some survivors. She said that…” He trailed off as Alicia started to shake her head. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
“That’s what she was told to tell you,” Alicia corrected. “Truth be told, I think she already had access to all the relevant information from the CDC before she even left.” She paused, as if contemplating how much to tell Ethan, and then finally she said, “When we realized that your group was involved, Avi went to track you down. She was told to get you all here by any means necessary, to tell you whatever she needed to tell you to get you to agree to come with her.”
“But why me?” he asked, baffled. “What did you want with me?”
“We didn’t want you,” Alicia said. “Well, not you per se. We were looking for this man.” She pressed a hand to the top of the folder she’d brought in with her and slid it across the table to him. “Do you know Michael Evans?”
He frowned. “Michael Evans?” he repeated. “No, I can’t say I do.” Even as he spoke, he looked at the folder in front of him. The tab bore a computer-printed label that had a series of numbers and letters listed on it, and below the numbers, in neatly spaced lettering, it read, “Evans, Michael Brandt.” Alarm bells began to chime in his head. “But I know a Brandt Evans. What’s he got to do with anything, though?”
Alicia nodded and shifted to turn her chair around. She straddled it, resting her forearms against the back, before continuing. “Lieutenant Michael Brandt Evans of the United States Marines,” she recited. She motioned to the folder before him, and he slowly folded the cover open. The first thing he saw was a photograph of Brandt, paper-clipped to the top page of the papers inside. His familiar brown eyes stared out at him, face unsmiling. He was uniformed, and a dress cap adorned his head. He looked a deal younger than the Brandt he knew; this picture had obviously been taken several years ago. “Test subject number fourteen,” she said. “Testing began in the December before the outbreak happened, continuing into that January, when the virus escaped from the CDC.”
“Test subject fourteen?” Ethan repeated weakly, even as he leaned over to take in the medical charts and information printed on the papers inside.
“Evans escaped CDC custody with the assistance of a scientist at the onset of the initial outbreak,” Alicia explained. “The scientist told him he’d been given a placebo as part of the control group in the testing of what’s become the Michaluk Virus. We have evidence suggesting that that scientist may have lied to Evans when he told him he was clean.”
Ethan sucked in a slow breath and lifted his head, even as his brain scrambled to process the new information. “What, exactly, are you trying to say?”
“We have been informed that there’s a high chance that Michael Brandt Evans is infected with the Michaluk Virus,” Alicia answered solemnly, “that his body has achieved a sort of symbiosis with the virus, that he’s in essence a carrier. And because of that, he might be the key to the cure for the virus.” She paused for a long moment, watching him intently, studying his reaction, before she spoke once more.
“We need Evans to save the rest of us.”
Afterword
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* * *
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Keep reading for an exclusive excerpt from The Becoming: Revelations!
An Excerpt from Revelations
From the Journal of Ethan Bennett
March 21st
* * *
My name is Ethan Bennett, and I am a dead man.
I officially died a month ago at the hands of a group of homicidal people infected with the Michaluk Virus. I suffered serious injuries and contracted the virus while attempting to delay the infected attackers’ pursuit of my friends. I was saved from succumbing to the virus by sheer luck—and with the help of a medication cocktail that holds the virus at bay. For now, I only have a low risk of becoming like those who killed me.
For now.
I’m with a group led by a woman named Alicia Day. She’s former Marine Security Forces, and the people here seem to hold her in very high regard. She leads roughly one hundred fifty men, women, and children at the Westin. Through their hard work, they’ve turned this
hotel into a small village. Around thirty of those people are infected with the virus in a manner similar to me. It’s only through the miraculous chance of having a CDC doctor here that I’m able to write this, that the infected living here are able to continue with their lives, such as they are. Despite the daily medication regimen, they’ve eked out a reasonably productive existence in the hopes that something more permanent can one day be discovered. They live for that hope, though there’s always the chance their bodies will hit the point where the medications are no longer effective.
Alicia tells me it’s imperative that we find Brandt Evans. He was one of my friends before I became infected, and I don’t know where he is. I can’t remember where any of my friends were to go after Atlanta. And honestly? That terrifies me. Because if what Alicia tells me about Brandt is even remotely true, then my best friend Cade and my lover Remy and hell, even Gray (as much as I dislike the bastard)—they’re all in danger. If Brandt is infected, he poses a major risk not only to Cade, Gray, and Remy, but to the entire world.
But Brandt Evans is also a hope. A possibility of a key to the cure for the Michaluk Virus. And that is a chance we can’t afford to let pass.
Our bodies have begun to adjust and adapt to the medications. I’m fine for now, but there are many who aren’t. The drugs are losing their effectiveness for some; there have already been four people to spontaneously fall ill this week alone. Four people Alicia took away from the others and put down, as she said it was her responsibility to do.
The survivors can’t keep losing numbers like this. We need a cure, and we need it fast.
And we’re hoping Brandt Evans can give us one.
* * *
Remy Angellette’s nights had become filled with entirely too much coffee. That wasn’t a good thing. The liquid—however dark and rich and deliciously bitter it was—kept her awake far more than she’d already been before the group’s flight from Maplesville over a month ago. Her nerves jittered at the thought of them running out of the sparse supply of coffee grounds that they’d already been reduced to. But the sleeplessness caused by the caffeinated drink and her own willpower was far better than the nightmares that plagued her every time she closed her eyes.
She wasn’t sure if Brandt had caught on that she wasn’t sleeping, but Gray definitely had. Oddly enough, he hadn’t said anything to her about it. Instead, he’d often join her on the roof of their newest safe house late at night, and together they’d sit in companionable silence, watching the stars and dwelling on their thoughts, their hopes, their dreams, or their lack thereof.
In the weeks since the terrible events in Atlanta, Remy had dwelled incessantly on Ethan, on Theo, on Nikola, and on Avi—especially on Avi. Every time her thoughts lit on the woman, she was bothered by the suspicion that there was something more to the story. Avi had hidden something important from them—her mannerisms, the way she’d avoided directly answering questions, her flowery speeches, her flat-out seeming helplessness when facing down the infected all made that glaringly obvious—but what that “something” was, Remy had no way to find out. The other woman was dead and, therefore, impervious to Remy’s questions and accusations, no matter how loudly she shouted them in her head. She hadn’t been affected by Avi’s death, beyond the initial, sudden shock of it—after all, she’d only known the woman for a few days at that point—but the one who’d fallen only minutes after her…
A sob threatened to well up in her throat as Ethan’s face appeared in her mind’s eye, but she quickly tamped it down. She couldn’t stop the upset that stirred in her gut, though. Ethan Bennett had fallen, had met a terrible death at the hands of the infected while trying to save the rest of them. While trying to save her. And she had fought, had tried to get to him before it was too late, but Brandt hadn’t allowed it. He’d held her down, pinned her to a rooftop, while on the ground below, Ethan had died.
Remy wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive Brandt for that.
Boots scraped on the roof behind her, shuffling and bumping as their owner climbed through the second-story window to join her. She pulled her knees to her chest and set her bolo knife beside her, lovingly tracing her fingertips over its wooden hilt before wrapping her arms around her knees. The owner of the boots approached.
“Hey,” a quiet voice greeted her. Brandt. Of course. Her chest constricted at the sound of his voice, and she couldn’t help but think on the words he’d said to her when he broke the news of Ethan’s sacrifice: He stayed behind to give the rest of us a chance.
But she hadn’t wanted that chance. She just wanted Ethan.
“Hey, Brandt,” Remy replied. She suppressed a sigh as her hope for peace and quiet was dashed. She could just ask him to leave her be, and he’d likely do it. But, despite the lurking bitterness she felt toward him, she still wanted his company, any company. So she kept her mouth shut and pressed her lips together as the tall, muscular man settled onto the shingles beside her.
“I thought it was Gray’s turn to keep watch,” Brandt commented. He rested an arm against his bent knee and glanced at her. “What are you doing up here?”
She shrugged and kept her eyes locked onto the darkness. She couldn’t see it, but if she strained her ears, she could make out the faint sounds of the Atlantic Ocean, its dark gray waters breaking on the beaches a mere two blocks away. She’d seen it only once, when they first arrived in the tiny coastal South Carolinian town near Hollywood. She’d immediately disliked it. It was a far cry from the beautiful blue waters and sugar-white sands of the Gulf of Mexico near which she’d grown up. Compared to that paradise, the coastline in the distance looked like something out of Dante’s Inferno.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Remy finally admitted after the silence stretched for too long. “Figured I’d let Gray get some rest since I’m awake anyway.”
Brandt gave her a sad smile that she just barely saw in the moonlight. “Thinking too much?” he asked gently, understandingly.
Remy didn’t want his understanding. “You don’t even know the half of it,” she muttered. Her voice revealed how disgusted she was. At whom, though, she wasn’t sure.
“You could try me?” Brandt offered. His own voice was tinged with a fair amount of the concern that did a fantastic job of pissing Remy off. She didn’t want him to waste his time being concerned over her. There wasn’t anything to be concerned about.
Remy glanced at him, ready to offer a blunt refusal, maybe an excuse for why she didn’t want to talk to him. But as she opened her mouth, she caught a glimpse of the darkness in his eyes and quickly shut it again. It was a haunted, disturbed look—the look of a man who’d stared into the pits of Hell for far too long, had seen things that couldn’t be unseen. The expression unsettled her. Maybe Brandt wanted an excuse to talk about some things. Maybe his concern over her problems was a pretense for examining his own.
“Are you okay?” she ventured. She tucked her feet beneath her and settled onto her boots to cushion her seat against the roof. She locked her eyes on his, trying to force him to look at her. He glanced at her fleetingly before his eyes darted back to their surroundings.
“What do you think I’m asking you?” Brandt replied. He ran his hands through his dark hair. The gesture reminded Remy, painfully, of Ethan. “You’re not sleeping,” he continued. “You’re getting, what, two or three hours every couple of nights? That’s not healthy.”
“You’re not my father,” Remy muttered. “Not even Eth—” The name caught in her throat, and she drew a deep breath. Her eyes welled with tears, despite her best efforts to prevent their appearance. “Not even he could get away with ordering me around like that.”
Brandt didn’t reply right away, though he did finally look at her, studying her closely in the moonlight. She looked back at him through tears threatening to spill. Memories flooded her brain, hammered at her skull, trying to force the tears from her eyes against her will. Brandt gave her a sad smile and squeezed her shoulder. “Yeah, I miss him, too,” he admitted.
“I miss all of them.”
That was all it took for the tears to stream down her face. Remy bit her bottom lip, but the pain from her teeth did nothing to quell the sobs that clawed up from the empty hole Ethan’s death had left inside her.
The next thing she knew, Remy was in Brandt’s arms with her face pressed against his chest as painful, gut-wrenching sobs she’d fought for a month to restrain broke free. She grieved for all her lost friends, for Nikola and Avi and Theo and especially Ethan. But she also cried for the four of them who were left, the ones stuck coping with the losses they’d sustained in such rapid succession and the difficulties they now faced in surviving without the man that they’d looked to as their figurehead for the past year.
“Why did he have to do that?” she managed. “Why did he have to play the motherfucking martyr? Couldn’t he see that we need him? That I need him?”
“Of course, Remy,” he said, rubbing her back in slow, soothing circles. “Of course he could see that. Of course he knew we needed him. That’s why he did what he did. He cared enough—he loved all of us enough—to give up his own life so we’d have a chance to keep ours.” Remy looked at him again. The dark, haunted expression was back in his eyes. “If he hadn’t done that, the infected would have circled the building and swarmed us when we came out the front doors. And then we all would have died. Ethan would never have found something like that acceptable.”
Remy let out a shaky breath and lay against Brandt, her eyes closed, listening to his heartbeat and his steady breathing. It was the closest she’d ever felt to him, like being comforted by an older brother she’d never had. The thought made the bitterness inside her subside, made a fleeting smile brush against her lips. Brandt ran his fingers over her hair and kissed the center of her forehead. Then he dug a tissue from his pocket and pressed it into her hand.
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