I should have told Korwin about the Nanomem disease privately. I couldn’t. There was no time. Still, finding out this way, after he pulled me off Jeremiah, must seem insulting. Maybe I should have blurted it out as soon as I saw him, but telling someone you love that you are losing your mind is not an easy or quick pain to bear. I dread what he will say about Jeremiah. What must he think of me? Will he still want me, knowing I could lose my spark?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks. His voice is soft. I’m surprised he doesn’t yell. I deserve for him to yell.
“I just found out myself.”
“No. You’ve known something was wrong. Charlie said this was the second incident.”
“I wasn’t sure what was happening. I didn’t want to worry you.”
“It’s my prerogative to worry about you, even if we don’t know all of the facts.”
“That’s just it. I don’t think you should have to worry about anyone. You deserve better, Korwin. This is what I was talking about when I said there were things worse than death.”
He snorts. “This is not worse than death.”
“Are you going to stick around while I slowly go crazy? Will you still want me when you’re not physically attracted to me?”
His eyebrows dive. “Why would any of this change our attraction to each other?”
“If I lose my spark, we won’t have the magnetic draw to each other we do now. The blue light we put off and the zaps and tingling when we touch will be gone. Those things will die with my spark.”
He shakes his head. “So what?”
“So what? So, you might not want me anymore.”
“Ridiculous.”
I shake my head. “You say that, but what if I lose my mind?”
“It’s going to be okay,” he says. “I’ll watch out for you. Charlie will fix this.”
“We don’t know that Charlie can fix this.”
“You’re right. We don’t. But I know I love you. Nothing is going to change that.”
I stare at my fingers, gone cold on the table in front of me. “I’ve lied to you.”
“Huh.”
“The reason I didn’t tell you sooner was not because I didn’t want to worry you.” I look him in the eye and swallow hard. “And it wasn’t because I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself for me or to settle for something less than perfect. I withheld the information because I don’t want to lose you. I’m selfish and insecure. I can’t bear the thought of you leaving me. If you do, I have nothing left.”
With his thumb and knuckle, he pinches my chin. “Let’s get something straight. The electrical connection between us is not why I want you. And it certainly isn’t why I love you. I want you to be healthy, and I want you to feel like yourself, but the love I have for you isn’t such a fragile thing to be shattered over the loss of your spark.”
“You could be bound to a lunatic,” I whimper.
“I told you, I’m not going to leave you. Don’t you see? I can’t be without you, Lydia. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that we have to stick together.” He stands and moves behind me, my skin heating from the electrical charge between us as he leans over my shoulder and wraps his arms around my neck, hugging me. “Don’t you want that?”
“I do, but—”
“No buts. I will love you if you lose your mind. I will love you if you lose your power. I’m not going to leave you or forsake you because some asshole pumped you full of chemicals that are destroying your brain. I’m going to take care of you. There’s no other option for me.” His voice comes warm and breathy in my ear.
I pivot within his arms to face him. “I love you. I love you so much.”
His lips press into mine, and the heat of a blush warms my cheeks as my body reacts to the charge coming off him.
“We could lose this,” I say into his mouth.
“So let’s enjoy it while it lasts.”
As Korwin’s lips trail to my earlobe, he pushes my newly platinum hair off my shoulder. I tip my head to the side and close my eyes. My mind goes blissfully blank. I am lost in our connection, distracted by the sweet oblivion of our physical touch. My blue glow rivals the conference table console. The heat coming off us causes the glass to discolor.
“Charlie says I’m not supposed to get too worked up,” I murmur.
“Somehow I doubt this is what he meant.” Korwin rubs my shoulders. “Did it bother you when I called you my fiancée earlier?”
“Of course not.” I smile and look away bashfully.
“Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Trust me.”
I do as he asks. There are a few moments of rustling, as if he’s digging in his pockets for something, and then a cool weight settles around my neck.
“Okay, open them.”
Resting on my chest is a shiny platinum cross. I lift it to admire its simple beauty.
“I can’t grow a beard like the married Amish do, and you didn’t seem comfortable with a diamond ring, so how about an engagement cross?”
A smile spreads across my face until I feel my ears move to make room for it. “I think it’s a fine idea. A brilliant idea.” I throw my arms around him. He holds me until I let go first.
Threading my fingers into his, I lead him toward the door.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
“To my room. To my bed. Charlie said I needed my rest, and I rest better with you next to me.” I give him a salacious half smile.
He raises an eyebrow. “Good idea. I’m happy to help.
We take our time getting to my room, stopping often to kiss and touch. The magnetic draw that fuels our attraction is a palpable thing. It makes me feel strong. Almost invincible. But all the while we are riding the elevator and chasing each other down the hall, a nagging thought floats wispy and malformed at the back of my brain. Are we on borrowed time? Will we have this connection tomorrow?
“You need rest. Let’s get you to bed.” Korwin’s hands wrap around my waist as he kicks the door closed behind us. His lips connect with mine, and I close my eyes, inhaling deeply through my nose. His fingers work under my shirt. The crackle and zap of skin against skin makes my flesh buzz. My shirt billows and sticks from the building static. I wrap my arms around his neck, digging my fingers into his hair. He’s slightly taller than me, but I rest my elbows on his shoulders and pull myself up on my tiptoes.
He backs me against the wall. The glow coming off us lights the dark room like our own personal star. I hitch one leg over his hip and press myself against him. My hands trail down the outside of his arms, around his sides, and up his back. The hard muscles of his shoulders strain against my palms through his shirt.
Deep within, I ache with need for him. All those months in Hemlock Hollow, we held back from each other, hardly touching, barely kissing. I am starved for him. I dig one hand under the tail of his shirt and press my open palm into his lower back. The pressure of his body against mine makes me moan into his lips.
There was a time I would have stopped this, told Korwin it was against God’s will for us to be this close outside of marriage. But when I left the world of Hemlock Hollow behind, I abandoned the black and white strictures associated with my faith. I do not feel guilty kissing Korwin. In fact, if anything, I feel silly about waiting so long to do more. In my arms, I hold my soul mate, my other.
There are few guarantees in life. I am not sure how many days I can keep the wolf at bay or trust that we’ll both make it to see next week. My relationship with Korwin is solid. It is a truth as real as gravity that we will and should be together.
All this sifts through my mind as formless as sand while Korwin’s lips work their way down my neck to my collarbone. His mouth burns.
Click. Scrape. Click. Clank.
Korwin pulls back and glances over my head. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.” I follow his gaze to the ventilation grate above us in the wall. Click. Scrape. Click. Click. A whirring precedes the left corner screw slowly twisting from its place. It drops from the grate onto the floor near my feet.
“What the hell?” Korwin sweeps an arm in front of my chest and ushers me to the other side of the room.
The upper left screw drops, followed by the top and bottom right, and then the entire grate flips from the wall. It clangs to rest where we’d been standing. At first the ventilation shaft looks empty and dark, but then a glint of light catches on a thin metal leg. The glossy black eye of a drone pushes out of the darkness, the whir growing louder as the lens adjusts to the light. Like a shiny metal spider, it grips the edges of the shaft.
Korwin sparks. “I’ll take care of it.”
“No. Wait,” I say as light projects into the room in a beam instead of a flash. It scans down my body, blinding me temporarily as it passes over my eyes. There’s a beep and then the light focuses at the center of the room. A hologram forms before us, not unlike the clips we viewed in council chambers. A man’s body is built out of blue light from the legs up. My hand goes to my mouth. It’s Dr. Konrad.
“If this message is playing, be assured that I am aware my drone has found you, Lydia. Its facial recognition software is remarkably accurate. By this time, your location has already been transmitted back to me.” Konrad’s thin hologram lips pull into a smile. His image is translucent and flickers. Dust passes through his torso, catching the light. “Don’t worry. I won’t be coming for you; you’ll be coming to me.” The hologram expands to show Trinity bound and gagged in a chair. “That is, if you want your friend to live.” Trinity’s wearing a vest laden with explosives. The room she’s in is familiar. Concrete floor. Metal girders. The Red Dog Kennel.
I squeeze Korwin’s hand. “Dear Lord, he has Trinity!”
“You took something that belongs to me. Now you must return it. Bring SC-13 to the Deadzone or Trinity dies. You have one hour. You know where to find me.”
Konrad’s image flickers twice and disappears, replaced by a clock counting down from sixty minutes. The seconds tick by.
“What do we do?” I press my fingers against my cheeks.
Korwin opens his mouth. With a pop, the drone in the ventilation shaft self-destructs, cutting him off.
“We can’t give Konrad what he wants. I’m not handing over SC-13,” I say.
“Of course not.”
“But we have to save Trinity.”
“We need to find David and Laura. They’ll know what to do. There has to be a way to get Trinity out. We might be able to catch them, but we’ll have to hurry.”
We rush from the room and down to the tunnels, to where Sal outfits Liberty Party soldiers for their missions. The squat man looks up from mending a shirt when we barge into the apparel room.
“Where’s the fire?” he says in his gravelly voice.
“David and Laura,” I blurt.
“We need to find them right away,” Korwin fills in.
Sal’s eyebrows plunge over his nose. “They just left, maybe ten minutes ago. You might be able to catch them in the garage.”
“Thanks, Sal!”
We bolt from the room and race across the building. Several soldiers call to us, “What’s the hurry?” and “What’s going on?” But there’s no time to stop and explain. We almost barrel over a nurse on our way to the garage. She berates us over her clipboard.
“David?” I yell as we burst into the garage. “Laura?” The lights are still on but there’s no answer.
“The van is gone,” Korwin says. “They must have already left.”
He pulls out his phone and taps David’s icon. After a few moments, he hangs up and taps Laura’s. Cursing, he slides the phone back into his pocket. “They’re not answering.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know why. Maybe the call’s not going through. The guys in Tech might know.”
“We don’t have time to ask the guys in Tech. He’ll kill her.” Panic rises in my throat. “If we leave now we can make it in time to stop him.”
He shakes his head. “We can’t. Maybe we can find Charlie.”
“There’s no time, Korwin. He gave us an hour. If we leave right now, we will barely make it in time.”
“No. No. Charlie says you can’t.”
“As of now, I’m fine until I sleep,” I say, my voice elevating.
“Or get stressed beyond your breaking point. Charlie said no stress.”
“What do you think this is? Waiting for my friend to detonate is not helping my condition. And we can’t call Jonas or Charlie. They’ll never find someone else to go in time.”
“No.”
I plead, “If we leave now, we might be able to catch Laura and David.”
“It’s a long shot. I’m not even sure it’s possible. What if we can’t?” He rubs the bridge of his nose.
My palms start to sweat. All I can see is Trinity’s bound body, the gag pulling at her mouth. “Then we go alone. You and I know the Deadzone. We can steal her out from under Konrad’s nose the same way we did SC-13.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It could be easy.” My voice cracks. The words hold a bravado I don’t feel.
“As long as Konrad doesn’t kill us all, we don’t get caught by the Greens, or run into one of the many Red Dogs with an ax to grind.”
“We fry them and ask questions later.”
He laughs derisively, but I am deadly serious.
“You’re wasting time, Korwin. We can only do this together. As long as we can touch, no one can stop us.”
“Charlie isn’t going to like this. I don’t like this.”
“We’ll be careful. There’s no time, Korwin. I know the risks, but we have no choice. We can’t let her die. Not like this.”
“You’re terribly brave.”
“No. Just grown up.”
“Jeep,” he says, pointing at the refurbished Green military vehicle. “We should stay together. The bikes are too risky.”
“Right.”
Korwin climbs behind the wheel and keys in the code to unlock the dash. I hoist myself into the passenger’s seat above the oversized tires. The dashboard lights up and the engine purrs to life at Korwin’s commands. I hastily push the button on the console to raise the door.
Tapping the dash, Korwin silences the engine. “Fuel cells don’t have to make noise but all of these vehicles are manufactured with sound. It helps people drive. I think in our case, we’d prefer the silence.”
“Agreed.” He accelerates into the dark forest. With a tap of the dash, I close the door behind us. We’re almost a mile out when I notice something. “What happened to all of the flashers?”
Korwin leans forward in his seat in order to see the tops of the trees better. “They’re gone.”
“There were thousands of them out here the night we came back from the Ambassador’s Club.”
“Judging by the message Konrad sent, he’s pulling their strings.”
“Which means he has eyes everywhere.” I stare into the trees, my stomach clenching at the thought. Konrad isn’t just pulling the flasher strings; he’s pulling ours as well. And I can’t help but think, as we speed through the forest, that we’re playing the part of his puppets to his satisfaction.