Bane

by Amelia C. Gormley

  “No!” Nico’s refusal was so sharp that Zach felt a suspicious frown drawing down the corners of his mouth.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing.” Nico sighed. “It’s just . . . now that they have Rhys, they’re going to figure out pretty quickly that you messed with his test results. And they’re going to know why, realize that you’re onto them. Maybe they’ll even realize we’re coming after them. I don’t want you somewhere they can get to you when that happens, especially with no one to have your back.”

  Zach hung his head. “I hadn’t thought of that.” Silence fell until he looked up again, smiling fondly. “You know I’d rather be outside the Clean Zone with you, anyway.”

  “Zach—”

  “How long can we keep doing this, Nico?” His eyes burned, and he refused to hide it. “It’s been six years since you returned. How long do I have to keep pretending that it isn’t killing me not to be able to be with you the way we’re meant to be together?”

  Nico’s chin came up. “You tell me. Are you willing to accept the Alpha strain?”

  “You ask that like I didn’t beg you to infect me years ago when you came back,” Zach said angrily. “Don’t forget you’re the one who decided it was more important for me to be able to return to the Clean Zone and infiltrate the DPRP.”

  “Maybe I knew you didn’t mean it, that you weren’t thinking rationally at the time.” Nico’s reply was rough and bitter. “Except for that one incident, you’ve always been adamantly opposed to accepting the Alpha strain. Have you changed your mind?”

  He wanted to say yes, but he couldn’t. “No,” Zach whispered reluctantly.

  “Well, there you have it.” Nico’s smile looked forced and bleak. “One close call was enough. I won’t risk your life.”

  He wasn’t being melodramatic, either. Nico’s struggle was written on his face and in his body every time Zach left the Clean Zone to meet with him, always from a careful distance of at least twenty feet. It brought a surge of shame to Zach’s heart, to know that this man, whom God had made such a sensual creature, a man built for pleasure and touch, had been without human contact for six years. Maybe even longer. He’d never asked what Nico had done those four years he’d been away with Sierra Company, and Nico had never volunteered.

  “I’m sorry,” Zach whispered. “I wish . . . I wish I could, but I know in my heart and soul that it would be wrong for me to accept the Alpha strain. I know, without any shadow of any doubt, that it’s not God’s will for me to become a Jug. Maybe He knows I’m too weak, too fallible. Maybe He knows if I succumbed to that temptation, I’d fall prey to the corruption that could so easily come of having access to that sort of power.”

  Nico shook his head firmly. “Not you, Zach. If any of us could withstand it, it’s you.”

  “Then why do I go cold every time I consider accepting? You think I haven’t wanted to?” Zach plucked some twigs out of a cluster of brush and threw them away in disgust. “Every time I see you, every time I think of how much I want you, how much I love you, how lonely you must be, I want to give in. But then something inside my chest freezes. And I know—I know—that it’s God telling me, ‘This is not for you.’”

  “I’m aware of your reasons. We’ve talked about them plenty,” Nico sneered. “But I don’t share your faith, and I’m inclined to call that ‘cold’ feeling just plain old being afraid. So, does your God expect you to spend the rest of your life celibate, Saint Zacharias? Or will you settle down and start a family in the Clean Zone when you can’t stand to be alone anymore?”

  “You know I wouldn’t do that. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve been married to you for twelve years. Do you think I could be with anyone else, knowing you’re out there all alone?” Zach slumped in weary resignation. They’d had this argument at least twice a year since Nico had come back to Colorado Springs. “And it’s not like you to mock my beliefs, Nico.”

  “No, it isn’t. I’m sorry.” Nico sighed. “Maybe . . . maybe when all this is done, when Littlewood isn’t a threat anymore, I’ll go back to the Jugs. If we can’t be together, then maybe we should just not see each other anymore.”

  “Damn it, Nico! No! You’re not running away again! We can be together. Just like we were before the overthrow. I was safe then, and as long as we’re careful, I can be safe now.” He took an unintentional step forward, and it felt like a knife in the heart when Nico quickly stepped back. “Let me make love to you like we used to.”

  Nico swallowed, and the yearning on his face was so powerful it nearly buckled Zach’s knees. But he shook his head. “I can’t. When that building fell down around me and I was bleeding, I heard you yelling for me, coming toward me, and I wanted to die, cariño. I mean that literally. I was going to go jump into Royal Gorge if you got sick. I won’t risk it again. Unless you promise that you’ll accept the Alpha strain if there’s an accident, I can’t.”

  Zach closed his eyes, wanting with everything inside him to agree. He couldn’t, though. That icy feeling in his chest grew, holding him back. That was how Zach knew Nico was wrong. It was the opposite of the warm feeling Zach got when he knew he was doing what God wanted him to do, a gentle warning that he was contemplating the wrong choice.

  He shook his head, and the ice dissipated, replaced with the glow of the Lord’s approval. Whatever plan God had for him in all this, becoming a Jug wasn’t part of it.

  If only every other part of him were as convinced. “I’m sorry, Nico. I can’t make that promise.”

  Nico looked so anguished that Zach wanted to weep. What did Nico’s own internal struggle feel like? Did he ever feel the same surety when he knew he was making the right choice? Nico didn’t believe in God, but that didn’t mean God didn’t still guide him, subtly urging him this way or that, if only he would listen to those quiet impulses.

  He didn’t look very peaceful right now as he took another step backward, and another after that, eventually turning his back on Zach. He looked like everything within him was screaming that maintaining the distance between them was wrong. Which tracked with all Zach’s impulses, as well. As surely as Zach knew the Lord didn’t want him to accept the Alpha strain, he also knew that he and Nico being apart wasn’t right, either. But the only alternative was to convince Nico to risk Zach’s safety, and Nico would never do that.

  Was it a test of faith? Maybe Nico was supposed to put his trust in God to keep Zach healthy if they were together.

  Right. Zach’s chances of convincing Nico of that had rounded bad and were careening toward abysmal.

  “Go get some sleep, Zach,” Nico said over his shoulder, refusing to meet his eyes again. His voice was rough and raspy. “We’ve got a long march ahead of us.”

  Aching and conflicted, Zach went.

  The chances of Darius sleeping before his second-watch shift hovered in the realm of nonexistent, especially after Nico had recounted just how depraved Littlewood’s sexual proclivities were.

  “He wants the perfect victim,” Nico had said. “Someone gentle and sweet who will show every bit of suffering. Not someone who wants it, and not someone who will be stoic or defiant.”

  He knew he shouldn’t worry about Rhys in that regard. He was nothing if not stoic and—albeit quietly—defiant. The boy had elevated passive resistance to an art form. It had taken Darius a while to realize that Rhys was no one’s victim and that he wouldn’t tolerate being treated like one. That should keep him safe from Littlewood, and yet . . .

  He couldn’t deny that, on the surface, Rhys was exactly Littlewood’s type. He looked like the sort of wide-eyed, easily wounded innocent who would suffer beautifully. And Rhys, for all his resilience, had never dealt with someone like Littlewood. Even Jacob Houtman and his father had practiced a different brand of cruelty. Their abuse hadn’t been sexual, and Rhys was wired to enjoy erotic suffering of the consensual, or at least semiconsensual, sort.

  What if Littlewood’s sadism broke through Rhys’s defenses, c
onfusing the part of him that mingled sex and pain? It would leave him vulnerable to agony that had nothing to do with pleasure, especially since it had taken Rhys two years to finally begin to feel safe and accept his own masochistic bent.

  Darius’s tormented musings meant he got to be the unintentional audience to Zach and Nico’s pathos-ridden argument. When Zach had settled on his bedroll next to the fire, Darius gave up the pretense of trying to sleep and rose, coming up behind Nico where he stood looking out over the Colorado desert.

  “Want to tell me why you knew all this was going on and you didn’t tell us? Why did you let your company think you were dead?”

  Nico scoffed. “I wanted to tell someone when we got the request for field reports from the DPRP. I knew the fact that they specifically requested information on the transmissibility of Alpha couldn’t mean anything good. But what would you have done if I had? How would you have stopped Littlewood? Don’t you see?” Nico hurled another stone at the ground. “He was embedded deep inside the Clean Zone then. I couldn’t risk pitting a company of Jugs against the civilian population.”

  “We could have stopped delivering survivors into his hands, demanded he be turned over to us unless congress wanted us to set up another Clean Zone.”

  Nico bowed his head. “I know that now. Back then it didn’t occur to me. And when all the shit with Charlie Company happened, it felt like a very bad time to stir up any more mistrust between the Jugs and the Clean Zone population.”

  “So you faked your death to go back to spy on Littlewood?”

  “I didn’t feel I had a choice. I was the only person alive who knew who he was and what he was capable of. And I had Zach inside the Clean Zone to gather information for me, to figure out what Littlewood’s angle was.”

  “And now you think you know.”

  “Not exactly. I just can’t see any outcome to Littlewood getting his hands on Alpha that ends well for anyone except Littlewood.”

  “If you’re gonna gossip, men, maybe wake someone else up to keep watch.” They both jumped at the sound of Xolani’s voice as she came up behind them, and she snorted.

  “Second I’m worried about anyone attacking from inside the perimeter, I’ll get on that,” Darius shot back.

  Xolani crossed her arms over her chest. “Tell me something before we go storming in and raze that research facility to the ground. Do you think there’s a chance, any chance, that he really does have his DPRP scientists working on a vaccine?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?” Nico looked bewildered. “I mean, let’s say congress does know what he’s up to, that they sanctioned his efforts to replicate the Alpha strain, maybe to create an army to take on the Jugs. The dangers of the virus still hold true, right? Their own troops would be as hazardous to the population as the Jugs are. So they’d still want a vaccine for everyone else, right?”

  “Good point,” Xolani acknowledged. “I can also see Littlewood wanting it for his own purposes if he’s as awful as you say he is.”

  Nico frowned and then nodded slowly. “If he’s after the power of being a Jug, the untouchability, he’s not going to want anyone else to be one too. He’s going to want to keep it to himself.”

  “Why approach us now?” Xolani asked as she seated herself on a rock, and Darius could see her brain spinning, trying to process it all. She looked cold, despite the heat, and he couldn’t blame her. “You’ve been sitting on this while Jugs come and go from delivering civvies to the Clean Zone for six years. If you didn’t want to pit Jugs against uninfected people before, why set Rhys up to be captured now, knowing there was no way in hell we wouldn’t take action?”

  “Rhys’s immunity means it’s no longer unthinkable, letting Jugs fight uninfected people,” Nico replied honestly.

  “You’re talking about a possible antiserum?” Xolani’s brows rose, and she nodded slowly. “Good point. Anyone we go up against won’t be in danger of taking the virus back to Colorado Springs if there’s an antiserum.”

  “Exactly,” Nico said with a tight smile. “Also, I was finally able to track down the lab.” He looked satisfied with himself over that, a fact that had Darius clenching his fists to avoid clocking the guy. “I’ve been combing all the little secret military installations in the southwestern desert for years, trying to find any that show signs of activity, and I located where they’ve hidden their personnel transport skim-craft and hacked into the nav computer.”

  “Motherfucker,” Darius snarled. “You knew he’d be taken by air and you didn’t have Zach warn us?”

  “I don’t think I ever mentioned to Zach how I got the coordinates. We only actually talk once or twice a year. Other than that, we pass messages to each other by way of Gillett Morris. And while we trust him, we still have to keep them brief and coded.” Nico gave them an apologetic look. “I was trying to figure out what to do about the research facility—since I didn’t have any backup here—when Zach learned about Rhys. Once I knew Delta Company was coming, with an immune subject you had a personal connection to, I could finally make my move.”

  Darius gritted his teeth before he said softly, “So you got what you wanted. Now, if anything happens to Rhys, I’ll kill both you and Zach. Personally.”

  Nico sobered at that, meeting Darius’s glower for a long, silent moment before he nodded once. “Fair enough. Just make sure we take out Littlewood first.”

  The kidnappers took Schuyler away the moment they disembarked from the personnel transport, and they led Rhys to a small room. A cell, really. It had a bunk and toilet, but not much else.

  He tried the door and found it locked, which wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was how quickly someone entered his room. At the first rattle of the door, Rhys had tensed, afraid it might be Littlewood. If even a fraction of what Zach had told him about the man was true, he was someone Rhys never wanted to meet. But now, he’d agreed to put himself in Littlewood’s clutches and he was so terrified his mouth had forgotten how to make spit.

  But it wasn’t Littlewood who appeared at Rhys’s door. It was a woman with dark-gray hair and a lined, tired face, accompanied by an elderly white man whose gaunt features looked haunted.

  “Mr. Cooper?” the woman asked tentatively, as though uncertain how Rhys would react. “I’m Dr. Thanh, and this is Logan. Are you all right? They didn’t injure you, did they?”

  “Would you care?” He put his back to the wall, folding his arms across his chest.

  The woman gave him a weary smile. “Believe it or not, yes, I would. I came here the exact way you did, Mr. Cooper. I don’t want to be here, either. I have a husband and children back in the Clean Zone to whom I’d like to return. So you have my sympathy.”

  “But not enough to stop you from kidnapping me.”

  “I didn’t order that.” Thanh shook her head adamantly, frowning. “I wouldn’t have, if I were in charge of the DPRP. Secretary Littlewood’s way of doing things is not something many of us agree with.”

  “Yet you work for him anyway.”

  “Under duress.” She grimaced. “I’ve been pressed into service, just like you. I don’t have a choice.”

  “And what about him?” Rhys jerked his head in Logan’s direction, unwilling to let them think he was softening toward them.

  “I’m—” Logan cleared his throat, his voice rough and rusty, as if he didn’t speak often. “I’m here because I want to help end Bane.”

  “Fine.” Rhys let his arms drop, his eyes moving between them. “What do you want from me?”

  Thanh gave something that might have been a smile, though it looked like it took effort. “We need to conduct a physical examination—”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me?”

  There was no way he was undressing in front of these people. “Zach examined me back in the Clean Zone. I’m sure you have the files. I’m in perfect health, and I’m done being poked and prodded by you people.”

  Thanh’s mouth tightened. “Is this the level of coopera
tion we can expect from you?”

  “Considering how I came here, I’d say any cooperation at all is way more than you have any business expecting,” Rhys snapped. “Now what do you want from me? More blood for your tests?” He pushed up his sleeve and thrust his arm out. “Fine. Take it. But I’m done stripping down for your stooges.”

  “No!” She stumbled back a step, her eyes widening with alarm. Logan didn’t quite jump back, but he flinched.

  Thanh cleared her throat. “We’re not suited, Mr. Cooper. We can’t take your blood.”

  “But I’m not infected.” For the first time since they’d walked in, Rhys forgot to play his role of indignant captive and blinked at them in confusion. “I’m immune. That’s why I’m here, right?”

  Thanh and Logan exchanged a long look, the sort of look Darius and Xolani sometimes shared, the one where they had whole conversations and planned out strategies in a single glance.

  “I don’t know how much the med tech you worked with back in the Clean Zone was authorized to tell you,” Thanh said after a moment. “But you’re here because you carry Bane Alpha. That’s why your presence is so important. This could be the break we’ve been waiting for.”

  “What?” Forget playing his part. Now he just wanted to know what the fuck was going on. It wasn’t fair the way a part of him still lit up with hope at the idea that he might have the Alpha strain. He had to squash that hope. Quickly. “I’m not a Jug. I think I’d know if I were.”

  “You’re asymptomatic, of course,” she replied. “But the tests they sent us from the Clean Zone clearly indicate the presence of Bane Alpha in your blood.”

  Rhys swallowed against the knot forming in his throat. Was it possible Zach would have made such a discovery and not told him? Was the story about Littlewood being a monster and the abductions and all that a lie, just bait to get Rhys to agree to be taken?

  But why bother? Why not just take him?

  Because of the Jugs, of course. Rhys closed his eyes, feeling the betrayal like a punch to the sternum. Zach had needed Rhys’s cooperation to get him away from the people who would protect him. And Rhys had given him that. Hell, he’d even made sure Darius and Xolani and everyone else would let him be taken.