Emerge

by Heather Sunseri

  The muscles along my spine tightened, yet I smiled at the same time. I’d been had by a girl who was half my size and barely came up to my shoulders. “Cricket, I presume?” I tried to glance over my shoulder to get a good look at the blond beauty behind me.

  She poked me harder. “And your name?”

  “I mean you absolutely no harm. Can I please turn around so that I can introduce myself properly?”

  “You tell me your name and why you’re here, and then I’ll decide if you can turn around.”

  I laughed. This was a girl who liked getting her way. “My name is West. I’m from New Caelum.”

  The moment of silence that followed was deafening. The pressure to my ribs lessened just long enough for me to turn on Cricket and see that she was holding nothing more than a rotten tree limb. She backed away, her eyes wide. She had just opened her mouth to say something when the silence of the dusk was broken by the roar of an engine, and a pair of bright headlights penetrated the dark, blinding me.

  A large truck was coming toward us. I shielded my eyes against the headlights and saw the outline of two men inside the truck’s cab. This was one of the scout trucks from New Caelum. And clearly not Ryder and Key, since their truck had been confiscated by the people inside the settlement.

  I hadn’t gotten the chance to discover the identities of the other scouts who had left New Caelum that morning. I had been too busy hiding, trying to keep secret the fact that the president’s son (who was supposed to be in quarantine) had snuck out on one of the other trucks. But I knew that none of the other trucks were supposed to have come east, and I had no idea why this particular one appeared increasingly determined to run us down. It didn’t seem to be slowing.

  “Run!” I screamed.

  Cricket and I quickly darted behind the stone wall. The truck slammed on its brakes, stirring up a large cloud of dirt, then beeped in reverse until it swung around and was once again facing us.

  “This way.” Cricket led me to an opening in a wire fence. She squeezed through, then turned and helped me, since I was much larger and didn’t fit as easily. I followed her down some concrete stairs that seemed to lead nowhere, but at the bottom was a door in the side of a hill. She dragged me inside, then pulled out a flashlight and lit up a long hallway. I had no idea where she was leading me or why she was helping me. And as I stared down this hallway of darkness that led to who knows where, I wasn’t sure I wanted her help

  We walked, unhurriedly, to the other end of the hallway, passed through another door, then went up a flight of stairs. When we reached the top of the stairs, I was surprised to find myself inside a huge room with gigantic two-story windows. Many panes were broken, but they were still grand, elegant—unlike anything I expected to find outside New Caelum. I looked up to find a sliver of a moon hanging low in the sky.

  “Where are we?” I asked. Of all the questions, that was the first one that came to mind.

  “A large abandoned property—the Biltmore Estate.” Cricket wasn’t even out of breath. She walked to a table on the far side of the room.

  After lighting a lantern, she turned, and the fire cast a soft glow across her pale skin. That was when I noticed the scars along her cheek. I couldn’t tell what kind of scars they were; they could have been from a bad burn. Maybe she’d been born with them.

  As if reading my thoughts, she shook her head slightly, letting hair fall forward to shield her scars from my view. “So, West from New Caelum, why are people of your city on this side of your protective walls? What are you looking for?”

  I debated on whether to come clean and be honest with her. See if she knew Christina. But I couldn’t tell the outside world that the virus was alive again. That information would be sufficient cause for the people of the outside to declare war on New Caelum. No one wanted to see that virus again, and the outsiders would likely care little about the fate of those inside New Caelum. After all, it was the citizens of New Caelum who had shut them out, deliberately kept them from the best doctors and medical supplies that could have helped many of them survive.

  Finally, I decided that I didn’t see the harm in asking Cricket if she knew Christina. But before I could speak, I felt a sharp pain to the back of my head. I fell to the ground and into a black hole of darkness.

  chapter seven

  Cricket

  “You didn’t have to hit him.” I couldn’t believe I was staring at the one and only Westlin Layne. My West. Six years had passed; he was a man. Yet I could still see the young boy that had kissed me on the day I’d developed the fever. What was he doing here?

  Did he know I was alive? He had found my necklace, but he obviously hadn’t recognized me.

  And how could he? I didn’t look anything like I did before. The virus had disfigured me. I’d still have the face of a monster if it hadn’t been for Caine and the skin grafts. He’d saved me in so many ways. But I had died in others.

  I knelt beside West. I wanted to rub the back of my hand against his face, to touch his skin, but not with Dax here. He didn’t know about my past. No one but Caine and Nina knew.

  Dax assumed I’d simply gotten lucky, like everyone else in this forsaken world. Everyone who remained in our country either successfully hid from the disease or was immune but didn’t know it. I was the only one who had ever caught Bad Sam and survived it.

  “What do we do now?” I asked. I hadn’t gotten the chance to ask West who was in the truck, or why he ran from his own people.

  “We wait until he wakes up, I guess,” Dax said. “What were you two doing? You brought him here?” There was a bit of hurt in his voice.

  I had never brought anyone to the Biltmore before. Dax had followed me here once, and ever since, he’d known to find me here when I disappeared. Which I liked to do from time to time. This was my place to escape. To clear my head. I liked to pretend it was my own mansion, that the piano in the corner wasn’t caked with inches of dust and falling plaster from the ceiling. That the dining table in the next room was set for a feast. Music played anytime I felt like dancing. It was silly, but this was a place—the only place—where I allowed myself to dream. If only for a minute or two, before reality set back in.

  “No, I didn’t bring him here. I’ve never brought anyone here.” My words came out harsher than I had planned. I stood and turned toward Dax. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  He held up a hand. “Yes you did. It’s okay. I guess I deserved that.”

  “No, you didn’t.” I glanced down at West. His fingers twitched.

  “He’ll be out for a while.” Dax stepped to me, lifted a hand, and cupped my cheek. “When are you going to let yourself feel happy? I know that you come to this place to escape. This world is what it is. But you’re not alone in it.”

  I cringed. Dax constantly asked me to run away with him. He wanted us to find an unoccupied house, one that we could call our own.

  “Not a lot to be thrilled about these days.” My stomach tightened as I spoke the brutal truth. I met Dax’s unwavering gaze and tried to smile a little. “You didn’t have to hit him.”

  He shrugged. “Meh. I’m not a fan of city boys.” He dropped his hand. “Why do you think they’re here?”

  “I don’t know.” I pulled a dining room chair over and sat beside West. He was going to wake with a huge headache.

  “You think it has anything to do with the increased activity at the incinerator?”

  My head shot up, and I stared into Dax’s eyes. “I have no idea.” Fear pulsed through my veins like a raging forest fire. We both had to be thinking the same thing, but neither of us spoke it aloud. If the virus was back… How many were infected? Who was infected?

  More than ever, I wanted to know why West ran from the other truck.

  chapter eight

  West

  I heard the moan before I realized it had actually come from me. I squeezed the bridge of my nose, hoping to ease the pressure that sat like a blocked vessel behind my eyes.

>   Slowly, recent events slid back into my mind. I sat up—too quickly, because the entire room tilted when I did. “Where the hell am I?” I asked before I even looked to see if anyone else was there.

  “Welcome back, Westlin.” A tall, dark-haired man with a goatee approached. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, and he crossed his arms as he eyed me with a lifted brow. His large size intimidated me, yet the partial grin counteracted that.

  “Who are you? How do you know me?”

  “I’m Dr. Caine Quinton.” He handed me a small ceramic saucer with some liquid. “For the pain.”

  I eyed the cloudy liquid. “No thank you.” I swung my legs around, letting my feet touch the ground, not quite trusting my balance yet.

  “Suit yourself. You’ve got quite a bump on the back of your head.”

  I let my fingers graze the spot at the base of my skull. He was right. It was quite the painful knot, too. “I was with a girl.” I looked up. “Cricket, I think she said her name was.”

  The doc smiled. “Yes. She didn’t hit you, though. That would have been Dax. You don’t get near Cricket without going through Dax first.”

  “He plays dirty. How good is he when his opponent’s back isn’t turned?”

  Caine tilted his head to the side as if considering the question. “I’d say the end result would likely have been the same. Just not as quick.”

  “So that was a mercy hit?”

  Caine laughed. “What are you and your friends doing here, West?”

  “You first. How do you know me?”

  “Your friends said you’d be coming. They told me your name.” He walked over to a table across the room and picked up a picture frame. When he returned, he thrust the frame at me. “Plus, I knew your mother.”

  Inside a simple metal frame was a picture of my mom and the doc. Both looked younger. And happy. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my mom with a look of such contentment on her face. She had actual color in her cheeks. Her lips were glossy and red-tinted.

  “When was this taken?”

  “Eight years ago. You would have been, what… ten?”

  “Sounds about right. Where were you?”

  “At the hospital where she and I worked. We were on the first team to decide how to handle the possibility of a world-wide pandemic.”

  “And how’d that work out for the two of you?”

  “I’m guessing you already have an opinion on that.” Caine smiled while taking the photograph from my hand, but I saw the slightest twitch in a vein in his neck. “I’ve told you how I know you. Now… what are you doing here?”

  “I’m looking for Christina Black.”

  “There’s no one here by that name.” Caine turned his back to me and poured amber liquid from a decanter into a small glass. His hand shook slightly.

  Feeling steadier, I stood and began circling the room. “But you know her? She was here sometime in the past, right?”

  Caine downed the shot of what I presumed was bourbon or whiskey. “You and your friends are welcome to stay for another day,” he said, “but then you’ll need to be on your way.”

  He was covering for Christina. Why?

  “I mean Christina no harm,” I said, and I meant it. As long as she could help my sister, I was happy to get what I needed from her and then never talk to her again. She obviously wanted nothing to do with me, or she wouldn’t have run.

  “Let’s say I did know this Christina Black. What do you want from her?”

  “She and I were friends once. I just want to see her.” With my own eyes. See if she’s the same person I remember. Only older. See with my own eyes that she’s not dead.

  I’d also need her to return to New Caelum with me, but the good doctor didn’t need to know that just yet.

  Caine Quinton turned on me so fast I didn’t even see him coming. He grabbed handfuls of my shirt in both fists and held me so that our faces were just inches apart. “Listen to me, and listen carefully. Christina Black is dead. Gone. She can’t help you. Now…” He took in a breath and let go of my shirt with a little shove backward. “I think you and your friends need to be on your way back to the city.”

  This was the man Mother wanted me to see? Was I really supposed to believe that the two of them had once been friends? He clearly knew something about Christina, yet just as clearly, he was determined to be as unhelpful as possible.

  After another harsh look at the doc, I grabbed my pack and headed for the door. Just as I got there, it opened, and I stood face to face with Cricket. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but strands of it hung loosely along one cheek, partially hiding the scars on the right side of her face.

  “Good morning, West. Your friends are having breakfast with Dylan and Nina. You can meet them in our dining room. Just go up the stairs, turn right, and the dining building is two buildings down on your left.”

  She dipped her chin, turning her gaze toward the floor, but not before I saw a hint of how blue her eyes were against her delicate, pale skin.

  “Thank you, Cricket.” I stepped to the side to allow her to pass. “I assume I also have you to thank for stopping your friend from pummeling me further.”

  “Dax only meant to protect me. He thought you meant me harm. You shouldn’t follow people in the dark around here.”

  “Are you sure I didn’t mean you harm?”

  She walked past me, still not making eye contact, then stopped, turning her head only slightly in my direction. “No, but I didn’t need Dax to protect me, either. If I had felt threatened, I could have knocked you on your ass myself and left you for your friends in the truck to pick up.”

  I smiled. “Good to know.” Then I turned and headed up the stairs as directed.

  I decided I was sorry I wouldn’t have more of a chance to get to know this Cricket.

  chapter nine

  Cricket

  “The virus is back,” I said without looking at Caine. I climbed a small wooden ladder to pull a shoebox from his highest shelf.

  “I suspect you’re right. West isn’t talking, though.” Caine sat in a wingback, drinking Kentucky bourbon from a crystal lowball glass. He only drank bourbon or used the fine crystal to celebrate really good news—or when he was depressed. “He doesn’t trust us.”

  “Mmmm. He didn’t recognize me.” I said it as a statement, but there was a hint of uncertainty in my tone. I carried the shoebox over to one of Caine’s work tables.

  “No. You’re nothing like the old Christina. And it’s been six years. But if the virus is back, the city could become desperate. Maybe they already are.”

  I opened the box and pulled out the PulsePoint device I’d learned to use before I’d developed the fever. I hadn’t used it since leaving New Caelum, though—hadn’t even turned it on. Not once. But I had wanted to. I’d wanted to see West’s face, talk to him, and know that he was all right. Let him know that I was alive.

  I had missed West the minute I was out of the city—and his sister, Willow. She was younger than me and West, but the three of us had spent many hours exploring New Caelum together. Still, as hard as it was to do, I had decided that it was best for everyone to think that Christina Black was dead. Because even at twelve years old, I wanted nothing to do with the people who had sentenced my parents to die.

  I had not forgotten—would never forget—the loss of my parents, and who was to blame for the fact that they were shut out of my life. During the initial stages of the pandemic, my parents had gone abroad, had taken their medical expertise where it was most needed: to poorer countries with few doctors and little advanced medicine. But then the bureaucrats had banned all international travel, had grounded all flights in and out of the USA. And in so doing, they left my parents for dead in the country where they had graciously given of themselves to help others.

  That was back when world leaders—West’s mother included—thought they could actually contain the virus.

  I stuffed the PulsePoint in my bag, then close
d the box. I was tempted to rummage through it, but there was no point. I knew what it contained. Keepsakes, mementos. A special rock, a gift from Dax. A small case of beads from my parents, brought back from one of their trips—the same beads my necklace had been made out of.

  The necklace that was now in West’s possession, I thought, and scowled.

  I turned to study Caine. He had leaned his head against the back of the chair, and his eyes were closed tightly like he was in pain. Stress was evident in the deep troughs that formed across his forehead.

  “You’re excited to see him,” he said without opening his eyes.

  “I’m glad to know he’s okay. I don’t like what seeing him means.”

  I pulled a stool over and sat in front of Caine—my father, for all intents and purposes.

  “Caine.” He opened his eyes and focused on me. “Are we prepared if the virus is back?”

  “As prepared as we can be.” He leaned forward and scooped my hand into his, a fatherly reassurance that only he would know I needed. “We are not prepared, however, for the virus to be inside New Caelum.”

  I cocked my head. “Why is that? What do you mean?”

  “If the virus breaks out inside New Caelum, close to a hundred thousand people will flee the city in search of a new way of surviving.”

  I understood. “They’ll overcome us,” I said. Especially if they could be reassured that those surviving outside the city were living well.

  “That’s right.” He took a drink. “And it’s probably the reason West is looking for you. You have the antibodies that might help battle the virus if it has, in fact, reared its ugly head again.”

  Would West hurt me? I wondered. Six years ago, I’d have answered that with an emphatic “no.”

  “I told West to get his friends and leave, but…”