Blood Trails

by Alianne Donnelly

  “Statistically, a sister virus strain, a mutated version of the virus originally used, would have the best chance of being successful. Similar enough to perform the same function and just different enough to avoid an attack by the subject’s immune system. Apparently the subject has developed a defense against the original virus so I had to improvise. And, hey, it only took me fifteen hours to come up with a workable serum. Tested it and everything this time. The newbie learns fast, no?”

  Hailey paused in her typing and looked directly at the recorder. “You can skip the next two minutes or so if you’re not interested in the technical crap.” And back to typing. A small sense of pride tickled her as she described the process of creating the serum, giving enough detail to explain but not enough to make it recreatable. The last thing she wanted was for the wrong someone to get their hands on this and pick up where Amelia left off. No, there were enough shifters in the universe.

  Hell, just attaching her face to this was a huge risk she probably shouldn’t be taking, but it wasn’t as if Amelia was there to look over her shoulder and correct her work. If anything went wrong, her sister would need to know exactly what she’d done. That was assuming she’d bother to do anything about it in the first place.

  Hailey shook off that unpleasant thought and resumed her narration. “I have cleaned the isolated, rare strain as much as possible. Given the time frame I am working with, it would be ridiculous to try to fully remove all its harmful effects. That would take months, maybe years. Quite possibly longer. Besides which, there is a limit to how far I can take it before it starts to degrade and becomes useless for my purposes. As is, the virus is aggressive enough that it should spread throughout the subject’s entire system easily. Double DNA shouldn’t cause any problems whatsoever, as the virus attacks animals as easily as humans.”

  She saved the typed file and fully turned her attention to the recorder. For the sake of thoroughness she had to consider as many contingencies as possible in case they happened. Again. But she was hesitant to even admit their possibility to herself.

  “This is … a risky procedure. At best, the subject will become infected with the regenerative agent and some of the virus’s indicators. At worst…” This was where she hesitated. In mind and recitation. If this worked, it would be a miracle. If it didn’t, she might wish she’d died instead. “At worst, the solution contains a cell or two of the full, live virus, in which case introduction into the bloodstream will mean immediate infection. The subject will feel light-headedness and nausea, followed by paralysis of the legs, spreading upward. Bleeding from orifices, even pores in the skin, difficulty forming sentences, then words. The brain will lose function in proportion to the paralysis—50 percent paralysis correlates to 50 percent loss of brain function. In thirty-six hours, the paralysis reaches the lungs and heart. If by some miracle life functions can be continued artificially, in forty-eight hours the internal organs will be damaged beyond repair. Fun stuff, this virus.”

  Hailey uncurled her hands. They were shaking. “Each consecutive injection increases the risk of infection by 25 percent. I’ll need three to fully incorporate the regenerative agent into the subject’s DNA. Easy math, there. It will need to be timed precisely. The disease can be stopped and even reversed in early stages, but once it reaches a certain point, game over. I need to allow enough time for the virus to carry its load to every cell and then stop it before it does irreparable damage to the subject’s system.”

  Hailey would have to inject herself at precise seven-hour intervals. The final injection had a time-released antivirus component. She’d double-and triple-checked it to make sure it would not activate until the virus had done its job.

  “On a brighter note,” Hailey said, giving her best attempt at a smile, “I have a date today.” With a bracing breath, she sobered again. “Okay, here we go.” She put on gloves and rolled up her sleeve. The three syringes were already prepared. She could have used an injection gun but call her crazy, she was a classicist. “Time of injection, three twenty-two.” Hailey jabbed the needle in her arm. “Computer, set alarm, new reminder. Ten twenty-two. New reminder, seventeen twenty-two.”

  “New reminders. Set,” the computer announced. “Ten twenty-two and seventeen twenty-two. Today, August 14, 3032.”

  “That’s great,” Hailey said and pressed gauze to the injection site. “I’m going to bed.” If anything went wrong she’d know in the next two hours. She took an injection gun with the antivirus with her just in case.

  Nothing to do now but wait. She’d be going crazy if she wasn’t so damn tired. Pulling all-nighters had used to be a cakewalk. With some caffeine and standard issue neural stimulants she could go two or three days without sleep, cram for a test, ace it, go celebrate, and then return to her normal sleep cycle as if nothing ever happened.

  Ah, those were the good old days. The best club she’d ever been to, she’d been half zombie when she walked in at the trailing end of three days without sleep and her usual pharmaceutical help. But stepping into that club had been like getting hit by lightning. She hadn’t left until the early morning hours, still flirting with the DJ to play just one more song. He’d played a slow one and danced with her before he escorted her to the door.

  Hailey missed those times when she could do whatever the hell she wanted and her body actually obeyed. She was beat from having to fight so damn hard for every little thing. Each victory felt the same as a failure. Each took a little more out of her. It was exhausting just keeping her mind focused so she wouldn’t go into spin cycle and curl up in some dark corner to bawl her eyes out.

  It was tempting, so tempting to just let herself fall asleep and never wake up.

  But Hailey had never been one to give up without a fight. She still had some left in her.

  When she came out of the lab she found Amelia sitting on the floor in the hallway. Hailey’s jaw nearly dropped. The aloof scientist was a mess. Amelia’s hair was mussed, her eyes red, her clothes in disarray as if she’d tried to sleep in a chair and ended up tossing and turning all night. She looked like she was heading into the worst wave of DTs, all shivery and staring off into space—and was that dirt on her hands?

  “I should have scanned your brain more deeply,” she said. “Maybe I would have found some anomaly to explain why you’re so determined to kill yourself.”

  “I’m tired,” Hailey told her. And it was true. She was drained. Not enough left in her to worry about herself or her sister. Or to give a shit about what Amelia was saying. Now Hailey wasn’t just a screwup anymore. She was damaged. Touched in the head. Funny, Hunt had said something similar to her yesterday. She couldn’t be bothered to come up with a reply. Amelia had already delivered her death blow. Everything after that was overkill.

  Amelia pushed to her feet. “You could have jumped in front of a bus. Could have asked Hunt to throw you off that damn cliff. Hell, if you’d told me a few months ago that you wanted to die, I could have put a bullet through your head!”

  “Big talk for someone who refused to inject me with a virus.” There was no heat in her words.

  Amelia compressed her mouth into a thin, offended line. She wanted to hit Hailey, that much was obvious. But she was restraining herself. As if it mattered. “A bullet is more humane,” Amelia said, seething. “What do you expect me to do now? Sit by your bedside and hold your hand while you fall apart?”

  “No,” Hailey said. Despite what had to be Amelia’s best attempt to rattle her, Hailey wasn’t rising to the bait. And that had to drive her sister crazy. Hailey didn’t care.

  But hey, if Amelia needed to vent her frustration on a dying person, if that’s what helped her sleep at night, it wasn’t as if it made a difference to Hailey one way or another. Either she would die, in which case she wouldn’t care one bit, or she would recover and say good-bye to Amelia—forever this time. In which case … she still wouldn’t care one bit.

  It was a strange feeling to willingly cut oneself off from someone like
that. There was a hollow in Hailey’s chest where some sort of emotion should have been. Anger, grief, pain … something. But there was only the smallest smidgen of regret, that faint whisper of a question, What if? What would have been? Not enough to make her dwell on it. Not enough to go back and do something about it. Just enough to serve as a reminder that at some point there had been something.

  Hailey was worn out so completely she couldn’t dredge up another ounce of emotion. She took out her earpiece microphone and pressed it into Amelia’s hand. “I expect you to do what you always do best. Be objective. Be the scientist, Dr. Chase. I’m going to sleep.”

  *

  Jeremy should have done as Pixie had told him and gone to see Hailey instead of calling her. He was almost sure that she would show tomorrow, but that still left hours of waiting until then. Pixie had gone to her friend’s house for a sleepover, saying she couldn’t take it anymore. Without her to distract him, Jeremy was about to go crazy.

  He paced the house for a long time then went to bed, tossed and turned for what felt like hours. Every time he closed his eyes, they just wanted to open again. He needed to see her.

  The clock on his nightstand read 4:05. In an hour or so it wouldn’t be so bad if he just showed up at the lab. Lots of people had guests at five in the morning.

  Jeremy punched the pillow. It didn’t help. He tossed it to the floor.

  Great, now he didn’t have a pillow. What the hell was wrong with him? He was going to see her in a few hours. If not at the Patio, then at her lab. He wasn’t going another day without talking to her. That should have put him at ease.

  But something felt off. Jeremy was exhausted and restless at the same time. He wanted to sleep but couldn’t because he had that annoying sense that he might have forgotten something important.

  He hated that feeling.

  Frustrated, he sat up but couldn’t stand off the bed. His legs felt weighed down with lead, his head spun, and his eyes slid shut. It took a lot of effort to open them again.

  This wasn’t him. Jeremy was wide awake, his mind working overtime. This was something else.

  Could it be…?

  No.

  But maybe Pixie was right…?

  It didn’t matter. Even if she was, Jeremy didn’t have the mental prowess to test his range right now. Clearly he was picking up on something, but to tune in to it and trace it to the source would take more concentration than he was capable of at the moment.

  He wondered how Hailey was doing. Had she found a cure yet? Had it worked? Was she sleeping now? He wanted to see her dreams. It was the only connection he had with her, and maybe, just maybe, it was strong enough to hold across a distance. Hell, it was worth a try. It wasn’t as if Jeremy had a plethora of other things to keep him occupied and he’d already accepted that sleep would not be forthcoming tonight.

  The one thing about that connection was that it was effortless. It sucked him in whether he tried to enter or not, whether he wanted to or not. Just close your eyes and sleep. Nothing to it.

  He closed his eyes.

  And sucked in a shocked breath when the darkness in his mind’s eye brightened rapidly into a world he knew.

  Mountains of pale gray stone, green fields, lush flowers … a crystal-clear creek winding its way through the alley.

  Was he dreaming? No way. He couldn’t have fallen asleep that quickly. And his mind was too sharp, too active to be asleep. What the hell was this? Pixie could have dosed him with something, except he hadn’t eaten anything and he never let her pour him anything to drink anymore. Not since that last time she’d poured absinthe in his juice just to see what would happen.

  So … this was real?

  She appeared out of nowhere on the other side of the creek.

  It wasn’t the Hailey he knew but the one she used to be. Shiny, auburn hair billowed around her in the breeze. Sunlight picked out the red in it, making it stand out like flames. She was wearing a strappy top and a wraparound beach skirt. Every time the wind tugged at the fabric it revealed the lush length of her leg up to the top of her thigh. A pair of flip-flops dangled from her fingertips. She was smiling, but her eyes were sharp.

  “Hailey?” What was this? The vision felt real. He could feel the ground under his bare feet, the warmth of the sun on his shoulders. He felt the breeze stir his hair, and he smelled the flowers all around him. It could be manipulation of some sort, someone making him see and feel this. Except even Hunt couldn’t create one out of scratch like this and make it complete in just a blink of an eye. He was uneasy as hell that he couldn’t figure it out. “What’s going on?”

  Hailey dropped the shoes and turned in a circle. “You like?”

  “Where are we? Is this my mind or yours?”

  She shrugged. “If I had to guess I’d say we’re somewhere in between.”

  “Come on, be serious for a minute. You have no idea how easy it can be to get lost in a mind. It’s dangerous.” And he could already feel his grip on reality slipping. He no longer sensed the mattress beneath his head or the covers over him. He’d left the window open, but though he knew it had to be cold with the breeze coming in from the lake, he felt nothing but the warmth of this world. Jeremy looked around for some kind of anchor and found nothing. There was no inconsistency here, no rip or seam in the surrounding scenery. Nothing to tell him what was real except the knowledge that this wasn’t.

  Hailey rolled her eyes. “Talk, talk, talk. Boring. Why don’t you come over here and kiss me instead?” She opened her arms to him, beckoning.

  And still he didn’t cross that creek. He rooted his feet, even though every cell of his body wanted to go to her. Touch her. Taste her. He hadn’t even realized how much he’d really missed her until now, when she was standing in front of him, a spirit of the sun, made to thrive in it, bright and beautiful and so alive. He wanted to feel that strength in her, to take succor from it.

  But it wasn’t strength. It wasn’t beauty. It was an illusion and her eyes betrayed it—they were wary; her smile never reached them. Those blue-gray eyes said—screamed—so much more than the image she was trying to project. Something was wrong here. This wasn’t his Hailey. This was a stranger, someone who didn’t exist anymore, if she’d ever existed to begin with. This was who Hailey thought she should be. He didn’t want this. “Stop it,” he said. “Show me the real you.”

  She blinked and her arms lowered to her sides. “Why? I thought you’d like this.”

  “I want the real you. Who you are, not who you think you used to be.” He wanted her so much he was sick with it. Could she feel it? Sense it somehow? “Why the big show?”

  Something changed in her expression. She came forward to cross the stream and as she did her appearance faded like a mirage into something else. Now her hair was brilliant white in the sunlight, glistening like snow, and she wore a flowing white dress. Gray eyes looked up into his, almost desperate when she came to him. She looked and moved like a ghost; her feet never disturbed the surface of the creek. The haunting image made his gut clench. “What would you do with your last day in this world?” she asked.

  It was her tone that undid him. She was everything he’d ever dreamed of and so much more, standing right in front of him and still somehow completely out of his reach. Wrong. So wrong. “Jesus, Hailey, what did you do?”

  She didn’t answer. “If you knew the world would end tomorrow, what would you do with your final hours?”

  I’d spend them with you. Holding you. Loving you. I’d put an entire lifetime into a kiss and take my last breath in your arms. The answer was instantaneous in his mind. He didn’t even have to think about it. Jeremy had spent his entire life analyzing every thought, every decision and action, always searching for a reason or explanation.

  He let all of that go, accepted the world around him, gave himself up to it. Instead of fighting now, he simply acknowledged and accepted. I love her.

  In such a short period of time he’d managed to fall in love with
the most beautiful, stubborn, complicated, pain in the ass female he’d ever met. A few months ago he would have laughed it off as ridiculous. It took years to truly get to know a person and appreciate them for who they were, let alone love them for it.

  But when it came to Hailey, rules of the universe didn’t seem to apply. Everything around him was proof of that. An impossibility that somehow became possible. Just for them. To bring them together when it seemed as if they’d be torn apart. Jeremy needed this, needed her.

  He looked at Hailey and couldn’t imagine the rest of his life without her. She was in every picture and fantasy his mind conjured. At every crossroads and major event he could imagine from now until the end of his life, even in the ordinary, everyday moments, he saw her with him.

  The thought that she might not be there made him desperate to freeze time somehow, to keep her forever.

  Because he knew her question wasn’t an idle one. It wasn’t random musings or some new need to discuss philosophy. Jeremy looked into her eyes and saw fear. Something had happened since they’d parted ways. Something had shaken Hailey enough that she truly believed she would be dying. Very soon.

  Had she failed?

  She wouldn’t tell him, of course. The way she was looking at him—desperate for something—if he pushed, made her confront it, she would disappear and Jeremy knew he’d never find her again. In this world, or the real one.

  “Tell me you’re okay,” he said, silently pleading for reassurance.

  Her smile was sad. “Answer the question.”

  No words would ever be enough to answer her, so he showed her instead.

  He kissed her, putting all of himself into that small gesture. It should have been momentous. Instead it felt so pathetically insignificant. A kiss. The exchange of breath; something romance novels forever touted as one of the most important, most telling events in any budding relationship. In reality, or at least this version of it, it could never be enough.