Noise. Shaking. Something was shaking her, but from a distance, as if on a different faraway planet. And screaming.
They were upside down and she was dangling heavily from the harness. Her head was spinning and her wrist hurt.
“Sophie!” Jon shook her again and she realized he’d been shaking her and shouting for the past few minutes. “Talk to me, dammit! Are you okay?”
Yes. I think. But the words wouldn’t leave her mouth. She turned her head to see Jon draw a big black knife, and before she had time to wonder what he was doing, he cut himself out of the harness, landing on the roof of the vehicle. An instant later, he was at the passenger door, trying to wrench it open, but it had buckled. He ran around the other side, cut her harness from the driver’s side, and pulled her out.
“Sophie! Can you hear me?”
She licked dry, parched lips. She hurt all over, particularly her head and her wrist. “Yes.” The word came out a dry croak. She coughed and immediately a canteen was at her mouth.
“Drink,” Jon ordered.
She did. The water went down like a dream. “Thanks.”
“Listen, honey. I have to know if you have any injuries. Are you bleeding anywhere?”
She shook her head.
“Anything hurt?”
She nodded, pointed to her head, held up her wrist. As if from far away she noticed it was oddly shaped, like someone had pitched a tent under her skin, which was rapidly turning a dark blue.
“Fuck. Wrist broken.” He shined a light in her eyes, holding her chin so she couldn’t look away and avoid the painful light. “And mild concussion.” There followed a string of words in several languages, which couldn’t have been nice words.
So she was concussed. That was why she was seeing double and couldn’t seem to coordinate her movements. And a broken wrist. It didn’t hurt, adrenaline was masking the pain.
“You fuckheads!” he screamed. Was he talking to her? But there was only one of her. Pain and awareness crept in, in equal measure. As her wrist began throbbing, she took stock of the situation. Jon was shouting into his wrist comms unit. “You forgot to switch off the mini-EDs, you fucks! What the fuck were you thinking? You fucking nearly killed Sophie!”
His distress was visible, certainly perceptible to her. Without thinking, she placed her hand over his. He was trembling, sweating, eyes so wide the whites were clear all around the pupils. He was hurting, he radiated pain and anxiety.
She clasped his hand more strongly, feeling heat rise, feeling his emotions rise to the surface then calm down. Feeling his distress dissipate like the fog curling up and disappearing under the force of the morning sun.
“Yeah,” he said suddenly, voice calmer. He never took his ice blue gaze from hers as he talked. “You’ll have the location via the transponder. We probably slid a hundred meters. You’ll need the hovercar. Bring medical supplies. Sophie has a concussion and a broken wrist. Bring pain meds too. No, I’m fine. Yes, the case is intact, I checked. Roger, we’ll see you in fifteen.”
He closed the connection then held her tightly again, eyes closed. “I nearly lost it,” he said, sounding surprised. “Fuckheads didn’t switch off all our protection devices. Whoever is responsible is going to be very, very sorry when I get back.”
Tendrils of distress colored his emotions.
Sophie stood on tiptoe and lay her cheek against his. Heat and solace. It was pure instinct. Jon was hurting. She had to help—because she loved him. It was as simple as that.
“I’m not hurt,” she murmured. “The wrist will heal. Considering what’s happening in the world, a broken wrist is nothing. Please don’t be angry at the person who forgot to switch the system off. He or she is probably overwhelmed and would never have endangered us on purpose.” She held him tightly as the trembling died down, until finally his head dropped so he could rest his forehead against hers. Her wrist was throbbing with pain, but it was nothing. Not when she could feel that Jon was okay again.
“If anything had happened to you . . .” he murmured.
“It didn’t. I’m fine, we’re both fine. We’ll be—” Home. She wanted to say home, but that was crazy. How could home be a place she’d never seen? “We’ll be there soon. We’ll rest, relax, grab a bite. Start working. Produce the vaccine, save as many people as we can. Look.” She stepped slightly back from Jon, turned him around, watched him take in the view.
It was magnificent. They were halfway up the mountain; the green valley floor was spread out before them, with checkerboard orchards and ranches and small towns in the distance. A section was covered with almonds in full bloom, like clouds with trunks. After the dark night, the colors seemed almost supernaturally bright, life blossoming before their eyes.
The sun finally topped the mountain, brilliant buttery light spilling out over the valley. It was so intense Sophie had to shade her eyes.
“Wow,” she whispered, glancing up at him then back at the landscape.
Jon gave a half smile. “Wait until you see it in the fall. Just beautiful.”
“It’s beautiful now. Stunning.” And it was. The shafts of light grew denser, picking out details that must have been miles and miles away. The land glowed in the sunlight, pierced by the vegetation. If you’d had to pick an illustration of the Garden of Eden for Sunday school, you’d look no further.
Her new home. Here. Her new mate. By her side.
Her head hurt and her wrist ached and every muscle was sore, but at the same time she felt suffused by something dangerous—hope. For a second, she could see the future. The virus, stopped. As much of humanity as possible, saved. All the survivors pulling together to create a new future for the children to come, including Catherine and Mac’s child. No room for greed and selfishness, everyone would have to pull together to re-create everything that had been lost. She’d see this beauty every day, see it grow even more lush as she worked side by side with Jon to create a new world.
From up here, the damage seemed much less somehow. Not trivial, but redeemable. Most of the fires had burned out. Three small towns were visible, the closest ones looking as if Godzilla had walked over them. But California was resilient. Earthquakes and fires and floods. They never stopped the rebuilding, over and over again.
They’d do it.
“I feel hopeful,” she said, almost to herself.
Jon scratched his chin, rasping against golden stubble. “You know, that’s exactly the kind of thing that would have made me really mad before. Hope is for chumps, that’s what I thought. Only strength keeps you alive. But I was wrong. You made me see that. Hope keeps us alive. So—”
A wild snarl, inhuman and violent, and something heavy and unstoppable crashed into her. Suddenly the air was full of wild cries, animal howls, and for a second she thought they’d been attacked by bears. She’d been thrown onto her back and she was stunned breathless when a terrifying face filled her vision. Wild eyes, a blood-stained howling mouth with broken teeth, a bib of blood down the front.
Not a bear. An infected.
She was so terrified she couldn’t scream. The bloody face, with deep gouges in its cheeks, snapped its jaws a couple of times, so close she could hear the horrible clattering. In a panic of self-defense, Sophie shoved hard at the shoulder with her good hand, taking the infected by surprise. It rolled away, then rolled right back, a second from landing back on top of her before she had a chance to get up with only one hand.
Then the face disappeared, as if a strong wind had blown it away.
It all happened in an instant. She tried to scramble up, but her legs wouldn’t hold her and she fell. Before she could hit the ground a strong hand caught her, swung her around him. Jon killed an infected that had been crouching, ready to leap.
That face disappeared, too, the head simply dissipating in a cloud of pink mist.
“Sophie!” Jon held her with one arm, the other holding his gun up as he looked around them. There were four bodies on the ground. She hadn’t even realized they�
��d been attacked by several infected until she saw them lying bonelessly, red spattering the ground. “God! Are you okay?”
Was she okay?
Sophie patted herself down fast, checking herself. She’d been so overwhelmed she hadn’t even heard the shot that killed her attacker. She could easily have been bitten without realizing it. But she was intact. There wasn’t even any blood on her. Somehow Jon had shot in such a way that there’d been no spatter on her.
“How did we not see them on scanners?” Sophie’s voice was tight. “How could they get past us?” She’d carried the scanner out with her from the car wreck. She checked it, moving it over the four dead bodies, but the scanner was blank. “God, they must have been freshly infected. They’d turned before their body temperature rose. Are there any more around?” She tapped frantically on the scanner, bringing the temperature threshold down to 97 degrees, where even uninfected would show up. She extended the range of the scan and there were no sources of life within a radius of 500 meters, and after she extended the range even further, they were clear out to a kilometer.
She turned to Jon. “Man, that was close. It’s a good thing you were so fast—”
She stopped. Brought a hand to her mouth.
“What, honey?” Jon asked, holstering the gun. He wouldn’t have used the stunner for fear of hurting her. Something about her stillness caught his attention. His gaze sharpened. “Honey? What’s wrong?”
Sophie lifted her shaking hand and pointed.
He looked down at himself and froze. Right there, on the back of his hand, was a bite mark. Unmistakably human.
He was infected.
Jon’s face turned to stone. He handed his gun to her, butt first.
“Here,” he said, tapping the bridge of his nose. “Aim here. Take the cortex out. Do it now.”
Sophie was white as the scattered snow on the ground. Crazily, when he handed his gun to her, she put her hands behind her back and shook her head.
No? She was saying fucking no?
Jon hardened his heart. He had to. Because not half an hour ago he’d been daydreaming about him and Sophie working hard the rest of their lives to build up Haven, raising their kids in a tight circle of people who were dedicated to creating a community.
Every single objection he’d had to even thinking of settling down was gone. Sophie was his future and he’d embraced it.
Now all that was gone, gone. Due to a bite he hadn’t even felt.
He looked down at his hand, at the elliptical oval marks the human mouth left. Whichever monster had bitten him had broken skin, and now he was a heartbeat away from becoming a monster himself.
“Take the gun, goddammit.” His voice was harsh, angry.
Ghost Ops soldiers always had a discreet method of suicide on them. His had been a vial of dimethylmercury. He carried it around his neck on a chain. Which was in his bedroom back in Haven, of no use to him whatsoever.
Sophie had to do it. Now.
But she was shaking her head.
Now he was really mad. “Fuck this, Sophie. I don’t know how long I’ve got. I’ll bet you don’t know either. Take me out before I turn.”
“No,” she pleaded. “Listen to me. I—”
“No, goddammit! You listen to me!” He was furious, and the feeling of being angry at Sophie—at lovely, gentle Sophie—was so strange he wondered if he was already turning. “I will not be responsible for your death. You’ve seen these creatures, Sophie. If you think that somehow I’ll turn but recognize you, that you’re you, and not hurt you—you’re wrong. You’ve seen them—you’ve seen mothers kill their kids, children kill their grandparents. In I don’t know how many minutes, I’m going to turn into a homicidal maniac and will rip you to shreds, and I can’t live with the thought. Not for one second.” He tapped the bridge of his nose again. “So do it. Right now. Because death is nothing. We all die. At least let me die knowing I won’t hurt you.”
His voice broke. It was pointless pretending to be mad at her when his heart was pounding with fear. Fear that he’d hurt her.
He’d spent all his adult life training to kill. He was good at it. He had killed often and he knew precisely what to do. Though he wouldn’t be aware of tearing Sophie to pieces, he’d do it. He could see it clearly, what he’d do to her. Death was a precious gift in comparison, if it could stop him.
If she shot him now, someone from Haven would be coming soon. They’d see the bite marks, his dead body, and understand completely. And he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that for the rest of her life, Mac and Nick would look after Sophie as if she were their own. She’d be safe. That was all that counted.
“Sophie,” he said evenly. “Now. Please.”
She took the gun from his hand, watching him out of those beautiful eyes, sad and sober.
Jon braced.
And Sophie threw the gun into the bushes.
Before Jon could run to see if he could find it, she leaped forward and put her hand on his forearm. Even through his clothes he could feel the warmth.
“Jon,” she said urgently, “listen to me.”
The anger was back. “Fuck that. We don’t have time for farewells, Sophie. I might be turning right now.”
“I’m a healer,” she answered and he frowned.
“You’re a what?”
“A healer. I didn’t tell you because—because I don’t tell people. It’s complicated and I can’t use it to clear up colds, but I can heal people who are really sick.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
She gently closed her good hand around his and led him to the foot of a huge pine tree. “Sit.” And just like that, he sat. Nervous energy was humming in him, he knew he had to find a way to kill himself fast, but somehow Sophie was overriding his system. He sat and she sat next to him, close enough for him to feel the warmth radiating off her.
She lifted the sleeve of the arm that had been bitten, pulling it up over his elbows, and put both hands on his hand, right above the bite. One hand was already becoming purple and swollen from the broken wrist but she paid no attention to that at all. Where she curled her hands around his forearm there was an enormous sensation of heat. Painless, enveloping.
“I’ve healed you already.” She absorbed the jolt his hand made.
“What?”
Sophie nodded. “Do you remember feeling heat when you landed on me? You’d just made a run for your life and you’d seen the horrors on the street and you were heartsick. And when—when you told me about your parents. It was like a grievous wound, I could tell. I don’t know exactly how it works—it’s actually scary to me—but you felt better afterward, didn’t you?”
Jon kept his stone face on, though he mind was whirling.
Sophie shook his arm. “Answer me, damn it! You felt better afterward, didn’t you?”
He felt like his lips were made of stone. He had trouble formulating the words. “Everyone feels better after talking about something painful. Psychology 101.”
She looked him in the eyes. “I am absolutely convinced I can cure this, Jon. I wouldn’t be playing with my safety like this if I weren’t. I can do this and I will. I am not going to go back to Haven with your dead body. We are going to go back together, we are going to work hard with the others to heal the world, and we are going to get married and have wonderful children who will be brought up to be smart, loving, and kind. That is not a wish, that is the truth. Do you believe me?”
No, of course not. The words were there, on his lips, but somehow they wouldn’t come out.
She looked smart and strong and very capable. Not crazy at all. The furthest thing from crazy, as a matter of fact.
And—he’d seen this before. Catherine and Elle. Both scientists, both women of reason, with unusual gifts. Catherine could feel emotions—and lately thoughts—through touch. And Elle—Elle could project herself out of her body thousands and thousands of miles away.
He’d have scoffed at even the hint of any of this b
efore last year, but he’d seen it with his own eyes. Catherine had found them in their secret lair, where the entire U.S. military had failed to find them, simply because she’d touched Lucius Ward.
She’d touched him and uncovered secrets he’d never told another human being. And Elle—Elle’s body had been back at Haven, but she’d been with him and Nick when they broke into Arka’s headquarters in San Francisco. There was no doubt about that.
So . . . maybe . . .
Sophie’s good hand clutched his more tightly and the heat was like a painless fire. She leaned forward toward him, toward a man who could be turning into a monster right now. “Give me a chance, Jon. Give us a chance. Please. I don’t want to live without you.”
It was nuts. It went against every single instinct he had.
Jon reached to his boot, pulled out his combat knife, placed it in her lap. One good thing—if he turned, he wouldn’t know what it was for.
“At the first sign, and I mean the very first sign, that I am turning, you slash me across the throat with that Sophie, and jump away. If we’re going to try this, I need your promise.”
“I promise,” she said, her voice low, gaze unwavering.
Nail it down. “Promise what? Say it out loud.”
“I promise that if I can’t heal you, if you show signs of turning, that I will take the knife, slash you across the throat, and run.”
He nodded. “They’re coming for you from Haven. They’ll find you. And they’ll protect you. If I go, I want to know you’ll live.”
She swallowed heavily. “I know.”
Jon couldn’t believe he was doing this, but he was. “Okay. What do we do?”
“I touch you. And I heal you.”
Jon frowned. “That’s it? That’s your strategy? You touch me? You’re touching me now.”
She nodded. “Do you trust me?”
“Well . . . yeah. But—”
“Close your eyes.”
He closed them, hoping she was right, terrified she was wrong. Would she be able to slit his throat in time? They had no way to know how the infected turned. No one had observed it. Or at least no one had observed it and lived. Was it a slow gradual process? Was it sudden? If it was like throwing a switch, Sophie’d have no chance. The only way she had any chance at all was if she could see him turning, and decide to put an end to it. To him. He wouldn’t block her in any way. In fact, he hoped to be aware enough to tilt his head back and offer his throat.
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