She scrunched up her nose. “Do we even know how to do that?”
He laughed. “You make a valid point. Ever since we met, we’ve always worked to overcome some obstacle, always chasing the next challenge.”
“You’re right,” she said as she absorbed the truth of his statement. “It’s almost like we need to relearn how to relax.”
They both let out an awkward laugh.
“I guess we can start by sitting on the couch, maybe watch some holovision?” he suggested. “Or we can go out to eat somewhere?”
Like a date? Her mouth immediately went dry. “Holovision is good,” she said hurriedly. “Let’s do that.”
+ +
Two hours later, Emery awoke to a pile of drool and her head on Torin’s shoulder. She slowly brought herself upright to look at him. He was passed out with his mouth open, head thrown against the back of the couch. A faint snore escaped his throat. She cautiously inched toward the edge, making as little movement as humanly possible so as to not wake him. The holovision displayed scrolling credits from the movie they hadn’t made it through. Geez, we must have been tired.
A pounding headache hit her as soon as she stood up. She stumbled into the kitchen to retrieve a glass of water, hoping that it was just dehydration and not a side-effect of the formulation. As she reached for a glass, her eyes landed on a disheartening image. Her hands.
They were grey again.
Trying not to panic, she whirled around, knocking the glass from the countertop, and darted back into the living room. She straddled Torin’s motionless body and began shaking his shoulders. “Wake up!”
An eye fluttered open, followed by the other. “What’s happening?” he said with a yawn. “How long was I out for?”
She held her hands up, just inches from his face. “The grey. It’s back.”
He rubbed his eyes, then grabbed her hands to take a closer look. “When did this happen? Are you showing any other symptoms?”
“I’m not sure. We both fell asleep watching the movie. When I woke up, I had a really bad headache so I went to get a glass of water and that’s when I noticed my hands.” She could feel her lower lip quivering as she said this.
“It wasn’t there when we started watching the movie, right?”
She hesitated as she thought back to just a few hours prior. “I don’t think so. I vaguely remember my hands being their normal color.”
“So the grey must have returned within the two hours the movie was playing,” he surmised. “Which means . . .”
“Which means that we didn’t figure out the formulation. Whatever we came up with only heals for a short period of time.” She sighed as she let her body sink into the couch. She turned her head so that her face made direct contact with a throw pillow. “This is so frustrating!” she yelled, her voice muffled in between the layers of fabric.
“Well, the good news is that we’re on the right track.”
She poked her head out from behind the pillow. “What do you mean?”
“Even though our formulation only heals for a short period of time, the most important part is that it heals. It does what sanaré is supposed to do. We probably have the right ingredients, but the one we’re missing has something to do with the length of the effect.”
“I can’t look through those journals again,” she murmured as she ran her fingers through her hair. “I’ve looked at them what feels like a hundred times and I’ve found nothing. I don’t know why this time would be any different.”
“You might be right,” he said as he stood up from the couch and began pacing across the living room. “But what if we’ve been approaching this entirely wrong? What if the final ingredient isn’t in your mom’s journals?”
She regarded him with a confused expression before shaking her head. “That doesn’t make sense. All of the other ingredients were in the journals, so why wouldn’t the last one be as well?”
“We need to think outside of the box. Maybe the final ingredient wasn’t perfected yet. Maybe it hadn’t even been completed. Or maybe it was so proprietary that your mother didn’t want to include it in her journals.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s a lot of ‘maybes’.”
He ignored her sarcasm, and finally stopped pacing. “Let’s try something. Can you think of any places or things that your mom enjoyed on a more spiritual level?”
Her stomach turned at the mention of her late mother. “That’s a pretty loaded question,” she whispered.
“Come on,” he pressed. “Think.”
“To be honest, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Obviously she was a chemist,” he prompted, “but was she religious?
Emery gazed up at the ceiling, and, as painful as it was, recalled some memories of her mother. “She enjoyed going to church. She did yoga sometimes, and she went for a lot of bike rides, but I guess that might be more on the physical end of the spectrum than spiritual.”
“What else?”
She racked her brain for more memories. What else did she like to do? “I don’t know. I mean, she loved to tend to her garden . . .”
At that moment, his eyes lit up, but she couldn’t quite put together why.
“She loved to garden?” he repeated.
“Yeah. Why?” And then it hit her. “The greenhouse.”
A wide grin, from ear to ear, stretched across his face.
Her heart began to race. “Do you think the final ingredient is in the greenhouse?”
He nodded excitedly. “It’s the only place we haven’t checked, and what’s more perfect for finding an ingredient than a garden?”
“If this is it,” Emery said as she shook her head in amazement, “then it’s been right underneath our noses this whole time.”
30
Byron knelt by the edge of Alexis’s bed with his head in his hands. Over the past week, his youngest daughter’s sleep patterns had become more and more irregular, and he’d noticed her waking less frequently. It’d gotten to the point where he wasn’t sure whether he should try to keep her awake, or just let her sleep. Sleep was supposed to be restorative and rejuvenating, but he’d recognized a familiar doubt creeping into the corners of his mind. What if she fell asleep and didn’t wake back up? Would he be to blame for her death knowing that he should have tried to keep her awake?
Any breath could be her last.
Falling asleep could turn fatal.
With that alarming thought, he leaned in and hovered over his daughter, waiting patiently for her chest to rise and fall. Her breaths were shallow, but she was still breathing.
She’s still alive.
He jumped as his phone buzzed in his pocket. As he tiptoed across the room and out the door, a hologram of Emery’s face appeared above his phone. “Hey, Em.”
“Hey, dad. I have some good news.” Her voice sounded uneven, almost as if she were out of breath—half panicked, half . . . excited?
“I wish I could say the same,” he mumbled as he glanced back into Alexis’s room. “I could use some good news right about now.”
“No luck with the formulation at 7S?”
He shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. Naia and the team of scientists have been working round the clock, but nothing has come to fruition. It’s a shame, really. All that hard work to get minimal results, at best.”
“Well then, you’ll probably like what I have to say.”
“Go on.”
“Torin and I dabbled a little with the current ingredients, the ones we know of, at least, and we’ve had some luck.” She took a steadying breath. “For the time being, it’s more or less a short-term solution. The three ingredients we’ve found provide the same results as sanaré, just for a shorter time period.”
He could feel his heart rising in his chest. “How short-term? And how do you know this?”
“The effects only last for two hours, then they wear off and the grey comes back again.
We know because . . .” She hesitated, biting her lower lip, but he already sensed where this was headed.
“Because why, Emery?”
She sighed, throwing her hands into the air. “Because I was the test subject.” She winced, clearly waiting for an angry reaction.
But he didn’t react. Was he outraged? Of course! How could she be so careless to test an unknown substance on her own body? But was he surprised? Not in the slightest.
“You’re not yelling at me,” she pointed out with one eye open. “Why aren’t you yelling at me?”
“Indeed, it was careless and you probably should have given it a second thought,” he scolded, “but I can understand why you did it. You must have a lot of confidence in your mother and those journals.”
A small smile crossed her face. “I do.”
“Well, it’s a great start, but it only lasts for two hours? That’s hardly any time at all. Has your condition worsened since its return?”
“Not yet. Torin’s been monitoring me, though. It seems that the return symptoms are exactly the same as before the injection. No worse, no better. There’s something else—”
“Well, if you can find that fourth ingredient,” he interrupted, “let me know immediately. We’ll need to formulate at 7S, test it, and then mass produce and distribute. There’s a lot riding on this.”
She narrowed her eyes, clearly confused by his statement. “Mass produce?”
He scratched his chin. Why does she sound surprised? “Yes, we’ll need to produce as much as possible to distribute to all of the dormants. I’d also like to find equivalents for the ingredients, in case the originals become difficult to obtain or are in danger of extinction. It’s always smart to have a back-up plan.”
“Right,” she murmured. “Once we find that fourth ingredient, I’ll let you know. I’ve got to run. I think Torin needs me for something.”
Before he could get another word in, the line clicked off and the hologram of her face disappeared into thin air. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but the abrupt end to their conversation had left a bad taste in his mouth.
He glanced back at Alexis’s room, watching as she turned over in her bed, pulling the blankets up high around her neck and shoulders. He could only hope that Emery would find that fourth ingredient.
And soon.
31
Emery stared at Torin as she set the phone down on the coffee table.
Concern shadowed his face. “Why did you lie to your dad?”
Kemp’s words repeated in her head: You don’t want to disturb the natural order of things. Once you upset Mother Nature, it’s very hard to get back in her good graces.
She gave him a pained look. “Honestly, I didn’t know that the plan was mass production and distribution. Do you understand what that could do?”
“I’m not sure I follow . . .”
She stood up from the couch and walked over to the window that overlooked downtown Chicago. “Sanaré can heal humans of all injuries and even reverse death within a twenty-four hour period.” She shot him a knowing look. “That’s not natural. I’m starting to think Kemp was onto something.”
“Kemp? That loon? You really think we should follow his words of wisdom?” He shook his head. “That guy was off his rocker and you know it.”
“Off his rocker or not, he did have a point. If we mass produce and distribute sanaré, then everyone in the world will have access to it. People could shoot or stab each other, and then heal themselves. People could bring their loved ones back from the dead.” Her eyes widened as the reality sunk in. “That’s not normal, Torin. And while many people might see it as something great, it could really screw things up, just like Kemp said.”
He clasped his hands and placed them on top of his head. “Are you even listening to what you’re saying?”
She looked at him in disbelief. “Don’t tell me you’re siding with my father on this one! Do you get what I’m saying?”
“I do, but,” he countered, “I think you’re underestimating the great things that sanaré can do for everyone. What if it cures cancer? What if it cures us of all our illnesses? What if it allows us to live longer, fuller lives?”
“And what if messing with the natural order of things makes things worse? What if, call me crazy, we’re not supposed to play God?”
He opened his mouth to respond, then thought better of it.
“You can see how that could be incredibly dangerous, don’t you?” she pressed. “We’re not supposed to have that kind of power.”
“Says who?”
His eyes were alight with a sort of rage that she’d never seen before. A chill ran down her spine. “Unbelievable,” she muttered. “I can’t be the only one who sees a huge problem with this.”
He cocked his head in defiance. “It’s not that I don’t understand what you’re saying. I do. I get it. But I think you’re jumping straight to negative conclusions instead of positive ones.” He paused. “Just give it a chance, Em.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
“Fine doesn’t mean yes.”
“I know,” she retorted with a smirk. “That’s why I said it.” Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. “Anyways,” she said, hoping to veer away from the subject, “I’m going to head home and harvest a couple of vials of imejora so we can finish the formulation and test it.”
“Do you want company?”
“Only if you’ll wipe the ridiculous notions of sanaré as a cure-all from your mind.”
He didn’t answer, just continued shaking his head as he headed in the direction of the nearest T-Port. She let him get more than a few paces ahead before following.
After mentioning that her mother loved to garden, she and Torin had left his apartment and teleported to Arizona, making a beeline for the odd plants in the greenhouse she could never seem to identify. She’d found handwritten instructions, in her mother’s cursive, tucked way back in a cupboard, that explained how to harvest the imejora. If the clear capsules were harvested properly, they’d turn a vibrant orange. It’d taken her a couple of tries, but eventually she’d found that the trick was to wear gloves when picking them off the plant, then to drop the capsules immediately into the vials. The final step was to secure the lid—it had something to do with the oxygen content as soon as it was harvested. As long as the capsules turned orange, and didn’t remain translucent, the harvesting had been performed correctly.
With four fresh vials in hand, Emery left her second visit to the greenhouse a happy camper. She and Torin walked over to the platform to head back to Chicago. Her father hadn’t been anywhere in sight, which was probably a good thing, given that she didn’t want to disclose what they were up to. Most likely, he was upstairs tending to Alexis, or taking a break on the patio.
As they stepped onto the platform, an unshakeable feeling of dread washed over her. Trying, but failing, to overlook the feeling, she waited for the cool gust of wind to distract her and transport them both back to Chicago. With her heart beating out of her chest, she stepped off the platform and trekked over to Torin’s apartment. She put her trembling hands in her pockets, but not soon enough for him not to notice.
“Hey,” he said as he placed a hand on her shoulder, “are you okay?” He reached for her hands and removed them from her pockets. The grey was slightly more prominent than before.
She gazed down at her hands in his, a flurry of butterflies erupting in her stomach. What’s happening? Black dots filled her vision as her knees began to buckle. She squeezed her friend’s hands as she leaned into him, the smell of oak and cherry filling her senses.
“Em? Em, are you . . . ?”
But she’d drifted off before she could hear the end of his question.
+ +
Emery awoke to a dark room, except for a faint glimmer of orange shining through the open window from the rapidly setting sun. She was sprawled out on Torin’s couch in the living room, her right
leg dangling off the edge. A cool draft swept through the room, and she quickly pulled the blanket up around her, burying her face in the soft fleece. Her neck and cheeks felt flushed, but the rest of her body felt cool, like stone.
“You’re awake,” Torin announced as he walked into the living room. He was carrying a tray of four syringes. She noticed that these were a bright tangerine shade as opposed to the burnt orange from their first go-around. As his eyes met hers, she could sense a sort of sadness in his expression. Had something bad happened in the time she’d been unconscious?
He averted his gaze as he sat down in the chair across from her. “I used the four vials of imejora to formulate these syringes,” he explained as he gestured to the tray. “Do you want to try one?” He looked at her, then abruptly averted his eyes back to the tray.
“Hey,” she said as she reached out to touch his arm, “look at me.”
When he didn’t, she started to panic. “Torin, why won’t you look at me?”
Without saying a word, he reached underneath the coffee table and pulled out a reflective silver platter, then handed it to her, his eyes trained on the floor.
Yeah, something bad definitely happened.
With trembling hands, she took if from him and held it up to her face. Her breath caught as her eyes met her reflection. The grey had spread, and now covered her neck and bottom half of her face, right up to the tip of her nose. The platter clanged as she dropped it onto the table, her hands moving to the neckline of her shirt. She squeezed her eyes shut, then looked down at her shoulders and chest.
All grey.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It’s just hard to see you like this. You’re so . . .”
“Grey,” she finished. In that moment, all she wanted to do was hide under the covers and vanish from sight.
“Clearly, your condition is getting worse,” he said quietly. “Who knows what that could mean for the others? Like Riley? And Alexis?”
Alexis. Her sister’s name carried a heavy weight. Alexis was much worse off, but how much worse? If her own grey had spread so quickly in such a short amount of time, would Alexis’s hold the same fate? Was she even still alive?
Restitution (The Alpha Drive Book 3) Page 12
