His claws press into my forearm, and he peels my fingers back from his forehead one at a time. My joints are cracking and popping. I hold on as long as I can, but then, Trey finds a grip on my wrist and yanks me off my feet. I go flying through the air, landing with a thud and rolling until I collide with the far wall.
“You bitch!” he shrieks, striding over. He looks about ready to end me, but halfway across the distance, he staggers, one knee bending under some unseen force. “I’m gonna…” He points a finger at me, but his eyes droop into a long blink.
Dropping down to his knees, Trey doubles over, clutching at his stomach. He gives a long groan, half animalistic growl, and then it’s like he explodes. His lips peel back and a gush of blood spews out of his mouth. It’s black and frothy, a torrent. He catches his breath, and his eyes clear for a moment. He snarls at me, “You’re gonna p—” but a second wave cuts him off. I couldn’t have believed there was this much blood in his body.
I yelp and pull my legs in to avoid the flood of blood pouring across the floor.
“What did you do?” my mom gasps, covering a hand over her mouth.
“Nothing, I just—” I look over to where Trey threw the syringe. “I think I cured him.”
We all watch in horror as Trey collapses to the floor, his body wracked with convulsions. His muscles spasm so hard that I can hear the snap of his bones beneath his skin. He’s covered in blood, but I don’t think it’s his. I think… it’s everything he ingested, his stomach contents. It’s as if his body is rejecting it.
We watch, awestruck, completely unsure about what to do. Would I stop it if I could? No, probably not. While I don’t relish the pain he’s in, I try to tell myself that he deserves it. He deserves nothing less, right? I hate that a small part of me still cares about him, so after a few minutes of watching in horror as Trey’s body shakes and spews, I finally make my way over to him and take his hand in mine.
He’s obviously in extreme pain, and watching him is like staring into my own future. Is this what the cure will do to me too? Is this just his body’s immune system kicking in and destroying the virus?
Or is he dying…?
I have no idea how much time passes. My mom helps Kenzo out of the room and then comes back to lead Bob away from Kelly’s side. He’s still crying softly, but he’s no longer a threat. He’s just a broken man, a devastated father.
Lastly, she comes back for the bodies.
I should be helping her, but she never asks, and it’s too easy not to offer.
The blood around me congeals and dries. Trey’s hand softens in mine, his skin, his bones beneath. He’s no longer invincible… but he continues to breathe. His chest rises and falls, and he’s no longer groaning in pain.
Eventually his eyes flicker open. I’m shocked to see them their old blue color.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Hi.” His voice is rough, like the edges of his throat are raw from screaming. “I’m not dead,” he states.
“No. Not for a long time, I hope.”
I’d like to imagine I see an apology in his eyes, for hurting me, Kenzo, Ellis, for killing those innocent people… but the truth is, I don’t think he’ll ever be sorry. Not really. He’ll regret some of the choices he made, but in the end, he’ll really only regret that he didn’t win.
I gently release his hand and lay it across his chest.
“Now what?” he asks.
“Not it’s my turn.”
24
Kenzo
“Ready?”
Lori looks at me with uncertainty. There are tight creases around her eyes, her lips set in a straight line. “Do I have a choice?”
I set a hand gently on her arm; no sudden movements. “You always have a choice.”
She just as cautiously puts her hand over mine, giving a light squeeze. “No. Not with this I don’t.”
Lori lies back on the bed and takes a steadying breath and gives me a nod. I lean in and pull down her lower eyelid and insert the needle as gently as I can. There’s not much I can do to dull the pain, but I can get it over with as quickly as possible. So that’s what I do.
Insert. Inject. Retreat.
When we set out to reach the research facility, it had been with the intent of curing everyone. End the Shredder virus once and for all. I couldn’t have predicted that I’d have so few to cure.
Lori goes stiff and whimpers, her eyes clenched tight.
“You okay?” I whisper.
“Sure,” she gasps. “Trey’s such a big baby. He made it out to be a big deal, but this is nothing.” With that, she clamps her teeth shut and throws her head back against the mattress, groaning under her breath.
“Liar,” I mutter, but I think she’s beyond hearing me now.
I wish I could comfort her, take away the pain, but I’m only human. I can’t even take her hand like she did for Trey. Her clenched fists would still crush my bones… but not for long. She will be human again.
Or something like it.
We’ve been monitoring Trey for the past week. Turns out what Lori suggested about his body was actually somewhat true: once a human has gone through the transition, they can’t really go back. Not with the variant, and not with the cure. His body is still shaped very much like a Shredder. His bones will forever be too long, knobby and malformed, although other changes were instantaneous. His claws have fallen off, his skin softening and sloughing off in sheets. His blood is red once again, and he’s been able to stomach real food.
Lori hopes her hair will grow back.
She holds off her screams for as long as she can, but once she starts, she can’t seem to stop. I try to stay, I do, but I have to clap my hands over my ears to filter out her shrieks. Eventually she shouts for me to go, and a part of me is grateful. Which just makes another part of me feel guilty.
Without Howell, it seems that I’m in charge here. I’m the highest-ranking officer, and I’m also one of the only full humans left. Sydney remained safe during the battle, hidden in her cell. Ellis went to get her once the dust had settled. Sydney then led him to where a few more survivors were hiding, the pregnant mothers and children—and Uki, whose job it was to protect them.
When all was said and done, there are now only seven humans remaining. Until the women give birth, anyway. Humans have been a dying breed for years, but this is the first time I’ve really felt like I’m on the endangered species list.
It’s a good thing humans are good at adapting.
A few hours later, Judith joins me where I’m curled up against the wall in the hallway outside Lori’s room. “Is it over?” she asks.
“Maybe…” Lori’s screams died out a while ago, but it feels wrong to go check on her at this point. Her transition back to humanity feels intimate somehow, private.
Judith is holding a tray of food, and my stomach gives a low growl at the aroma. It has the earthy smell of root vegetables. “I thought it would be best to stay away from meat for now,” she says, gesturing to the tray with her chin. “Lori really resented having to kill animals to survive.”
I smile sadly. “She always did prefer vegetables.”
“Apples,” we both say at the same time, and we laugh.
We pause, and I can’t help but notice that she’s avoiding my gaze. “She’s going to ask, you know,” I say quietly. “Why you won’t—”
She hisses to cut me off. “You think I don’t know that? She’ll understand.”
“Understand what?” The door opens to reveal Lori standing on the other side.
“Lori!” I gasp, shocked by the sight of her, and I struggle to my feet. “You look…”
She waves a hand. “I look like shit. It’s okay, you can say it. I’ve been dragged around the block a few times. I think I’m entitled to be a little rough around the edges.”
“No, that’s not what I was going to say.” I frown at her. She doesn’t look awful at all. I’ve seen her at her worst, when she was first infected and her spirit was
broken—and while she isn’t back to the girl I first met at the compound, she’s still… beautiful. She’s fierce and determined and so damn strong. Her eyes are no longer that thick black but are now her more familiar brown. The hair she’s been dreaming about isn’t growing back yet, but the armored skin of her scalp is already peeling away, and I have no doubt that we can expect some stubble to push through soon enough.
I can’t tell her any of this, though. She won’t want to hear it. I can tell by the hunched set of her shoulders that, in her eyes, she’s still the monster from her nightmares. She’s witnessed horrible things. Hell, she’s been forced do awful things in the name of survival.
My only hope is that, with time, she can recover from her journey through the darkness.
Maybe we all can…
“Don’t you dare think that you can distract me,” Lori says, narrowing her bloodshot eyes and pointing a finger back and forth between me and Judith, the claw already loosening from her flesh. She scowls down at it, grips it between her fingers, and tugs it off like a band-aid.
“Hungry?” Judith asks, wielding the tray in front of her like a shield. Food, the ultimate distraction.
Lori’s lips thin and she huffs a sigh out through her nose. She’s onto her mother’s tactics, but she’s also torn. Lori loves food. I’m not talking about the government’s protein paste or the gruel they passed off as sustenance, but real, vibrant, flavorful food, like what she was able to confiscate from her mother’s garden. She probably appreciates it now more than ever.
Her hands snap out and she grabs the tray from her mother. “I’ll eat this on one condition…”
We all know her condition doesn’t matter. She’ll eat the food regardless; she won’t be able stop herself. In fact, she’s already retreating into the room to sit on the edge of the cot, the tray balanced on her knees.
Judith sighs and trails into the room after her. It seems she’s going to play along. Judith seems almost jealous as she watches Lori spear a piece of carrot with her fork and jam it into her mouth like she hasn’t eaten in days. Though, I guess, to be fair, she hasn’t. She insisted on having an empty stomach before the treatment, saying, “Did you see how much blood Trey barfed out? So gross! Besides, fasting before a medical procedure sounds like a thing.”
Now it looks like she’s making up for lost time. “Slow down,” I tell her. “We don’t know how your stomach will handle food yet.”
She gives me a sour look but slows down, chewing the food more deliberately. She keeps making these adorable little moans, but between each bite, she shoots another look at Judith, making it obvious that she isn’t getting off the hook so easily.
Judith lowers herself onto my abandoned chair from earlier. I sidle toward the door with the intention of giving them some privacy, but she shakes her head sharply. “This involves you as much as it does me,” she says.
Lori’s eyes dart back and forth between us, assessing. “What does?” she asks after swallowing her mouthful of food.
“What we were talking about in the hallway,” Judith says.
As much as I’m tempted to make a break for it, I swallow down my discomfort and come over to sit beside Lori on the bed. She needs me now, just as much as she needed me the first time, during her mother’s battle with cancer.
I see the look of steel cross over Judith’s eyes. “I’m not taking the cure,” she says, getting it over with swiftly.
“What? But… why? That was the whole point to this journey! We came all this way to cure you.”
“No, Lori. We came all this way to cure you.”
Lori doesn’t look like she knows what to say. “You like being this…?” She stops herself from labeling her mother with something hurtful.
“Monster?” Judith finishes her thought for her with a wry smile. “No, I admit, it’s not ideal.”
“Then why?” Lori asks with a sob. Her shoulder trembles where it brushes against mine, and I wrap an arm around her frame, so much more fragile than it was just hours ago. It makes me feel stronger, somehow, that I might actually be able to protect her now, instead of the other way around.
Even as Lori asks, I think she knows the reason, but Judith runs through the facts anyway. “I was dying, Lori. I had cancer. Just because the virus holds the cancer cells at bay, that doesn’t mean it’s gone. If we cure the virus, then I…”
“Then you die,” Lori says with a sharp gasp. For a second, I think she’s going to argue, but what can she say? She looks at me briefly for confirmation, and I nod. I wish I had a better answer for her, but Judith and I have already looked at this from every angle. While we can’t say with any kind of definitive proof, since there’s no precedent for this kind of scenario, this outcome is our best guess.
Lori tries to go to her mother, but her knees give way. She drops to the floor and buries her face into her mother’s lap. Judith wraps her arms around her in a hug. Together, they mourn.
Lori cries with force, deep wracking sobs. This is more than just her mother’s choice weighing her down—it’s the loss of her brother and father too. It’s for the broken world, the innocent people who died. And it’s for the loss of her own humanity, the part of her I couldn’t give back.
The guilt of my decisions will be with me for as long as I walk this earth—maybe longer. I will do everything in my power to right every single wrong… but saving Judith was never one of them. She has a kind soul, and I can feel the love she feels for her daughter.
Judith gets up from her chair, guiding Lori over to me. I take Lori into my arms, comforting her in any way I can, and her arms tighten around my torso, her head pressed into my chest. Judith gives her daughter one last look then makes her way out the door, giving me a soft smile. “Take care of my daughter for me, Kenzo.”
She’s not leaving the facility yet, but I suspect she will soon enough. There’s too much temptation here, too much of a reminder of everything she’ll never be able to have. She’ll probably visit from time to time, but her attempt at living with humans was flawed. She knows it, and she won’t make that mistake a second time.
Time doesn’t move the same way when you’re grieving. The sun rises and sets. You eat when you’re hungry. You sleep when you’re tired. But while you’re surrounded by darkness, there can be no light.
I stay with Lori for as long as she needs me. Sometimes she cries, but usually we sit in silence. We sleep for a while, with Lori curled into my side on the narrow cot. She snores. Sydney brings breakfast… and then lunch… and leaves them inside the door.
Eventually Lori begins to talk. She tells me about her family—not who they were in the compound, but before.
She tells me about how Brent had the scariest bedtime stories about the monster under her bed, and to this day, no matter that she’s too old to believe it—or that she, herself, was scarier than anything in her nightmares—she can’t let her toes dip over the edge of the bed, in case a monster might grab her.
She tells me about how her parents would take her and Brent camping every summer, and when she found a tick stuck in her skin, her father’s response was “You’re so lucky! Ticks don’t bite just anybody. They’re very particular. You must be extra sweet.”
She begins to list all the family members she’s forgotten about over the years, the aunts and uncles, the cousins. I wonder if any of them are still alive somewhere…
And then she asks, “What about you? What do you remember?”
And I tell her everything.
I tell her about my parents, who she never got to meet. My earliest memories of traveling to Japan to visit my family. I pull my grandfather’s pendant out from inside my shirt and show it to her, the intricate carvings.
“Maybe we can add one of my claws beside the shark’s tooth,” she says, teasing. But you know what? I kind of like the idea.
I can feel a significant shift in her. And in myself. For so long, the only way to survive was to close ourselves off from the world—with physical walls,
sure, but also inside our minds. It was too painful to live each day surrounded by the memories of everything we’d lost, and so we just let it all… trickle away. By unpacking these memories, it feels like reclaiming a piece of ourselves.
After waking up a third time, Lori asks the question I’ve been dreading: “What now?”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I say honestly. “I mean, I guess I keep working with the cure. I can maybe get the lab up and running again, replicate doses, and your mom can send Shredders she finds back here for treatment. I could work with Ellis’s blood, maybe, see if I can isolate the immunity to the sun, without all the pesky side effects.”
Lori snorts a laugh into my arm that’s crossed over her.
“What?” I ask.
“Side effects. That’s a very polite way of saying the patient turns into a bloodthirsty killing machine.”
“Well… I guess I’m a polite guy.”
Lori pinches my arm.
“Hey!” I complain, snatching my arm away, but she grabs me by the wrist and wraps it back around her, snuggling in tight.
“I guess what I meant when I asked what next was… what’s next with us?”
“Oh.”
I’m suddenly aware that the mood in the small room has changed. We’ve been here before. Obviously, not quite like this, but the part where I profess my love and she pushes me away. I’m not sure I want to pour my heart out again if it means she’ll tell me I have no hope of a future with her. How could I possibly survive it a second time—?
Wait, what the hell am I thinking?! I’m not even sure if we’ll survive another day. The meaning of “future” is practically obsolete!
“Look,” I start, “I know you don’t love me, and that’s okay. And I don’t want you to feel like you’re stuck with me, being the last man on earth and all; that’s not how I want to win your heart. We don’t have to get married or even think about kids—I’m not even sure if that’s safe or possible, between the virus and the cure and your current… anatomy. So, how about we just take things one day at a time.” My stomach lurches as I wait for her answer.
The Shade Chronicles | Book 2 | Predator Page 25