“No, you take your orders from Secretary Littlewood, who just murdered Dr. Thanh,” Rhys called out from the doorway. McClosky whirled, staring at Rhys in horror. “I subdued him, but he’s going back to the Clean Zone and he’s going to face justice, and I’ll testify that any of you aiding him by carrying out his orders acted as accomplices.”
They stared at him in disbelief, but Rhys didn’t have the patience or the breath to argue with them in this heat. He rushed to the edge of the roof, looking out over the surrounding grounds of the compound. Which were empty.
“Where are they?” he demanded of McClosky.
“They ducked for cover beyond those warehouses over there when the idiots took the first shots at them.” McClosky pointed to the east. “Now they’re probably just waiting for nightfall so they can get to us unseen.” He turned back to the guards. “Come on, people. Some of you have families just outside the compound here. Are you really going to risk getting infected and never seeing them again?”
Rhys could see the guards weakening, giving in, but something was scratching at the edge of his senses trying to get his attention. He went still and closed his eyes, trying to focus on it.
There it was. His eyes flew open. “Do you smell smoke?”
Panic rippled through the guards. “They’re trying to burn us out!”
“Not them!” McClosky snapped. He pointed toward the open access door leading back down into the research facility. “It’s coming from inside. We’ve got to go! We’ll be trapped up here!”
Faced with the prospect of being burned alive, the Jugs beyond the warehouses were suddenly the least of the guards’ concerns. They scrambled for the access door, rushing down the ladder with Rhys and McClosky on their heels.
The corridors were cloudy with smoke. Clearly someone had disabled the fire-suppression system. “Littlewood!” McClosky hissed.
“I’ve got to get Schuyler out of here!” Rhys yelled, crouching low. Already his eyes were streaming and his lungs burning.
“The records! Thanh’s research and notes!” McClosky argued.
“Salvage what you can!” Rhys gave him a gentle shove. Thanh wouldn’t want her research lost, not when she had just had a breakthrough and possibly created a working vaccine. “Give me your keys. I’ll help once I know Schuyler is out!”
McClosky nodded, coughing, and shoved his keys at Rhys before rushing off for the lab.
Half blinded by smoke, Rhys fumbled through the corridors toward the cells, but Schuyler’s was already open. The shackles were in fragments on the floor, and it looked like she’d torn through the door. Hopefully she’d already headed out to safety. Rhys changed direction, blindly trying to find his way back to the lab through the thickening smoke. He and McClosky wouldn’t have much time to get anything out.
Suddenly someone grabbed him from behind, and Rhys spun, fists flashing out to ward off any threat. They were caught in a huge, dark hand, and he was jerked against a solid body to stare disbelievingly at a very familiar face.
Despite the smoke making tears flood from their eyes, Darius spared him a beaming smile. “Come on, boy! We’re getting you out of here!”
“The research! The vaccine!” Rhys dissolved into a fit of coughing, trying to tug Darius toward the lab.
Someone came up beside him, hacking loudly. Xolani had a semiconscious McClosky hanging off her. “The fucker set fire to the labs and records room first!” she shouted over the roar of the inferno, the effort making her double over with more spasms. The air was scorching. Rhys could feel it singeing his lungs. “It’s all gone!”
“We have to go! Now!” Darius barked. He hauled Rhys across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and began sprinting down the corridor. Behind him, Xolani did the same with McClosky.
“Schuyler!” Rhys tried to protest, but it came out as a strangled gasp. Whether they heard him or not, they didn’t stop. Not until they had burst out into the fresh air, their course taking them well out of range of the burning building.
Finally Darius stopped to ease Rhys down off his shoulders. As soon as he was on his feet, Rhys flung himself at Darius, wrapping both arms around him and clinging without concern for who might see him acting so unreservedly. Darius returned the crushing embrace just as ferociously, his lips pressing against Rhys’s temple.
“You okay, boy?” he asked, his voice thick with more than smoke.
Rhys nodded against Darius’s shoulder. “I’m fine. No one hurt me. I didn’t give him the chance, I swear.”
Darius’s arms tightened in response, but he said nothing.
“I love you,” Rhys whispered against his ear. Darius turned, his lips mashing against Rhys’s. They both tasted like smoke, and not the pleasant campfire kind. This was foul and pungent, full of chemical residue, but it didn’t matter. He kissed Darius back with everything he had, until another spasm made his lungs jerk and he pulled away, trying to expel the foul fumes he’d inhaled.
“Did Schuyler make it out?” he asked weakly when the fit had passed. He spat gray-black phlegm onto the ground and wiped his mouth.
“She got out, and in better shape than you did,” Darius reassured him. “She got Littlewood out too.”
Rhys’s head shot up. “Where?”
Beyond the warehouses and the fence surrounding the compound was a small cluster of housing for the people who had worked at—or been abducted to—the research facility. The residents had gathered by the fence to stare, and the guards and technicians with families were calling out reassurances from where Joe was holding them at gunpoint twenty yards away.
Nico and Zach kept themselves away from everyone. Nico’s arm was healing, but it had only been three days since he’d been impaled. It wasn’t safe to let him near uninfected people. And Zach, of course, would never be safe to be around again . . . Nico envied Darius the security of Cooper’s immunity.
Schuyler had joined him and Zach, which meant she was quarantining herself for some reason, and she’d dragged Littlewood with her. And Xolani had deposited McClosky with them, as well. Apparently neither of them gave a fuck if those two men became infected.
Darius kept his arm around Cooper as they shuffled over to join their small group. Nico couldn’t look at them for too long. It hurt too much. Instead, he focused on McClosky, whose presence shouldn’t have been possible. He was supposed to have been executed ten years ago.
Nico wished he could feel something about seeing the man who had once been his friend and mentor, before he’d become the person Nico despised most in the world. Even Littlewood didn’t compare. But all he felt was empty. Maybe it was because McClosky was already dead to him. Or maybe Nico had just lost his capacity to feel anything, ever again.
He listened with half an ear as Cooper gave a rundown of events in the lab. “. . . Thanh injected him with the vaccine before she died. If it works, he’ll never be able to contract Alpha.” Cooper smiled tightly as he finished his report. “But all Thanh’s research is gone. All the equipment.”
Nico swallowed hard and met Xolani’s eyes. “No antiserum?” he asked hopelessly. Oh, there was his emotion. More of it than he could ever possibly cope with. It felt like he was shattering all over again.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. Cooper’s eyes widened and he looked at them each in turn. His gaze fixed on Nico’s bandaged arm before flicking to Zach. Nico turned away from the dawning understanding in Cooper’s expression, the echo of Nico’s own pain and impending loss.
“Zach,” the kid whispered, his smoke-roughened voice a broken croak.
“It’s okay, Rhys.” Zach smiled that saintly smile and slipped his fingers between Nico’s, squeezing tightly.
Nico pulled away. What was happening to and with Zach wasn’t for Littlewood and McClosky to see. When he dared look at anyone again, sure enough, there was just the smallest gleam of cruel pleasure on Littlewood’s face. He was enjoying Nico’s pain. Even twelve years later, Nico recognized that expression.
A
hole blossomed between Littlewood’s brows before Nico even realized his sidearm was somehow in his grip. Blood and brains and bone chips splattered McClosky, who jumped at the explosion, his astonished gaze flying to Nico. In the distance, the other guards and the civilians on the other side of the fence cried out. Only the Jugs were unfazed.
In fact, Schuyler stepped up to McClosky, holding out her hand for Nico’s gun. “Nico’s got the right idea. I don’t trust the Clean Zone to hold these guys accountable for what they’ve done,” she said flatly. Nico laid the piece across her palm.
With Littlewood’s blood running down his face in rivulets, McClosky blinked at her slowly, then nodded once and closed his eyes. “I understand.”
Nico turned away before McClosky’s body hit the ground, but the shot rang in his ears.
It took some doing to convince the guards and civvies that they weren’t going to be summarily executed. As much as Darius understood and even approved of their actions, Nico’s and Schuyler’s preemptive justice made for a hell of a headache. He, Xolani, Joe, and Rhys spent the rest of the afternoon and evening explaining to the remaining personnel and their families that those who had worked for Littlewood would be taken back to the Clean Zone and remanded to whatever justice their complicity deserved. If they had just been following orders, or had no knowledge of what Littlewood was doing and no way to blow the whistle if they did, well, that was between them and the Clean Zone criminal justice system.
As for the people who had been abducted, they had the choice of returning to the Clean Zone or traveling to the northwest to join the new settlement the Jugs intended to establish. The more Darius thought about it, the more he realized they really should have set up a second settlement years ago. Sending everyone to the Clean Zone was a case of putting all their eggs in one basket. All it would take was a single case of Beta or Gamma slipping past quarantine—like the one Littlewood had threatened to set loose, according to Rhys—and every survivor they’d managed to round up in the past decade would be dead, except for maybe a handful who might possibly be immune like Rhys.
The northwest was also much more suitable for setting up a largely agrarian settlement, which this would have to be. The only thing that had enabled the Clean Zone to get off the ground was a heavy reliance on pre-pandemic stores, all of which had been used or were now long past their shelf life. The only thing Colorado Springs had going for it as a location for a settlement was its proximity to Cheyenne Mountain, where the earliest survivors had hoped they’d find shelter. Otherwise, it was too hot in the summer, and too arid and rocky for anything more than subsistence farming.
Hopefully the other companies of Jugs would see it that way too. If not, maybe they would come up with alternative locations that would work as well.
An unsurprising number of the abducted people had been in favor of going to the new settlement. That said a lot about what they had been through and how little they trusted the Clean Zone to protect them.
When that was all settled, Darius could finally turn his attention to Rhys, who waited for him in the Jugs’ small camp. There was something different about his boy since they’d recovered him. He’d always been quiet, but now there was a gravity to him, a deeper maturity than he’d possessed even a week ago. Whatever he’d seen and done—and he swore to Darius that those experiences had nothing to do with Littlewood—it had put a coat of varnish on him, making him harder and more impervious, but also somehow more open.
He startled when Darius sat down beside him on the bedroll, having nodded off in front of the fire. “I’m tired,” he sighed, leaning against Darius in a way he rarely had before. He still smelled like burning plastic and insulation; they both did. The Jugs had requested access to one of the residences and the running water therein, but they’d been too weary to take advantage of it before it was time to bunk down. Tomorrow would be soon enough for a shower.
Darius drew him close, letting him lie with his head in Darius’s lap. “Then get some sleep. Nothin’ we need to say tonight that we can’t talk about tomorrow.”
“Lie down with me.” Rhys sat up and waited for Darius to take off his boots and stretch out before he was pressed close again, clinging to Darius like a limpet. “Thank you for coming for me.”
“You knew I would.” He could get used to this new side of Rhys, who was no longer self-conscious in his displays of affection. “Seemed like you were handling things okay, by the look of Littlewood’s face when we got him out.”
“I should have bound him before I went up to the roof. It’s my fault he was running loose, torching the place. He did it just for spite.” Rhys shuddered in his arms. “As much as I enjoyed the idea of him going through life knowing he’d failed, I’m glad he’s dead. He was evil.”
“Guess you made the right call, then, decidin’ you were gonna go in and stop him.” He pressed a kiss to the top of Rhys’s head, ignoring the smokiness. “Good thing we listened to you. You made us proud.”
Rhys tucked his face into Darius’s shoulder. “Darius . . . you know I’m not going anywhere, right? Not if I can help it. You know I’m not just with you while I’m waiting for some other opportunity to come along?”
“Yeah, I know.” Rhys’s anxious tone made Darius frown and lift his head. “Doesn’t mean I’d blame you if you did find a chance for a better life.”
“I don’t want a better life. I want the life I have. We have.” His hazel eyes were golden in the firelight when he met Darius’s gaze. “I’m with you because it’s where I want to be. Where I’m happy. Please don’t ever suggest I should be somewhere else again.”
“It’s a deal. You’ll be my boy for always.” He brushed his lips across Rhys’s, lightly once, then again, slower and deeper. He stopped only when Rhys made a pained sound. “Okay?”
Rhys gave a self-effacing chuckle and nodded, settling back in against Darius. He could feel the pressure of Rhys’s dick against his thigh, but Rhys made no move to carry things further. “I’m okay. Just spent way too much time the past few days with my hand on my cock.” He laughed at Darius’s confused stare. “Nothing bad, I promise. It just might be a couple days until I’m really in the mood for more than this.”
“All right.” Baffled, Darius lay back, watching the stars in the clear sky above as he waited for his own arousal to subside.
He was almost asleep when Rhys spoke again. “Darius?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think we could go away again? Like we did before, just the two of us?”
He kissed the top of Rhys’s head again. “Anything you want. We’ll go as soon as things are dealt with here.”
The rest of the camp was asleep and Xolani’s bedroll empty when Rhys slid away from Darius and pulled on his boots. There was really no need to post a guard, which meant something else had Xolani awake in the middle of the night.
He found her looking over the still-glowing ruins of the research complex, her arms wrapped around herself. The bodies of Littlewood and McClosky, which they’d thrown onto the burning rubble, were no longer visible, obscured by collapsed walls.
“You okay?” he asked softly, knowing she wouldn’t have missed hearing his approach.
“Just stuck wondering ‘What if?’” She shook her head in disgust. “I want to resurrect that fucker Littlewood and kill him again. All that research and the equipment we needed—gone.”
“They should have approached the Jugs years ago,” Rhys said bitterly. “They had the ability to isolate the Alpha strain from a blood sample. They said it was because you wouldn’t have trusted them.”
Xolani flicked a small shrug. “They had a point.”
“Yeah, but I think they would have made the attempt, if not for Littlewood.”
“You’re probably right.” She shook her head. “Such a fucking waste. Anyway, what has you awake now after the day you’ve had?”
The day he’d had. Rhys thought he’d be seeing Dr. Thanh’s grisly, bloodied face in his dreams for months
, even with her triumphant last act. He’d keep remembering how lost in rage he’d gotten, how much he’d enjoyed beating Littlewood to a pulp—and how careless he’d been about leaving him there unrestrained.
He shook himself when he realized he was getting distracted. “I keep thinking about how we can use an antiserum from my blood to help people who have been recently exposed to the virus.”
“It’s a rare situation, Rhys. The chances of someone who has been that recently exposed having timely access to any antiserum we might make from your blood are astronomically small. We’d have to be there on the spot during what would be a very small window of opportunity. Twenty-four to seventy-two hours, tops. It’s not likely to ever come up.”
“I could have helped Zach, if I’d been with you.”
“Maybe. If we’d had the right equipment, we could have spun down your blood and derived the antiserum. Maybe.” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “I know you regret not being able to help your friend, but he seems okay with his choice.”
Rhys swallowed against the knot in his throat. “I know he is. I’ll miss him, but . . . this isn’t about him.”
“Then what’s it about?”
“You could be there on the spot, with the antiserum available, if the person who’s been exposed to Beta were a Jug’s newborn baby, couldn’t you?”
Xolani froze and turned slowly, staring at him with wide eyes.
“Couldn’t you?” he insisted. “We could help Jugs like Schuyler and Jamie, right?”
Xolani’s eyes were glassy in the moonlight, and she was staring at him as though she’d never seen him before. Her words came slowly, thick with emotion, after a shuddering breath. “If we can manufacture the antiserum, then yes. We could save their newborns, if they chose to have them.”
“Then the Jugs wouldn’t die out. I mean, there wouldn’t be any more Alpha-infected Jugs, but—”
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