The Last Sanctuary Omnibus

by Kyla Stone

  Beside him, two crew members lowered the fourth lifeboat on its cables. Gabriel sensed his brother's presence before he saw him. He twisted around.

  “Don't move!” Jericho jammed the gun against his spine.

  Gabriel barely noticed. “Micah!”

  Micah bent over the controls as the davits and cables lowered the lifeboat until it was even with Deck Four. He glanced up at the sound of his name. His curls plastered against his forehead, water fogging his glasses. His gaze met Gabriel's and he froze, his face contorting.

  Micah jerked his head and broke eye contact, turning back to the lifeboat. He opened the hatch and helped the first few passengers climb inside.

  Gabriel blinked the rain out of his eyes. Impossible. And yet there she was, not ten feet away, Silas propping her up as Micah grasped her hand to pull her into the boat. Lightning ripped the sky, revealing her pale face, the bruising and the cut on her lip.

  But Amelia was alive—dirty and wounded, but gloriously alive.

  She looked at him, their eyes meeting for one long, terrible moment. And what he saw was not the hatred that he deserved, but confusion, pain, and loss.

  Remorse filled him, a regret so wide and deep it swallowed him whole. He'd betrayed the only two people in his life he truly cared about. Micah, the brother he loved. And Amelia, the girl he cared about, might have loved, if only he'd had more time. If he'd given them more time. If he hadn't deceived and deserted her.

  He’d fed his own desire for hatred and revenge more than anything else. More than justice. More than love. And in doing so, he'd betrayed Amelia, his brother, his cause, and ultimately, himself. Self-loathing coiled within him, dark and deadly.

  Gunfire rained down. The bullets tore into the deck, exploding into splinters of teak. The terror-stricken crowd surged, knocking more people over the railing.

  Jericho spun around, searching for the gunman. Bullets chewed into the hull behind Gabriel. Several panels of the glass railing shattered.

  Three people to Gabriel's right crumpled, red water pooling at his feet. One of them was a girl, five or six years old, wearing only a bright yellow bathrobe. Her dark hair fanned around her head like a halo, her dim eyes staring up at him.

  Gabriel turned his head and vomited. That little girl hadn’t asked for any of this. Who gets to decide who is innocent? She was innocent. Now she was dead. She was Simeon’s collateral damage. She was Gabriel’s collateral damage.

  He did this. All these people, all this pain, terror, and death. This was his fault. He saw it now so clearly, now that it was too late. His soul broke under the crushing weight.

  The rain battered him, so cold. The seething sky so close. The shattered sea rose up to meet him. Ravenous, waiting. He stepped to the railing.

  “Gabriel! No!” Micah said.

  Someone grabbed his arm. Jericho jerked him back from the edge. “You don’t get to escape justice that easily.” He shoved Gabriel toward the lifeboat. “You’ll pay for your sins.”

  Gabriel bowed his head. There was no price, no punishment, no atonement that would cover his sins. He’d been a fool to ask his brother for forgiveness. There was no forgiveness, not for him. He would find no solace, no peace, no redemption.

  Not in this life or the next.

  50

  Willow

  Willow watched the first hints of gray tinge the dark windows. The fingers of dawn painted the sky in the softest shades of indigo blue. There was no trace of the storm, no boiling clouds, no vicious waves.

  The sea was still and flat as a sheet of glass.

  “You okay?” Finn slumped across the aisle, his back against the window, his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were blood-shot and rimmed with red, like he'd been crying in the night. Specks of dried blood dotted his right cheek.

  A part of her wanted to ask what had happened to him, but she didn't. She wasn't ready to reveal her own secrets.

  Every person in this boat would be haunted by the nightmare of this day for the rest of their lives—the things they'd seen, the people they'd lost, the things done to them and the things they'd done. She knew she would.

  Her arms tightened around Benjie. She wouldn’t let him go. Not for anything. Benjie was her only family now. He was her responsibility. He was her heart.

  “I'm alive,” she said.

  Finn nodded. “That has to be enough.”

  “We have to make it enough.”

  He gestured at her clothes. “I guess you really do hate dresses, huh?”

  She looked down at herself, the navy blue fabric ripped in several places, smeared with dirt and blood. She rubbed the cuts and bruises on her aching feet. “I sure don’t miss those pain-in-the-ass heels.”

  Finn snorted. They exchanged strained smiles.

  She noticed something in the window behind his shoulder. A gray smudge on the horizon, darker than the fog surrounding it. “What's that?”

  Finn turned and looked, cupping his hands against the glass. “My lady, I do believe you've sighted a ship.”

  She couldn't quite believe what she'd heard. “A ship.”

  She glanced at Finn, her own hesitant hope reflected in his eyes.

  They watched the ship grow closer in the early morning light, the sky shaded apricot and rose. It was a U.S. naval ship. And it sailed straight toward them.

  Rescue.

  51

  Amelia

  Amelia pressed against her mother. She couldn't stop shaking. The migraine had dissipated to a dull ache at the base of her skull. Her body ached with exhaustion, like she'd been climbing a mountain for days.

  She stared down at her numb hands. They didn’t belong to her. It was someone else who plunged that needle into Kane's eye. Someone else who stabbed him, over and over.

  But she was alive. She’d saved herself.

  Silas sat across from her, staring off into nothing. It wasn't like there was anything to look at in this barren, plastic-draped room. Everything was white or gray, sterile and bland.

  Since they'd been rescued by the Navy yesterday, the hundred and thirty-six survivors were confined to a massive room-like plastic tent. They were given water bottles and served several meals on brown plastic trays. They had access to a six-stalled bathroom and a few showers.

  The first time she had limped to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, she was shocked. Hair: tangled, knotted mess. Face: dirty, bruised, and swollen. Dress: torn and stained. Nails: ragged. She'd examined the greenish-yellow bruising on her ribs and stomach, gingerly touching the tender flesh.

  But she was here. Simeon wasn't. That asshole Kane wasn't. Her father wasn’t. She was. She raised her chin and met her own gaze in the mirror. This time, she smiled for herself.

  But that was hours ago. Now, they just waited. Everyone sat on plastic chairs or hunched on the floor, huddled in blankets. She sat with her mother and Silas against the wall in the far corner.

  Jericho sat somewhere behind them, giving them privacy. Tyler Horne and Senator López were here, and Celeste and Meredith Jackson-Cooper. A few feet away, Willow slept with her little brother curled in her lap, a ratty backpack clutched in his skinny arms.

  Micah slumped on the other side of Benjie. He was as sleep-deprived as Amelia, judging by his hollow cheeks and red-rimmed eyes. She hadn’t spoken to him, but she could read the sorrow and devastation etched across his face.

  Everyone was scared, confused, shell-shocked, grief-stricken. They had all lost someone. Muffled sobbing drifted over the drone of the ship's engine.

  The only people who'd come into the sealed room wore bulky contamination suits. They didn't meet her gaze through their masks. They tended to the wounded and provided first aid. They examined her clutch with the single auto-injector but didn’t take it. Not yet.

  Whenever anyone tried to ask them questions, they just shook their heads. “We're following protocol. Someone will be in to speak with you shortly,” was all they'd say. That and, “Please remain calm.”


  Silas glanced at her, cocking one eyebrow. He didn't constantly ask her if she was all right, like her mother did. But he studied her, scrutinizing her face, searching for something. She met his gaze. He was the brother she loved, the one who put himself between her and her father, over and over. Though he never said a word, he still made sure she was okay.

  But she wasn’t, not yet.

  Ever since the attack, she couldn't sleep. Her eyes burned and her head throbbed, but every time she tried to rest, she saw that face behind her closed lids—Kane's venomous eyes, that hideous, lecherous grin. She could still feel his hands—huge, strong, scrabbling like spiders. She could still smell the stench of his breath, the heat of it on her cheeks. She couldn't get the stain of his touch off her skin.

  If she managed to drift off, she jolted awake, her heart beating savagely against her ribs. Kane haunted her sleep, but Gabriel haunted her waking moments.

  She kept seeing him in her mind’s eye, in the rain and the chaos of the deck. Gabriel, desperately pleading for something she couldn't give him. She hadn’t seen Gabriel since two naval officers led him away in handcuffs within moments of their rescue. She didn’t know what would happen to him now.

  She shivered and wrapped the Mylar blanket tighter around herself.

  Her mother stirred and opened her eyes. “Amelia.” Her voice filled with relief. Every time she woke up from her restless dozing, she was frantic until she laid eyes on her daughter. “We survived. We're all here.”

  “Not all of us,” Silas said.

  She licked her lips. Part of her wished she didn't need to know, that she could pretend it all away. But that was impossible. “Why are they keeping us in here?” she asked again.

  This time, her mother answered. “They want to make sure we're not infected.”

  “Because of what's happening on the mainland,” Silas said.

  She rubbed her charm bracelet. “This is all because of Father, isn't it?”

  Her mother gave her a hard look.

  “You don't have to keep protecting me.” Her tone came out sharper than she intended. “In case you haven't noticed, we're well beyond that.”

  Her mother sighed. “Keep your voice down, please. We must keep this between us. We don't have all the answers. Not yet. The attack on the Voyager must have been planned for months.”

  “But how—”

  “There are political groups who have openly hated and threatened us for almost a decade. Your father planned the Unity Coalition’s Prosperity Summit on the Grand Voyager for the same week every year. It wasn't like we made ourselves a difficult target.” Her mother's hand strayed to the hollow of her throat.

  “There's more,” Amelia said.

  Her mother took a deep breath. “Yes, there's more.”

  “The New Patriots said the universal vaccine was used as a cover to distribute a bioweapon.” Amelia stared at her mother, trying to read her face for any signs of deception. “They said the engineered virus was meant to kill a hundred thousand innocent people. Father admitted it. How could he do something like that?”

  “Shhh.” Her mother tilted her chin at the people closest to them. But everyone else seemed to be sleeping. They sat in the far corner, which afforded as much privacy as this fish bowl allowed. “When you blame the poor for their misfortune—like your father did—it dehumanizes them. It becomes easier to justify atrocities if their plight is their own fault. And if they’re less than human . . .”

  “Did you know?” Silas asked.

  Her mother grabbed her hand and squeezed. “I swear to you, on your life, I had no idea. I never would've—I believed we were safe. Your father—he protected us. I didn't know.”

  Revulsion filled her. She yanked her hand away. “But you know what he’s like.”

  “You have to understand, Amelia. The world is such a dangerous place. He offered safety.”

  “Safety?” Silas asked. “Is that what you call this?”

  A line appeared between her mother’s brows. “It wasn't supposed to be like this.”

  Amelia couldn't stop thinking about all the people, all those thousands of lives. All those mothers and fathers and children and babies, all suffering, all dying in agony.

  The worst part was how those people trusted the vaccine, believed in it, waited for hours to give it to their sick children. All those health workers administering the shots with a smile on their faces and gentleness in their touch, saying, “This will only hurt a bit.” Because they didn't know. How could they know they were administering grief and horror and death?

  She bent double, acid burning the back of her throat.

  “Amelia! Are you okay?” Her mother reached for her purse. “Do you need your medication? I have your pills—”

  “I’m fine. What about the cure? The cure the New Patriots wanted to help all those sick people?”

  “They didn't want the vaccine for the sick. They wanted it for themselves.”

  “What?”

  Her mother closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were full of anguish. “Amelia, honey, I need you to sit down.”

  She stiffened. “Just tell me.”

  “The bioweapon—it didn't just infect the people who received the virus through the shot.”

  Dizziness rushed through her. She started to get that feeling, like when the aura came before a migraine. A warning. “Tell me.”

  “The engineered virus inserted into the flu vaccine—it mutated. It's contagious.”

  “Contagious,” Amelia echoed.

  “With a vaccine that utilizes a live virus, like measles or polio, viral shedding is possible. But this—something happened. I’m not an expert, but I believe the engineered virus merged with the H17N10 bat strain of influenza in tens of thousands of already infected people who lined up to receive the universal vaccine.

  “When the two viruses infected the same host cells, they underwent reassortment, combining their genetic material to create a new strain—the Hydra virus. I don’t know much more than this. But right before communications went down on the Grand Voyager, the CDC declared the Hydra virus a pandemic.”

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Amelia asked, fighting down panic.

  Her mother clasped her hands together. “We have faith. We do anything we can to help. We pray for the sick and their families—”

  “How can you say that?” Silas's mouth twisted. “How can you talk about faith after what he's done?”

  Her mother's eyes filled with tears. “I hope I've taught you—”

  “What you've taught us?” Silas glowered at their mother. “You taught us to respect and obey a monster.”

  She looked from Silas to Amelia, her face crumpling. “You both must hate me. And maybe I deserve it. But you don't know everything. I need to tell you—”

  But Amelia had heard enough. She couldn't stand to be near her mother, couldn't stand to look at her. Her mother was weak. She'd always been weak. Amelia saw that now.

  She'd been blind before, so determined to please her father, she hadn't seen him for what he was. She’d tried to be as meek and docile as her mother. She hadn't seen what it was doing to her own soul.

  Even with Gabriel, she’d been blind, letting herself see what she wanted to see—someone to rescue her, so she didn’t have to do the hard work of rescuing herself.

  But she wasn't blind now. She didn't have to be weak and docile anymore. “Just stop.”

  “But Amelia, you don't understand—”

  The entrance to the quarantined area opened, and two figures in contamination suits lumbered in, wheeling in an old-fashioned flat screen TV. Their hazmat suits made them look alien and intimidating. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the first one said in a loud, throaty voice.

  All around her, people sat up, rubbing their exhausted faces. A few seats down, Willow hunched protectively over her little brother. Their eyes locked. Amelia tried to offer up a reassuring smile, but her mouth, her whole face, was frozen.


  “We understand your shock, confusion, and questions,” the woman in the hazmat suit continued. “You've been through a tremendous ordeal. However, due to the circumstances, we must take extreme precautions. Our doctors will conduct further examinations on each of you later today. Thank you for your patience and please remain calm.”

  “Give us some damn answers!” someone shouted.

  “Is this because of that Hydra plague?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You can’t keep us in here!”

  “I have been authorized to brief you on the current state of emergency. As you may have gathered, the Hydra virus is a particularly virulent strain of Influenza A. It has also mutated in . . . unexpected ways.”

  “What's happening?” a man asked, terror in his voice.

  “All state and national agencies are working in conjunction to contain the disease. President Sloane has ordered all domestic ports closed, and domestic and international flights have been grounded.”

  A murmur spread through the room. “President Sloane?” Tyler Horne asked.

  The woman nodded. “President Morgan succumbed to the virus the night before last. President Amanda Sloane was sworn in immediately. Her first act was to declare a national state of emergency.”

  Another audible gasp.

  “President Sloane announced yesterday that the Hydra virus was released upon the United States as a biological weapon.”

  No one moved. No one breathed.

  “The effects have been . . . catastrophic. We’ll release information as we receive it, but for now, we've been authorized to show you part of President Sloane's emergency address.” The woman turned on the television and stepped aside.

  On the screen, the new president stood behind her desk in the Oval Office. She leaned forward, her hands splayed on the desk. She was a tall, svelte woman in her mid-fifties, her auburn hair clipped short around her ears, her gaze somber. She looked like a person who was strong and capable, someone able and ready to handle the crisis. “I’m shocked and saddened to announce that the Grand Voyager cruise ship sank yesterday after it was attacked by terrorists. As of now, we do not know how many survived. This was an intricately planned and organized two-prong attack.