As Sasha raced up the road towards the Interstate, she could hear Derek catching his breath. She didn’t dare look at him yet, she feared she was dreaming. Nora climbed into the backseat with Ripley, and Sasha felt tears of relief overwhelm her as she saw Derek turn his head to her out of the corner of her eye.
She faced him, and he looked at her with beautiful, soft brown eyes.
“We made it, Sasha.” He said between deep breaths.
“I love you.” She answered. He looked to her, smiling.
The SUV pushed through the night, passing a sign marking the Interstate ahead.
EpilogueSometimes I get scared that I will forget how it happened. That I will forget how it was before. I remember some parts so clearly, so perfectly that I can imagine that I am still there. But there are moments that I have to reach for, way back in my memory, to see again.
I had another family. A mother, a father. I was loved and I was safe. I felt safe. When you are young, and you feel safe, you can’t even think about anything happening outside of that. I certainly didn’t. But then, suddenly, the safety was gone. Everything was gone.
I almost didn’t make it. Sasha not only saved me from the Loki Variation, she saved me from myself. I don’t know exactly what it is about intense, long-lasting fear that makes some children refuse to speak, but I think I thought that if I didn’t acknowledge the horrid reality around me, it would all disappear and I would wake up from the nightmare, safe and sound in my bed.
That ended the night we fled the refugee camp. The new family that had found me; Sasha, Derek, Hud, and the others, had done so much to keep me safe. Some had given their own lives. Even as a scared, naïve child, I knew that if I didn’t accept the reality as it was, and use my voice again, Derek would be left behind. So much changed after that.
It’s been seven years since we escaped that night. We drove all night and were met by a military roadblock some time the next day. Sasha and I spent 3 months in quarantine, then we were pushed through a Red Cross program to give us shelter and supplies after that. Derek was held for much longer than we were. They wanted to know how it worked, how someone could be infected with the parasite, survive as themselves, and then be cured. They never learned because by the time they got to Derek, he was completely normal; there was no parasite in his blood. They wanted to reinfect him to learn how to cure others, but he only wanted to disappear, taking Sasha and me with him.
In the chaos that ensued after the outbreak, after the death tolls had been tallied and it was known that nearly a quarter of the country’s population had been eradicated, as well as smaller outbreaks in other countries, we had to find a way to continue living. Derek had received his mother’s inheritance, as they had never made it off of the cruise ship. He moved Sasha and I to Oregon, where we still live now.
I can pretend it’s over, sometimes. The news announced a year ago that there hadn’t been any sightings of the strays in six months. The strays were the infected that had somehow survived, hidden in areas that were still cut off from society because of the risk of another outbreak. They were hunted and killed, one by one. Most of the east coast had been cleansed and was being repopulated.
But the ones who had been like Derek and Lily, able to host the parasites without turning into a monster, the Impervious, they are a force of their own. It had been determined that a fraction of the population had partial immunity to the effects of the parasite. The effects, to them, are abilities that the rest of us only gain with adrenalin.
Derek doesn’t talk about it. He knows, like I do, that those in power want to destroy every instance of the parasite, and I don’t blame them.
But how can the government destroy something that lives inside a harmless, law-abiding citizen, when the only way they know how to do that is to kill the host? The Impervious just want to live. I don’t blame them, either.
Derek can’t ignore it anymore. He knows he will have to make a choice, one that carries unthinkable risks no matter what he decides.
Unless I can solve the problem before he has to.
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The Loki Variation 2: Rebellion
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