“Beta Team to laboratory. Beta Team to laboratory.”
I follow my team out the door and down the hallway. Wes helps Brian steer Sully in the right direction, even though he's whining about just coming from the lab.
They laugh and chatter among themselves, but I keep to myself in the back, eyeing the way the guards watch us as we pass.
Suddenly, I do feel something. But it's not excitement or glee or any kind of rush.
It's apprehension.
Inside the lab, eight chairs stand arranged in a circle. The Alphas are nowhere to be found, but the sheets on the beds are disheveled, telling me they probably just vacated the room. I expect to see nurses mulling about, but they're MIA. In their place are guards. One by each bed.
“What's going on?” Brian whispers.
I have no idea, so I shake my head.
“Have a seat.”
Eight heads turn at the same time to find Arthur March. I haven't seen him since our training started, but here he is, still dressed in that expensive, untarnished suit.
We all obey because, well, what choice do we have?
I pick the bed closest to the door and as soon as I sit down the meathead guard grabs my wrist.
Instinctively, I pull away, but someone is already on my other side, holding my hand down against the bed.
“What are you doing?” I begin to thrash when a face ducks in close to mine.
“The more you fight, the worse it will be for you,” Secretary March says. His breath smells like peppermints and cigarette smoke. “Actually, it will be better for everyone if you don't fight.”
From across the room, I hear a whirring and look to find a tattoo gun poised at Martina's neck. She's watching me with wide eyes, but the fear I see there isn't for herself or what they're about to do. She's not strapped down. No one's even touching her. That fear is for me.
The two guards at my sides bound my wrists in handcuffs and secure the other ends to the bed.
“What are you doing?” I ask again, this time directing my question to March. “Why am I restrained?”
He narrows his eyes. “You know why.”
Before I can say another word, he's gone, making his way to the door. I don't need to ask anything else, because I know why I'm restrained and the others aren't.
They're scared of me. They're scared of what I might do. I could lose control. I could lash out. I could hurt someone...
I stop fighting.
If they want to tattoo me, fine. Whatever. I won't resist. They can do their job and know they're safe from being bitten or mauled. Besides, it's just a tattoo. I can handle that. How bad can it be?
My eyes train on a small dot on the ceiling and I use that as my focal point. Pain isn't as painful as it once was, so this should be a breeze. But I don't hear the whirring of a tattoo gun coming. Instead, there's a very distinct hiss. And that hiss sounds much more dangerous than the rapid thrumming of the tattoo needles.
I snap my head to the side and find a small fire pit sitting on the floor, and in that fire pit is a long steel pole with the end sitting in the flames. It's burning red-hot as the guard scrapes it through the embers.
A branding iron.
He holds a bottle of red ink in his other hand.
“What- what is that?” I ask, careful to keep my voice level, showing them I'm still in control.
He glances my way. “Your skin won't heal right after being tattooed, so we had to find an alternative.” He raises the iron. “Had to get pretty creative.”
A tattoo is one thing. Having a brand burnt into my skin is an entirely different thing.
I don't want to be branded, but I also don't want to be put back in containment for being uncooperative. The pain and humiliation of being tagged like a heifer really is the lesser of two evils, but that doesn't lessen my anger at the thought.
“This might hurt.”
“No shi–”
My words break off into one long, agonized scream as they press the hot metal to the side of my neck, just below my ear. If I thought I'd become desensitized to pain, I was dead wrong.
This hurts. I mean – HURTS. It feels as if the very fires of Hell are licking up the side of my neck, drawing my skin up tight around the edges, sending the muscles below to throbbing. Blood leaks from my eyes, tingeing everything I see in a deep reddish-black hue.
But almost as soon as it happens, it's gone. What feels like an hours worth of pain is only a few seconds, but once the iron is gone, a duller, yet still unpleasant sensation sets in. The guard dumps the bottle of ink onto my neck and wipes around the burn. I don't need to breathe, and I haven't in quite some time, but my lungs work hard to drag me through the pain.
“All done,” he says.
I can see my teammates. They're all staring at me in horror. Martina is batting at the hand of her guard, telling him to let her up so she can come to my aid. But she doesn't need to do that. The pain is already ebbing. I wave her away. She continues to protest, but when I yell at her to sit down, she does as I say.
“Don't remove the bandage until tomorrow morning,” he says, smoothing tape around my neck. “That should be enough time for the ink to set.”
Keys are inserted into the handcuffs, freeing me, and I'm up off the bed and heading down the hall before any of my teammates are even close to done. But I don't care. I don't need their reassurance and I sure don't need to reassure them that I'm all right. Because I'm not.
My entire neck throbs, and for once I wish my body really was dead. All of it. I wish death on all my nerve endings, all my cells, all my atoms. But it's not just the physical pain that has me marching to the dormitory. It's the fact that I was just held down and forced to do something I didn't want to do.
They restrained me... like an animal.
Like the animal I am.
I don't care that I can't sleep. I lay down on my cot and close my eyes anyway.
Getting what just happened out of my head is harder than I thought it would be, but I push it all aside and bring up a memory of swimming in the lake with Jared. I sprawled out in the water, floating on my back. He stood behind me, his arms hooked under mine, pulling me around as waves crashed against my body. We laughed as we bobbed along, letting our cares and worries sink to the bottom of the silt-laden lake.
It was a good day.
The memory takes hold of me completely and I drift into a languid state of oblivion. Not quite awake; not quite asleep. On the precipice of each. Much like my relationship with life.
Not alive. Not dead. Just... existing.
Lights flicker on and I jolt out of my trance. Everyone else around me wakes up slowly, rubbing sleep from their eyes, yawning, and stretching tired, achy muscles. I don't even remember them coming back in last night, but everyone is here.
“Hey, you're awake.” Martina smiles through a stretch. “I was worried about you. Couldn't get you to wake up when we got back.”
“Yeah, except your eyes were open,” Brian comments. “That's freaky, even for you, Maya.”
Yes. I suppose it is.
Something on Martina's neck catches my attention and I take her chin in my hand so I can tilt her head up.
“Is that a chess piece?”
It's a simple black pawn in between her hairline and shoulder. Right smack dab in the center of her neck. There's no shading, no intricacies. Just black.
“Yup,” she says glumly. “Not exactly what I had in mind when I envisioned my first tattoo.”
“Could be worse. You could have barbed wire around your ankle or Tweety Bird on your shoulder.”
“That is true,” she laughs. “But I'll never be able to hide this unless my next job is in a convent.”
“Oooh, you'd look good in a habit,” Sully teases. “Get you some spike heels to wear under it and a metal ruler and you could rule the world!”
Martina rolls her eyes and grabs a fresh uniform out of her locker. We're way past the point of caring what others think, so instead of
wasting our time in the bathroom, we change behind the semi-privacy of our locker doors.
“Here, let me get that for you.”
Martina peels back the adhesive of my bandage and I practically moan when the cool air hits burnt flesh.
“Holy crap, dude. That looks... well, it looks awesome, but also really freaking painful.”
“That's because it was,” I deadpan. “Not the most fun experience I've had.”
“I'm sorry.”
In the mirror stuck to the inside of her locker, I can finally see my brand.
It's a pawn, just like Martina's, only where hers is filled in completely with black, mine is red. And not just flat red. Blood red that didn't quite take as well as it should have. Black webbing made of singed flesh creeps through it, giving the appearance of flames about to burst through the surface.
It does look pretty cool, but that doesn't make me hate it any less.
After brushing my teeth and attempting to do something with my hair, I head toward the door. For once, I actually do feel the need to attend breakfast and eat whatever they've thawed for me.
I make my way past a group of Alphas, but when I brush past Kaylee her tattoo catches my eye. It's different. On Kaylee's neck is an elephant with its trunk raised in the air. Curled in its grip is a cross. I halt in my tracks and look around at everyone mulling around the room. There are other pieces. Horses, elephants, towers. But everyone I see from Beta Team is marked the same. Apparently we're not all pawns in this game.
“Well isn't that positively disgusting.”
Celeste's voice raises my hackles, and I turn to find her sneering down at my tattoo.
“Morning to you too, Celeste.”
“That's the first bright thing they've done with you,” she says, pointing at my neck.
“And what have they done?” I'm already tired of this conversation. I just want to go to breakfast.
“They've made a distinction. See, you're the only person here that can turn on a dime and decide to slaughter us all.”
Technically, that's not true. Anyone could lose their crap and decide to visit the armory and mow us all down.
“You're the one we have to fear,” she continues. “They know you're going to be the first one to draw blood. Our blood.”
I've had enough. “Can you please just move so I can go?”
She lifts dainty fingers to touch her own tattoo.
It's an intricate crown filled with filigree and topped with a feminine flower.
She's the queen.
Of course she is.
Why had I thought that honor would go to someone more deserving?
“That isn't just a symbol of your rank.” She tosses her blonde hair to the side and I curl my fists to keep from clawing every strand out by the root. “For you, that bloody pawn is a warning label.”
I want to lunge at her. Everything inside me, everything bad, everything negative, everything vital and weak and instinctual wants to take her down. An angry fire blazes to life in my chest and suddenly I want her to feel as bad on the outside as I do on the inside.
But I can't do that.
I can't, and I won't
My feet remain planted and I keep my fists restrained because... I can't prove her right.
I can't play her game. She's far too malicious and skilled for the likes of me.
So I do the only thing I have left to do.
I walk away.
The other Alphas stop to watch, their mouths agape, but I push through them and make my way to the door. Celeste continues to call out to me, to taunt me, but I have to get some distance. And air. Fresh air. Lots of it. I've never wanted to escape a room so badly in all my life, not even the glass-walled containment cell.
Inches away from the exit, a shadow looms over me and I turn my eyes upward. Up and up, until Cain's face comes into view.
The second our eyes collide, the warmth of his hand envelopes my own, gripping hard, so hard I can't pull away.
He continues to walk in the direction I was heading, swinging our joined hands between us as we step over the threshold. I don't know what's happening, so I don't know how to feel about it.
“What are you doing?”
“Making a statement,” he says softly.
I can't see his neck, but before I take another step I realize I have to.
“Look at me.”
He moves only his eyes. “I am looking at you.”
Bull.
He knows what I want to see.
My free hand comes around and grips his chin, tugging it to the side until his neck comes into view.
I'm not sure what I expect to see or what I even want to see, but the shock that comes with the electrifying realization of what he's been marked as is impossible to contain and I jerk to a halt.
There, on Cain's neck... is a crown.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I don't want to be a pawn.
The chess player controlling the board doesn't have a problem sacrificing a pawn if need be. We're disposable. Replaceable.
Of little importance.
For the rest of what is bound to be my short life, this is all I'll be.
The Blood Pawn.
Our team's most interesting asset and greatest liability. And Cain? My friend and ally? He'll be at the top of the food chain, looking down on all of us from his perch next to Celeste. Why does that make me feel like puking up the raw hamburger patty I had for breakfast?
“Winters! Are you paying attention?” Secretary March slaps a hand against the folder he just handed me.
My eyes snap up to his. I've only been half-listening to his instructions concerning our first mission, but I get the gist.
“Yes, sir. Right there with you.”
“Good. Then repeat what I just told you. The Reader's Digest version if you don't mind.”
Fine. I will. Jerk...
“Mission number one: Get Decker from home base, onto the plane, and into Brussels without incident. From there, accompany him on the two-hour train ride to Paris. Once he finishes with his meetings there, escort him home.”
March looks like he swallowed something sour; like he didn't think I was listening at all and was looking for a reason to scold me. It wouldn't surprise me if that were the case.
When he goes about discussing the details of each stop, he makes it a point to stand with his back to me. That's fine. Let him pout.
I should be elated sitting next to the President of the United States, but I'm not. Mostly because of the stress that's come along with the job of keeping him safe, but also because throughout all of this, through the outbreak and the death and the upending of my entire life, I've come to realize that titles and labels mean very little.
So he's the President? So what? It's just a job. A job that's important and vital to our existence at the moment, but my job is to keep him alive. My position at the moment outshines his if you ask me.
He sits stoically, hands laced together in his lap. My teammates are too busy oohing and ahhing over the plane to lend me an ear, so I turn in my seat. Might as well try to get an answer or two out of the guy.
“Why am I here, sir?” I ask. He turns to face me, puzzlement drawing his thick brows together.
“Pardon?”
I've got is attention. Might as well go for broke.
“Why not leave me back there? Or better yet, why not open the door and boot me out?”
Okay, that was a little dramatic, I admit, but I present a good point.
“I'm dangerous. I can see the disdain in the guard's eyes when they look at me. They don't trust me, and I'm not entirely sure they should.”
Voicing these long-guarded thoughts is freeing, and I don't even care if he has an answer for me.
Decker folds his hands together in his lap and leans back against the plush headrest as he takes me in.
“Do you know where we're going, Winters?”
I nod. “Brussels.”
“And do you know why?”
>
The details are shady at best, so I shake my head.
“I'm meeting with a scientist who worked for the CID, the Center for Infectious Diseases, before it collapsed.”
For just a second, his poker face slips. Somewhere in those intense brown eyes, I see a spark of hope.
“That scientist claims to have a cure.”
A cure.
That word didn't mean a whole lot to me two months ago. But today? Today it means absolutely everything.
“You're joking.”
His face hardens. “I wouldn't joke about something that stands between our salvation and damnation.”
“Then I would think you wouldn't bet your life on it either,” I point out. “Why can't they come to the States? Our situation is worse here. It's where it all started.”
“But I don't think it's where it will end.”
I don't know what he means by that, but I don't think I'm in the position to ask questions, either.
So I don't.
Hours later, we land in Brussels. My family and I never had much time to travel, so the farthest I've ever ventured is Tampa. This is the first time I'll ever step on foreign soil, and even though the circumstances suck, I'm antsy to take in the people, the accents, the architecture. Before, I would have wanted to taste the food, but now that's kind of out of the question. Well, it's not, but I have no urge to put anything into my mouth that isn't bleeding.
We all shuffle together, keeping our weapons close to our chests. Or, in my case, sheathed at my waist. I wait, anticipating my first breath of European air, as the door slowly lowers to the ground.
We all stomp down the stairs and spread out on the tarmac, but when we look off into the distance, it's clear the Brussels we imagined on the plane ride over isn't the Brussels that's greeting us today.
All across the horizon, fires burn. Smoke wafts up in great plumes, filling the air with the scent of singed wood. It's gut-wrenching, seeing the destruction of such a beautiful city.
As if all that isn't horrific enough, there's another facet to the scene that has me sinking into myself.
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