by A. P. Kensey
“Him, or someone who knows where he is,” said Bastian.
“What if he isn’t? You said this place could lead us to the cure.”
Roku turned around. “Are we going to sit here all night talking?”
Bastian smiled. “I’d like to hear how you plan on getting inside the building. If you think we’re wasting our time—” Roku stood up and walked toward the complex before Bastian could finish. “Hey!” Bastian whispered sharply. “Hey!”
But Roku ignored him. He crouched low as he walked quickly down the dune toward the building.
“What do we do?!” asked Haven.
“We go,” said Marius. He stood and followed after Roku.
“Guess that settles it,” said Bastian. He left Haven alone at the top of the dune and went after Marius.
She sat there for a moment, sputtering to form a sentence that would bring them all back. Eventually she could only mumble, “A plan would have been nice,” and ran quickly after the others.
There were no guards on top of the building, and no alarms were raised as they approached the dirt road. Roku picked a large boulder some yards away and moved toward it with surprising speed. He crouched low behind it and gestured for the others to follow.
The section of wall closest to them was not quite as busy as the rest of the perimeter, but there were still a fair amount of trucks entering and leaving the doors nearby. The two armed guards at each entrance checked the trucks before they drove into the building.
“Well?!” said Bastian, turning to Roku. “What’s your big plan, genius?”
Roku did not answer. The group sat waiting, still as stones, as truck after truck passed by on the other side of the boulder. Haven saw one coming that carried six large, square plastic containers on the back bed. The bright lights from the building on the other side of the opaque containers would have silhouetted their contents, but the containers were empty. The driver was alone in the cab.
“That one,” she said in a whisper, pointing at the truck.
Roku nodded. When the truck slowly drove past the boulder, he stepped right up to the driver’s door, shielded from the warehouse guards’ view by the truck itself. He quickly opened the door as the truck lurched to a stop and put his hand over the driver’s throat before he could call for help.
“You know what I am,” said Roku.
The driver nodded, fighting for breath as Roku squeezed harder on his throat. He wore a beige jacket and a small green hat that lay tilted haphazardly from his struggle against Roku’s grip. The driver’s eyes blackened.
“Then you know what I can do. You will help us, or you will die.”
The driver did not need to be convinced. He nodded vigorously and when Roku released him, he choked out the words, “The tanks. Get into the tanks.”
“They will check them,” said Marius, who stood next to Roku.
“Only the manifest,” said the driver, pointing to a book on his dashboard. “No physical inspections of unused containers.”
Each container was shaped like a squat, square jar with a single screw cap on top. Bastian and Marius went to the first three behind the driver’s side and carefully turned them over so the screw caps faced outward. Haven stood close to Roku, watching the guards next to the building. The two standing by the nearest door were shouting with one of the drivers about the contents of his truck and had yet to notice the stalled vehicle out by the big boulder.
“What about you?” asked the driver.
Roku smiled at him. “I ride with you,” he said. “Give me your hat.”
The driver pulled off his small green cap and handed it over.
“Your jacket, too.”
Roku forced the driver to stand outside while he crawled into the cab. The whole ordeal would have been a lot easier if he could have walked around to the other side of the truck and use the passenger door, but that side was fully exposed to the warehouse guards.
Roku grunted as he scooted over the center console and sat low in the passenger’s seat. The driver plopped down next to him, sweating profusely.
“It will never work,” he said. “There are too many guards.”
“It’s working so far,” said Haven. She smiled at Roku, hoping it would give him courage, if he needed any. She closed the driver’s door and walked to the back of the truck. Marius was wiggling through the hole of one of the containers, his thick legs kicking wildly as he struggled to pull himself all the way in.
“He’s stuck on his belly,” said Bastian, not bothering to hide his amusement.
Marius’s protruding stomach had in fact proven to be something of a stopper as he entered the container. He spoke violent Russian from within the tank and sounded like he was inside a fishbowl. Haven guessed he was cursing Bastian for the slap on the rear he had just given Marius as he squirmed.
“Grab a leg,” said Bastian. He took hold of Marius’s right leg and Haven grabbed the left. They did a silent count of three and then pushed as hard as they could. With a hollow phonk, Marius popped into the tank and landed on the bottom. He groaned and rolled over onto his back.
Bastian picked up the screw cap lid and twisted it into place. “Have to hurry,” he said. “Our air won’t last long.”
He laced his fingers together and boosted Haven up into the next container. She slid in far more gracefully than Marius, easily clearing the sides of the hole. Bastian’s face appeared at the opening.
“All set?” he asked. Haven nodded and he threaded the cap and gave it a light slap to let her know he was done.
The empty tank next to hers shifted slightly, and she heard Bastian drop down inside. Somehow he had managed to keep one hand out of the tank and hold on to the lid, because a second later she heard it spinning into place.
The truck lurched into gear and they were moving.
The only thing Haven could see was the occasional passing light. It was like looking at the sun through a thick white blanket. She kept waiting for the truck to stop but it didn’t. They had been driving for too long, far too long, when it suddenly halted and she slid to the front of the container and bumped lightly against the plastic wall. She lay as flat as possible, knowing that if any bright lights were shone directly onto her tank, anyone standing on the other side would easily see her silhouette.
Men were talking. One was the driver, speaking quickly in clipped sentences. Haven thought he sounded too nervous and for a moment she was afraid it would be enough to tip off the guards. Maybe that was just the way he spoke, though, when he didn’t have a hand on his throat. Another man asked him questions. His voice was muffled and Haven couldn’t make out the words.
Suddenly there was a knock on her tank and she almost screamed. She saw a dark blur walk past her container and hit the next one down the line.
The driver spoke calmly, pleadingly, and his tone suggested he just wanted to finish his shift so he could go home and relax. The dark blur came back to stand in front of Haven’s container and slapped it roughly three more times. The driver asked if everything was okay and Haven held her breath, waiting for a reply. When it finally came, she heard the guard very clearly: “Someone’s in here.”
23
Dormer picked up the papers from the rickety wooden table in the center of the room and rolled them together. He slipped the roll into an inside coat pocket and smiled at Colton.
“Hungry?” he asked.
Colton’s stomach growled at the prospect of a hot meal. It felt like he hadn’t eaten in days, yet food had been the last thing on his mind at that moment. All he could think about was Adsen’s unceremonious departure and the door clanging shut behind him.
“There’s nothing to be done at the moment,” said Dormer. “So we might as well keep our strength up.”
“You still have your ability,” said Colton suddenly.
“That’s right, and I’d like to keep it a secret. For now.”
“Does Adsen still have his?”
“Why should he?”
“Because he’s your brother.”
“Even if he was not infected with Fade, he wouldn’t be able to do much, if anything. They completely fried him at the medical facility. I doubt Adsen could harm anyone at this point.” He opened the door. “Coming?”
Colton didn’t move. He was dumbfounded. “Why don’t you fight back? You’re probably the only one here who still has his ability.” His voice was rising but he couldn’t stop it. “Why is everyone suffering if you could—”
“Colton,” said Dormer, interrupting his growing hysteria. “The soldiers are never gathered together at the same time, and neither are we. I could take out a few, or even most, but the rest would have plenty of chances to react and start shooting. And then there’s Kamiko. In a straight-up fight, she would kill me.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“I do. I feel it. I’m more sure of that fact than anything else in the world. Which is why we need to wait a little while longer for the perfect moment to strike.”
“You’re afraid?”
“I’m clever. If it made sense to throw my life away for the rest of you, the choice would be easy. But it serves no purpose in our current situation.”
“When do we strike?” asked Colton.
“We’ll recognize the opportunity when we see it.” He gestured to the door and Colton reluctantly stepped out into the hallway.
The kitchen was just down the hall. Colton’s stomach growled again as he approached the doorway. Delicious aromas wafted out into the hallway: spiced meat and vegetables, and something sweet in the mix. Cake? Was someone making cake? The very idea of baked pastries in a hostage situation struck Colton as strange.
Micah was standing on his tiptoes in front of the stove across the room when Colton entered, stirring the contents of a large pot with a wooden spoon. The boy wore an apron that was much too large for his small frame. The bottom of it lay piled over his sneakers like a dropped tablecloth, and the top half hung so low around his neck that it only protected his pants. His shirt was covered with splotches of food. He turned and smiled at Colton.
On a long countertop immediately to the doorway’s right, Noah stood with a big kitchen knife in hand, sloppily chopping up a giant head of lettuce. He smiled, too, when he looked up and saw Colton and Dormer.
“Hi,” he said brightly.
“Hello,” said Colton. Noah seemed to think it was a great reply and went back to chopping.
A timer beeped off to his left and Colton turned as a slender black woman opened an oven door, only to be greeted by a billowing cloud of smoke. It roiled out and engulfed her faster than she could get a hand up to waft it away. She coughed and reached into the oven with a mitted hand and retrieved a large, circular tray atop which sat something that Colton assumed was supposed to be cake.
He hurried over and closed the oven door as she turned away to set down the tray.
“Oh, thank you!” she said, still waving away the cloud of smoke. Her voice was laced with a very faint French accent. “I guess I set the timer too long.”
“It’s calibrated wrong,” said Colton. “Best to set it ten minutes under and check it manually until it’s done.”
The woman set down the tray and pulled the oven mitt off her hand. She stood with one hand on her hip and blew a strand of loose hair away from her eyes. “Wish I would have known that before making dessert,” she said without a hint of frustration. She was perhaps thirty-five, although her time spent at the medical facility had apparently added a few years to her dark, pretty features. Her brown, curly hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she reached up to tuck an errant strand back in place, then offered Colton her hand.
“I’m June,” she said.
They shook hands. “I’m Colton. We met when you first arrived from the medical facility.”
Her good humor faded slightly. She dropped his hand and picked up the cake tray. “I don’t remember much about those days, I’m afraid. To tell you the truth, I’m just now starting to figure out where I am. When I first got here, was I—” She paused, searching for the words. “Was I in bad shape?”
“About the same as the others,” said Colton. “A little more awake, I think.”
“You’ve probably told me this before, but how many of us were there?”
“Twenty-eight originally. Most of them left when they recovered enough to remember who they were and where they came from.” He looked over at Dormer, who had joined Micah at the stove and was talking the boy into letting him sample what was in the pot. “Now there’s just you and a few others.”
She walked the cake tray over to the island in the middle of the room and set it down next to a container of homemade icing.
“I imagine one of them told Alistair where to find this place.”
“I think that’s what happened, too.”
She unscrewed the lid of the container and stuck a butter knife into the icing, then glopped some out onto the slab of cake.
“Shouldn’t you wait until that cools?” asked Colton.
She spread the icing around. “It burns me up that you nice folks did what you did and one of the survivors went and tattled.” She was spreading the icing too roughly and small chunks of the cake broke off and crumbled. “It burns me right up, and I can’t do a thing about it.” June suddenly dropped the knife next to the cake and turned away with her wrist to her nose, stifling a cry. Colton noticed faint black veins covering her forearms. “It was just out of the frying pan and into the fryer for me and the other survivors, wasn’t it?” She wiped her nose and stared at the wall. “I was a chef—well, I am a chef, I guess. Owned my own place on Bourbon Street. That’s all gone now. They set fire to it when they took me.” She shook her head, remembering. “The other ones who came with me from the medical facility, they just want to stay in their rooms and keep their heads down. They think it will all blow over.” June wiped some of the tears from her cheek and looked at her hands, then down at the cake. “I just felt like being normal again, is all. I haven’t cooked since before I was taken.”
Colton tried to find the right words to say, and then he realized there were none.
June turned to him, smiling through teary eyes, and wiped her hands on her shirt. “But we’re going to make the most of it, aren’t we, Colton? Cake for everyone.” She picked up the loose crumbles and pushed them back into the cake, then gently coated them with icing so they would stick.
“Cake for everyone,” he agreed.
Micah trotted over from the stove, carefully keeping his wooden spoon and its contents from spilling. He stood next to June and offered it up to her timidly. She sipped from the ladled end and chewed on it for a minute, Micah watching her the whole time as if his life depended on it.
“C’est magnifique,” she said finally. “Micah, it’s perfect. You have made the best soup in the entire world.”
His face lit up as he hurried back to the stove and turned off the burners. He hoisted the pot aside—with a little help from Dormer—and fanned the soup with an oven mitt, still smiling at his accomplishment.
June sighed. “So what’s next?”
“What do you mean?” asked Colton.
“You know what I mean. Don’t you go planning anything without me, you hear? I’m awake now, and I won’t sit around while those soldiers and that woman march all over the people that saved me from that horrible place.”
Colton thought about telling June that they were never going to plan anything. Maybe then she could stay out of harm’s way. Yet he knew the look in her eyes—it was the same look in Haven’s when she was determined to do something, and good luck to anyone who tried to stop her.
“You’ll be the first one to know,” he said. “I promise.”
June nodded and went back to icing the cake. Colton watched her, admiring her calm beauty. The black, poisoned veins on her forearms faded away as they passed her elbows, but Colton knew they would soon reach all the way up to her shoulders and onto her back.
He had looked at himself in the mirror that morning, peeling off his shirt and gently touching the skin over his ribs. It looked as if someone had taken a pen and sketched out the veins under his skin in dark, bold strokes. They spread like spiderwebs over his back, and soon the veins would cover his entire torso.
The sound of marching boots snapped Colton back to reality. Micah and Noah went to June and she pushed them behind her as five soldiers stomped to a halt in the hallway. Kamiko walked through the middle of them, forcing them aside without a touch. Her eyes were lit up and raged like burning wildfire. She seemed angrier than Colton had ever seen her.
She looked right at him.
“Come with me,” she said. “Now.”
Colton thought about resisting, then looked around the kitchen. Micah and Noah huddled behind June, who stood with her head up and glared directly at Kamiko. Dormer stood by the stove, watching the soldiers, his fists slowly pumping open and closed. Each soldier had a rifle aimed at someone in the kitchen. June and the others would be slaughtered easily if Colton or Dormer put up any kind of a fight.
Colton slowly walked toward Kamiko with his hands up. “I’ll go,” he said.
She grabbed his hair and yanked him out into the hallway. The sudden violence startled him. He yelled and tried to pull her hand away. Lightning crackled from her other palm as she slapped Colton’s face and pushed him to the ground.
“Hey!” shouted Dormer from the kitchen. The rapid clak-CHIK of five rounds feeding into five separate rifle chambers silenced the room.
Colton stood up, rubbing his stung cheek. Kamiko brushed past him and barked an order at the soldiers, who were suddenly on either side of Colton, dragging him out to the main dome room.
24
The truck was moving again, but something was wrong. Haven lay flat as she could on her back in one of the large plastic containers. The dark shapes of men with guns blurred past her outside the truck. Marius and Bastian, each in their own container to either side of her, remained silent.
