by Emily Suvada
Dax rubs his eyes. “Oh, but I can, Leoben.”
Leoben shakes his head. “You were gonna bomb a compound full of civilians.”
“They weren’t civilians anymore,” Dax says. “They’d started a war by attacking our base. Jun Bei has the scythe—I had no choice. She could have wiped out millions in an instant if she wanted. Bombing her made the most sense. It wasn’t an easy decision.”
“You could have called for a truce,” Leoben says. “You could have surrendered.”
Dax lets out a bitter laugh. “I’ve lost seventy-four bunkers in the last three hours, Leoben. People have been breaking out of them all around the world, and we’re barely hanging on to the ones we have left. The civilians want to go to war with the genehackers. They don’t want a truce, and they definitely don’t want to surrender. You’re asking me to go against the wishes of three billion of the people I’m supposed to be leading. Starting this war is the only thing that might bring them back to us.”
“You don’t need to bring them back to you,” I say. “We’re going to fix the vaccine. It’ll be strong this time.”
Dax rakes his hand through his hair. “I’ve heard that before.”
“This time it’s real,” I say. “We’re going to try to stop the rebellions, too. The Viper is the one causing the unrest in your bunkers. She’s the one behind the pigeons, and the Lurkers, and the self-destruct protocol.”
That gets Dax’s attention. “The Viper,” he repeats, his eyes going distant. “Do you know where she is?”
“We’re trying to find her right now. She’s going after Lachlan. We need to know where he’s being kept.”
Dax looks between us, hesitating, then his eyes glaze. A location file pops into my vision. “The building is being guarded. I’ll tell them to stand down.”
“Thank you, Dax,” I say.
Leoben nods, but he doesn’t say a word.
“Lee…,” Dax says.
“What makes you think I’d want you to hurt people, even if I died?” Leoben asks.
Dax drops his head. “I’m sorry—”
“Sorry isn’t stopping these attacks.” Leoben lets out a frustrated breath. “I need you to do better than that. I need you to work with Novak and figure out a way to bring your people together. I need you to stop yielding to your civilians when you know they’re wrong. You’re supposed to be a leader. I want you to act like one.”
Dax lifts his head. His green eyes blaze, locked on Leoben’s. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Do more than that,” Leoben says. “Do the impossible. This is the end of the goddamn world. Nothing else counts.”
“Modest requests as always,” Dax says, the faintest hint of a smile crossing his features.
The tension in Leoben’s shoulders eases. He rubs his face with his hands. “Just stop this war for a night, okay? Let us do the rest.”
Dax looks over his shoulder as though someone is calling him. “I have to go. I’ll talk to Novak.” He looks at Leoben one last time, then the air flickers again, and he disappears.
“What happened?” Jun Bei asks.
“He told us where we need to go.” I open the location file. “It’s in Canada. Up north, in the mountains. He said it’s guarded, but he’s going to have them stand down.” I pull up a map of the location in Veritas. It shows an updated view from above—a building surrounded by trucks, tents, and Comoxes. It looks like there’s a small army defending a concrete building in the middle of a valley. Mountains stretch out around it, their peaks wreathed in mist.
I freeze. I know this view. I’ve just never seen it from above.
“Did you find the place?” Jun Bei asks.
“Yeah.” I swallow, staring at the map. It makes perfect sense. A hidden laboratory, away from population centers and kept off Cartaxus’s official registry. I look up at Leoben and Jun Bei.
“Lachlan is waiting for us in the Zarathustra lab.”
CHAPTER 39 JUN BEI
LEOBEN, CATARINA, AND I SYNC our panels and log in to Veritas together to ask the others to help us finish the vaccine. I haven’t used this simulation since I was in the Zarathustra lab, when I needed to meet up with Mato. I don’t remember which one of us found Veritas, but I remember the hours we spent together—coding, walking through forests, and exploring unfamiliar cities. The memories bring a stab of pain. The hours I spent with Mato made my time in the lab more bearable. He urged me to fight back and helped me build up the courage to escape. I needed his help and his ruthlessness then, but I don’t need it anymore.
Leoben shares the coordinates of where we’re meeting the others, and the simulation’s hook slides into my chest and yanks me out of the Comox. Pain lances through my shins as I land hard on my feet in the living room of what looks like a cabin in the woods. The walls are bare, two tattered couches arranged around a low fire crackling in a grate. A window offers a view of the star-flecked night sky and the shadow of a lake.
Anna and Cole are sitting around the fire with a dark-haired girl, staring as Leoben and Catarina appear beside me. Leoben shoots them a grin, but Catarina sways on her feet. She looks pale and woozy. The infection must be affecting her. Cole seems relieved to see Leoben, but Anna stands in a blur and snatches up a rifle.
“Whoa there!” Leoben says. “Down, girl. Yeah, I’m still alive, and I brought Cat and Jun Bei—your favorite people. We’re just here to talk, and it’s important. I’d appreciate it if you’d stop waving that gun at all of us.”
“It wasn’t aimed at you,” Anna says, but she lowers the rifle anyway.
The dark-haired girl pulls a pair of goggles over her eyes and leaps to her feet. “Lee? They said you might be dead.”
A jolt runs through me. It’s Ziana. She looks healthy. It’s been years since I’ve seen her.
Leoben lets out a cry. “Zan? Holy shit—I didn’t even recognize you!” He runs for her, but stops awkwardly, unable to give her a hug with his Veritas avatar.
“What’s happening?” Cole asks, looking cautiously between me and Catarina.
“We need your help,” Catarina says.
“You expect us to help you?” Anna spits. “You and Jun Bei can go back to whatever body you’re sharing and stay the hell out of our lives.”
“This is serious,” Leoben says. “You all need to get yourselves back to the Zarathustra lab. We need to let the old man run one more test on us to finish the vaccine.”
The room goes quiet. Ziana shakes her head, backing away. “No, Lee. I can’t. You can’t make me go back there.”
Anna slings her arm around Ziana’s shoulders. “She’s right. We’re not gonna be Lachlan’s experiments anymore.”
“This isn’t just another experiment,” I say. “It’s a way to finally beat this plague forever. Lachlan can do it, but he needs all of us.”
Cole crosses his arms. My stomach clenches at how pale he looks, at the dark shadows of veins beneath his skin. My code did that to him.
“I hurt you,” I say. “I’m sorry. I thought I was going to make the world a better place, but I was wrong. I made a lot of mistakes.”
“You’ve hurt all of us,” Anna says, glaring at me. “I’m not even talking about throwing Cole out of a goddamn Comox, either. You left us. You escaped from the lab, and we never heard from you again. How are we supposed to trust you?”
“She really is sorry,” Catarina says. “She’s given up a lot to be here. She’s deleted the code she’s been working on, and she got infected trying to stop Agnes—”
“You’re infected?” Cole looks between me and Catarina, horrified.
“That’s why you need our help, huh?” Anna asks. She lets out a snort. “Saving your own ass. I should have guessed.”
Cole just stares at me. I know he’s angry about what I did to him, but it’s clear from the look in his eyes that he still cares about me. When I first saw him in Entropia, I told myself that I never wanted to look as vulnerable as he did—I never wanted my emotions to be so o
pen or obvious. I didn’t even want to have those emotions. But they’re what I need right now.
The others won’t listen to arguments about how important it is to finish the vaccine. That won’t make them trust me. We need to come together again—all of us. It’s the only way to finish this.
“I was dying in the lab,” I whisper, trying to keep my voice steady. “That’s why I never got in touch after I escaped. I was losing myself, and I was worried about what I might do. I know you think it made it easier on me that I was Lachlan’s favorite, but it made it worse. I felt responsible for protecting all of you, and that turned me into someone I didn’t want to be. I was so angry and scared, and you were all afraid of me, and I knew it. When I escaped, I had a plan to come back and save you—I was going to burn the whole place down—but then I didn’t. I don’t remember why, but I think I started to heal, and I took any excuse I could not to face my past again.”
Ziana’s eyes go distant. “You couldn’t be around us without hurting. That’s why I left too. It wasn’t because I didn’t like you all—I just had to be alone and get away from that place. You’re asking us to go back there and face Lachlan again.… That’s a nightmare.”
I swallow, pushing my hand back through my hair. “I know what I’m asking of you, and I know this apology isn’t enough. I want to do better, to be better, but first we have to stop the war, and letting Lachlan run this test might be the only way. People are fighting each other and dying right now, but we still have a chance to bring them together. We can’t do that without the vaccine. Please help us.”
Nobody speaks. Ziana’s arms are wrapped around her chest, her expression turned inward. Anna’s eyes drop to the floor, and Cole shifts uncomfortably.
“Please,” Catarina says. “We’re flying to the lab right now. We’re a few hours away. I know you don’t have any reason to trust Jun Bei or me, but this is bigger than us.”
“Come on, guys,” Leoben says. “This is it—and then we’re free. No more hiding. Cartaxus is falling apart, so let’s make sure something better comes after it.”
“We’re really free after this?” Ziana asks.
“I can make it happen,” Leoben says. “But we need a vaccine. That’s the only way.”
Anna and Cole exchange a look, debating silently. “I’m in,” he says finally. “I don’t forgive you, Jun Bei, but I’m not going to let you and Catarina die. Zan?”
Ziana nods, her shoulders tight. “Okay, I’ll come.”
“Fine,” Anna says, sighing. “We’ll meet you there. We have a Comox. We can fly.”
“Promise us you’ll come,” Leoben says. “This doesn’t work without all of us.”
Anna rolls her eyes. “I promise. We’ll leave now. Just get the hell out of here.”
“Come on, guys,” Leoben says. His eyes glaze, and the room ripples in my vision.
The hook in my chest yanks at me again, dragging me away from the cabin, and from Ziana, Anna, and Cole. I just hope I haven’t broken their trust enough to doom us all.
I blink back into the Comox, falling hard into my body. I’m sitting on the metal floor with my arms wrapped tight around my knees. We’re not far from the Zarathustra lab, flying over dark forests with no sign of roads or houses beneath us. I’ve never seen this part of the country from above—jagged rocky peaks wreathed in cloud, thick wild forest creeping over every inch of land. The air whistling through the bullet-riddled windows is icy, but it feels good against my fevered skin.
Leoben stands up slowly, and Catarina blinks into view beside the window. Her hands are clutched in front of her, and now her whole body is shaking. The fever is definitely affecting her, too.
I push myself to my feet unsteadily as Novak strides over to us. “I think they’re going to come,” I say.
“They’d better,” Novak says. “This whole mission depends on them.” She looks me up and down, her eyes pausing on the sheen of sweat on my face. “And it depends on you, Jun Bei. Are you going to be able to do this?”
“I’ll be fine,” I say. But I don’t know if I will be. My helmet is still looped on the belt around my waist, and I’ll need to wear it soon, when the scent of infection rises from my skin. The virus is itching through my veins, bringing up purple bruises on my arms. I haven’t seen myself in a mirror, but I know I look like hell. There’s pity in Ruse’s eyes as he looks at me from across the cargo hold. If he’s feeling bad for me, then I must look terrible.
“There’s some bad news,” he says. “I just ran a long-range scan on the lab, and the Comox is showing heavy fortifications. There’s a tent set up for troops and weapons, and at least a dozen trucks.”
Catarina turns from the window. “I thought Dax was going to have the soldiers stand down?”
“I thought so too,” Ruse says, “but the scan showed them readying weapons and forming defensive barricades around the lab a few minutes after Agnes landed. They’re Cartaxus’s people, but I think they’ve turned. It looks like they’re fighting for Agnes now—though I don’t know why.”
“She’s the Viper,” I say. “She still has access to all of Cartaxus’s systems. She probably changed their orders and made it look like this is what Crick wants them to do.”
Leoben groans. “We’re gonna be flying straight into a battle.”
I look around, sizing up the genehackers sitting hunched in the cargo hold. Some are wounded, like Rhine, and the rest don’t look like they’d be much help in a firefight.
“We’ll never make it into the lab,” I say. “Not with our numbers.”
“I don’t know about that,” Novak says. She’s still limping heavily, wincing as she moves to the back of the cargo hold. The bone in her leg must be in a thousand pieces if her tech hasn’t hacked together a temporary fix by now. “I couldn’t bring many of my people with us,” she continues, “but this Comox is loaded with military supplies.”
She wrenches the lid off one of the crates on the floor, revealing curled metallic shapes packed in foam pellets. Scorpions. She lifts one in her hand, and it unfurls slowly, a laser in its eye splashing a grid across the cargo hold. Novak drops it back into the box and replaces the lid. “These won’t be enough to get you all inside, but they’ll help. I’ve got weapons, too—a few guns, smoke grenades.”
“We might have a shot if we’re creative enough,” Ruse says.
“You’re coming down with us?” I ask him. “This is going to be dangerous.”
Ruse turns his silver eyes to me. “Of course I’m coming down. We need to release the vaccine. I’ll help you in any way I can.”
“But how can you trust me to fix it after everything I’ve done?”
He smiles faintly. “I’ve always trusted your code, Jun Bei. But you can bet I’ll be checking it before we release it to the world.”
Catarina shifts nervously, looking at the crates of weapons. “I don’t know about this. I think we’re too outnumbered, and we can’t risk Leoben or Jun Bei getting hurt either. Anna and the others will have weapons, but no backup. I can try to distract the soldiers and draw their fire away, but I’m just one person. We need to get all five of them into the lab unharmed.”
“I know you’re in Veritas, but you can still get hurt, can’t you?” Leoben asks her.
“Just temporarily,” she says. “It’s not a lot of fun, but their bullets won’t kill me. It’s better than them hitting you.”
I turn to her. “Wait—that’s it. Can we ask Dax to give more people access to Veritas?”
Leoben raises an eyebrow. “Probably. Why?”
“We need more fighters, but we don’t necessarily need them there physically.”
Novak straightens, a smile spreading across her face. “I’ll call him now and start talking to my people. This might actually work.”
“It had better,” Leoben says. “We’re just a few minutes away.”
I grip the netting on the Comox’s ceiling, turning to Catarina. “We need more time. The rest of us will make our w
ay to the lab, but you have to jump there now. If Agnes is making Lachlan work on the Panacea, then you have to stall her and give us time to get inside. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Catarina nods, her image flickering for a moment, a hint of pain crossing her face. Something pulses through the wall in my mind—a rush of pressure and static, but it passes as quickly as it appears. She gives me a tight smile. “Okay, I’m going in. Don’t die on me. I’ll see you soon.”
Her image flickers again, and she disappears.
“Time to arm up,” Novak says, prizing open the other crates. She pulls a rifle and a bulletproof vest with a parachute sewn into the back from one of them and holds them out to me. “Be careful, Jun Bei. You might make a decent leader one day.”
“Maybe one day,” I say, taking the vest, slinging the rifle over my shoulder. “Let’s just get through tonight first.”
I walk back to the window, buckling the vest around my ribs as the Comox dips, starting its descent. The lab comes into view. Its lights are on, its flood lamps splashing yellow across the grassy fields around it. The sight sends a jolt of fear through me—not because of the troops stationed there—but because of the bars on the windows and the glimpses of the rooms inside.
I built a replica of this lab inside my mind. I think part of me will always carry it with me—it’ll always feel strangely like home. That doesn’t stop the chill that races through me at the sight of it, though. This is the building I was born in. I just hope I’m not going to die here tonight.
“We’re gonna have to jump,” Leoben says. The Comox’s descent steepens. He pushes through the cargo hold, grabbing a rifle and a vest. “The Comox is set to take us on a loop around the front. We’ll swoop down and jump from there to let Novak and the others get away.”
The lab looms larger as we drop, the shadows of troops patrolling the perimeter coming into view. I stand beside the door, double-checking the buckles on my vest, rubbing my fingers across the bruises on my cheek, smelling them to check for the scent. There’s the faintest hint of sulfur in my sweat, but it’s missing the notes that evoke the Wrath. I probably have another hour or two until the fever takes me. Hopefully, that’s enough time to finish this.
