Melancholy: Book Two of The Cure (Omnibus Edition)

by Charlotte McConaghy

  “It’s called trust.”

  “Yeah, and it’s long gone between us.” It comes out harsher than I mean it to, and the smile is wiped off his face.

  That’s when the people appear below us. Two men and a woman, all wearing lab coats. Beside me Luke tenses. His eyes dart to one of the men, and then he leans very close to my ear again to whisper, “Falon Shay.” The prime minister.

  I lean to Luke’s ear. “He’s not our mission. Ben is.”

  Luke doesn’t respond, and I’m pretty sure he’s far more interested in revenge or whatever oath he’s sworn to kill Shay than in rescuing Ben.

  “… scheduled date can be moved forward,” Shay is saying.

  “Not realistically, at the rate of testing,” replies the woman in a deep voice.

  “Where are we?”

  “It isn’t ready,” she says bluntly. “I need another round. Several, actually.”

  “There isn’t time. Show me the subjects so far.”

  They continue further into the room and I can no longer see them. Their voices drift back to us. “Subject sixty-four, like many before her, shows bouts of unpredictable lethargy.”

  “Lethargy isn’t productive,” Shay snaps. “Fix it.”

  “Subject sixty-five, like many before him, shows hyper-sensitivity to light.”

  “And sixty-six? This one?”

  “Severe anxiety attacks and paranoia.”

  “But no sadness for any of them?”

  “No detectable sadness.”

  I close my eyes, head swimming with a bone-shattering fury. I’m completely aflame with it; my whole body is burning. Sixty-six people experimented on and ruined. I’m going down there. I’m going to kill all three of them and then I’m going to burn this whole fucking lab to the ground –

  Rough, warm hands take my face and I jerk in alarm, so utterly lost within the rage that it takes me several seconds to realize that it is Luke with his hands pressed to my cheeks, looking into my eyes.

  Breathe, he mouths, but I don’t want to, I don’t care about breathing or calm or panic or any of it I just want to kill them I want to torture them in the same way they tortured those poor people I want to watch the life fade from their eyes and I can’t breathe or think or feel anything I just –

  Lips press against mine.

  Everything vanishes. The world, instead, is his mouth, the warmth and the softness, the ache of it and the perfect way it fits against mine.

  When Luke pulls away he is feverish, and I am calm.

  Falon Shay and the other man have left. Now there is only the female scientist below us. Belatedly we pull on our gas masks, because the gas is dispersing. We swing down from the vents (difficult with only one hand and a complete lack of coordination) and land in the lab.

  The woman spins to face us in shock. She is pretty, with fine, sharp features and thick dark hair. “What – ” But that’s about all she manages to say because she is abruptly very sleepy. Stepping toward the disconnected alarm, she presses it before slumping almost gracefully to the floor and conking out.

  Before us are several glass cages in which people sleep. Test subjects sixty-four, sixty-five and sixty-six. Two girls and a boy, all children around ten years old.

  There’s a pain in my chest at the sight of them, something nostalgic and cruel. Memories circle, faint, shadowy things unlike any of the precise memories that fill my brain. Discomfort and fear and a lab like this. Needles, cages, lab coats …

  “Josi!” Luke says, and I return to the world. There’s no time to engage in whatever messed-up stuff lies in my ten-year-old brain. Luke scoops the scientist into his arms and we duck out of the lab, moving swiftly through the underground levels of the building. I find the woman’s security tag in her pocket and read, Dr Meredith Shaw, Head Scientist and Medical Researcher, Collingsworth Institute.

  I wonder how Ben feels to know this vile place has been named after him.

  We creep past sleeping scientists and Bloods, all here late in the apparent rush to get the sadness cures ready for administering. We check every room and every bed, but Ben isn’t to be found.

  “Goddamnit,” I moan in growing frustration.

  We reach the final hallway and see a huge NO ENTRY sign out the front, as well as two sleeping Bloods. Praying that this is it, we prop Dr Shaw’s eye up to the scanner and press her fingers against the pad.

  With a hissing sound the door opens and a waft of very cold, disorienting air hits us. I go first, creeping slowly down the stairs and into a room even further underground. It’s well lit, the bulbs almost painfully bright. And what’s with how cold it is? My teeth are chattering.

  “Weapon up,” Luke orders me, and I draw my pistol with shaking fingers, even though he specifically told me I wouldn’t be able to hit anything with it. Why did he tell me that? To freak me out? My gas mask is making my breathing louder in my ears.

  Luke’s close behind me, but because he’s holding Dr Shaw he can’t draw his own weapon. Which means it’s all me this time: the girl who can’t hit a grown man three paces in front of her.

  A billow of what seems to be mist caused by the low temperature wafts aside and I am able to see the glass container. Inside it, lying asleep on the floor – without even a bed to lie on – is Ben Collingsworth.

  Lowering my gun, I run to the glass. He looks older than I remember, his skin much paler, hair wispier. “Open it,” I implore Luke quickly. I don’t know why I feel so profoundly protective of this old man. Maybe it’s simply because although I don’t remember him experimenting on me, I do remember him saving my life last year.

  Luke gets the door open and I rush in to squat beside Ben, rolling him over. There is blood in his mouth, and I lift his top lip to see that it’s coming from his gums. His skin is freezing to the touch, and there is blood under his fingernails too. I can’t help but look worriedly up at Luke. He wears a pensive expression that doesn’t make me feel any better. Gathering the old man into his arms, he carries Ben up the stairs and out of the cold room.

  “I want to take Dr Shaw with us,” I tell him.

  He considers quickly, eyes darting back to where he left the woman at the bottom of the stairs.

  “We can find gurneys to carry them,” I press. “Think how badly it’ll mess up their schedule to lose their head scientist. And imagine what she’ll be able to tell us.”

  With a quick breath, Luke nods. “Righto, wait here and keep your gun aimed down the hall.”

  He puts Ben on the ground and runs back down the steps to get Dr Shaw. That’s one of the things I like about Luke, I realize. He’s the one in charge, he knows a thousand percent more than I do about this stuff, but he’s always open to suggestions and happy to listen to other people’s ideas. It’s a nice quality.

  “He’s a lot lighter than she is,” Luke says when he returns with the scientist. “You’ll have to get him in a fireman’s hold.”

  “I carried you on my back for about two miles,” I grunt wryly. “I think I can carry one old guy who looks like he’s mostly made of paper.”

  “When did you carry me on your back?” Luke demands.

  I pause to look at him. “To get you out of the asylum.”

  “You carried me all the way from the asylum to the resistance tree?”

  “How else did you think we got away?” I ask, leaning to try to roll Ben over my shoulder. I don’t really want to talk about it, to be honest. Leaving my pack and a bunch of the crap I’ve been hauling around, I instead try to get Ben over my shoulders. I have to stop, though, as my wrist feels like it might snap off.

  “Uh, give me a hand here?”

  Luke belatedly rushes to help me, lifting Ben over my shoulders and supporting our weight as I straighten my legs under the load. Despite my bravado, Ben is really heavy and incredibly awkward to carry. He keeps slipping and every time I catch him my wrist jerks and feels like it’s breaking anew.

  One of the rooms we saw held a few unused gurneys, so we back
track and gratefully put the sleeping beauties down. Then we roll them back out to the elevator, which still has three dead bodies in it.

  Dragging these out, I feel a pit in my stomach, along with a whole ocean’s worth of guilt for having been excited about a mission during which we murdered five people. Doesn’t matter that they’re scientists in a clinic that essentially rapes innocent people of their personalities. It only matters that Luke shot them without batting an eyelid, and now they’ll never again go home to their families.

  I hate it all. I hate these people and their science, I hate Ben, I hate Dr Shaw, I hate Luke and I hate myself. And I am having some serious mood swings. Anthony would tell me it’s due to stress. And normally I’d tell him how mood swings are my right, but in this moment I think I’d rather not feel anything at all.

  We squeeze the gurneys into the elevator and ride it up to the ground floor, only to have the doors open on six mask-wearing police officers with their guns pointed straight at us.

  “Freeze!” one shouts.

  Oh dear.

  “Get low,” Luke orders me.

  “Don’t fire,” I hiss, because I can suddenly see how this is going to play out. He’s going to fire, and there’s going to be a gunfight, and I’m going to have to watch him get mowed down by a hail of bullets and I can’t do that –

  Someone fires and my heart skips a beat, but I realize belatedly that it wasn’t the officers or Luke – it came from behind the cops, wounding and dropping three of them.

  Luke picks off one, two of the other men in quick succession.

  The last cop is firing wildly, and then a few more of the wounded ones start to fire from the ground. Bullets go past my head, smash through walls and ding against the inside of the elevator. The doors start to close in front of us but Luke shoves them open and shoots the last cop.

  I rise shakily and push Ben’s gurney out into the hall behind Luke and Dr Shaw. Around the corner comes Will, panting in panic.

  “Shadow’s hit!” he shouts.

  No. We sprint to Shadow’s side and I see blood all over his abdomen and pooling onto the floor. He has his hand pressed into his stomach just beneath where his vest ends, and his face and lips look gray. It is a horrifying sight.

  “Still here,” he grunts.

  “You’re okay, mate,” Luke says. “Will, get Ben’s gurney.” He picks up Shadow and runs with him toward the parking garage door. Will and I push the beds in a sprint down the hall, careening around corners and almost overturning them at one point.

  Pressing through the heavy swing doors, we arrive in the garage to see a white patient transport van. In the driver’s seat is Pace. Hal is already helping Luke get Shadow into the back, so we bring Ben and Dr Shaw to be loaded in next.

  Once the three of them are laid out in the back, Luke, Will and I squeeze in, Hal jumps in the passenger seat and Pace roars us out of the garage and into the night.

  “Where are we going?” she shouts.

  We’re all looking at Shadow, who is bleeding everywhere.

  “We can’t take him back to the train like this,” I murmur. “He’ll never make it.”

  “Can’t take him to a hospital,” Will points out.

  “Head back toward the apartments,” Luke calls.

  “We can’t go back to that shithole,” I argue. “John’s boys’ll be out for blood.”

  “We’re not,” he replies, meeting my eyes. “We’re going to my parents’ house.”

  Chapter 11

  February 8th, 2066

  Luke

  When my mother opens the front door she finds a gaggle of rough, bleeding soldiers carrying an unconscious woman, an unconscious elderly man, and a dying giant. She takes one look at us, sees me at the forefront, and bursts into laughter. I am reminded of how, after she was given the cure, she always laughed when something went wrong.

  She is bent over double when Dad comes to the door behind her, spots the chaos on his front lawn and frowns.

  “You’ll be wanting to get that van into the garage, boy?”

  “Thanks, Dad.” To Mom I say, “We’ve got a gunshot wound to the stomach here.”

  Thankfully she sobers quickly and shepherds everyone inside. It takes us a few trips to get all the unconscious people in, but we manage to settle them on beds and put Shadow on the kitchen table for Mom to work on. Pace pulls the van into the garage.

  Josephine looks spooked. She has imagined this house a million times, I know, and I never made it easy for her by giving her any details. I was so tight-lipped about my family that she probably started to think I’d made them up, but here she is in their living room.

  It smells the same, and even though I am always transported into memory when I walk in the door of this house, now it is more than that – now I have this tingling sensation on my skin, and there are pictures in my mind so vibrant I feel like I’m having a seizure or a hallucination or something.

  “You okay?” Josi asks me.

  I blink, returning from a memory of Dave picking Mom’s pot-planted flowers to give to her and being mystified when she screeched in horror at the sight. I nod quickly, trying to rid myself of the uncanny sensations. I shouldn’t have brought danger here; I can taste the regret already. But what choice did I have? To let Shadow bleed to death on the train home?

  Wanting them out of the way, I sit Hal, Pace and Will on the couch and tell them they have to either sleep or eat. “Mom’s a trauma nurse,” I assure them. “She’ll sort him out.”

  I go back into the kitchen where Dad’s helping Mom cut Shadow’s shirt away. Shadow is still conscious, and I cross to his side to lay a hand on his shoulder.

  “Rookie error,” I tell him.

  “Cocky little prick,” he manages, and I grin. “Where’s the girl?”

  “I’m here,” Josi says, moving to his other side.

  He looks like he’s about to say something to her, but instead just quietens down, her presence seeming to calm him.

  Dad brings over a bottle of vodka and makes Shadow drink as much as he can, then he sluices the rest over the wound, causing the man to groan in pain.

  “If you’re staying, sweetheart,” Mom says to Josi, “you’d better be ready to help.”

  “Yes, ma’am. What can I do?”

  “Mop and bucket in the laundry. Make sure I don’t slip on the blood. Get towels too – pack them and change them as needed.”

  Josie rushes off to get supplies, despite her broken wrist and the shock-after-shock-after-shock she has endured tonight. She’s done really well, actually. Better than I imagined a complete novice could. Her presence alone focused me while on the job – surprising, given I’d thought she would be distracting.

  I watch as Mom gets a pair of tweezers and starts digging around inside Shadow’s stomach for the bullet. He screams then, a terrible sound that reverberates around the room and through the house.

  Mom gets the bullet out, followed by the two fragments that have broken off in his stomach. Then she gets to work sewing the organ and tissue back together.

  “I need blood,” she says briskly at one point.

  “I’ll give it,” Josi offers immediately.

  “Not you,” I say. “I can’t either.” Mom looks at me as though she’s never been more disappointed. “Our blood’s diseased,” I explain. Or something to that effect.

  “Take mine,” Dad says, rolling up his sleeve.

  “What type is he?” Mom asks.

  “B negative,” Shadow mutters.

  “It’s too rare,” Mom sighs.

  “You three – you got B negative blood?” Dad asks the three musketeers. They all reply no.

  “I do,” Josi says.

  “Josi, we don’t know what’s in your blood.”

  “It’s nothing that’s transmittable, Luke,” she argues. “The Zetemaphine has been blocked. Dodge well and truly discovered that when you were dying.”

  “You were dying?” Mom screeches at me.

  �
�No, Mom.” Of Josi I ask, “What if the blocker’s done something weird?”

  “Whatever it is at this point is better than Shadow bleeding out.”

  Dad starts setting Josi up to donate blood, but he’s shaking so I guide him to a chair and take the blood myself. Mom makes sure I’m doing it right as I insert the needle and siphon the blood through the tube and into the bag. We used to joke that Mom needed to bring all this stuff home from work because Dave and I were always so badly injured. But I’m sure as shit glad about it now.

  “How’s your wrist?” I ask Josi softly as we watch her blood flow into the bag.

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll get you some painkillers once we’ve done this. Mom, how much?”

  “Eight hundred mills,” she says without looking over.

  “That seems like a lot …” I hedge.

  “It is, but we’ll watch her.”

  “I don’t think – ”

  “Do it,” Josi snaps. “It’s just blood, Luke.”

  So I measure the blood and pass it off to Mom, who hooks it up to Shadow’s IV. I get Josi a loaf of bread and make her eat a few slices, as well as a sugary cup of tea. She looks pale, so I get her some painkillers too.

  “I’ve repaired as much as I can, so now we wait,” Mom says eventually. “If he gets an infection overnight there won’t be much I can do for him unless you can find me some antibiotics.”

  I nod, mopping up the blood all over the floor and placing new towels around Shadow’s abdomen.

  Dad’s setting up bedding for the three in the living room, placing down blow-up mattresses and sleeping bags. Ben is asleep in Dave’s bed, and we’ve tied up Dr Shaw on the floor so she won’t escape during the night, which I admit is kinda mean. But Pace assures us that the amount of gas they put through the vents is enough to keep both Ben and Dr Shaw out for at least twelve hours. We’ll leave Shadow on the table as he needs to be hooked up to the blood bag and the fluids, and he needs to keep his wound flat. The five of us will take turns monitoring him and if there’s any change during the night, we’ll wake Mom.

  Which leaves Josi and me in my old room.

  I show her in and tell her to take the bed, setting myself up on the floor. She’s weary beyond any point of embarrassment because she turns her back to me and gets undressed down to her underpants. I’m about to turn away when I see her back.