by Isla Jones
Mason’s grin faded somewhat as he stood. “I’ll take you. I can’t let you out of my sight outside of this wing, but I can take you to Dr Miles.”
I pushed myself from the wall and gave him a once over. “I really hope you weren’t lying about being gay.”
He just laughed, but I’d meant it. I couldn’t handle another hetero-man adding stress to my life.
“Did you take any of the others?” I asked.
Mason swatted Cleo’s fur from his pants. “Dr Miles asked me to look out for you.”
I remembered her comment on his cheesecake, how he’d worked hard on it and silently demanded an apology. “Are you two close?”
Mason considered the question. “Your sister does amazing work here. I have the upmost respect for her. If any advancements are made, it will be because of Dr Miles’ efforts.”
“So you’re like her lackey?”
He seemed to think it was a joke. It wasn’t, but he gestured me down the hall with a smile on his lips.
The Lab Maze (Mason’s words) was on the same level as the Common Halls, but through doors not unlike those in decontamination. Mason had to swipe his ID card and type in a code to open them.
As we wandered the halls, I caught a glimpse of elevators through a thick, clear door. With all the gadgets on the wall, I got the impression that Mason’s ID card wouldn’t be enough to let him through. That door needed ‘top ranking personnel’ to open.
I halted our stroll at an open room without doors.
The beauty snatched the breath from my lungs.
Before me was an open room, double the size of my own, not unlike those gardens that rich people visited for long walks—botanical, I think they’re called. The wall opposite was painted with all the colours of nature: a deep blue lake that glittered beneath a sunny sky, and in the distance were trees so bushy and green that I was half-tempted to slip into the painting myself just to smell the promise of nature that it couldn’t deliver.
“Is …” I hovered in the entrance, wide eyes shifting between stone pews and pot plants overflowing with lush, green leaves. “Is this the garden?”
Cleo thought it was the garden too. She bolted straight into the painted wall.
“Oh shit!” I scrambled over to her and scooped her up. Her black eyes, dazed, blinked at me a while. I ignored the jolt of pain in my stomach and held her weight close to me.
Mason stayed at the entrance.
“This is just the retreat room,” he said. “It’s supposed to zen us or some rubbish like that. White coats use it the most.”
I nudged the pebbled floor with my shoe.
“It’s not rubbish,” I said quietly. Something had lifted off of me—a weight from my shoulders, heart, and soul. I felt lighter in there. “Can we stay for a bit?”
Mason didn’t get the chance to deny my request.
I’d quickly sat myself on a stone pew that faced the painted wall and hugged Cleo to my lap. The fresh, familiar aroma of pine-needles snuck up my nostrils and warmed my insides.
Mason hung back.
I shut my eyes and soon forgot he was there at all. The faux nature lured me in so deep that I felt its effects stronger than the pills’.
I don’t know how long I sat there, lost in the sweetness of it all, before a stampede of footsteps trampled my tranquil mind.
I looked over my shoulder.
Mason leaned against a stone pillar and faced the end of the corridor where the stampede came from. The deltas marched into my sight.
Castle checked over papers with Leo beside him, Adam tailing them as usual.
Castle paused when he spotted Mason.
Glacier eyes snapped to me. Every inch of his face hardened.
“Ms Miles wasn’t feeling so perky this mornin’,” said Mason. “This is the closest to fresh air I can give. Hope it’s all right with you, Corporal.”
Leo rubbed his lips together, his eyes—the same forest green from the painted wall—swerving between me and Mason. I sighed hoarsely and slid off the pew. Every gaze followed me as I carried Cleo back to the corridor.
My moment of calm was over before I could really lose myself in it.
Face like stone, Castle pierced into me with his fierce gaze, but still, he asked, “How did you find it?”
I gestured to the soldier. “Mason showed me, like he said.”
Castle’s stone mask cracked. He fought a slanted smile, and the sight had my heart lurching. “I meant how did you find the room—was it to your liking?”
“Oh. Ohh.” I nodded, face aflame. “It was … really nice, yeah. Like being outside, but safer.”
I could’ve described better than that, but as I stood there, I felt like I’d been dunked into a pot of uncomfortable stew and left to simmer.
Satisfied, Castle gave a brisk nod to Mason—who relaxed some—then strode down the hall. The deltas left through one of those special doors with thumbpad-readers and code buttons.
Castle’s swift code had the door opening in a blink.
I studied the door curiously. “What’s through there?”
Mason just smirked then jerked his head down the opposite corridor. “Your sister should be down this way.”
Mason led the way through the rest of the Lab Maze.
His secrecy only tickled my interest.
Summer was on the other side of the glass.
Strapped to a chair that looked like it belonged in a dentist clinic was the rotter-boy, Noah. From his groggy state, I had no doubt that he was sedated. His dazed eyes wandered around as though he could see everything, but not quite understand.
Summer was perched on a stool, goggles stuck to her heart-shaped face, and her glove-wrapped hands switched blood slides underneath a scope.
Mason knocked once before he swiped his ID card through a slot.
The door slid open.
Summer looked up. Once she spotted me, a sweeping smile lit up her face.
I wandered inside, Mason by the door.
“Winner.” She spoke my nickname with such relief that my own lips tugged into a smile. “Put on gloves and goggles,” she added and gestured to Cleo bundled in my arms. “Mason, could you ...”
He heard her unspoken order and took Cleo from me. My heart skipped a beat. But he held her by the door and shot me a wink.
Was I making a friend, I wondered?
“Our no dog policy is quite strict,” said Summer. “Goggles, gloves, now.”
I fingered through the gear on the metal table. Temptation lured my gaze to a lab coat on a hook. My willpower collapsed. In a blink, I was draped in the full get-up, flexing my fingers in purple gloves, and a white coat drowning me.
Summer suited what looked like a costume on me. And by the smirk that danced on her lips, she had the same thought.
Though, she didn’t say it outright; “Look at you, Winner.”
Noah stole my smile with a hoarse moan. My gaze snapped to him, but he stared blankly at the ceiling. Summer paid him no mind and went back to assessing the blood slides.
I watched his bloodshot eyes drift from ceiling to vent, ceiling to vent, over and over again.
“Do you think he knows?” I asked. “Like … where he is and what you’re doing? Why he was put through seven months of hell?”
Summer hummed, then followed my gaze to the boy.
“I’m not sure.” She returned to the blood slides. “Come see this. It’s marvellous.”
I peered through the microscope at the blood slide. “What am I looking at?”
Summer switched the slides.
The only difference I could spot was the ... nothing. I couldn’t tell the difference. Blood looked all the same to me and my non-doctor eyes.
With a hum, I pretended to understand and drew back from the microscope.
Summer hardly noticed and spread her arms. “Amazing, isn’t it? Patient Zero is, by general understanding, supposed to hold the clues. Yet, the interesting part is—” She held up her hand and stro
de over to a bunch of glass vials and whatnot. “—the virus has latched onto all of his active cells. The second sample … Now, that sample shows blood cells bonding with the virus, which, if you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I would have declared it impossible.”
Jibberish.
Jibberish that bored me so much that all I could do was sink into her empty chair and pretend to listen as she rambled on.
“Your handsome delta might be our key,” she said. “Don’t quote me on that just yet. It’s too early to tell. But his cells have bonded with the virus, embraced it.” She levelled my gaze. “This bond prevents him from becoming like the other infected specimens.”
I scoffed and clicked a fancy pen that I thought about stealing. “What do you know about the infectees? Down here, all safe—you can’t know that much, can you?”
Summer slid off her goggles and studied me. Then, she tugged off her gloves.
“I’ll show you what I know,” she said.
֍
Summer led me through the halls of the Lab Maze. Mason carried Cleo for me.
We stopped at the door the deltas had gone through. Summer’s thumbprint was too sweaty for the reader, so she huffed and slammed in her code. I watched her out the corner of my eye. I caught the last couple of digits and at the sight, my heart twisted as if wrung out. The anniversary of our parents’ death.
With the code and her ID card, the door granted us access to corridors that ran like rivers of glass rooms. Most of them, I found during our walk, were empty, other than some standard offices and conference furniture.
Then we reached those rooms, beyond another sealed door—a door so solid and thick that I doubted the deltas would be allowed through. This door was different. It didn’t keep people out. It kept things in.
Through it was a single corridor with a dozen rooms on each side—and a rotter in every single one of them.
Most of the rotters were restrained, either chained to the walls, or wrapped in straitjackets with rubber devices looped over their heads to gag them. A few of them had been soldiers—if their uniforms were anything to go by—and the soldier-rotter who wore all black still had his badge sewn to his bloody uniform. I couldn’t be sure, but from the corridor, it looked like it spelled ‘SERGEANT’.
Most of the others were white coats.
A shiver ran down me at the sight of them all. Suddenly, just by looking at them, I was outside again. I was trapped in a Jeep, listening to the growls of rotters; I was weeping in a cabin, hearing their desperate howls—I was wearing a person’s blood to camouflage myself.
I cleared my throat and tore my troubled gaze from the rotter-prisoners.
My breath shook as I asked, “What happened to them? How did the virus get in? It’s meant to be safe down here.”
Summer pointed to a glass room with a white coat in it. “Dr Stevenson happened.”
I frowned at her. “The doctor you went on a date with?”
She’d mentioned it on our last phone call, the morning before the outbreak. Before the lines went dead—before everything started to crumble.
“He was the first to turn,” she explained. “It was chaos, Winter. The day of the outbreak was the worst day in the history of this facility.”
She and Mason shared a look filled with regret and sorrow. I shifted on the spot, uncomfortable.
“Not everyone could be allowed entry,” she said, bringing her gaze back to mine. “Some had been infected on their way here. Others tried to bring in their infected family. We couldn’t let that happen—Dr Stevenson was especially adamant about the decision to go into lockdown. We received our final orders before our communications were cut.”
“What orders?”
“The outbreak was orchestrated, Winter. Media was controlled to focus on their own states—and the virus was released all over the world on the same day.”
I couldn’t breathe.
At my shocked face, she reached out for me.
“I had no idea, Winter. Most of us here were not informed of this decision. What we know is that every underground facility in the US—and further—are occupied by those chosen.”
“Chosen?” I spat.
“Must I tell you again that I had no part in this, Winter?” she snapped, but her hands still cradled my shaky ones. “I learned of it moments before the entire facility went into complete lockdown. Dr Stevenson released this facility’s patient zero—as did every CDC facility across the country—nights before the outbreak reached the news and national panic. Shockingly so,” she added bitterly, “he failed to mention that in the process of releasing patient zero, he was scratched.”
“He was infected,” I whispered, my horrified gaze swerving to the docile rotter.
“The payload your deltas transported here is valuable to my research. But that specimen was never supposed to arrive, Winter. Not to here, not to any CDC.”
We were never supposed to live. None of us … The whole world, wiped out by a bunch of old crooks in government to repair the damage they did the world. Billions of innocent lives for a few rich, greedy, corrupt ones.
I felt sick.
“So…” I choked on a shaky breath peeled my hands from hers. “Why … Why were we let in?”
“Dr Wong made a snap decision. Neither she nor I are comfortable with what occurred. We might be the only doctors left in the world who will dedicate the rest of our lives to righting this wrong. To do that, I need every tool available to me.”
Dazed, I nodded. “Noah.”
“Noah,” she agreed with a tight smile. “And the others, who were unfortunately infected by Dr Stevenson after the virus took over. But I need more than that, Winter. If I want to repair a piece of this world, I need more.”
“Like what?”
Summer’s smile turned soft and she rested her hands on my shoulders. “How would Leonardo respond to assisting my research?”
“Leo?” I shrugged, still lost in the storm of what I’d learned. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess I could ask him?”
Summer beamed at me. “Thank you, Winter. He’s essential to my research. If he’s comfortable with assisting me, I would grateful. His blood could change the world.” She drew back and looked to the glass cell with the Sergeant in it. “It is entirely Leonardo’s choice. After all, he’s not quite a guest, is he?”
My face scrunched up. “What is he?”
Summer sighed and gestured for me to follow her gaze to the Sergeant.
“Your deltas are the ranking officials here,” she said. “There is one official who outranks Corporal Hill, and we are looking at him. For now, I’ve told your friends that their Sergeant is indisposed in the lower levels, but … it won’t be long before they figure it out, if they haven’t already.”
She shook her head and turned her pleading gaze on my stunned one. Mason, holding Cleo a few paces behind Summer, studied me intently, waiting for my declared loyalties.
“You can’t tell them, Winter. You have influence over two of those deltas, which—here—is a monopoly. I need you to utilise that influence for the time being. Can you do that for me?”
Her eyes searched mine.
I couldn’t give her much with everything tangled in my brain. I had the simpler issues to worry about, Castle and Leo mainly, then the revelation that mass worldwide genocide had happened, that survivors lived underground all over the world, and a political war in an underground facility which plonked me between the men who broke my heart and my sister who’d had a part in the end of the world.
But Summer meant more to me than anyone else in the world. Except maybe Cleo. That was a close tie. Sorry, but it’s true.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked in a whisper.
Gently, she squeezed my hand. “Bring your Leonardo to me and convince him to join my study. I need blood from him daily, plasma—some bone marrow, perhaps. He can be eased into all of this, but to begin, I need his consent.”
Uneasily, I glanced at Mason whose fierce
ly loyal gaze glowed at Summer’s back.
Summer stared at me with such hope that it stirred a warm, nervous feeling in my heart.
“I don’t have control over what he does …” I licked my lips, casting my gaze downwards. “But I’ll try.”
Summer warmed and drew me in for an embrace. Mason winked at me, a pleased smirk pasted to his handsome face.
Into my plaited hair, Summer whispered words that assured me I’d made the right decision; “That’s all I’ve ever asked of you, Winner.”
DEATH IS EVERYWHERE
ENTRY TWENTY-TWO
It was surprisingly easy to manipulate Leo, while declaring my loyalty to Summer.
I found Leo in the dining hall after dinner that night and asked for a moment alone with him. (Castle’s glares were starting to give me rashes). Leo came back to my room with me, where I stayed quiet for a while. He stewed in the silence with me, watching me from the edge of the bed where he perched himself.
Finally, I turned to him and wrung my fingers together. “My sister needs something from you, but after all you’ve done to bring the cargo here, she’s not comfortable asking you herself, and I talked to her, and it seems really important to finding the cure, and so I said I’d talk to you, but then I remembered the way our last talk went and how most our talks have gone lately and—”
Leo smiled; it touched his moss-green eyes. “Stop.”
For added effect, I bit my lip and shifted my weight from one leg to another. It seemed to work. I’d really discovered something in that.
Leo reached out for my hand. I hesitated, but then I rested mine in his. The touch of our palms shook my breath a little.
Leo pulled me closer, then slid his hand down to my outer thigh. His foresty eyes found my troubled ones.
Absolute sincerity slicked his voice; “What do you want me to do?”
I let his hand linger on my leg. Inside, I ached to punch his hand away from me. I wanted to punch him. I wanted to kick him and spit on him. But I reined in all the lashes of rage and kept his gaze.
“It’s just a brain study,” I said. “You’ll look at a bunch of pictures and Summer will study something about your brain chemistry or whatever.” I shrugged and wiped my clammy hands on my sweatpants. “She needs the data to compare with Noah’s.”