My fingers dig in deeper, desperate to hear his next words.
“I couldn't fix you even if I wanted to, but I don't mind pulling together the pieces. Even if I have to do it over and over and over again. It's okay, because you're my favorite puzzle.”
“A puzzle,” I laugh. “More like a shattered vase.”
He shakes his head even as he reaches for my chin and brushes his thumb across my skin.
“Well, then, I'll be your broom and dustpan,” he laughs.
I wish I had a heart. I wish I could feel it squeeze within my chest. That giddy feeling you get inside your bones when someone says something that makes you melt? I miss that. I miss it so bad. Because if given the chance, Cain could make me melt, in a multitude of ways.
Before I can stop him, his arms come around my torso in a hug. It's been so long since someone embraced me, really embraced me. I can't even remember the last time someone had their arms around me. Was it my mother? My father? A member of the team after I changed? Who knows?
“Thank you,” I breathe against his shoulder.
He rocks us from side to side and the motion relaxes me. “You're very welcome.”
Behind us, a shrill cry rings out, bouncing off the stone houses surrounding us.
“Crap.”
So much for our little moment.
Cain pulls away, just the slightest bit, and our eyes collide in a way they've never done before. He moves in close... closer... and suddenly, I realize what he's about to do.
“Cain, no!”
His lips stamp down on mine, and even through all the panic, all the fear, I feel him. I feel his warm skin, the softness of his touch, the care in which he kisses me.
But that all comes to a screeching halt the second he pulls away.
What. A. Moron.
How could he have done such a thing? Who knows what kissing me will do to a person?
I touch my lips because, well, I can't help it. His kiss still lingers there, but underneath the fog of sensual emotions, I'm ticked.
“You idiot,” I spit. My voice is cracked and breathy. “Do you know what you just did?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Cain smiles, and it's the most gorgeous thing I've seen since the world turned dark and began folding in on itself.
“Now run.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A concrete structure vaguely resembling a prison shouldn't be the kind of place that calms you, but that's exactly what happens when the base comes into view. I miss my cot. Its threadbare canvas covering an ancient iron frame might as well be memory foam and plush linen compared to sleeping on the plane.
Paris was a bust just like Brussels, but I don't care. I'm ecstatic to be back with both teams intact, even though I can't get past the nagging feeling that Cain shouldn't have kissed me.
When his lips touched mine, he planted a seed of fear. Uncertainties aren't things I enjoy living with, and he gave me the biggest one of all.
What happens when the living touch the dead with lust on their lips?
What happens then?
No answers for Maya. None. I just have to accept that I'll be left to wonder.
Maybe I infected him. Maybe I didn't.
Maybe he's immune to me since he has the vaccine. Maybe he's not.
Maybe we're on the verge of crossing over into necrophilia. Maybe we... yeah, no. We're not. That's just- no.
I'm ready to lay down, zone out, and forget it ever happened, but Cain isn't having that.
“Winters. Get up.” His boot hits the side of my cot and I crack one eye open to glare at him.
“What?” I snap.
“Need to run some errands for March. Give me a hand?”
I close my eye. “Sure.” I raise said hand in the air. “Give me a couple months. I'm sure it'll fall right off.”
Clearly, Cain doesn't find my joke as humorous as the people around us, because while they laugh, he grabs hold of my wrist and hauls me out of my bed without so much as a grunt.
“Careful, Cain,” Martina scolds. “You'll pull her entire arm out of the socket.”
More laughter erupts and I join in, which earns me a death glare from King Cain.
He half-drags me all the way out into the hall before loosening his grip.
“Too much?” I giggle. “My bad.”
“Yeah, call me crazy, but I don't enjoy jokes about your body parts falling off.”
Wow. He's in a mood.
Before I can say another word, he thrusts a set of keys and a lanyard into my hands. I recognize them as Secretary March's and wonder why they're not around his neck where they usually are.
“What are we doing with these?”
“March has a briefing with the new guards coming in and needs someone to print off their enrollment paperwork.” His eyebrow raises suggestively, and I can't help but feel like a receptionist that's being gawked at by her CEO.
“You're sending me off to do paperwork? Cain, we've been home a total of ten minutes. Why does everyone else get to decompress and I'm sent off to do grunt work? Just because I don't have a pulse doesn't mean I'm a machine.”
“Duly noted.” He takes off down the hall without another word.
I follow him around the corner and we stop at the door to the computer room. He nods at the lanyard and I start trying every key on the ring. He sighs, and that just makes me move slower.
Eventually, I find the right one and we make our way inside. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch his every move. He's changed. He even walks like a soldier now. Head pulled back, spine ramrod-straight, boots clunking noisily as he walks. It's kind of hot.
“It's in the security file.” He points to a computer and I take a seat in the chair. “Under Admin Forms.”
“If you already know where everything is, why don't you just do it?”
A teasing smile curls his lips.
“Because then I'd be stuck here in this room alone instead of with you.”
I slump back in the chair and glare at him.
“You know you dragging me down the hall negates that super sweet line you just delivered, right?”
He closes his eyes and nods. “Yes, I'm aware.”
“Good. Just wanted to make sure.”
It's a fairly easy task, so in no time at all, the printer fires to life and starts spitting out paperwork. While we wait, I play with the lanyard I have around my neck, clicking two of his keys together. There are four keys in all and one flash drive. I move the plastic hull between my fingers and wonder briefly what a man like him would keep on a flash drive when he has an abundance of storage space in this very room.
I glance up to find Cain staring at the papers in the printer tray. His mind is somewhere else. He's distracted.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I uncap the flash drive, insert it into the side of the computer, and watch a new box pop up on the screen.
There aren't very many files, mostly addresses and memos, but one file in particular catches my eye. It's just one letter. One capital letter.
Z.
I double click on the icon and a Word document pops up on the screen a millisecond later.
Cain is still preoccupied, so I start to read. I'm halfway through the first page when a shocking bolt of realization pummels through me, freezing me to the chair.
It's a list of water treatment plants.
The cities they're located in.
The people that run them.
And the codes to enter their gates.
All that doesn't bother me. That could be anything. But what does bother me is the heading along the top of the page.
Phase I: Distribution of Variola Lyssavirus.
“Cain...”
I can't take my eyes off the page, but I can tell he's turned his attention back to me.
“Come here.”
He moves around the desk and comes to stand behind me. “What's up?”
“Look.” I point to the screen and wait for him to read t
he words that just filled me with incomprehensible terror.
As he reads, I push the button to print the file.
“What are you doing?” he demands. “Are you trying to make your life harder than it already is?”
I look around to make sure we're absolutely alone before folding the pages in half and shoving them down the side of my jeans.
“Maybe.”
I'm out the door and heading back down the hall before Cain can stop me. I don't know what this means and I don't know what I'm going to do with the information, if there's anything to do about it at all. Confusion makes my limbs jerky and uneven, and when I walk into the dorm, some take notice. Usually, I just look like a zombie. Now I'm walking like one.
“Everything okay?” Tara asks.
My head bobs up and down in the most unbelievable attempt at a nod ever made.
“Totally.”
Martina joins her. “You sure? Because you look like someone just made you eat a live chicken.”
Funny. Now that she mentions it, it does actually feel like there's something clawing and pecking away at my stomach lining.
“Nope,” I say, waving them away. “All good.”
“Someone really needs to find a cure before you turn into a bigger freak than you already are.”
Martina and Tara glare over my shoulder, and I know who's behind me. As always, her voice has the same effect as nails on a chalkboard, and I turn around to face Celeste.
Her sneer is too much right now. I don't have the time nor the patience to deal with whatever she's trying to throw at me. Her long blonde hair, her sweet-as-saccharine voice, her flawless skin– it's too much for me.
Before anyone can stop me, I'm swinging my fist.
It connects with her arm as she blocks me, so I swing again.
“There is no cure!” I scream, trying to get a good hit. “There's never going to be a cure because no one cares about us!”
Hands close around my arms, my waist, my neck, and I'm lifted up into the air, away from Celeste, who is still freaking sneering.
“Calm down,” Brian grunts in my ear as he and Sully pull me away. “It's okay.”
It's not okay.
It will never be okay.
The world is doomed, and yet there are still people like Celeste. People who want to spread as much hate and derision as they can.
“What's going on?”
All eyes whip to the open door where Vice-President Wilder stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Secretary March.
Wilder steps forward. “Is there a problem, Winters?”
Oh yeah. Lots of problems. So many problems.
I want to warn him, to tell him what kind of company he's keeping, but I don't have a complete death sentence, so I keep my mouth shut.
“Take her to holding,” March says, eyeing me closely. “She's starting to show signs of distress. We can't risk her snapping at the others.”
“Distress.” I say the word through a thick bout of laughter. “Is that a joke? You recruited us to kill people that are already freaking dead. Of course I'm distressed!”
They carry my body out of the room, and I know where we're going, but can't bring myself to care. Maybe the solitude will be good for me. Maybe March is right. Maybe I am losing control.
Inside my transparent cell, a male nurse pierces my skin with a needle and empties a syringe into my bloodstream. I expect to be put straight to sleep, but whatever they give me doesn't work right away, so I only grow more and more pissed as they try to bring me down.
“Relax, Winters,” a guard growls. “Stop making this harder than it already is.”
Laughter rings through the small cell, loud and frenzied. It's my own, but I barely recognize it. They let me go and a second later the door shuts with a whoosh and a beep. I lay flat on my concrete slab and stare straight up at the glass ceiling, wondering what to do next.
“Good call, guys.” I give the guards a thumbs-up. “Hazard contained. You can all sleep a little sounder tonight. I'll just be here, rotting away.”
When their footfalls no longer echo through the chamber, I hop off the bed and dig every single paper out of my pants. It's not an ideal storage solution, but I pull up the cover of the drain, roll them up as tightly as I can, and place them right inside the lip in the concrete floor. Once I tap them down for good measure, I replace the metal drain cover and scoot to the far side of the room.
For now, the pages are safe.
I might not be, but those secrets are.
It hasn't even been a full minute since the guards left, but the door is already opening again. But this time, it's not an authority figure coming to chastise me. It's Cain.
He rushes toward me carrying a meal tray, his face drawn up in worry. When he reaches the box, he sets the tray on the floor and presses his hand against the glass. I meet him there, pressing mine to the other side.
“Give me the papers,” he whispers.
I start shaking my head before he ever finishes his sentence.
“I can't. They're safer in here.”
For a second, he looks confused, but then his face clears and he looks relieved.
“You're right. Just don't lose them.”
My head snaps back and I offer him my fiercest glare, bared teeth and all. I don't have the patience left to deal with his pigheadedness.
“Screw you,” I sneer. “I'm not a five-year-old, Cain.”
He backs away from the glass and runs a hand over his short hair.
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to suggest you don't know what you were doing. I just– I'm stressed out too, Maya.”
Stressed out. What a laugh.
I'm not stressed.
I'm stretched to the limits. Life has been flying by so fast I haven't even had a chance to properly grieve my own death; something a person should never have to do.
“The girls wanted to see you,” he says out of the blue. “The guards wouldn't let them in but I told them I'd check on you.” He picks up the tray and slides it inside the hatch. “And bring you this.”
I take it from him and toss it to the slab.
“Why would they let you and not–” I cut off with a smile. “Oh, that's right. Long live the king!”
He levels me with a glare. “It's so good to know your sarcasm hasn't died with the rest of you.”
Ouch. Harsh.
He blows out a breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sorry. That was low.”
“You think?”
We both sigh together, and he takes a seat in the metal folding chair next to my door. We suck at this. Whatever this is. But he's here. That's got to count for something.
“Do you need me to bring you anything?”
I lift the cover of the tray and see a raw pork chop sitting next to my formaldehyde bottle.
Gross.
“How about sushi. I'm in the mood for a spring roll.”
“Sure thing.” He tries to hide his smile, but I see it. “I'll get right on that.”
Cain opens his mouth to say something else, but the sound of the door unlocking cuts him off. He jumps out of the chair and stands at attention as Louis Decker, Bartholomew Wilder, and Arthur March enter the room.
“Holebrook. What are you doing in here?” March asks.
Cain directs his answer toward the president, and for a split second I worry that he's going to give us away.
“Bringing her dinner, sir,” he says, aiming his eyes at President Decker.
Decker nods before waving him away. Cain watches me all the way to the door, and I do the same. The door slams shut, its echoes lashing out like an exclamation point.
“We're dispatching both teams tonight,” Decker says.
I'm already running through the list of things I need to do before going out again.
“Tonight? But we just got home, sir.”
He nods. “I'm aware. But this is what you signed up for.”
Well, technically none of us really knew what we were signing up for
, and they didn't give us a whole lot of wiggle room to say no, but whatever.
“I'm good, sir,” I say, hoping he believes it. Not that he should. It's a lie.
“Winters.” My name sounds clipped on his tongue, and I don't think I'm going to like where this is going. “You're going to have to sit this one out.”
Disappointment pulls my shoulders down and I slump back against the bed. Of course I'm sitting it out. I just spun out of control – again – and tried to hurt a teammate.
I'm just about to tell him that I don't blame him for making that call when Secretary March steps forward.
“Let her go, sir.”
Decker whips his head around. I can't see his expression, but I assume he's pissed. “Excuse me?”
“Sir, we can't compromise the rest of the group by leaving our most vital asset here in containment.” His voice is slow and reasonable, and even I have to agree with him. I know he didn't mean any of that as a compliment, but that's how I'm taking it.
Decker apparently disagrees.
“And we can't compromise the group by leaving them with an unstable member either.”
I see a chance to jump in and I take it.
“I swear, sir, I'm in complete control. I am. I promise.”
He spins back around to face me. “You can see how I might have a problem believing that, don't you, Winters?”
“Well, yeah, but it's the truth. I just had a... lapse in judgment.”
“Lapse in judgment,” he repeats, chuckling. “Winters, you're a pain in my backside.”
“I know, sir. I'm sorry.”
Without another word, Secretary March pushes the code to unlock my door and it slides open.
“Trust me, sir, she'll be fine,” he says. “I'll vouch for her.”
He's so sincere I'm automatically suspicious. But Decker considers it for a few seconds before standing and waving for me to exit.
I hop up and meet him at the door where he stops me with his hand. “Get your tray, Winters. We've already got zombies. We don't need ants too.”
My chest shakes with laughter as I spin on my heel and grab it off the bed.
“Of course, sir.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The hour-long drive to the undisclosed location creeps me out. The rear windows are all blacked out, so all we can see is the road ahead. Everyone else gave up trying to figure out where we're heading a while ago, but I keep my eyes forward, searching for signs of life or hints at what's to come.
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