This Cruel Design

by Emily Suvada

  “Holy shit,” I breathe. “It actually worked.”

  “Yeah,” Leoben says, “but we gotta hurry. Cartaxus will be sending backup.” He slides out of the jeep and reaches back in to help Cole, slinging one of his arms around his shoulders. Cole’s face is pale, his eyes glassy and unfocused, but he’s awake.

  “Will that thing even fly?” I ask.

  Leoben grunts, looking up at it, one hand locked around Cole’s wrist. “I don’t know. It should be able to compensate for a hit like this, but it might be too damaged. Either way, we don’t have long until a fleet arrives, and we’re not going to outrun them in the jeep.”

  “What about the pilot?”

  “Still knocked out,” Leoben says, helping Cole out into the grass. “It’s just one person in there. I can’t tell much from my scans, but I think they’re hurt.”

  He shuffles toward the Comox, Cole staggering at his side. I clamber into the back of the jeep and grab my backpack, searching through the piles of blankets and files for anything we’ll need. It looks like Leoben’s already packed everything away, though. My black backpack is open, stuffed with the medkit, a few folders of Lachlan’s paper notes, and some slender boxes marked with Cartaxus glyphs. I yank it closed and sling it over my shoulder, grabbing Cole’s rifle, then run to catch up with them.

  The Comox is balanced precariously on the splintered base of the tree, one landing skid buried in the dirt, the other tilted in the air at chest-height. The tiny squares of broken glass from the shattered window crunch beneath my boots, catching the swirling cobalt light of the pigeons. There’s a steel cable the thickness of my forearm stretched from the Comox’s belly to the ground.

  “Gonna have to cut that,” Leoben says, nodding at the cable. “It’s an anchor to stop us stealing it.”

  “How the hell are we gonna cut through that much steel?”

  Leoben gestures to my backpack with his free hand, the other wrapped around Cole. “I put some flash strips in your pack. Blue box.”

  I drop my backpack to the ground and rip it open, sliding out a rattling turquoise-colored box. The glyph on its side throws a warning into my vision.

  High-powered lasers. Use protective eyewear.

  I blink the words away, still not used to my panel flinging text and images at me like that. “How do I use these?”

  “I’ll do it,” Leoben says, shifting Cole from his side, leaning him against the Comox’s raised landing skid. Cole’s eyes are glassy, his breathing shallow, but there’s color in his cheeks, and his bleeding seems to have stopped. Leoben takes the box from me, pulling out a chainlike length of segmented black metal with a lever on one end and an LED battery icon on its side. He ducks beneath the Comox’s raised landing skid and wraps the black strip around the cable.

  “Don’t watch,” he says, scrunching his eyes shut, yanking the lever. I look away just as a flash of pure white light splashes out from the strip. A sound like a gunshot echoes through the air, startling the pigeons, and Leoben jumps away, shaking one hand as though it’s burned.

  “What the hell was that?” I ask, blinking away a storm of neon spots in my vision. The cable is cut—one half dangling from the Comox’s belly, the other lying on the ground, its severed end glowing orange.

  “It’s an anti-anti-theft tool,” Leoben says, ducking back out from under the Comox, sliding his arm back around Cole. “Probably gonna have to blow the door open too. It’ll be locked, and these things are built like tanks.”

  I shove the box of flash strips into my backpack, looking up at the Comox’s dented side. The shattered window looks like it’s the same width as my shoulders. “I might be able to get in,” I say.

  Leoben eyes the broken window and looks me up and down. “Okay. Hurry, though. The pilot’s still unconscious, but they won’t be for long. Be careful, squid.”

  I zip my backpack up and leave it on the ground, grabbing Cole’s rifle. “I thought I told you not to call me squid.”

  Leoben snorts. I sling the rifle across my back and grab the landing skid, kicking at the broken tree beneath it to push myself up. The Comox groans, shifting sideways with my weight as I grab a handle on its side and clamber to the window.

  “Can you get in?” Leoben asks.

  “I think so.” I swing the rifle around and use the butt to knock out a jagged shard in the window’s base, scraping it back and forth to clear it, then duck my head through to scan the cargo hold. It’s dim, smelling of rubber and oil. The walls are a dull black metal, studded with hooks and cargo straps, a row of parachutes lined up beside the door. Two duffel bags are stowed in the cargo hold beside a box of what looks like gentech equipment, but I can’t see any weapons. Still no movement from the cockpit, but there’s a figure slumped over the controls. I swing Cole’s rifle off and drop it through the window, then kneel against the Comox’s tilted side to shimmy through, rolling when I hit the floor. The figure in the cockpit doesn’t move.

  “Pilot’s still out,” I say, straightening.

  “You see the handle?”

  I grab Cole’s rifle and stagger up the slanted floor, grabbing a yellow lever beneath the window. The door hisses, swinging up, a ramp extending to the landing skid. Leoben crouches to boost Cole up, and I jog down the ramp to take Cole’s arm, helping him inside. “You okay?” I ask.

  He nods blearily, staggering into the hold, grabbing one of the straps on the ceiling to steady himself. He winces as he raises his arm, stretching the wound in his ribs. “Never better.”

  Leoben climbs up with my backpack and dumps it on the floor, then slides a handgun from his side. He meets my eyes meaningfully, glancing toward the pilot. I nod, lifting Cole’s rifle to my shoulder, and follow him to the cockpit.

  The Comox’s flight controls look like the jeep’s—a curved LED screen with two sets of manual controls built into it. The screen is showing a terrain map of the mountains and a scrolling log of warning messages. The pilot is slumped across it, his hand wrapped around one of the yokes.

  My breath catches in my throat. It’s Dax.

  “Dax?” Leoben pushes into the cockpit, sliding his gun back into its holster. He takes Dax’s shoulder gently, easing him away from the controls and into his seat.

  Dax’s head rolls back. He looks haggard, with dark shadows hanging beneath his eyes, a bruise rising on his pale, freckled cheek. A deep gash is open on his forehead from the crash, and the sight of his blood-streaked face brings the attack at Sunnyvale back to me in a wave.

  I can suddenly feel Dax’s hands around my throat, his bullet in my back. I can hear the screams of Sunnyvale’s people as they turned on one another. I know it wasn’t really Dax who hurt me that night—it was Lachlan’s code—but it’s still his face that’s in my memories. His breath, his voice. My muscles tighten as I stand over him, part of me wanting to make him feel as helpless and frightened as I did on the floor of that hallway.

  Leoben turns to me, his eyes wide. “Put the gun down!”

  I stiffen, looking down at the rifle. I’m still aiming it at Dax, my knuckles white on the grip. “Shit,” I say, lowering the barrel. “Sorry.”

  “Get out of here!” Leoben says, his voice sharp. “I’ll deal with him.”

  “Okay,” I murmur, stepping back into the cargo hold, slinging the rifle’s strap off my shoulder. My hands are shaking, my heart racing. Dax used to be my friend. My coding partner. I used to dream that we’d end up together one day after the plague was over.

  Now I don’t know if I can trust myself to be around him with a gun.

  “Did he say Crick’s in there?” Cole asks from behind me. He takes the rifle, pushing past me and into the cockpit. The Comox shifts on the splintered tree, groaning. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” Leoben says, dropping into the navigator’s seat, grabbing the secondary controls. He pulls a lever on the controls, and the Comox’s engine whines, the rotors spinning up. They sound wrong—their normally steady thump is
syncopated, the walls shuddering with the strain. “This thing won’t take much more of a beating. We need to go before Cartaxus gets here.”

  “We’re not bringing him with us,” Cole snaps, grabbing the collar of Dax’s lab coat.

  “Cole,” Leoben says, a note of warning in his voice.

  “He’s not on our side, Lee,” Cole says. “He shot at us.”

  Leoben reaches out, wrapping one hand around Cole’s wrist. “He used tranquilizers. He didn’t come out here to kill us, but he came here for a reason, and I think we’d better find out what it is.”

  I look between the two of them, torn. Part of me agrees with Cole—Dax blew up Leoben’s jeep and shot at us. He’s clearly not here as a friend. My first instinct is to throw him out and leave him the hell behind us, maybe with a medkit if we’re feeling generous.

  But the horror of remembering Sunnyvale is fading, and another emotion is settling through me. It seems like it’s been a lifetime since Dax and I were playing pranks on each other at the cabin, but I can’t help feeling an echo of that affection when I look at him now. In the chaos of my past, Dax is one of the few people I can remember clearly—because the memories are mine. We were both young and naive, but he was important to me.

  Maybe he always will be.

  I turn to Cole. “I think we should see what he has to say.”

  Cole lets out a growl of frustration, but he jerks Dax from his seat and drags him into the cargo hold. “Fine, we’ll bring him. But he’s going in the back.”

  Leoben’s eyes follow Dax as Cole drags him away, then he tilts the Comox’s yoke. The door hisses shut, and Cole drops Dax into one of the seats, yanking a harness over his lab coat to keep him in place. The windshield is splattered with mud and splinters of wood, the flock forming a wild, glowing mess of light beyond it.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “South,” Cole says. “You said your friend tracked Lachlan to Nevada?”

  “Agnes,” I say, nodding, a twinge of anxiety rippling through me at the thought of her going after Lachlan on her own. I still don’t know why she left like that, or why she isn’t answering her comm. But she has to be okay. She’s the toughest person I know.

  “Nevada it is,” Leoben says, turning the controls.

  We lift with a screech of metal, the wind from the rotors whipping through the broken window. The roar of the rotors shifts frequency as we rise, growing smoother and more high-pitched, the syncopated thud flattening into a constant whine. It’s only been an hour since sunset, but this far north in summer, the sky doesn’t stay dark for long. The horizon is already a pale shade of blue, the first hints of daylight peeking around the curve of the earth. Cole pulls a metal shade over the broken window to cut out the gale blasting in, then grabs one of the straps on the ceiling to stand beside me, glaring down at Dax.

  “Maybe you should sit down,” I say. “You weren’t looking so good a few minutes ago.”

  “I’m fine,” he says. “My tech just needed to kick into gear.”

  “You had a piece of metal in your side.”

  “I know.” He shifts the strap of his rifle to his shoulder. “I can handle it.”

  Leoben tilts the Comox, picking up speed now that we’re above the pigeons. I fold down one of the seats near the cockpit and sit down, staring at Dax. He looks awful. His hair is greasy, his clothes crinkled and stained, like he hasn’t changed them in days. There’s no stubble on his jaw, but he probably has an app to keep it smooth. The bruise on his cheek is dark and painful-looking, and the gash on his forehead is deep, still trickling with blood. It looks like the last week has been just as rough for him as it has for us.

  He coughs, his eyelids fluttering, and blinks awake. His eyes focus on me, widening in surprise. “Princess,” he says, his voice slurred. “You’re alive.”

  Cole swings his rifle up. “Don’t call her that again if you want to stay conscious.”

  Dax looks up blearily at Cole, then at Leoben in the cockpit. He sighs, leaning back against the seat. “This has not gone as planned.”

  I stand up, waving Cole’s gun away. “Why the hell did you shoot at us, Dax?”

  He touches the gash on his forehead, his fingers coming away bloodied. “The jeep was armed. I didn’t want to get shot down, and I had to disable it to stop you running. I came here to help you. Cartaxus central command is searching for you all.”

  Leoben looks back from the cockpit. “Central command?”

  Dax nods, squinting as though trying to clear his vision. “Brink is sending an envoy. They’re headed to the lab you were camped near.”

  “Shit,” Leoben says.

  “Who’s Brink?” I ask.

  Cole shifts uneasily. “He’s the leader of Cartaxus’s central command. They run the whole organization—military division, the science group, the bunkers.”

  “How come I’ve never heard of him?”

  “That’s how he wants it,” Cole says. “Central command tries to stay under the radar. They usually don’t get involved unless things are . . . difficult.”

  “Well, things are most certainly difficult right now,” Dax says, shifting in the harness. He looks woozy, sweat dotted on his brow. “We need to hide, and quickly. There’s a location programmed into the controls—” He pauses as a crack sounds below us, loud enough to cut through the drone of the rotors. “What was that?”

  “Probably more goddamn fireworks,” Leoben says. “Looks like there’s a survivor camp down there.”

  Dax’s eyes cut to the metal shutter over the broken window and then to me, his face paling. “Veer around it. Keep us a mile away.”

  “You’re not giving the orders around here,” Cole says.

  “Just do it,” Dax says, his voice sharp. He coughs again, leaning forward in the harness, covering his mouth.

  A chill creeps across my neck. That blast didn’t sound like fireworks. The audio profile was all wrong. It sounded like the blasts Leoben and I heard back at camp. The Comox banks, veering to the left, and I stand and walk to the cockpit. Leoben is leaning forward, his eyes glazed, scanning the ground. The light is still dim, the forest painted in shades of blue and gray, but it’s bright enough to make out the shadow of roads arcing through the trees. There’s a camp below us—a dozen vehicles parked around a few squat structures. I scan the forest for a hint of fireworks or an explosion, but I can’t see anything.

  Dax coughs again. I look back at him, the chill on my neck spreading down my spine. He’s still watching the Comox’s broken window. He looked at it as soon as he heard the blast, and then he looked at me. There’s air hissing through the metal shutter—it’s not airtight, but that shouldn’t matter. We don’t need airlocks anymore, not now that the vaccine is out.

  “You okay, Dax?” I ask cautiously, walking back to him.

  “I’m fine,” he says, swallowing, wiping his sleeve across the sweat on his brow.

  “You don’t look fine.” I drop to one knee beside him, searching his face. He’s sweating, his eyes bloodshot, the bruise on his cheek purple and red. I reach for the collar of his shirt, but he grabs my wrist.

  “Please,” he whispers.

  “Don’t touch her,” Cole says.

  “It’s okay, Cole,” I say. I slide my hand free of Dax’s grip, reaching for his collar again. He closes his eyes, sighing in defeat, slumping against the harness.

  I pick open the top button of his shirt and move down to the next. Dax doesn’t smell great this close—he clearly hasn’t washed properly in days, but neither have we. But it’s more than that. There’s something off in his scent. The collar of his shirt falls open as I unbutton it to reveal his pale chest, dotted with dark bruises.

  It can’t be what I think it is, but Dax’s emerald eyes lift to mine, and a jolt of horror runs through me.

  He’s infected.

  CHAPTER 6

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?” LEOBEN CALLS back. He looks over his shoulder at the bruises on Dax’s chest, the
n drops the controls and stands from his seat. The Comox shudders, switching to autopilot. Leoben pushes past Cole, dropping to his knees beside Dax, his eyes wide with confusion as he takes in the bruises on Dax’s face and chest. “No,” he breathes.

  Cole strides to the cockpit and leans forward, staring down through the windshield. “Are we in danger? Have we been exposed?”

  “You’re probably fine,” Dax says. “We’re high enough. The plumes aren’t as big.”

  “What plumes?” I ask. “What the hell is going on?”

  Dax leans back in his seat, closing his eyes. “There’s a new strain of the virus, and the vaccine isn’t stopping it.”

  Leoben just stares at Dax. I reach behind me for one of the Comox’s seats and sit down blindly, the muscles in my legs suddenly weak. I knew it wasn’t fireworks that we heard earlier. It was blowers. I close my eyes, seeing plumes on the horizon, bruised bodies detonating into mist. This world has been a living nightmare for the last two years, and even though Lachlan is still out there threatening us, part of me has been breathing easier knowing that at least the virus was dead.

  But everything we’ve done has been for nothing. The vaccine isn’t even working.

  I think I’m going to be sick.

  “What else do you know?” Leoben asks, one hand gripping the side of Dax’s seat. “How long has it been spreading?”

  Dax pulls back the grimy left sleeve of his lab coat, tugging it over a cuff locked around his panel. It’s a sheath of black metal, the same kind he was wearing when we went into Homestake, the Cartaxus bunker we stayed in. A row of blinking lights on the cuff’s side grows brighter when Dax presses a button near his wrist, and a hologram splashes into the air.

  The image wavers, a mess of glowing static resolving finally into a zoomed-out view of a survivor camp. It’s somewhere cold, with snow scattered on the rocky shore of a beach, the ocean gray and still beyond it. A man is staggering toward the water, and a crowd of people are running from him, screaming. He drops to his knees in the shallows, his head snapping back.