“And, like always, guess who cares?” he shot back, chuckling softly. “It’s not like pretending to take the high road ever got you anywhere.”
“It usually got me where I wanted to end up,” Nate retorted, just a little too confrontational for that relaxed attitude he was trying to portray.
Hamilton chortled, continuing with that same bullshit behavior that was begging for a punch in the face. As much as I wanted to respond, the impassive faces all around held me back. There was more going on than Hamilton just being a fuckwit, and I wasn’t sure I still wanted to know what. I was tempted to tell Nate so, but Hamilton spoke up before I could.
“You both owe me, big time. As in, neither of you would still be alive anymore if not for me. So how about you listen up and cut that sneaky bullshit crap. We’re all stuck here together and before long, we’ll have to rely on each other. Maybe think about that next time you turn your constant whiney moping into action.”
That shut me up good. Not the last part about us obviously not being as covert in our undertakings as I’d figured, but then something must have tipped off Hill last night to come over to investigate—likely a muffled scream or two from me. No, it was that first part that burned a red-hot trail of shame through my conscience that made any objection I might have wanted to bring forward die an instant death.
Nate noticed my sudden change in mood, and it was kind of funny to realize what it was that brought his defender urge to the forefront. This once, I could really have done with more stoicism.
“Yeah, right,” Nate chuffed, taking a swaggering step forward so he wasn’t standing beside me anymore but closer to Hamilton and the others. “Neither of us owes you shit. Do you really need a reminder that since the very first day we met, you’ve always been playing second fiddle to me? I have always been the better soldier, the better leader. You were always just good enough. If I hadn’t thrown in the towel and set things in motion to step out, you’d never have gotten to where you are now. I know that. You know that. Your men know that. More than half of them have the experience and competence to replace you in a heartbeat. You’re just here because nobody wanted to make an effort and challenge you. Yet.” His tone was hard and held more than just a hint of challenge, making me weirdly proud to stand beside him. The kid gloves had definitely come off. So he had only been holding back until he was sure that I would be okay and able to fend for myself. More than anything else, that was a massive relief to me—and proved that, indeed, I was getting better. Almost dying last night had just been a small bump in the road, nothing more.
Contrary to what I would have expected, Bucky was rather unperturbed by Nate’s accusations, his grin never slipping. Oh, there was tension in his jaw as he listened to Nate listing his many shortcomings, but the blow didn’t so much glance off as there was no resistance.
“And you’re, what? Doing that now?” he asked. “Challenging me?”
“Maybe I should,” Nate shot back, his eyes briefly leaving Hamilton to skip along the present soldiers. “It wouldn’t be a smooth transition, but I’m sure we’d work out any remaining differences quickly enough. I’m not like you. I don’t punish people for questioning my authority. I welcome it, if warranted in particular. Why not air out all our grievances and then see who they’d rather see in charge? Someone who’s a competent leader, or someone whose only directive is to follow his orders, with not a care about resulting casualties?”
I knew something was wrong when Hamilton still didn’t let himself be baited. And it wasn’t that he’d primed his flunkies—enough of them looked genuinely surprised, and while a few didn’t seem particularly happy, most seemed intrigued.
“Of course we can do that,” Hamilton offered jovially. “But let me remind you of one thing first.”
“Which is?”
Hamilton’s grin widened but lost a lot of its humor as he started to drone on. “You swore an oath. An oath to never form any emotional connections or attachments. To never fall in love, never marry, never father any children. From this day forward, there is nothing more important in your life than to follow your orders, whatever the consequences, whatever it takes. There’s only the program, nothing else.”
That sounded like such a load of bullshit that I was hard-pressed not to laugh—until I glanced over at Nate and saw that he’d gone perfectly still, the color draining from his face. Gone was the bordering-on-gleeful lust for confrontation, replaced now by… was that open fear in his eyes? Nate wasn’t one to be rattled easily, and except for me dying I’d seldom seen him more than somewhat apprehensive at the most. I knew him well enough to be aware that he was capable of a broader spectrum of emotions, but it likely would have killed him to admit that, or so I’d joked on more than one occasion. There was no hint of that reservation going on now, and that terrified me on a level I hadn’t realized I was capable of.
This was not good. So not good. I might not have a clue what was going on, but that much was obvious.
“Decker can’t still be alive,” Nate rasped out, his voice almost inaudible with strain. “Of all the billions of people that died, he can’t have been one of the few that made it. He must be well over seventy now.”
Bucky’s gleeful sarcasm took on a rather different meaning. This was a bit of information he must have been sitting on for ages, and it obviously made him feel like the proverbial one-eyed man among the blind.
“Seventy-three, far as I know. Rumor has it that, unlike almost everyone else, when the first warnings trickled through the grapevine, he grabbed his favorite granddaughter—supposedly the only member of his family that damn hypocrite found deserving to survive—and disappeared into whatever hidey-hole he’d set up for emergencies. I’m not positive on what happened to the girl but she was still with him when he turned up at one of our bases in early spring.” The smile he offered was closer to a grimace. “Who do you think has been running this shtick all year long? Everything we accomplished this year has his stamp blazoned across it.” Now that grimace morphed back into a wry grin. “But you do know, don’t you? If you didn’t outright suspect it, you got mighty cautious after the first few setbacks to keep your name out of the headlines. Too little, too late, I’m afraid. You had your chance and you blew it.”
Nate didn’t react, still processing whatever that piece of information meant to him.
I could only guess what events Bucky was referring to, but Nate had taken a step away from the stage after the I’d gotten infected at the factory and almost died. For a while, I’d thought he’d lost his drive to help others if it took everything we had just to survive. Then it had been easy to believe that he let me take the lead to exact my bloody revenge on Taggard and whoever else had wronged me. Yet while all that had sounded reasonable at the time, looking back now, Bucky’s claim held a lot of weight—and I really didn’t like that.
“Who’s Decker?” I asked the most obvious question. Silence answered me, Nate and Bucky still locked in their staring match, one gloating, the other still reeling. I cast a questioning look at Burns but got nothing but the same back from him. It was Cole who spoke up to explain, a little bemused after doing his own double-take among his buddies.
“He’s a ghost,” he offered, snorting when only Hill inclined his head. “Not that I’ve ever met him. Fabled recruiter of our illustrious ranks. Back when I—and that big oaf here”—he indicated Hill—“were Delta, one of our buddies knew a guy who knew a guy who supposedly was looking for people with a very special skillset. That’s closer than most of us ever got to him.” His gaze skipped from me to Bucky and Nate. “Except for a few classes of our commanding officers. Good luck with trying to get any intel out of them, though. Never met a single one of them who didn’t immediately clam up when he was mentioned.”
That explained some things, but at the same time, nothing at all.
Bucky paid us no mind, still fixated on Nate. Somehow I got the feeling that he’d been waiting for this conversation to happen since we’d shown up
on their doorstep—or even longer.
“Remember the last words that old bastard said to you, at the hearing for your dishonorable discharge?” he asked.
Nate gave the curtest nod possible, his voice a little stronger than before. “He said that if he ever saw my ugly mug again, he’d kill me. And that I was the biggest disappointment of his life.” Unexpectedly from what little information about this Decker guy I’d gotten so far, Nate sounded something between sentimental and laden with guilt.
Bucky picked up on my observation, impossible as it was for me to keep my bewilderment off my face, briefly directing his smirk at me while still mostly talking to Nate.
“You always were his golden boy. His prestige project. He snatched you up right out of the recruitment office, didn’t he?” Nate inclined his head but didn’t volunteer anything else. “He was your mentor, and you gobbled up every little tidbit he threw your way. You showed interest in something? Why, of course there was a spot opening for you in sniper school or with the Sappers. You wanted to take some months off to take some psych classes in college? Perfect for someone who already had all the ducks in a row to go for PSYOPS next. And like the eager little soldier that you were, you always outperformed his expectations. You always had to raise the bar. Meanwhile, I had to fight for scraps, never being quite good enough simply because I wasn’t his psychotic little lapdog. The rest of us had to be bent into shape, broken and reforged. You were perfect just the way you are.”
I briefly checked in with Burns. He rolled his eyes at Bucky being so dramatic. Nate still didn’t protest, although he looked like he was about to regain his composure. There must have been more to this to explain his outright shock at the news. Then again, I had some experience myself with new information making me rethink my every action for the past, well, years. Might take the best of us a few minutes to come to grips with that.
“Shall I go on or is this enough?” Bucky harped, suddenly no longer that at ease himself.
“No need,” Nate was quick to respond. Now there was something I knew I needed to have a chat about with him later.
Hamilton grunted, not done yet—not by a lot. “The only reason you got out was because of me. Did you really think they’d just let you go because you pretended to screw up, and with no casualties to show for it? Come on, you never were that stupid. I didn’t get it back then and I still don’t to this day, but hey, who was I to stand in my own way? Decker may have believed that he forged you into the perfect weapon, but I’ve always seen right through you. You wouldn’t have made it out on your own without my help. They would have either put you out of your misery, or sent you to be retrained, and we both know how that would have ended.” His eyes briefly flitted to me but he didn’t elaborate. “So I stuck out my neck for you. Took the guilt and the blame that you couldn’t shoulder. Rather than kill you, they decided to shelve you, whatever the old man said. You might still come in handy later, should worse come to worst.” He flashed his teeth in a bright smile. “And lo and behold, don’t we all know how that went down.” That was one way to describe the dead rising once more, after the damn virus killed off most of the world’s population.
Bucky allowed himself a moment to gloat—and for Nate to refute any of his claims, which he still didn’t—before he went on.
“You made two mistakes,” he offered, then included me. “Three.” Raising a finger, he counted. “One, you should have come with us back in that godforsaken town right when the shit hit the fan. How you didn’t see what was coming before that happened I will never understand, but by then you must have realized that the world was going to hell, and just for sheer survival, your odds would have been a million times better with us than out there alone. Thank fuck not everyone was that stupid.” He didn’t need to glance at Murdock and Davis to make them hunch their shoulders slightly. Ah, so there was still some residual guilt there that, rather than follow Nate, they’d thrown their lot in with Bucky.
Hamilton wasn’t waiting for an answer from Nate, but he nevertheless got one—and one that surprised me in its honesty. “I was heavily relying on intel from one of my associates at the time,” Nate confessed. “As we all know, she was with those idiots who might have started this shit. She deliberately fed me false information so we’d go through with the mission no matter what. Looking back, it makes sense that she also made sure none of us would snatch up the wrong kind of rumors.” Dolores, his tech wizard friend—may she roast in hell.
If Bucky was displeased that Nate didn’t argue the point of not joining him having been a mistake, he didn’t show it. Instead, he focused on me. “We all know why you joined him.” No expected raucous laughter came from the others, and for once I missed it. That damn tension in the air was way worse than getting ribbed. Hamilton cocked his head to the side. “What has always puzzled me is this: did he actually recruit you, or did he just screw your brains out to make you receptive for helping him when he needed you? One of the reasons why I was in that damn town was because you were on a VIP list of people I should fetch. Only found out much later that your status was actually way higher than the random politician’s kids that we were also out to collect. Emily Raynor herself set you on that list, and if more assholes’d had the sense to listen to her, you’d have had a special detail pick you up as early as Wednesday afternoon.” That would have been two days before Nate and his people locked me up in the Green Fields Biotech atrium with Greene and the other scientists—making it a full three days before it had been too late for all of us.
It was mostly the unease causing my skin to itch all over that got me to answer him. “I had no idea what was going on until I was a hostage in a glass cube. And even then I was only given very limited information.” I could have done without Bucky’s smirk but didn’t concede that point to him. “What did Raynor have to do with that?”
Bucky kept on grinning, letting Red—surprise, surprise—do the explaining. Richards looked vaguely uncomfortable, but so far, he’d watched the exchange with avid attention, making me guess that he was taking notes, just like I was.
“Emily Raynor is probably the only reason why any of us are still alive,” Red started. Nobody disagreed, which surprised me. “There was an incident two weeks before that sent her into red alert. She pestered everyone who would listen—which were far too few people—before she grabbed a bunch of scientists, every scrap of lab equipment that she could get her hands on at short notice, and holed up in the Esterhazy base. One of the reasons why she’s one of the power players is that her warning hit way closer to the truth than anyone could have expected. She insisted that special troops were sent to key stations to ensure that in the event of a fatal catastrophe, we would be able to prevent worse from happening.” He cocked his head to the side when all he got from me was a bland look. “Have you never wondered why the US didn’t turn into a nuclear wasteland when the grid went offline and no one was alive to power down the reactors?”
Now that he mentioned that…
I shook my head, unease of a different kind taking over for a second. I sure hoped our European counterparts had used the extra time allotted to them thanks to the slower onset of the apocalypse to take care of that.
“Not getting eaten or infected seemed like the much more pressing issue at the time,” I admitted. “And guess I forgot about the rest when no one else brought up any possible dangers.” I didn’t need to look at Nate to indicate who I was referring to.
“We had teams of two to five people stationed at every single possibly volatile point,” Richards disclosed. “That’s part of why we lost so many in the first weeks of the outbreak. And why a lot of them chose to set out on their own, ending up on your side of the playing field this year.” Bucky’s lips curled into a slight sneer. Red ignored him. “I’m not sure how long you’d been on Raynor’s radar; probably only for the brief time when you were about to be hired by Raleigh Miller to join his team, but since you never actually got to work on his research, you likely ended up as a no
te in a file. Yet when she was scrambling to secure all the resources she could, she must have remembered that one of the most brilliant scientists to have ever worked on the serum project thought you a worthy candidate. It took all the favors she could call in to set things in motion. There wasn’t enough pull left to escalate your retrieval. If I hadn’t accidentally ended up in Lexington as we had to pull back, no one would have spared a second to try to pick you and your girlfriend up.”
Gee, wasn’t that a nice reminder. That, inevitably, I hadn’t needed their help to survive didn’t seem to matter to Richards now. That he seemed to be the only reason why Sam was still alive did matter to me.
Tired of someone stealing his show, Hamilton took over once more, raising another finger.
“Your second mistake was showing up on the playing field once more when you thawed out from your bunker in spring.” I must have looked surprised that he knew about that, making him laugh—harshly. “Yes, I knew where you were hiding. Never wondered why they had a set of overwhites around that was a few sizes too small for all of them? That was intended for my sister.” He grimaced, as if he’d bitten on something unexpectedly bitter. “Back when we built that bunker, we were still tight, but even then we were paranoid enough to keep the undertaking under wraps from everyone who didn’t strictly need to know. I didn’t have a reason to rat you out. On the contrary. Would have been so much easier for me if you’d just remained dead like everyone thought you were.” He barked a short laugh. “But no, you had to be fucking morons who set out to save the world! Some people absolutely deserve the shit that comes raining down on them.”
A dramatic pause followed. No one spoke up. This was getting tedious quickly, but considering I kind of knew what was coming next, I could see why he was drawing this out. I had to admit, I was kind of curious about getting his side of things. Not that I expected any huge revelations that could dwarf the bomb he’d already dropped, but so far, none of this had really impacted me. That was about to change.
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