Bane

by Amelia C. Gormley

  “His victims, you mean.” Rhys sneered at him. “You’re as bad as he is. ‘Subjects.’ ‘Projects.’ They’re fucking people.”

  Something flickered in Logan’s eyes. “You’re not the first to make that point. I admit I’ve had to cultivate a certain detachment about it all.”

  “Where are they now? The subjects. Did they even survive? Or did Littlewood get his hands on them?”

  “Not all of them were abused, no. Littlewood only took an interest in a particular few. As for the others, the people we strongly suspected of having been exposed to Alpha, we had to get them away from the Clean Zone so there was no danger they would infect anyone else. Once they were here, it made sense to find a use for them. We don’t have the ability to do computer modeling of the potential test results anymore. Live trials are our only sure way to get the data we need.”

  Logan cleared his throat. “We do what we can with animals who can contract the virus, of course. But there have been times when we’ve needed to observe the progress of the virus in a living human, particularly when we thought we might have something to counteract it. For the people who weren’t needed, we’ve given them housing nearby. We provide them with rations, help them support themselves. Some of them have made homes with the personnel who work here in the lab. They can’t go back to the Clean Zone, even though it turned out they weren’t infected with Alpha after all.”

  “Why? Because they might tell people about your operations?”

  Logan nodded slowly. “That’s part of it, yes.”

  “Uh-huh. And how many of them did Littlewood get his hands on?”

  Logan’s eyes slid away from his. “Too many.”

  “Why didn’t you do anything to stop him?”

  “You have to understand my position here, Rhys.” The look on Logan’s face was wearily earnest. “I have no power or control. And I think Littlewood keeps me alive for petty revenge. I once was party to manipulating him, and I think he relishes his authority over me.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I should be dead,” he said, not answering the question. “I was sentenced to die for my role in implementing Project Juggernaut, but I struck a deal. I knew congress would assemble a department to work on preventing another outbreak of the pandemic, and I agreed to work with them, tell them everything I knew. Back then, of course, we had no idea that Thanh was still alive. I’m a soldier, not a scientist, but I was all they had. They couldn’t discard such a potential resource.” Logan sighed, plucking the sheet at the edge of the bunk. “So they kept me imprisoned to consult with the scientists they were able to assemble. Eventually Thanh came along, and that was when the decision was made to set up a lab outside the Clean Zone so that we could obtain live samples of the virus and work with them without endangering the bulk of the population.”

  “I’m a soldier, not a scientist.” Rhys’s eyes widened as something fell into place. “You’re General McClosky.”

  The old man nodded. “I am.”

  Rhys snorted. “Wow, do I know some people who would love to see you dead.”

  McClosky nodded with a rueful smile. “Yes, I hardly blame them. And if what you said about the Juggernaut troops coming after you is true, they’ll get their chance soon enough. I guess it’s long past due.”

  “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

  “No.” McClosky rose, wandering toward the door with bowed shoulders. “It’ll be a relief, actually. I’ve evaded justice for long enough. And if your Jugs don’t get to me, well, I suppose the wounds you kept hidden from us will do the trick with a much more poetic flare, don’t you?”

  “What the fuck have you done?” Schuyler demanded when Rhys insisted on seeing her again the next day. Apparently the research facility personnel had decided that quarantining him was futile at this point, since they didn’t protest taking him out of his cell, despite the new discovery of his open wounds. “I’ve been hearing panicked voices all over the place out there.”

  Rhys rubbed the back of his neck. “I, um . . . Remember how I told you they said I was infected with Alpha? I didn’t remember at the time that I had some healing welts on my back.”

  The color fled from her face. “Oh fuck.” She sank down on the edge of her cot. “How many people are out there?”

  “I’m not sure.” Rhys shrugged. “Two dozen, maybe? A couple virologists. Lab techs. Guards. Littlewood.”

  “The secretary of the DPRP is here?”

  There didn’t seem to be any sense covering up his secret agenda now, even if they were being monitored, so Rhys gave her a brief rundown of what Zach had told him about Littlewood and the DPRP’s sinister agenda. Then he told her what had happened that night in Littlewood’s quarters.

  He thought he might have seen some respect in her eyes when he finished.

  “You know what he could have done to you if you weren’t infected with Alpha, right?”

  Rhys nodded, looking anywhere but at her frank stare. “Yeah, I knew.”

  “And Darius agreed to this?”

  “He, um, wasn’t exactly thrilled with it, but it was my choice.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course it was.”

  “Oh Jesus! What did I do now?” Rhys snapped, suddenly beyond his tolerance for her disdain.

  “When you’re with someone, you make choices like that together. It’s called being partners. If Emmy ever pulled something like that, or Ka—” She threw up her hands in disgust. “Maybe you could try taking what he feels into account for once instead if it always being about you.”

  “Oh, fuck off.” Rhys glared at her. “Just because he didn’t like it doesn’t mean we didn’t decide together. Hell, Joe and Toby and Xolani all weighed in too. I didn’t do it behind their backs.”

  They fell into a sullen silence. Some portion of him wanted to storm out and leave her to stew in solitude, since she was obviously always going to think the worst of him, but his reluctance to be alone overruled it. She was a part of his life among the Jugs, even if she was a contentious one. He needed that connection right now, needed to remember that Darius was coming for him and that he wouldn’t be alone here when these people began to die.

  “I don’t see why you insist on thinking I don’t care about him,” Rhys said, deflating after a moment. He poked at a threadbare spot of fabric threatening to become a hole near the knee of his fatigues. “I mean, I know in the beginning it . . . took me a while to accept the way my life had changed, the things I thought I needed to do to survive. But since I settled in, have I ever given anyone any reason to think I wasn’t committed to staying with Darius?”

  “Have you ever given anyone a reason to think you were?” Schuyler shot back. “Look, I know my way around undemonstrative people. Delta Company is full of them. But I see you and Darius, in the canteen at Fort Vancouver or wherever, and he can’t keep his eyes off you. He can’t keep his hands off you. But you won’t make eye contact with anyone, like you’re embarrassed to be there, and while you’ll let him touch you, you never reach out to him.”

  Rhys shrugged, resisting the urge to squirm. “I’m just not comfortable doing that.”

  “Doing what? Showing someone you care about them?”

  The hole in his fatigues got bigger, and Rhys focused on widening it even more.

  “Cooper, do you have any idea what Darius was like before we found you?”

  That got his attention. He stopped picking at his pants and finally met her eyes. “I know what he was like when I met him.”

  “That’s a start. He’s different now, right?”

  Rhys nodded. The Darius he knew now would not have been as cold and unfeeling as the Darius he had first known. It might have made a difference in the way Rhys had handled things back then.

  But the way Rhys had handled things back then had been part of the catalyst for Darius to change, hadn’t it? Darius hadn’t felt right about what he’d done to Rhys in the name of keeping him alive, so he’d softened, started finally lis
tening to Rhys and figuring out what Rhys needed to make everything bearable.

  It had taken time, but they’d finally begun to understand each other.

  Schuyler let him mull on that for a while. “Darius had seen too much, done too much. Every time his squad had to put down an infected survivor, he was the one who pulled the trigger because he wouldn’t make any of his people do it. He had to stop feeling or it was going to drive him to eat a bullet. Some of us wondered if he was shutting down, but then you gave him something to care about again.”

  Rhys returned to worrying the hole at his knee. “I know.”

  Schuyler made a frustrated sound. “Look, it’s simple. Do you love him, even a little? And if you do, would it kill you to act like it?”

  “It’s not that easy.” He needed to be done with this conversation. Now.

  “Yeah, it really is.”

  “It’s not!” Rhys shot to his feet, stalking as far away as the four walls of the cell would allow. “I won’t make him any promises I can’t keep.”

  Schuyler hissed a curse. “You little fucker. You are planning to leave him.”

  “No!” He whirled on her. “But it’s not like I have a choice.”

  “You don’t have a choice about whether or not you’re going to have a future with him?”

  “What future?” Rhys’s voice rose so high and loud it cracked, and he pulled it back down. “God, it’s all people talk about lately. Where we’re going to go after Lewis-McChord and then after that, whether the Jugs will ever have a place to settle down. What’s going to happen with the Clean Zone in five, ten, twenty years if they don’t get their act together. But you of all people should know there’s no such thing as a future.”

  “Me of all people?” She scoffed. “Why would I know that?”

  Rhys lifted his chin. “Because you can’t have children.”

  Schuyler’s face flushed with fury. “Did Kaleo tell you about that?”

  “He told me things weren’t easy for some of the Jug women, that you were all the strongest of the Jugs because of it.” He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, her stillness making him nervous. “After seeing what Emmy had to do, having an abortion so her baby wouldn’t be born with the Rot after Jacob infected her, it wasn’t hard to figure out what Kaleo meant or who he was talking about.”

  “And you think that means I don’t have a future?” Her upper lip curled into a sneer. “You’ve been listening to too much of Xolani’s fatalistic bullshit. Fuck you, Cooper. You don’t know shit.”

  “I’m just saying, more than most people, you should get it. There’s no sense on counting on a tomorrow that won’t be there. There’s only the moments you’re here until you aren’t anymore.” Rhys began pacing, no longer concerned with her anger in his desperate need to make her understand. His words came tumbling out in an uncontrolled torrent. “I was nine years old when I went into a bunker. I came out three years later and everyone was just gone. The whole world, gone. I watched everyone I knew drop off, one after the other until there was only me and Jacob. A dozen people entered that monastery, and seven years later, only two were left.”

  He swung his hands, whirling on her violently. “One after another. Year after year. All gone. I put a bullet in the head of the only person who cared about me when my mom was sick and Jacob was making my life hell. I saw a colony of twenty-some people kill themselves for no reason. I saw Kaleo a-and one second he was walking through the woods to check on something he’d picked up on his scanner and the next he was on the ground with half his head missing. Gone. Gone. Gone.”

  Fuck. His eyes were burning now. Rhys wiped them angrily with his sleeve. “But now I have Darius and Xolani and Joe and the rest of the Jugs, right? And I’m happy. I am! Stupid as it is, I really am.” He met her stare squarely, willing her to see the truth he was trying to speak. “Only, I’m not one of you, and I never will be. I’m too weak. Too fragile. Xolani says my heart might be damaged from years of starvation. It might be tomorrow or next week or next month, but sooner or later, I’m gonna be the one who’s gone. And I accept that. I’m ready for it. But why would I tell Darius I love him and promise him a future there’s no way I can deliver?”

  He held her gaze as her face grew a little pale, her freckles darker than usual. “Shit, Cooper.” She shook her head, muttering in disgust. “All right. I get it. You’ve been dealt a rotten hand and seen things no kid should see at way too young an age. But you don’t stop living just so no one notices when you die. You live even more, live harder, live like you’ve got nothing to lose.” She snorted, flopping back against the wall along her bunk. “Hell, for all Xolani’s cynicism, even she does that. Pack a hundred days’ worth of living into every day you’ve got, so when that moment comes and your number’s up, you didn’t miss out on anything.”

  Rhys swallowed against the thickness in his throat. He wanted to believe her. Wanted to let go and just exist without the constant awareness of his own doom hanging over him. Wanted to enjoy life and enjoy being with Darius without holding back, without wondering if losing him would eventually fill Darius with the same aching emptiness Rhys had felt after each consecutive loss.

  Maybe he could. But how did he learn to stop looking past tomorrow in anything but vague, hypothetical terms?

  “I’ve got to go,” he muttered, hunched over as though he could hold the contents of his chest inside. He couldn’t seem to uncurl and straighten up to meet her eyes.

  “Sure.” He couldn’t quite read her tone. It wasn’t the resigned disgust he was used to, at least. That was something. “I’ll give it another week, and if no one shows up, we’re breaking out of here.”

  Rhys nodded quickly and rapped on the door, waiting for the guard to respond. Unable to resist, he asked over his shoulder, “Did Kaleo decide with you, when he made the choice to go after Jacob?”

  The guard opened the door just then, so he almost missed her answer when she whispered, “No.”

  Dr. Thanh was waiting for him when he returned to his cell.

  “We need another sample,” she announced without preamble. He couldn’t see her very well through her hermetic suit, but something about her presence screamed exhaustion. He doubted she’d slept in the last couple of days.

  “The three I’ve given you already haven’t been enough?”

  “No.”

  Something about the way she said it made him freeze where he stood. “Have the samples I’ve given you even made it to the lab?” he asked, swallowing thickly. “Or have they been rerouted to people who might want to infect themselves with Alpha to protect against Beta? Perhaps just one certain someone?”

  “Please.” The whisper hissed from the speaker of her hood, a broken, desperate sound. “None of us here have a choice. He’s promised the guards he’ll infect them and give them immunity if he can just get infected with Alpha first, and they’re desperate enough to believe him. They’ll kill us if we don’t cooperate.”

  Rhys bowed his head, understanding for the first time Zach’s need to pray. It certainly felt like he could use some guidance here. “I’m sorry. But no. No more. Not if it means he becomes a Jug.” He looked up, staring squarely into her mask. “You know how dangerous he’ll be if that happens. I won’t give him the Alpha strain.”

  “You’re killing us!” she said urgently.

  “How many people has he raped and killed?” Was this what Darius had felt when Rhys had first met him? Or when he had made the call that someone had to be put down? Numb to the prospect of another lost life? Unmoved? Did he just shut down because it was the only way to stay sane? “You people abducted me knowing I was infected with Alpha. And yeah, I set myself up to be taken so I could stop you, but I didn’t make you do it. I’m sorry if that means more people have to die, but he has to be stopped.”

  “What about our families? Do you understand that my children will never see me again?”

  There was despair in her tone now. Rhys brushed past her and lay on
his bunk, curling into a fetal ball with his back to her. “He did this to you. I didn’t.”

  The sound through her mask of her weeping was haunting. He’d be hearing it in his nightmares for years to come. Once he got past this strange feeling of not giving a damn.

  This wasn’t anything like what he’d imagined when he’d agreed to Zach’s plan. And why had Zach asked him to do this at all if he knew Rhys was infected with Alpha?

  Had Zach hoped for this?

  “Just the tubing on the collector. Please?” She spoke so softly that Rhys almost didn’t hear it. “I don’t need much, and I won’t let him know I have it. Discard the rest of the sample if you want, but let me have the tubing?”

  He rolled slowly, blinking at her, then nodded once. “Come back in an hour.”

  They found Joe on the shores of the Great Salt Lake just before sunset on the fourth day of their pursuit. Darius greeted him with a tight smile, looking him up and down to assess his condition. He looked like he’d been waiting there for a while, at least long enough to have bathed and rested.

  “You send Toby and Titus to get reinforcements from Seattle?” he asked immediately. He nodded in approval when Darius confirmed.

  “I followed the trajectory of the personnel carrier until I got to the lake,” Joe went on, “but I figured that by the time I skirted around it, I’d have lost track of their route. Do we have any idea where they went?”

  Xolani nodded at Nico, who was helping a pitiful-looking Zach off his bike. “He does. Says he got the location from the nav system of their skim-craft.”

  Joe narrowed his eyes at Nico. “Looks familiar. Do we know him?”

  Nico’s lips quirked into a slight grin. “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. I used to be with Sierra Company. I’m a friend of Kaleo’s.”