The Becoming: Redemption (The Becoming Series Book 5)

by Jessica Meigs

“We—or rather, I—have to play this cool,” Lindsey said. “With any luck, no one has noticed that something is wrong. I need to get back to my lab before someone does realize there is an issue. Jacob can only cover for me for so long.”

  “You can’t possibly think you’ll be able to go back there,” Brandt protested. “It won’t take long for Bradford to put two and two together. You have a sister named Cade, I have a wife named Cade, and we both went missing at the same time? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we left together.”

  “What are you saying I should do?” Lindsey asked. “Abandon my job tonight and take off with you?”

  Brandt snorted. “You make it sound so…illicit.” She growled at him, and he sighed. “Look, you’re the one who was all, ‘Let’s break you out of here.’ So you’ve broken me out, and you did it for the express purpose of finding Cade. So let’s go find Cade. I would really prefer reconnecting with my wife sooner rather than later, especially considering the fact she’s pregnant and will need me.”

  Lindsey stared at him, then looked at the watch on her wrist and dug her cell phone out of her pocket. Brandt thought she was about to make a call, but she dropped it onto the ground and stomped on it until the screen was shattered and its innards were battered and broken. Then she shucked off her lab coat, rolled it up, and tossed it into the still-open trunk. “We have to go to my house for supplies before we leave,” she said. “Because I’m pretty damn sure they confiscated your weapons when they took you into custody, and all I have is one pistol and the ammunition for it.”

  A slow smile spread across Brandt’s face. “And after that?”

  “After that, we’re going to kick ass, take names, and find out where my sister is.”

  Chapter 37

  Once they’d discovered the existence of the wall, Cade and her companions had decided—rather forcefully, on Remy’s part—to retreat, observe, and assess what the next step needed to be. They’d taken shelter in one of the buildings not far from the metaphorical line in the sand where all the buildings had been razed, setting up camp as comfortably as they could and waiting for dark to fully settle on everything. Cade had a Sterno stove in her backpack, and she took it out and lit it, opening open cans of food to warm them for everyone to eat. Sadie, Jude, and Keith sat against a cracked sheetrock wall on the other side of the room, a single flashlight balanced on its end with the beam aiming toward the ceiling. Sitting in the middle, Jude looked to be teaching Keith sign language; the older man was focused on Jude’s hands and notepad in turn, mimicking the signs Jude was making with his hands. Sadie sat cross-legged, sharpening their machetes with a kit that Cade figured she’d had in her own backpack, her compound bow beside her with its arrows lined up alongside it. She looked like she was in her own world, but she occasionally tore her eyes away from her work to interject her own instruction into Jude’s ASL lesson.

  Dominic was to Cade’s right, sitting against that wall, his knees pulled to his chest. He grasped one of his pistols in his right hand, resting it against his right knee, and he stared into the middle distance in front of him, deep in thought. Cade would have given her left arm to know what was on his mind; she hoped it was a plan for how they were going to approach the wall. She didn’t have the greatest confidence in the emissary idea the others had come up with in the back of the truck on the trip from Atlanta. There was nothing that would stop the men in the guard towers along the wall from shooting every one of them the minute they walked into sight.

  Cade attacked a can of beans with a can opener, looking around for the last missing member of their party. Remy was nowhere to be seen, a fact that was concerning in and of itself. She stuffed the can opener into the side pocket of her backpack and set the can carefully on the Sterno stove, then asked Dominic, “Where is Remy?”

  “Last I saw her, she said she was going to sit on the roof and think,” Dominic said. “Should I go check on her?”

  “Do I even need to dignify that question with a real response?” Cade pulled a spoon out of her backpack and stuck it in the warming can, stirring gently to distribute the heat.

  Dominic pushed to his feet, sliding his pistol into its holster. “I’ll be right back,” he said and slipped out the door. Seconds later, Cade heard the metallic thunks of his boots on the fire escape ladder outside the building, heading toward the roof where Remy was supposed to be.

  “Anybody hungry?” she asked the others. “These beans are ready if anybody wants them.”

  “I’ll take some of them,” Sadie said, making a few final passes over her machete’s blade with the whetstone. She set the stone on Jude’s knee, examined the blade, then carefully sheathed it and got up to join Cade. She settled down onto the floor opposite Cade, the Sterno stove between the two of them, her legs tucked underneath her. Cade pulled out several plastic plates and divided the beans between them before taking out her can opener again and starting to open another can to heat.

  “Have you come up with a workable plan yet?” Sadie asked. “Or are we still thinking about doing the whole emissary thing?”

  Cade rubbed at the bridge of her nose with her thumb and middle finger, pinching it between them. “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “I think it’s probably the only option we have,” Sadie said.

  “Yeah, I know what you think,” Cade grumbled. She poked another spoon in the can on the Sterno stove, jabbing more forcefully than necessary. “Do you know the risks associated with one of us walking out there trying to play emissary?”

  “Yeah, they could listen to us,” Sadie said. “We could get a chance to meet with them.”

  “Or whoever we send out there could end up dead,” Cade retorted. “Honestly, I’m not sure I’m willing to risk it.”

  “What if Dominic is?” Sadie asked.

  “Then that’s his business, but I won’t condone it,” Cade said. “I want to get Brandt back, yes. However, I don’t want to ask anyone else to risk themselves because of my desire to rescue my husband.”

  “I don’t know Brandt well, but he’s one of us,” Sadie countered. “You can’t expect the rest of us to sit back and let you run it by yourself.”

  Cade didn’t know how to respond to that. Thankfully, Dominic’s return spared her from having to do so. He slipped back inside the building with a look of dark concern on his face, his shoulders set in a manner that suggested he was deeply worried. “What is it?” Cade asked, instantly on the alert.

  “It’s Remy,” Dominic said. “She’s not on the roof.”

  Cade sat up straight, alarmed. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Not at all,” Dominic said, and Cade got up from the floor. “I looked around for her, but I didn’t dare call out for fear of drawing too much attention to our position too soon.”

  “Any sign of which way she went?” Cade asked. She put the Sterno stove out, leaving it on the floor to cool, and gathered her weapons.

  “No clue,” Dominic replied. “I looked, but I didn’t see any signs giving me any ideas.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Cade snarled. “I’m going to kick her ass the minute we find her.” She looked to Sadie, Jude, and Keith. “You three stay here in case she shows back up before we locate her. We’ll be back shortly. If we don’t come back in, say, an hour, assume the worst and move on.” She walked out the door, Dominic right on her heels. “Where could she have gone?” she asked.

  “Pick a building, any building,” Dominic said. “You’ll probably have a good chance of finding her in any one of them.” When Cade gave him a dirty look for his borderline smartass answer, he said, “It depends on why she walked away. If she wanted time alone, she’d pick a random, empty building. If she was looking for something in particular, she’d have picked a building that might have whatever she’s looking for, and that we have no way of knowing.”

  Cade ran her fingers through her hair, wishing for another hair band; she’d lost hers at some point during one of the f
lights from various hiding places. “Why did she have to pick now, of all times, to run off?” she grumbled.

  “Because she’s not one to think about the needs of others,” Dominic said. “Not usually. She tends to put herself first, and she thinks of others second. It’s probably a product of her upbringing.”

  “She needs to take her upbringing and shove it somewhere else,” Cade replied. “Because we don’t have time for her to play the rebel, not when we’re so close to Brandt.”

  “Assuming he’s even here,” Dominic said.

  “Yeah, there’s that,” Cade muttered. She walked out into the middle of the street and looked both ways, trying to decide which building Remy would have been most likely to go into. “Closer to the wall or further away?” she mused out loud, scanning the buildings.

  “I vote closer to the wall,” Dominic said. “She’d want to watch it to see what happens around it.”

  “Good point,” Cade said. She adjusted her backpack higher onto her shoulders and started walking in that direction, keeping to the center of the road so she could see if Remy emerged from any of the buildings. Dominic followed her for a few moments before speeding up to walk alongside her, his hand resting casually on his holstered pistol. “You think we’ve made a mistake here?” she asked as they walked closer to the torn-up strip.

  “Do you?” Dominic retorted. “Because if you’ll recall, we were following your lead, not mine. If you think we’ve made a mistake, maybe you should say so.”

  “I’m asking for your opinion here, Dominic,” Cade snapped. “Will it kill you to give it?”

  “Probably,” Dominic said, and Cade whirled on him with every intention of smacking him before she saw the grin on his face. She growled and turned back forward and walking more briskly. “My opinion? I think we’re on the right track. How far along on the right track we are, I’m not sure.”

  Cade blew out a breath. “You have no idea how reassuring that is,” she admitted. “I’ve been agonizing over whether or not this was the right decision dragging all you guys out here to—”

  “You didn’t drag us anywhere,” Dominic said, catching her arm to stop her in the middle of the street. “We all came willingly. We volunteered, because we wanted to help you. Because we care. Besides, Brandt’s one of ours. We have to get him back. He’d do the same for us.”

  “Yeah, he would,” Cade said. “He already did that with me once, remember?”

  “Who could forget?”

  Cade spotted movement near the edge of the street, where the buildings and road ended and the dirt began. She unslung her rifle from her shoulder and lifted it to aim down the street, ready to shoot whatever it was moving down there. She relaxed when she realized it was Remy, prowling around at the dirt line.

  “Looks like you were right,” Cade observed, pointing her out.

  A big smile broke out across Dominic’s face. It was so blatantly obvious to Cade how Dominic felt about Remy that it was ridiculous. She only hoped that Remy returned the man’s affections; it would be terrible to watch the fallout if she didn’t.

  Dominic sped up at the sight of Remy, and he hurried toward her, his look a cross between joy at finding her unharmed and concern at why she’d wandered off in the first place. Cade followed him at a slower pace, lowering her rifle and hanging it by its strap off her shoulder again in its usual position.

  “Hey, Remy!” Dominic called out, and she froze like a deer in the headlights of a speeding van, whipping around to look at who was yelling for her.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” Remy asked. She didn’t make any move to walk towards him; she stayed back, hanging near the dirt line with a wary look on her face. There was a streak of blood on her upper lip, smeared upward toward her right cheek, like she’d had a nosebleed and swiped at it with her hand.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Dominic retorted.

  “Are you following me?” Remy demanded. She looked past Dominic toward Cade. “And you brought Cade?”

  “We were worried about you,” Cade said. “You took off without a word to any of us. We thought you were keeping watch on the roof.”

  “I was looking for some stuff I needed,” Remy said. Cade raised an eyebrow and spotted a few coffee cans nested together and tucked underneath her arm. Remy saw her looking and twisted around to block her view with her body; the cans rattled with the movement. “What did you guys come all the way out here for? It’s dangerous.”

  “Once again, I could ask you the same thing,” Dominic said. He stepped closer to her, catching her arm in a light grip. “We were—I was worried about you.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” Remy replied. “I can take care of myself just fine.”

  “I know. I just—”

  Dominic’s words cut off abruptly, and he staggered sideways. The echo of a single rifle shot vibrated through the air, and Cade reflexively took a few steps back, raising her own rifle.

  Dominic groaned and tumbled to the ground.

  “Dom?” Remy said.

  Another shot echoed out, and a pockmark appeared in the dirt right beside Remy’s shoe. Remy barely noticed it as she reached out for the man on the ground.

  A dark stain slowly spread underneath him.

  “Dominic!” Remy shrieked when she realized what she was seeing at the same time Cade did.

  Dominic had been shot. Judging by his appearance, the limp way he lay on the ground, the sheer amount of blood pooling underneath him, and the lack of movement in his chest, he was already dead.

  “Remy!” Cade shouted, racing toward her as fast as she could. She skidded to a stop at her side and hooked a hand underneath her arm, hauling her to her feet. “Come on, we’ve got to move!”

  “Let go of me!” Remy yelled back at her. “We’ve got to help him!”

  “Remy, he’s dead!” Cade snapped. “There’s nothing we can do for him! Let’s go before we both get shot!” As if to punctuate her statement, another bullet pinged against the ground, dangerously close to Cade. “I’m not getting shot for you! Now get up!”

  It was hard to tell whether or not Remy listened to her; considering Cade was pulling on her arm so hard, it might have been the force she was exerting on her. Either way, Remy was on her feet and being led down the street before Cade could give her any more orders, the coffee cans she still clutched rattling loudly with every step. She and Remy ran toward the side of the road, ducking behind a crumpled car that blocking the sidewalk. Remy’s stifled sobs were the only sounds Cade heard outside of the echo of gunfire that still rang in her ears. She stared at the dead man on the ground, keeping her tight grip on Remy’s arm, lest she take off running toward Dominic again.

  “Jesus Christ, Cade, they shot him!” Remy gasped through her sobs. “They fucking shot him!”

  Tears welled up in Cade’s eyes, and her gaze fixed on the dark red flood oozing out from Dominic’s body and soaking into the dirt and the cracks in the pavement. Her breath was short, and her entire body was shaking with adrenaline and horror.

  “I guess maybe Sadie’s emissary idea was a really bad one,” she said shakily.

  Remy was trembling, and Cade looked at her in concern. Remy swiped at her tears with the back of her hand, smearing the tears and the streak of blood already on her face around further. She still stared at Dominic’s body, like she could hardly believe what was before her.

  “Remy, we’ve got to move,” Cade said, but it was like she hadn’t even spoken. Remy still stared, unmoving. “Remy?”

  Remy turned her head to look at her, and though tears still streamed down her cheeks, her eyes were hollow. “They’re going to pay for this,” she said, her tone pure, unadulterated fury. “If it’s the last thing I do in this life, I’m going to make them pay.”

  Chapter 38

  Ethan was freezing. He hadn’t been this cold in nearly two years, which was, incidentally, the last time he’d been exposed to central heat and air conditioning. It was a differ
ent kind of cold from what he’d become accustomed to, far different than the chill of outdoor winter air. This was a dry cold, one that threatened to give him a painful sinus headache, and as the thought crossed his mind, he eyed the box of tissues on the corner of the large desk in front of him.

  When he, Kimberly, and Chris had arrived at the Eden Facility, as their captors had called it, they’d been separated and taken to different decontamination rooms. He’d been forced to strip off every stitch of clothing, which had all probably been incinerated or subjected to some other equally heinous treatment. He’d been hosed down with a water hose that felt like it was set to only a notch below “power wash.” Afterwards, they’d thrown towels at him to dry off with and given him a very thorough medical exam that made him feel violated. Only then was he allowed to put clothes on, if the incredibly thin scrubs they’d given him could rightly be called “clothing.”

  Kimberly sat in the chair to his right, outfitted in identical clothing, and her entire body randomly shook with shivers and chills. She sat hunched in her chair, rubbing her palms over her bare arms in a vain attempt to warm herself. Ethan itched to reach over and wrap his arm around her, maybe tug her chair closer to his so he could lend her what little body warmth he had, but there were soldiers standing guard behind their chairs, and he had a feeling if he made any moves towards Kimberly, he’d probably end up with a bullet in the back of his head.

  Chris sat on Ethan’s left, his arms folded over his chest, his eyes staring blankly at the desk and the empty chair behind it. He looked disgusted by the whole situation, and Ethan couldn’t blame him. If it wasn’t for him, Chris would be in his barracks with his fellow soldiers, not sitting in this freezing cold office in a pair of scrubs waiting for whatever punishment was about to drop down on them.

  A door on the side of the office swung open and a tall, imposing man strode into the room. He was outfitted in a service dress uniform that was heavily decorated with medals and ribbons, a clear attempt to make himself look accomplished and imposing. His nameplate read, “Bradford.” Though Ethan wasn’t wholly familiar with which uniform insignia was which, he was pretty sure that the gold leaf on the man’s shoulders meant he was a Major. He was an older man with graying brown hair and a tanned, weatherworn face, and he looked like the type that took everything that dropped in front of him completely seriously. He carried a stack of notebooks and loose papers, and Ethan realized that the officer had all of Derek Rivers’ research on the Michaluk Virus in his possession.