by Kat Falls
A groan tore from his throat and I froze. My vision blurred and trembled with tears. “I’m sorry,” I murmured and quickly bound his arm with the silk tie as best I could. When I’d finished, Rafe brought my hand to his cheek, which was warmer than before. He turned his face into my palm, resting there, eyes closed.
“It’s my fault.” The words broke apart as I spoke them. “I killed him and his blood got in your cuts.”
“No.” Sweat cut trails through the dirt on Rafe’s face as he pushed himself up and got to his feet slowly. His breath came in gasps. “Chorda bit me an hour ago.”
I rose on unsteady legs. “You’re just saying that.”
“He did. He — Look.” He pointed past me but I didn’t turn. I was searching for the truth in his face. “Lane, up there,” he insisted, nudging me around.
A blinking light dominated the night sky, growing larger the closer it got, until we could hear the hum of rotary blades.
“It’s Everson,” I told him. “The patrol picked him up from the castle roof.”
“Told you he’d get you back to Arsenal.” Rafe was trying for smug, but all I could hear was the low vibration of fear in his voice.
The hovercopter swept the ground with a spotlight and sent the ferals scuttling and slinking into the shadows. Everson had come for us, but it was hopeless. We didn’t dare leave the cage until the ferals cleared out of the zoo. I watched helplessly as the hovercopter veered south.
“You’ve got to get out there and signal them,” Rafe said, pressing me toward the door.
I faced him. “If we get you to Arsenal, Dr. Solis can give you the inhibitor. Maybe it’ll stop the virus from taking hold.”
“People have tried that. It doesn’t work.” He glanced at the hovercopter, heading away. “Go,” he growled.
“If you don’t leave this cage, then neither will I, and Everson won’t find either one of us.”
He glared at me, but when I didn’t relent, he exhaled sharply. “You are such a pain.”
I took that for acquiescence and ducked under his undamaged arm, draping it over my shoulders. He let me help him to the cage door. But just as I opened it, a dark shape dashed past. I jerked back as more shapes leapt along the tops of the outside enclosures. My eyes skipped over the fleeing ferals, looking for a place out in the open, but where we wouldn’t be attacked. Gunfire rattled on the other side of the building, giving me an idea.
“Come on!” I hurried out of the cage with him and down the path. He cursed under his breath and pressed his arm to his chest, but he kept up.
We rounded the building only to find ourselves in the middle of a nightmare. We backed up against the brick. The handlers had taken cover on the carousel. They popped up from behind the painted animals to shoot at the ferals. Blood sprayed as they managed to drop a few, but the ferals surged forward. More ferals came running up the path, sniffing out their prey. The handlers kept shooting until their clips were empty. There was a stunning moment of silence, and then the ferals attacked. They leapt over their dead, and the remaining humans scattered.
“Wait here,” I told Rafe.
“Where’re you —” he began, but I took off.
I ran for one of the dead handlers, stopping only long enough to pluck a flare gun from his apron, and headed for the carousel. As the ferals stormed the gates and swarmed over the zoo fence, I climbed onto the back of a carved elephant. I gripped the edge of the carousel’s fiberglass canopy and swung up my leg.
The canopy was sturdy enough to stand on. From up there, I spotted Rafe limping along the path. “Stay where you are,” I called.
Of course, he didn’t listen. Bleeding and swearing, he clambered onto the canopy beside me.
“You are such a pain,” I told him, and was rewarded with a strained smile that turned into a grimace as a shudder went through him.
“Shoot already.” He jerked his chin at the gun in my hands.
I fired the flare gun into the sky. An instant later, the world around us felt like a hallucination as the flare exploded and illuminated the scattered bodies of ferals and handlers.
“They saw.” Rafe pointed to the blinking light in the distance.
Sure enough, the light changed course.
As Rafe watched the hovercopter circle back, I saw that his aqua eyes now had a golden sheen, like sunlight reflecting off the surface of a lake. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. “Your eyes …” I pressed my hand to his cheek before he could pull away. He’d grown so much warmer since we’d left the cage. “Please come back to Arsenal with me and let Dr. Solis look at you.”
“They’d shoot me on sight.” Rafe took my hand from his cheek, holding it curled in his own. “Can’t blame them. I’d shoot me.”
My heart lurched. “What does that mean? Rafe?”
“Nothing. Just promise me something….” He looked down at my hand fisted in his and pushed his fingers into it, compelling me to entwine my fingers with his. A move that was perfectly him. He’d pushed himself into my heart much the same way. “Promise,” he went on, “that if you hear about a grupped-up tiger gone feral, you’ll hire a hunter to put me down.”
“No,” I gasped. “You’ll have years before that happens and by then, Dr. Solis will have found a cure.”
But the doctor could only find a cure if he had all the strains. Everson’s words came back to me: “A cure would save everyone.” He might be a guard through and through, but I was a hypocrite, because suddenly I was grateful that he’d made the choice that he had.
“Promise me, Lane,” Rafe pleaded, letting me hear the depth of his anguish.
“Okay. I will,” I said, hating the promise even as I made it. “But only if I hear about a feral infected with tiger, which I won’t because I’ll be on the other side of the wall.”
A smile touched Rafe’s lips, genuine this time. “You’ll be back. A fierce girl like you belongs on the wild side.”
I released his hand to move closer, not caring that he was fevered, and gently slipped my arms around his ribs. Rafe tensed at my touch, but then drew my face to him and brushed a ghost of a kiss on my forehead. The soft warmth of his lips sent a wave of longing through me and I tightened my hold on him as the hovercopter neared, its hum growing steadily louder.
“I won’t go,” I whispered against his shoulder. “I’m not leaving you when you’re sick.”
“You’re not leaving me.” He peeled out of my embrace and faced the edge of the canopy. “I’m leaving you.”
“Wait,” I gasped, reaching for him. I wasn’t ready to lose him to the night and the chaos of the zoo. But when Rafe glanced back at me, my hand froze. His eyes were now as luminous as a predator’s.
“In the bedroom … ,” he said in a rough voice that I could barely hear over the approaching hovercopter. “Remember when I said I lied to Omar and the queen?”
I bobbed my head, unable to look away from his jewel-like eyes, shining in the darkness … so much like Chorda’s.
“That was the lie. Good-bye, Lane,” he said and then leapt into the darkness.
“No, wait!” A blinking red light caught my eye. My dial went black — out of power. Ignoring it, I scrambled down from the canopy to the carousel. When I hit the grass, I searched for some sign of him, but he’d vanished. I whirled to head for the entrance only to be brought up short by a firm grip on my arm.
“Why do girls always chase after the wild ones?” Mahari tsked.
The other lionesses slipped from the bushes as silent as shadows. “Same as us,” Neve said, blood edging her smile. “She likes the hunt.”
I struggled against Mahari’s hold. Rafe’s eyes had so distracted me — no, terrified me — I hadn’t been following his words, couldn’t piece together his meaning. “Let me go,” I snarled at her. When she didn’t, I slammed my heel down on her bare foot and she released me with a yowl.
The other lionesses closed in around me, their golden eyes gleaming. My breath caught at their ferocious beaut
y. With a slight shake of her head, Mahari stopped them in their tracks and their expressions relaxed.
“Told you she’d make a nice addition,” Deepnita said, and licked a claw clean.
“Yes,” Mahari agreed, eyeing me. “She’s no rabbit.”
“Get out of my way.” I tried to push through their ranks.
“Don’t waste your time looking for him,” Charmaine said with a languid smirk. “He’s long gone and you don’t have any cat in you. You’ll never catch him.”
I slumped, realizing she was right.
“And why would you want to?” Deepnita asked in her rumbling purr of a voice. “Tigers are solitary creatures.”
“But we’re not,” Neve said with a smile that might have come off as kittenish if it weren’t for the accompanying growl.
Suddenly we were bathed in light. The whipping air stirred up the dust as the hovercopter slowed until it was above us. A hum filled the air and a rope ladder spilled out of the ’copter’s open side. I looked up to see Everson leaning out, a gun in his hand, his expression determined. “No!” I shouted and waved to let him know that I was in no danger.
“You don’t have to go,” Mahari said, smoothing her tattered gown. She eyed me. “You could join us.”
I stared at her, not quite sure what she was offering.
“You’re a lioness. You know you are.” She smiled, revealing her ivory fangs.
“You mean, let you infect me?”
“Let me uncage you,” she corrected.
The temptation was there, all night. To be so strong … so fast … so terrifying. What would it feel like to move through the world so powerfully and with such confidence? “I want to be a lioness,” I breathed. “I do. But I’m going to try doing it without the virus.”
“Well, if you ever decide you want the trimmings” — Mahari extended her claws — “give me a roar.” She waved the other lionesses onward. “Let’s go, girls, we’ve got a castle to burn.” And away they raced, roaring with fierce joy.
As the hovercopter glided over Chicago, I leaned out to see the ferals running through the abandoned streets, baying and howling, and I shivered. Chorda was dead, but now there were so many more ferals on the loose. Ferals who’d been abused by handlers and had good reason to hate humans. My eyes throbbed with the tears I held back. I wrapped my arms around myself. The ferals were free because of me and I didn’t feel good about it.
“Did you get Rafe out?” Everson asked, sounding strained.
I felt a hundred fault lines spreading through me, invisible cracks that the slightest jostle would turn into fissures. “He’s free. But he’s infected.”
Everson sucked in a sharp breath.
I turned back to the open door as the hovercopter swooped low over Chorda’s castle. On the roof, manimal servants were throwing their collars and harnesses into the air while shouting in triumph. That much at least, I did feel good about. But where was Rafe in all of this chaos? I scanned the streets and shadows for him. His fever would be amping up now, and the thought of him suffering through it alone made me feel feverish.
“Chorda bit him?” Everson’s hands were fisted in his lap.
I nodded, though I didn’t believe it despite what Rafe had said. He’d gotten infected because of me. Yes, if I hadn’t cut off Chorda’s hand, he would have slashed Rafe’s throat. And if I hadn’t driven the machete into him, Chorda would have murdered us both. As Dr. Solis said, reason had its advantages. And yet knowing that I’d had no choice didn’t comfort me in the slightest and it did even less for Rafe.
“Lane …” Everson faltered. “I’m sorry, I’m —”
“You don’t have to apologize.” I forced the words past the sob trapped in my throat. “You did the right thing, choosing that.” I nodded to the box on his lap. “It wasn’t my choice. I’d still pick Rafe. But I’m glad you put the samples first. And I’m sorry for the things I said, about you following orders. You weren’t. You were following your conscience. I get that now. I do.” Tears were streaming down my face now; I couldn’t hold them in any longer.
“It’s not about that. It’s —” He took a breath and then began again. “When I got in the ’copter, Dr. Solis was on the radio.”
I stiffened. He was using that consoling tone people took when they were about to break bad news.
“You remember the little girl at the gate, Jia, who brought in the mauled man?”
“The man who saved her from her own mother …”
“Yes. Dr. Solis says that he might not make it. He’s lost too much blood.”
Everson’s voice seemed to be coming to me from far away. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“Because it’s Mack.”
The moment we touched down on Arsenal, Everson took me to the infirmary, running interference on anyone who tried to question me. Two guards were stationed outside my father’s room. Everson didn’t follow me in.
I found Dr. Solis sitting by my dad’s bed. My father was pale and sleeping, with his chest and leg encased in bandages. Dr. Solis rose and gestured for me to take his seat. “He’s badly cut up, but he doesn’t have Ferae.”
“And he’ll be okay?” I asked, touching my father’s hand. He was so warm. Fevered?
Dr. Solis hesitated. “We’re going to have to amputate his leg, Lane,” he said gently. “I can’t promise that he’ll survive the operation.”
“Amputate?” I echoed hollowly. “That’s the only choice?”
Dr. Solis looked grim. “It’s the only choice here, on Arsenal. In Iowa City the patrol has a surgery unit that might be able to repair the nerve damage….”
“He’s under arrest. They’re not going to fly him over the wall.”
“Actually, that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” said a female voice from the doorway. I twisted to see a tall woman enter. At least I thought she was a woman. It was hard to tell through the transparent surgical mask that covered half of her face. It fit so snugly that it flattened her features like a stocking-faced thief’s.
“Lane, this is Ms. Ilsa Prejean,” Dr. Solis said.
Everson’s mother!
Her hair was shaved as short as a line guard’s and she wore latex gloves past her elbows. Guess the rumors about her germ phobia were true.
“Hello, Lane,” she said.
I nodded in return, noticing she didn’t offer me her hand. Didn’t matter. It was her other offer that interested me. “You can get my dad back into the West?”
“Yes, I’ll have you both flown to Iowa City in my private hovercopter.”
I eyed her, trying to spot the catch. “Why would you do that?”
She waved a gloved hand at my father as if it were obvious. “Mack allowed us to test the inhibitor. The infected people in Moline wouldn’t have touched it if a line guard had marched in and offered it to them. But they trust Mack. Not only did they take the inhibitor, they told him in detail how the medication was affecting them. The information he brought back is invaluable. The least Titan can do is fix up his leg. And you, Lane?” Her mouth widened under the stretchy surgical mask. A smile maybe, though smooshed. “Because of you, Everson brought in twenty-nine of the missing strains.”
I gasped and looked to Dr. Solis for confirmation.
He nodded. “We just took a big leap forward toward finding a cure or at least a vaccine. Thanks to you, Lane.”
“No,” I said. “It was Everson. I only showed him where the blood samples were stored.” He’d been right to make those samples his priority, even if they weren’t mine. Those missing strains would go a lot further toward helping Rafe and millions of other people than anything I’d done.
“So,” Ms. Prejean said, clasping her gloved hands. “I will get you and your father safely back into the West. Consider it payment for services rendered.”
I slumped. “My dad can’t go back. If he does, Director Spurling will have him executed.”
“No, she won’t.” Ms. Prejean sounded pleased with hers
elf. “Not if I say that Mack has been working for Titan all along on a classified assignment.” Her eyes — pale gray like Everson’s — crinkled over her transparent face mask. “Biohaz can’t arrest him if he had authorization to enter the Feral Zone. And there is no higher authority than me when it comes to the quarantine line.”
Within the hour, I accompanied the gurney bearing my father through the camp and across the shadowy bridge to the landing pad where Ms. Prejean’s hovercopter waited. Along the way, guards stared at my dad, but none gave me a second look. And why would they? I was just a medic in green scrubs thanks to Dr. Solis.
Once the guards had gotten my father safely aboard the hovercopter, I headed for the edge of the landing pad where Everson stood in a pool of light talking with the pilot. We hadn’t spoken since he brought me to my father in the infirmary. The pilot glanced from him to me and quickly excused herself.
“I wanted to thank you,” I said, joining him by the lamppost.
He nodded, a line guard once more, ramrod posture and no hint of emotion on his face under the bandages.
There were several other guards on the landing pad and two more by the gate to the bridge. I knew why he was being so formal — they were watching — and I knew I should let it go. But we were standing so close to the dark, land-mine-strewn hill where we’d met just days ago and seeing him with the same cool expression as that night, appearing so unchanged, made it feel as if our trip to the Feral Zone had never happened. And that stung. But I didn’t know how to draw out the boy underneath the military bearing. “Well, thanks and … good-bye.”
He dropped his gaze to my medic shirt, eyeing it as though it was transparent. Long enough to make me uncomfortable.
“Um, what —”
He stepped closer and slid his hands under my hair. As his fingertips tickled the back of my neck, I grew still, surprised that he’d kiss me here. Not that I cared if the other guards watched. I wanted him to, in spite of the ache that had filled me since Rafe had disappeared into the darkness. As I tipped my face up to his, a small weight lifted from my chest and Everson drew back — no kiss.
