On our way out the door, I glare into the camera Nyssa spotted a few minutes ago. The door slides closed behind us once Pritchard and I are in the long, steel corridor.
“What the hell was all that about?” he asks.
“New security. That’s all they would say.”
Pritchard laughs. “Two armed guards in The Citadel medical wing? Do they think we’re in The Grind?”
“And cameras. I thought we were done with those when we moved to this side of the gates. Did you see the guards grab her arms?”
“The rumors about the briefcases must have gotten back to them.”
“Yeah, I don’t know.”
“You think Nyssa knows what people are saying?”
“I don’t know, man!” I snap, then take a deep breath after I push open the door to the street. “You know as much as I do, okay?”
Pritchard holds up his hands, palms facing me like I’ve pulled a weapon on him or something.
I roll my eyes. “Just get in the car.”
Donovan is already outside leaning on Wu’s long, black Lincoln. He sees us coming and opens the passenger door.
“What happened? You okay?”
I nod to him. “Fine. Just new security protocols.”
“Lay this on the seat and keep it steady,” I say to Donovan, who gets in the backseat.
“Hey, I heard there are three mutations now,” he says. “Did Nyssa say anything?”
I shake my head at him. “I don’t care what’s in that case, Don. And neither should you.”
“One of them gives you speed. One strength, and the other one gives you both, plus they all give you this kind of wild immunity boost,” he says, completely ignoring me. “You’re basically immortal. Imagine having unlimited years.”
Pritchard snorts. “Impossible. You need to stop talking to the lab janitors.”
“Wouldn’t you want unlimited years, Ryder? Come on?” Donovan shoves the back of my shoulder.
“Who wouldn’t? Can you shut up about it now?” I answer.
“Which color do you think best represents immortality?”
I just sigh at Donovan’s stupid question and look out the window at one tall, fiberglass building after another going by. I never should have gone to Nyssa that night in The Grind. I should have just called the sweepers and paid the years.
Donovan’s abrupt, maniacal laughter pouring from the backseat shocks me out of my thoughts. Pritchard hits the brakes and swears.
“What the hell, Don!?” I shout over the bench seat, but that’s all I can say at the sight of him. His mouth is wide open and his dark eyes are nearly bugging out of his head in surprise.
“It works, man! It works!” He laughs.
The sleeves of his plaid shirt are suddenly becoming skin tight, pulling at the buttons over his chest. His neck grows at least two inches in thickness right before my eyes, and his normally round face starts to become sharp-lined around his cheekbones and chin. He even has a short, blond goatee, which definitely wasn’t there five minutes ago.
The briefcase is open next to him, one of the syringes out of its mounting and lying empty in the lid.
“What the hell did you do, Don?” I ask with the last of the breath in my lungs.
“I got the code, man!”
Pritchard pulls the car into an alley and turns full body to face Donovan. “Did you just shoot one of those? You just—” He stops cold when he notices the obvious physical changes.
“Hell, yeah!” Donovan laughs like a five-year-old in a farting contest. “Kira gave me the code to the case!”
“Kira, the cleaning girl?” I ask. “How did she get the code?”
“This is our ticket, Ryder—unlimited years!” Donovan says through psychotic celebration, which turns into full-blown mania when I feel something sharp hit my shoulder. A heat spreads across my chest and back. “That’s the blue syringe. Pritchard, gimme your arm for the yellow.”
“Don!” I shout, tearing at my shirt because it feels like my skin is on fire from the inside.
Pritchard pushes his hands through his hair. “Are you crazy!? You just injected him!?”
“He just said who wouldn’t want unlimited years!” Donovan says, completely confused. “I mean, look at me, man! So just give yours a second, Ryder. Kira said sometimes there’s a delay.”
“I’m gonna kill you!” I start to leap over the seat, but Pritchard grabs me and pulls me back.
“What’s wrong with you?” Donovan yells, pushing at me. “Ryder, we can go anywhere now!”
“You’re dead. You’re dead. No, we’re all dead! We have to deliver that case right now, you idiot!”
“Ryder, calm down!” Pritchard pushes me against my door and holds out a long arm to keep me from leaping at Donovan again. The heat from my shoulder feels like it’s wrapping around my heart and lungs like a hand squeezing.
Donovan holds up his hands at me. “It’s all right. I have a plan.”
“What did you do to me . . . ?” I finally manage, glaring at him, but he just looks me up and down, confused.
“Nothing is happening yet? Do you feel any different? I don’t think the delay takes this long.”
My mind races. “I don’t know—it’s hot. Everything is hot. That’s it. I don’t know what’s happening.”
“Do you feel stronger? Get out and run down the block,” Donovan says. I lunge at him again.
“Stop!” Pritchard puts a hand in my chest and knocks the wind out of me.
I clench my teeth and check the clock in the car. “They’re going to kill us, you moron! We have to deliver this case in twenty minutes!”
“I got it handled!” Donovan pulls three small bottles out of his pocket and holds them up. One is full of yellow liquid, one blue, and the other red. “See?”
“What is that?” Pritchard asks.
“I don’t know—dye or something?” Donovan shrugs. “Kira also said the serums don’t always work. Nyssa’s people just mix up another batch if the clients complain, and they get another case. It’s happened before.”
My head is spinning. There’s so much wrong now I don’t even know where to begin. How do I fix this? How do I get this stuff out of me?
“This is bad . . .” Pritchard says, dragging his hands down his face. He gives me a quick scan. “Nothing’s changed? Are you still hot?”
I shake my head since the heat has started to dissipate, but my heart is still pounding. “No. I think it was a dud. It had to be a dud.”
“Thank God,” Pritchard breathes. “All right. Put that stuff in the syringes and let’s go. I want that case out of here.”
“It could still work—remember the delay, man. Pritchard, you don’t want the yellow?”
“Are you insane!?” I bark at Donovan.
“Hey, you said you wanted the years! Besides, I was doing you a favor. Kira said this stuff can even regenerate limbs.”
“All right! It’s already done!” Pritchard interrupts, throwing out a big arm to block my path to Donovan. “Ryder, you can beat the crap out of him after we deliver the case, all right?”
“Pfft, he can try.” Donovan flexes his stupidly huge bicep and admires himself.
I close my eyes in a long blink and shake my head as Pritchard starts driving again. “And how are we even supposed to explain you now? You can’t just come back to the dorms all Captain Steroid like that. Ugh, you moron!”
“Our internships are up in two weeks. I’ll just wear baggier clothes until I graduate and move into the engineering suites.”
“You really are an idiot,” Pritchard says.
“Just loan me some of your clothes, man. It’s fine.”
Pritchard shakes his head and blows out a hard breath as he glances at me again. “You still okay? What’s happening? Anything?”
“I’m fine. There’s no delay. It was a dud,” I say, believing it more each time I say it. I turn back to make sure Donovan is refilling the syringes. He finishes, then closes the briefc
ase and spins the lock. “Give me those bottles.” I hold out a hand to him. He hesitates for a second before reluctantly giving them over. I pull the stopper out of the yellow one and pour it out the window, ignoring his protests.
“I need to give her back the bottles at least,” he mumbles. I toss them over the seat just as we park near the entrance to the docks.
“Stay here,” Pritchard says, holding his hand out for the briefcase. Donovan passes it over the seat as I get out of the car.
“Where are they? I can’t see anything,” Pritchard says after walking a few minutes. “Ryder?” Panic laces his voice when I don’t respond. Even though we’re technically still within The Citadel boundaries, the docks in The Grind are just beyond the outer gate that closes off the narrow bay in front of us.
“I’m here. Just keep the case steady,” I say, picking up a piece of pipe from the ground and putting it in the back of my waistband, just in case. You can’t trust anything in the fog.
The suits are waiting when we get to the docks. They’re always in suits—all of them black like the villains in every bad movie ever made. There are three of them this time, but I’ve delivered enough of these cases to know for every three you see, there are ten more you don’t.
“You must be Knox Ryder,” the black suit in the middle says, looking me up and down and raising his palm as he studies me, seemingly fascinated. “Please, please, take your time. I would like to study your cadence.”
Here we go again. Another stranger who knows about my legs. I give him a flat smile. “Are you Zhang or what?”
Pritchard growls a warning at me under his breath and gives me the case. My heart starts pounding in my chest again.
The man steps into the light and extends his hand to take the case while I put my other hand in the air, per the protocol.
“I am Zhang, yes. And I have been advised the contents this time are reformulated?” he asks, looking down the flat planes of his broad, pockmarked face at me. “I am told there will be no more . . . ferals.”
Ferals? I think, but I push it out of my head when he starts eyeballing my legs again. I take a step back. “They said to tell you not to expect any problems,” I lie, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. This is a re-delivery? I wonder. Then who delivered the first case to Zhang?
“We’ll see.” Zhang hands the case to one of his flunkies, another pinched-faced man who punches a code into the briefcase’s number plate. It doesn’t open, so he tries again.
The sound of the crashing waves behind Zhang and his crew falls out of sync with the pounding in my ears. Zhang’s eyes scan my legs again, and after several minutes, he shakes his head at me.
“Is there a problem?” I bark before I can catch myself. Pritchard thumps the back of my shoulder just where Donovan hit me with the syringe, and a fresh wave of heat shoots through my whole body. I brace for a punch or a pipe to the stomach for my tone, but Zhang just gives me an oily smile instead.
“It is almost like being a god, isn’t it, Knox Ryder?” He looks at me for several more seconds, long enough for me to notice the rapid, unnatural dilation of his eyes. “Everlasting performance, no deterioration. And more.” He scans my legs again and grins in approval. “Ah, titanium.”
Before I can respond, the pinched-faced man gets the case open, checks the contents, and nods to Zhang before closing it again.
Zhang’s lips curl, his feathery eyebrows pitching as he gives me a long side-eye. His assistant hands me another briefcase, then disappears into the fog with Zhang and the rest of his entourage.
Pritchard and I stand in silence for several seconds before the aftershock of adrenaline hits my bloodstream, and I start shaking. I clench my teeth to keep from accidentally biting my tongue.
“Well, that went well,” he says into the night as Zhang and his fellow black suits disappear into the mist. “You see his eyes? Did he x-ray you back there?”
I blow out a breath, but something breaks in me. Something I can’t put back together. And I know this is the last time I’ll ever stand here like some kind of exotic zoo animal for people obsessed with living forever.
I shove the case into Pritchard’s chest. “I need to get out of The Citadel.”
He laughs and slaps me on the back as we start walking back to the car. “All that time trying to get in, and now you want to get out?”
“I still know people in The Grind. We could make it.”
“And do what? Risk more of your life operating as an unauthorized medic?” Pritchard sighs. “The Grind is a war zone, man. Especially for you.” I shoot him a glare, but he just raises an eyebrow and glances at my legs. “The scavengers? They’d tear you apart once they found out about your . . . enhancements. Besides, Don doesn’t want to leave. You heard him.”
I stop walking and turn to him. “Hit me.”
“What?”
“Hit me. I need to see Nyssa again.”
“I’m not going to hit you.”
“Damn it, Pritchard, either hit me or I’m going to throw myself out of the car on the way back to The Citadel.”
“Do you understand the years you’re putting at stake for both of you by getting unauthorized medical treatment again. We don’t have any credits yet, in case you forgot.”
“We have bigger problems now. Zhang said ferals are being produced from whatever was in the last case. What if that’s what’s going to happen to Donovan? What if going wild, or whatever feral means, is a side effect? We have to tell Nyssa what happened and find out what was really in those syringes.”
“Oh, so you’re trying to get her killed then? Because they won’t send her back to The Grind if she gets kicked out. They won’t even charge her with giving you unauthorized medical services. She knows too much now.”
I squint at him. “What, then? We just wait for Don to go feral? We just keep being part of this chain that leads to people dying? That’s the exact opposite of what a medic does!”
Pritchard sighs. “You don’t even know if that’s what’s happening. Let it go. We’re free and clear in two weeks. Nyssa too.”
“They’re never going to let her out of that lab, Pritchard. She had two guards with her tonight. They escorted her like she was some kind of prisoner.”
“Even if that’s true, she’s still better off at The Citadel than in The Grind.
“I used to think that before they locked her up in there.”
“Look, I understand, okay? But we’re done with these internships in two weeks, man, and then we’ll have social percentage—we can buy back all our years!”
“Why am I even talking to you?” I shake my head and pick up my pace to get Pritchard out of my wake. Donovan flashes the headlights for just a second in the distance, and I turn toward them.
The black car emerges from the fog like an animal in the night, creeping forward just as quietly—why does it always feel like something’s hunting us next to this stupid water?—and I get in the front seat while Pritchard gets in the back.
“You got the payment?” Donovan asks me as he pulls away.
I jerk my head over my shoulder at Pritchard in the backseat. “We drop off the case, and then we’re going to see Nyssa.”
“Why? What happened?” Donovan asks, darting glances at me.
“I had an accident.”
I start hitting my right knee with the pipe as hard as I can.
“Hey! Hey!” Donovan swerves and abruptly stops, making me fly forward and hit my head on the dashboard.
Pritchard yanks the pipe from my hand. “Are you crazy? Yeah, you’re both crazy! Oh and great,” he adds, leveling a hand at my face. “Well, there’s your accident.”
I taste the blood in my mouth and feel more trickling down from my forehead.
Donovan swears and shakes his head at me. “What are you doing!?”
“Just take him to Nyssa.”
“What about turning in the payment?” Donovan asks, scanning the rearview and side mirrors as he pulls out again.
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“I’ll take it to Wu this time.” Pritchard sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose as he rests his head against the backseat.
We drive in silence the rest of the way to the interior gate of The Citadel. Donovan slows down long enough for the scanner to read his eyes, and we wait for the red gridline gates to disappear in front of us.
The narrow streets are deserted like they always are at this time in the morning—too late to go to sleep, too early to wake up. We pull into the administrative block, where Donovan stops to let Pritchard out with the case.
“Take Ryder to Nyssa before he has another great idea. If Wu is still waiting, I’ll say we had some interference on the way back from the deal.” Pritchard leans down on a forearm to glare at me through Donovan’s window. “Tell her to check your head while you’re there. And I don’t just mean the part you whacked on the dash.”
I give him a mock salute. He pounds on the top of the car a few times, and Donovan steps on the gas.
“So . . . what the hell was all that about?”
“Zhang said their last case produced something called ferals when he asked if the contents were fixed this time.”
“Does he mean the attacks?”
“You tell me, Don! What did Kira say when she gave you the code?”
“Nothing about ferals.”
“How are you not losing your mind right now?” I ask. “Hell, I am and I just got a dud! Don’t you see that whatever Nyssa’s people put in those syringes must be what’s causing the attacks? What else could ferals mean?” I want to keep trying to pound this into Donovan’s head, but I feel fluid leaking down the back of the synthetic skin on the side of my calf. That’s probably not good.
“You worry too much, Ryder. We’re about to start earning social percentage. Wu even upgraded your legs. We get a whole day off every few weeks to deliver a briefcase . . . an hour’s worth of work, tops. Oh, and I’m probably immortal now.”
“You think this is some kind of joke? What if you turn into one of the ferals—whatever they are?” I almost shout as the car slows outside Nyssa’s unit.
“Look, I’m sorry you got the dud syringe, but I feel better than I ever have in my life! Who cares about what else they’re doing? It’s not affecting us. They won’t just send us back to The Grind if you blow this, Ryder—they’ll kill us . . . Nyssa too, and it will all be for nothing.”
On the Brink Page 26