by Angie Fox
“Fess up. You like it that way,” he said, tossing one end of the ladder up onto the roof of the lab.
Once he made sure it was secure, and once he’d yanked down about ten feet of excess rope ladder, he offered it to me with a half bow.
“What is this?” I asked, strolling up, giving the climbing rope a test tug.
His lips grazed my shoulder. “I know you’re used to taller buildings, but this was the only thing I could swing on such short notice.”
“Hmm,” I said, planting a boot on the bottom rung, willing to take this gift, this man, for as long as I could.
The roof of the lab was slightly ridged metal. I turned to see Marc following me up, with a blanket tucked under his arm. “You’ve thought of everything.”
“I wish,” he said, shaking an errant piece of glass away.
If we’d only known the dangers of our research. If we’d only treated that with as much suspicion as we’d treated each other.
“Hey,” he said, easing me down on the blanket with him. “No regrets.”
“No regrets,” I promised.
He hovered over me, his face laid bare, his emotions raw. “I love you,” he said fiercely, possessively. “I promise I’ll never leave you again. If we find a way out of this, I’ll always be with you.”
It was all I’d ever wanted, him with me. He felt perfect. He filled me on a fundamental level. He was that missing piece that I’d lost so long ago.
We lay down under the stars, kissing tenderly. We loved each other slow. Touching, murmuring, even laughing at times, we stayed awake all night, this last night.
And when streaks of red and purple gave way to dawn, we lay together, bodies and legs entwined, as we watched a gleaming crystal rise over the horizon.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I’d never seen anything so large, so beautiful. It rose high in the sky, a glittering beacon of death. The facets sparkled against the dawn. It was the most brilliant sight I’d ever witnessed.
When it had reached the apex of the sky, it exploded in a million flecks of light. Glittery shards rained down. They disappeared in the wind, the deadly crystal powder taking flight, poisoning the very air we breathed.
I swallowed hard.
Soon, humans would inhale the virus. Their bodies would begin to shut down as it attacked the nervous system. Muscles would slow—the heart, the lungs. They’d breathe out the poison, but it wouldn’t matter. It would already be in the air, the water, the soil. One hundred percent fatal and designed to kill quickly.
At least it would be over fast.
The virus could move through the portals and beyond. The humans on Earth might have a few minutes, maybe an hour more. No one would understand what was happening as entire cities succumbed. Until there was nothing left.
Marc and I held each other close, afraid to breathe. I closed my eyes as I felt the fine dust brush over my skin. I didn’t want to die. I hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much. This feeling of my body shutting down, my lungs failing. It would be like drowning. My breath hitched.
I buried my face in the warm crook of Marc’s shoulder and waited.
“I love you,” he murmured in my ear, as if he had to say it one last time.
It was all so fragile—life, love. Each moment we had together. We could never get them back.
My lungs felt heavy. I could almost feel the virus invading, working its way into me on a cellular level. It was hard to breathe, hard to think. At least the end would be quick. We would die as we’d always wanted to live—together.
I clung to Marc, letting his comfort ease through me. I should be more afraid, outraged even, but I was tired of anger. I was sick of living with injustice.
Death would set me free.
Marc lifted his chin from my head. The air around us lay still, as if the entire world held its breath.
I blinked up at him. My throat and chest felt tight. We shouldn’t have survived it this long. “What’s happening?” I whispered, afraid to speak.
“I don’t know,” he said, brushing a smudge of something from my cheek.
It was as if we were alone in the world.
We held each other for a moment longer, waiting. For our deaths, for the deaths of our friends and colleagues, for what I wasn’t sure.
“Let’s see what’s happening,” he said, reaching for his shirt.
Right. If we didn’t succumb right away, they might need us down there.
We readied ourselves quickly and hurried back toward camp in silence. It was eerie. Not a soul walked the paths. It was so quiet, I could hear our camp flag flapping in the breeze.
“This is so weird,” I said, my eyes darting, searching for signs of life.
“I know,” Marc said beside me.
We passed silent tents, a deserted mess hall. It was as if everyone was dead except for us.
“Let’s check out the clinic,” he said as we walked past a discarded boot in the road. Letters from home fluttered in the poison air, scattering down the path like tumbleweeds.
Maybe some of the virus victims had made it there. We could at least do some good before we succumbed.
Hot grief welled up inside me, and I tamped it down. My friends were going to be in there, my colleagues. The least I could do was face the end with dignity.
Marc opened the door to the recovery unit, and I followed him in.
The front desk was stacked with files, as if someone had been working right up until the end. I braced myself and searched behind it, expecting a body. But there was nothing there.
“Where did everyone go?” It wasn’t like a virus could consume the bodies.
Marc shook his head and glanced into the first recovery room, then ducked inside.
I joined him.
It was the first time I’d ever seen the recovery room completely quiet. I breathed in the familiar scent, ready for my lungs to give out, for my strength to fail. I fingered the files on the desk, as if they could give me some clue as to what had happened here.
“Hey!” a voice called.
I flung the file sideways as Holly popped out of one of the middle rooms. “Couldn’t sleep?”
Marc dashed into the hallway, and Holly gave a little scream, dropping the tray she’d been carrying. Scalpels and medical scissors clattered over the floor. “For crying out loud, those were sterile!”
She bent to pick up the instruments, glaring at Marc and me.
We simply stared at her.
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
“Other than him scaring the bejesus out of me?” She shot Marc a look. “I’m just getting ready for the morning shift.”
He stood over her. “You haven’t been hit with massive casualties?”
“No,” she said, gathering up the last of the scalpels.
It didn’t make sense. I saw the crystal explode.
“What does it mean?” I asked Marc.
Was there a delayed effect? Did we still have time? I didn’t know what to do with it if we did.
He stood, jaw clenched. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision. “Let’s go see Eris.”
We left a very confused Holly and headed for what was left of the VIP tent.
As we neared, we saw that Eris had replaced the burned red hutch with white limestone. That should be easy to cart around if we needed to relocate the MASH camp.
The goddess was unlocking an ice-blue front door, wearing the same silver chain mail dress she’d had on the night before. Her hair was mussed and…was that a hickey on her neck?
“Hello.” She giggled, giving me the once-over. “Glad to see you had fun, too.”
I reached to smooth down my own bed head. Come on. I couldn’t look that bad.
“Did you save us?” Marc demanded as we stepped onto Eris’s new threshold. It was made of a kind of clear glass. Tropical fish swam underneath. The poor things had no idea they were in the desert. I didn’t know what to think of this. Of her.
The glass gave way under M
arc’s foot, and he sloshed his boot in the muddy bottom. The goddess snickered as he shook out his boot and gave her a look. “I had better things to do,” she trilled, opening the door. “Let’s just say I got mine, too.”
“Your what?” I asked, throat tight. I was tired of games.
She pursed her glossy lips. “My sweet revenge. I slept with Nerthus’s son.”
Marc and I exchanged a look.
“And then you destroyed the virus,” he said.
Eris clucked, posing in the doorway as she fondled the frame. “All you humans think about is yourselves. Me, me, me.” She rolled her eyes. “I went up to Hephaestus’s forge, but he said he was way too busy for me. Luckily I had your knife. I showed it to him, and he completely forgot about the crystal he was working on.” She drew her fingers across her collarbone, down her ample cleavage. “I told him it was a gift to his glory, and of course he invited me inside.”
Unbelievable. “You gave my knife as a gift?”
“You gave it to me,” she huffed. “Anyhow, we did it seventeen different ways, including a reverse Zeus right on top of the crystal he should have been working on. It’s my signature move. Hephaestus was so impressed with my flexibility, he decided to etch my name on it. Did you see it? I hope Nerthus saw it. He sank it into that big fiery forge, and of course I told him how hot he was.” She notched her chin up. “He wrote E-r-i-s right on the front.”
I stared at her, trying not to react, as it sank in.
Marc was not so subtle. “Hephaestus sank the loaded crystal into his forge?” he barked, not even caring when his other foot sank into the goddess’s tropical front porch.
Eris frowned. “Well, of course it was loaded. It was the weapon.” She brightened. “With my name on it.”
I couldn’t help but grin. Marc, too. You couldn’t heat the virus. Not without killing it.
He will fire the weapon and bring an end to suffering.
Thank God.
They’d fired a deadly weapon—into a very costly tribute to the goddess of chaos.
I kept my face straight as a grin bubbled up inside me. If I didn’t watch it, I was going to laugh. Incredible. I glanced at Marc and could tell he was on the verge, too.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I mumbled.
“Yes. Do,” Eris said, dismissing us. “I’m very tired.”
We stumbled off her porch, fighting it as we made our way past Eris’s limestone pied-à-terre, to the other side of the VIP showers. There, we collapsed in a fit of laughter.
It was too much, too overwhelming that the human race was saved by…her. By a reverse Zeus, whatever the heck that was.
“She killed it.” I giggled, tears streaming down my face.
Marc wrapped his arms around me, his fingers tangling in my hair as he pulled me down for a joyful kiss.
I tasted him, savored him. I slid my hands down his chest and under his T-shirt. His skin was warm and alive.
“We did it,” he said against my hair, spinning me in a circle until I was breathless. Free. I smiled against his skin.
We did it.
Now we just had to make sure they didn’t try again.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“We need to tell Kosta.”
His tent was just on the other side of the VIP showers. Hand in hand, we dashed the twenty feet to his hutch and pounded on the wooden door.
No answer. Marc and I exchanged a look as we knocked again, harder.
The door opened a fraction, and Shirley stood on the other side. Her hair was mussed, and her lipstick was gone. I couldn’t believe she was going to let Kosta see her like that until… I gasped. “No!”
Colonel Kosta strode up behind her, bare except for a very short towel wrapped around his waist. “What do you want?” he demanded, moving in front of her.
For a second, my mind went blank. Kosta and Shirley sitting in a tree… I shook it off. “There’s been a new development,” I said. “The virus has been destroyed.”
The colonel’s eyes widened. “That’s good news,” he said in the understatement of the year. He reached down to touch Shirley’s shoulder. I don’t even think he realized he was doing it. His eyes flicked over Marc and me. “Meet me in my office at oh nine hundred.” With that, the door closed in our faces.
I looked at Marc. “Seems to me he’s going to take his time getting there.”
But I was wrong. Kosta beat us. We walked into his outer office to find Shirley at her desk, grinning like she’d never stop.
“Way to go,” I said, impressed.
“I told you I had a system.” She winked as she opened the door to Kosta’s office.
The colonel sat behind his desk, mellower than I was used to seeing him. He had his hands clasped over his chest and a cigar dangling from the side of his mouth. “Thanks, Shirley,” he said, giving her the once-over.
Shirley needed to write a book. How to Seduce a Demigod in Just Under Fourteen Years.
Marc and I stood in front of Kosta’s desk.
He plucked the cigar from between his lips. “What do you know?”
I stared at him. Then back to her. Shirley and Kosta. Who would have thought?
“Hephaestus lowered the virus and the crystal into his forge,” Marc told him.
Kosta shook his head. “Why would he do a fool thing like that?”
I shook my head, smiling. “He was under the influence of Eris and a reverse Zeus, according to her.”
Kosta lowered his cigar and succumbed to a belly laugh. The skin on his face and head grew ruddy. His shoulders shook. I’d never seen anything like it. He’d barely cracked a smile in the seven years I’d known him. Now he was wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.
“Gods,” he said, standing, trying to gather himself. “Argus defected. His mother should be leaving for Olympus soon.” He eyed the closed door. “I did some checking when I got here to the office. My sources say the Old God Army is calling the virus a dud. The gods are canceling the program.”
Holy Hades. “We did it.” I hugged Marc, not caring where we were. Kosta would have to get over it. We were alive.
The door burst open behind us. Shirley clutched the handle, wide-eyed. “I told her you were busy, but—”
With a crackle and burst of feathers, a goddess appeared next to Kosta. She was Egyptian, with long black hair and an ornate headdress with an ostrich feather at the front. She wore a flowing white robe and carried an ankh, which she promptly set on Kosta’s desk.
“Who are these two?” she asked, unfurling her wings.
“This is actually the one I told you about,” Kosta said, tilting his head at Marc. To me, he said, “This is Ma’at, goddess of justice—”
“And truth and about eight other things,” she said, whipping a feather out of thin air.
Nice trick.
“Thanks,” she said, holding it out in front of us.
Holy moly. She knew what I was thinking.
“Hello? Goddess of truth,” she said, peering through the feather, making a thorough study of us.
“Nerthus isn’t too happy,” Kosta said. “She’s been humiliated because her virus didn’t work.” He nodded his head toward Marc. “She wants this one back to restart the program.”
Ma’at made a face. “Well, she’s not going to get him. I’ll tell her myself. He belongs with us now.”
My heart swelled.
Thank you, God.
“It’s Ma’at,” she said, “Goddess. And I’m not doing it for you. Or Eris.” She stood in front of Marc. “You are going to be quite valuable to us.”
Marc watched her. “I have no idea what you mean.”
The corner of her mouth curled up in a grin. “You will. In the meantime, you two belong together.”
My heart swelled. I knew that.
But how did she know that?
The goddess frowned as a riot of colors burst from the lower right corner of the room. A rainbow blazed arching past Kosta’s desk and over the
line of ancient shields. “Iris?”
“Is this a good time?” a timid voice echoed.
Ma’at stuffed her feather back into a fold in her robe. “Spit it out, Iris.”
“Priority message one from the old god leadership. START: Nerthus the condemned has wasted our time and our glory on a futile virus. STOP. Said goddess will be swiftly and irrevocably punished for her vile crime. STOP. Nerthus, venerated Goddess of the Sacred Grove, Creator and Blessed Ruler of Niatharum, Divine Mother of Hephaestus, will be made the slave girl to Argus, High General of the Old God Army, for a period of one thousand years, for him to do with her as he wishes. END MESSAGE.”
Ma’at waved her hand, and the rainbow vanished. “Thank you, Iris.”
She turned to the colonel and reached onto his desk for the ankh. “Good work, Kosta. I just wish I could stick around.”
“Yes,” he said, uncomfortable. His eyes traveled to where Shirley stood at the door.
“Put a sock in it. I know.” The goddess waved her hand and was gone.
Kosta’s gaze traveled to Marc. “We’ll get you set up here in camp. We’ll also put you on the schedule.”
“There’s a free tent close to the tar swamp,” Shirley chimed in from the door.
“I’d like that,” Marc said, wrapping his arm around me.
I couldn’t believe it.
At last, Marc was here, with me.
“I’d like to request a change in quarters,” I said, unable to contain my excitement.
“Give Shirley your application,” the colonel said, as if I had any doubt my friend would rush it through. He looked to Marc. “Make sure she leaves in the mornings wearing more than a robe.”
“Something I need to know?” Marc asked.
“I’ll tell you all about it,” I said as Kosta led us to the door.
“I’d also like to get the lab up and running again,” Marc added to him.
The colonel considered it. “It seems harmless enough now that the virus is gone.”
Amazing. We could rebuild. Start again. We still had the anesthetic. And now I had Marc as well.