by Kyla Stone
She glanced across the fire at Gabriel. This wouldn’t be easy. She wasn’t used to trust, to vulnerability. Not after a childhood raised on fear and secrets. But she couldn’t let them have any more power over her—not Gabriel, not Kane, not Simeon, and not her father. They’d all tried to break her in their own way. They’d all failed.
“I hope you’ll forgive me for not telling you before,” she said haltingly. There was no way to cushion her words, so she simply blurted them out. “The New Patriots weren’t behind the Hydra Virus.”
Micah stiffened beside her. Like everyone else, he’d believed that the radicalized group to which his brother belonged had not only hijacked the Grand Voyager, they’d also released the Hydra bioweapon, the genetically engineered virus that had killed ninety-five percent of the world’s population in a matter of weeks. “What? How do you know?”
“Because—” She sucked in a breath, reaching instinctively for the charm bracelet bound to the leather cord circling her neck and tucked beneath her shirt. “Because it was my father who did it.”
The chill seemed to deepen around her. Would Micah reject her? Hate her? Blame her?
“Tell me,” he said gently. There was no recrimination in his voice. No bitterness or judgment.
She told him everything—how her father had designed the bioweapon and released it through the universal flu vaccine his company, BioGen, had distributed to the American public, carefully selecting one hundred thousand victims from the poorest communities to receive a fatal dose. “It was supposed to terrify the people into passing the Safe and Secure Act. The Unity Coalition had plans to monitor every citizen with the VitaliChip implant. Just one more step in cementing their power and control.”
Micah glanced at Tyler Horne. “Was Horne in on it?”
He stood guard at the edge of the firelight, facing toward the street, his semi-automatic cradled in his arms. Both handsome and incredibly vain, he had symmetrical features, a square jaw, and floppy blonde hair that he still managed to style—even in the apocalypse.
Amelia shook her head. “I don’t think so. Tyler Horne’s company, VitaliChip Industries, was a subsidiary of BioGen. They stood to make billions when the microchips became mandatory. But my father and his associates wouldn’t have trusted someone like Horne with the truth.”
“Why would he want to kill his own citizens?”
“Because they planned to blame it on the New Patriots all along. A massive-scale terrorist attack would let them pass just about any law they wished, which they did. People will trade their rights for safety. The Unity Coalition had been consolidating their power for years. They wanted to take over the U.S. government, to wrest the last remnants of power. And they were willing to do it by any means necessary.”
“But they killed billions.”
“That wasn’t their plan.” Amelia remembered all the terrible things her father had said on the bridge of the Grand Voyager, his face bloodied, a gun to his temple, surrounded by terrorists who wanted nothing more than to kill them both, his eyes hateful and defiant until the end. “The virus they engineered interacted with the bat-flu virus that was already an epidemic. The new, mutated virus was highly contagious and deadlier than either of them put together.”
“And my brother . . .”
“He still hijacked the Grand Voyager. But Gabriel told you the truth. The New Patriots were trying to stop the Unity Coalition and the microchip implant law. Once they found out about the bioweapon, they tried to force my father to give them the cure. But he refused. Gabriel had nothing to do with the Hydra Virus.”
Micah let out a long, shuddering sigh. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay.”
Amelia clasped her hands on her lap. She stared at the flames until her vision blurred. “My father wasn’t the mastermind. He was working with others. We don’t know who. Vice-President Sloane—well, President Sloane, now—was a member of the Unity Coalition. So were several other senators and high-ranking government officials.”
“You think they might be in this Sanctuary place,” he said, reading her thoughts.
“Silas, my mother, Gabriel, and myself know the New Patriots were used as patsies. If any surviving members of the Unity Coalition were to find out what we know ...”
“They’d want to eradicate any threat to their power. Whatever’s left of it, anyway.”
Amelia nodded heavily, suddenly feeling her exhaustion. Her muscles ached. Her eyes burned. “Even in the apocalypse, some things never change.”
Micah was quiet for a long moment. The wind picked up. The thin line of trees at the edge of the yard swayed. Bare branches sawed against each other, making strangely haunting sounds.
Almost like a violin. She touched the permanent indents on the pads of her fingers. “I’ve wanted to tell you for months. But I was afraid. And with everything going on, struggling to find our next meal and not get killed, it was easy to simply not tell you. But I hated that you believed that Gabriel was guilty of such a thing. I mean, he’s guilty of plenty, but…”
“He’s not guilty of destroying the world as we know it,” Micah said wryly.
“You deserve to know the truth. Gabriel—” she swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat, “—he knew and didn’t tell anyone, even though it made everyone believe he was a monster.” Gabriel was an enigma. He’d both betrayed her and protected her, lied to her and kept her secrets. She couldn’t wrap her head around it.
Micah touched his shoulder to hers. “I won’t tell anyone either.”
“It makes me sick,” she whispered, “to know it was my own father who did this.” It sickened and terrified her. Thoughts of her father always brought a knot of fear and anger and shame, of grief and loathing—and beneath it all, a tangled, bitter love.
“It was him, not you. We aren’t responsible for the sins of others. Don’t ever forget that.”
Relieved, she gave him a shaky smile. Micah didn’t resent or despise her, not even for withholding the truth about his brother for so long. He was the same old Micah—loyal, solid, always there to lean on. Her truest friend. “Thank you.”
A twig snapped behind them. Amelia whipped around, twisting in her camp chair.
“What was that?” Benjie asked, his brown eyes wide. His black hair stuck up all over his head. He pulled his ratty Star Wars backpack onto his lap and clasped it to his chest, shivering.
“Just a squirrel,” Celeste mumbled.
“Nothing set off the trip wire,” Willow said, but she stood up anyway, her hand drifting to her holster.
The hairs on the back of Amelia’s neck prickled. She peered past the circle of firelight into the darkness surrounding them. The fire made the shadows shift and sway. Anything could be out there in the dark.
Hunting them.
Something moved.
Fear spiked up her spine. It could be a violent gang. An armed, dangerous loner. A pack of infected dogs. Or something larger, a tiger or bear that had escaped from the local zoo.
The shadows deepened beneath the trees. They seemed to solidify, taking the shapes of monsters and demons, then melted back into nothingness.
She rose to her feet, the blanket slipping off her shoulders.
Silas screamed.
2
Gabriel
Twenty-one-year-old Gabriel leapt to his feet, yanking helplessly against the handcuffs binding his wrists. His heart jackhammered into his throat.
A massive shadow plunged into the center of the clearing. It bounded past Silas, smashing into his chair and knocking him on his ass.
Silas let out another sound that sounded an awful lot like a scream. Jericho came running.
Willow was already on her feet, gun pointed at the massive black shape whirling in front of the fire, sparks flying all around it. “Oh, hell.”
“It’s that scary-ass dog,” Silas growled from his position on the ground.
Gabriel might have laughed, if he wasn’t slightly terrified himself. His senses cleared as
Silas’s words sank in. He let out his breath. “It’s the wolf.”
“Nothing gets past you, Sherlock,” Willow quipped, lowering her gun.
The huge black wolf stood in front of the fire, mere feet from Gabriel, his massive head taller than Gabriel’s waist. He stared at them with unblinking yellow eyes, his hackles raised, ears pricked, tongue lolling through sharp white fangs.
Before anyone could get their bearings or say another word, a figure sailed into the middle of the circle, dismounted a hoverboard, and dumped three dead rabbits and a bundle of sticks on the ground next to the fire. The figure pushed back the hood of a rain slicker, revealing a head of black hair and a pair of shining black eyes.
Everyone stared at her, their mouths open.
“You didn’t trip the alarm,” Jericho said, both alarmed and perplexed. Slowly, he lowered his rifle.
The girl’s expression didn’t change. “I watched you make it.”
“How did you follow us?” Silas asked suspiciously.
“You’re slow. And you bumble around like stampeding cattle.”
Willow let out a sharp laugh. She slumped back into her camp chair and shoved her unruly bangs out of her eyes. “You about gave us a heart attack, Raven.”
Raven was short, though not as short as Willow, who barely reached Gabriel’s shoulder. Her Asian heritage showed on her delicate-featured face, though there was nothing delicate in her fierce, unyielding expression.
Silas stood up shakily and pointed an indignant finger at the wolf. “Just keep that…that thing away from me.”
“Shadow goes where he wants. You try telling him what to do. See how it works out for you.” Raven pointed at the animal carcasses at her feet. “We caught dinner.”
Celeste looked appalled.
“I refuse to eat a rabbit,” Horne said, aghast, his pompous nose turned up at the very idea.
“Then don’t.” Raven dropped her backpack with the hoverboard sticking out of it to the ground and pulled a hunting knife from a sheath at her waist. She crouched on the ground, picked up one of the rabbits, and made a small cut along its back.
Horne stared at her. “I will not be turned into a greedy, mindless animal.”
“Greedy, mindless animals eat supper.” Raven paused and looked up, meeting Gabriel’s gaze. There was no fear or indecision in her dark eyes. “Do you know how to field dress a rabbit?”
He shook his head, suddenly embarrassed. Simeon had taught him to hack the government, how to fight, and how to kill people, not animals. He was a city boy. He didn’t know how to hunt or how to cook what he’d hunted.
Raven tsked in disgust. “Slow and stupid.” She grabbed the rabbit’s fur on either side of the cut she’d made and tugged, pulling the rabbit’s hide away from its body. She quickly chopped off the animal’s head and feet. Her hands moved deftly as she carefully sliced the rabbit’s belly skin from tail to chest. Its entrails slid out in a steaming pile.
“That poor rabbit,” Finn said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Screw it,” Celeste said, though her mouth was pursed. “I’m starving. Food is food.”
Horne made a gagging noise. Amelia looked away, her milk-white skin growing paler. Only Willow sat forward, fascinated.
“How did you learn to do that?” Gabriel was fascinated himself. If they could learn to hunt the local wildlife, they wouldn’t be so dependent on scavenging in dangerous towns and cities.
“Practice.” Raven moved to the second rabbit, repeating the steps. She worked like she’d done this a hundred times—some skilled hunter and trapper transported from the pioneer days.
Within a few minutes, she’d skinned and dressed all three rabbits and set up a spit with the bundles of sticks she’d brought. She rocked back on her heels. “Now they cook.”
Gabriel leaned forward, his cuffed hands in his lap. “How long have you been alone?”
“I’m not alone.”
“Then what group are you with?”
She didn’t bother to answer, just pushed one of the forked sticks deeper into the ground and turned the spit.
“She means the wolf, you bonehead,” Silas said sullenly from his camp chair, where he hadn’t taken his eyes off Shadow for a moment.
“How’s he so big?” Benjie asked.
“He’s a hybrid.”
“That’s impossible,” Gabriel said. “The scientists said mods couldn’t be bred with normal animals.”
“The scientists were mistaken.”
Willow snorted. “Seems to be a lot of that going around these days.”
He wasn’t sure if he believed Raven, yet Shadow was the largest wolf he’d ever seen. Mods were often larger than their original counterparts, but genetically engineered to be meek and docile. The wealthiest of the elites commissioned mods as pets. Since so many wild animals were extinct now, the remaining zoos, circuses, and aquatic parks were mostly filled with mods.
Or at least, they had been. Since the Hydra virus unleashed its wrath on the world, the animals had either been released by activists or starved to death in their cages.
The wolf stood next to Raven, refusing to lay down or relax, wary and vigilant. His ears were pricked, hackles slightly raised, his sharp eyes constantly shifting.
“How did you tame a wolf?” Benjie asked, awestruck.
Raven’s expression was impassive. “Who says he’s tame?”
Shadow yawned then, showing off a dramatic set of teeth. Benjie’s eyes widened even further.
“Where did you find him?” Gabriel asked.
She didn’t answer for a long moment, as if weighing how much to tell them. She looked like someone used to fending for herself. Someone used to being alone. “I saved him,” she said finally. “Then he saved me.”
She wasn’t afraid, but she also didn’t seem comfortable. Her eyes kept darting back to the shadows past the campfire. She gripped her knife in her right hand. And she kept her back to the fire, keeping as many of them as possible in her sight.
When the rabbits were ready, Benjie scavenged the abandoned house for plates and forks. He even brought out napkins. Raven chopped the meat into strips and passed it around, offering Benjie the first plate. As she moved, Gabriel noticed she heavily favored her left foot. At Sweet Creek Farm, she’d barely stepped off her hoverboard.
The fire crackled and popped. Everyone ate in silence, enjoying the hot, juicy meat and licking their fingers. Even Horne and Finn appeared to have overcome their misgivings. Celeste dug in, forgoing her cultivated manners to tear into the meat with her teeth. “This is amazing.”
Gabriel ate hungrily, ravenously. He’d never tasted anything so delicious. It was stringy, but also rich and gamey—nothing like the faux foods and cloned meats he was used to. It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed a truly filling meal. Maybe not since the Grand Voyager.
At the naval base in Jacksonville, he’d been treated like a terrorist, beaten and starved. He pushed those memories out of his head. They served no purpose but pain. He had plenty of that already.
The wolf rose to his feet and nudged Raven’s shoulder with his snout. She tossed him a chunk of meat. He gulped it down in one bite, teeth flashing. He turned his great head and regarded Gabriel with those keen amber eyes.
Gabriel remembered those eyes from the night Nadira died, when he’d dug her grave in grief-stricken silence. The wolf had come, standing still as a statue at the edge of the woods, simply watching him as he plunged the shovel into the earth again and again, blisters forming on his hands and pain rupturing his soul. The wolf had kept vigil, a witness to it all.
And when Gabriel had longed for death, challenging the wolf to come for him, to end him, end his guilt and shame and misery, the wolf had refused.
Gabriel moved his cuffed hands together and carefully shoved one hand into his pocket, fingering the folded cloth. He’d torn a small section from Nadira’s eggshell-blue headscarf to keep with him, to remind him of the sacrifice she’d mad
e.
Nadira, who was sweet and tender and one of those rare people who was genuinely good-hearted. In the midst of everyone’s hatred and suspicion, even his own brother’s, she alone had treated him with gentleness and respect. As though her god, Allah, could forgive the likes of him, as though he hadn’t fallen so far that he couldn’t climb back up again.
She’d believed he could earn redemption for his sins. She’d offered her life for his, ensuring that he wouldn’t throw his own away.
He gritted his teeth. She haunted him now, both in his waking hours and his dreams, joining the dead of the Grand Voyager—joining the little girl in the yellow bathrobe, shot to death on the storm-tossed deck, her black hair fanning around her tiny face like a halo. He was responsible for their deaths.
The life he lived now must be worth something. He would spend it seeking redemption. Maybe someday, if he was lucky, he would find it.
Raven ripped off a piece of meat with her teeth and chewed noisily. “You shouldn’t go to the city. There’s a settlement. Northwest of here, a seven days’ hike. My mother lived there before the break. She’s not there anymore, but there are more people now. Good people. They’ll take you in.”
Gabriel wasn’t sure if they would survive another community. Sweet Creek Farm had seemed welcoming enough, but in desperate times, people saved their own. They wouldn’t stick their necks out for strangers. Why would they? He wouldn’t. “If it’s so great, why aren’t you there?”
Raven tossed a rabbit bone into the fire. “Too dangerous for Shadow. He can’t be fenced in. Neither can I.”
“Thank you for the suggestion, but we can’t.” Amelia’s voice was soft, but there was iron running through it. “We need to beat the Headhunters to the Sanctuary to rescue my mother, Elise.”
Raven stood up quickly and shouldered her pack. “Have it your way.”
“Are you leaving already?” Willow looked disappointed. So did Benjie. “Why don’t you come with us?”
“No.”
“Yet you came all this way,” Gabriel said, studying her. “Surely it wasn’t just to feed us dinner.”