As we crammed into the desert Cruiser once again, I demoted Darwin to passenger and took the driver’s seat. I needed something to stomp my foot on, even if it was just the gas pedal. My throat felt like someone had tightened a screw on it. My breaths coming short and fast, I concentrated on the cold, hard facts. Cutler was in Omega. Cutler needed to take a long dirt nap for all the evils he’d perpetrated on Leon.
Cannon slid in beside me. Turning the ignition, I looked back at the castle.
My wingman inspected my no-doubt-distraught visage with a long, slow, “Duuuude. Maybe you should stay.”
“Fuck off.”
Leaving Leon behind—with Raine—already twisted my heart up and wrung it dry as this desert earth. I did not need Cannon getting inside my head. As I’d been reminded every hop, skip, and jump of the way, our quest was twofold, and I was an emotional, sappy, sad-case fuckwit when it came to Leon. In the high beams of Cannon’s scrutiny, I clamped up tight for the remainder of the drive.
An hour or so later, I braked gently on a sandy hillside just outside the Corps compound we’d landed at. Nathaniel rolled up beside us in the second vehicle, nodding through the window to Cannon. If they started getting kissy-face on the glass to each other, I was going to go ballistic. The nervous rumble in my belly winched tighter and tighter, a clear sign we had to proceed with caution.
“Nice rides,” Darwin said, nodding out the rear window at the foursome of dune buggies racing in our direction.
Cannon hooked his head around for a look. “Sure beats a camel.”
Scanning the low-riding, high-powered transports, I felt a loosening in my taut nerves. “Our backup is here. Look lively, people.”
Each of us armed to our eyeballs, we disembarked from our vehicles, hidden behind the hillock. Shehu and his band of warriors cruised to a stop, barely disrupting the swirling sand. Greetings were exchanged between our two groups before Shehu and I convened.
“You are unsettled.” His glossy black eyes pinned me.
“You’re less than relaxed yourself.”
“I must apologize for allowing your people to be taken.” He bowed, the long Mohawk-style braid dripping over his shoulder.
The chieftain of the Karesh Freelanders didn’t need to show me such deference. “We know the risks.”
“I am responsible for all in my care, as are you. Where is the young Leon today?”
“He…” I made sure my back was turned to the others. “I cannot endanger his life like this.”
Stroking the long blade of his deadly machete, Shehu gave off the impression of a predator on the hunt. “The risks will get higher today.”
“That is the fate of our venture.”
He raised his voice. “To war?”
“To war!” Around the two of us, soldiers and warriors, our combined Freelanders and Territorians, raised their firearms in a gesture of solidarity.
As a unit, we moved across the hot, prickling sand to the topside of the mound shielding our vehicles from view.
Weapons were drawn. Binoculars were pressed to eyes. Then hisses sounded all around.
Cannon broke the ugly spell to curse, “Fuuuckin’ A.”
Really, there were no other words to describe the scene we came upon. It was impossible to believe any sight could be as repulsive as the one we’d witnessed at the POW camp or as viscerally horrifying as the Beta Corps’s brutal ambush of my own militia not quite a year ago. I rubbed my eyes, hoping grit and sand had blurred my vision to the point of delirium.
Sure enough, my eyes maintained the same gruesome visual. Zoomed in, the open-sided makeshift combat hospital was heavily guarded. What made us all squirm in the sand were the patients housed inside on plastic-wrapped cots. Except these sick people didn’t look like war-wounded soldiers but innocent civilians. They didn’t wear Corps insignia but the rigor of cadavers on their strained features.
The worst part was, they seemed aware of the disintegration of their flesh from the inside out. They hadn’t been drugged up, doped up, or given any reprieve. Even the ones walking around in jerky, zombified movements had a sick pallid alertness about them.
Dark horses of death galloped at their gravesides.
“Cutler did this.” My voice came out gravelly.
“Total annihilation.” Nathaniel grimaced. “Leave it to Father.”
Liz didn’t handle binocs but used her CheyTac rifle to dial closer. “Mass extermination. Cutler’s infected more, hasn’t he?”
“If that motherfucker’s even here…” Cannon spat.
“Who put us into play here?” I asked.
“Raine reported it. This.” With a snarl, Linc narrowed his eyes at the tent.
Before we had a chance to regroup, we noticed a group of brick-faced soldiers herding the civilians who were still mobile toward a big transport.
Shehu slid forward with the ease of one accustomed to this landscape and the ways in which to blend in. He dodged behind scrubby brush barely big enough to conceal his mass, but his painted face and slithering tactics made him invisible to the enemy. Two of his warriors followed him.
Darwin hauled in a hasty breath the same time I saw the scar-faced, scruffy commander stroll between his troopers, shouting orders. The same man who’d put Darwin through her paces when we’d touched down in this Territory. His eye patch today was embroidered with the InterNations standard.
“Stand down, soldier,” I whispered to the Alpha Elite woman while maintaining a read on Shehu and his men creeping closer to the backside of the Corps hospital.
With my attention split, Darwin decided to go balls-out blazing. Barreling across the terrain, she laid tracks toward the trucks.
My entire crew, and Shehu’s warriors, too, pounced to their feet with me. Talk about putting up a red flare to our whereabouts. I hunched low, hoping their instincts would kick in and they’d follow suit. Lo and behold, the hotheads hit the sand beside me.
“You, you, you, and you don’t need to be ID’d.” I met the flinty glares of Cannon, Nathaniel, Linc, and Liz, aka personae non gratae to the millionth degree. “Stay put and cover us.”
I turned to Shehu’s remaining warriors. “Back up your chieftain.”
I didn’t wait for replies. I was off and running after Darwin. Fuck me, that woman had more balls than brains. I dodged behind her footsteps. My longer legs almost overtook her fast footfalls, and then we were there. With no plan, little artillery support—nothing but her mouth gunning off.
The Omega Commander’s craggy face turned in our direction with a look of pure bewilderment. “Flight Captain Darwin, you’ve been cited as MIA.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Apparently Darwin didn’t give two shits about all the weapons cocked, aimed, and one trigger away from party time with our brain matter. She went bared-teeth and bald-faced bitch in her former commander’s face.
Confusion scuttling across his face, the commander jerked up his creased tan pants. Sweat dripped from his temple.
“What is this?” He pointed at me as if I were three-day-old trash no one had taken to the dung heap.
“This is Darke. A Freelander. My bodyguard.” Faced with extreme danger, Darwin braved a grin.
“You are one step away from being court-martialed, hanged, or worse.”
“And you’re about two-dozen meters from being stretched out naked on the hot tarmac of the landing zone and having your nuts poached.” As Darwin talked, the commander blanched, and eight severely pissed off troopers took aim at us.
It was like we were in the middle of a pressure cooker placed on top of an open fire. Darwin kept stoking the flames with her feisty attitude.
The kill-or-be-killed instinct rushed over me, but before I had the chance to push the bad end of my S&W 500s into the leader’s empty eye socket, we were surrounded on all sides by glinting, gleaming, sharpened steel.
Shehu had marshaled his forces as silently as a reaper.
The troopers took precision aim at the Freelander newcomers.
With a clipped voice, Shehu advised, “You can stand down or get run through. Your choice.”
“Ease off, soldiers,” Eye Patch ordered. Once his command was followed, Shehu’s people gave a little leeway from their encroaching circle. Eye Patch turned to Darwin. “What the hell is the meaning of this?”
“I’m asking you the same thing.”
“This?” He glanced disinterestedly at the dying civilians.
Some of them had stopped their march to the transport, and the close-up view was even worse than I’d imagined. The skin of their faces was not just hollow and sunken, but shrunken and sticking to their skulls. Their droopy eyes dripped a thick yellow substance. Mouths gaped open, and I knew the stench of their breath would be that of fetid disease.
“It’s Cutler’s new plan to root out insurgents or kill ’em before the real virus even goes live.” Eye Patch smiled.
“These are innocents.” I craned forward.
“Not anymore. The minute the bleeding manifests, after they’re released in the streets of Omega’s bazaars, they’re homegrown killers. Kind of perfect, beautiful human bombs.”
“What do you mean, when the bleeding manifests?” Darwin asked.
“That’s how this new one spreads. Airborne toxicity from some kind of—” He stopped and scratched a finger under the bars-and-stripes eye patch. “Whatever. They’re gonna start leaking blood. That blood contains the contaminant. From there…it’s unstoppable.”
“A death sentence to all in Omega.” Shehu twirled his machete so its shiny blade reflected the sun in diamond patterns.
“Oh, probably all the Territories after Cutler sees this thing go live. We were chosen to undertake the test subjects, to see if it was a success.” Pride seeped from his skin like tainted oil. “I’m thinking it will be.”
“Hey, Commander? I’m pretty sure it won’t.” The razor edge to Darwin’s soft voice should’ve been his warning. “Ever heard of the Reformed Corps? You’re looking at them.”
There was no saluting or sweet-talking from her this time. She drew her gun and bored a hole into his brain before he even had a chance to say a prayer.
His deadweight slumped to the sand, and Darwin used his lifeless body as a stepping-stone to his shocked and shitting-in-their-britches soldiers. I guessed I wasn’t much needed as her supposed bodyguard, but I did a clean sweep with my weapons around the quivering idiots to make sure no one got high-and-mighty ideas about becoming a hero. Shehu and his men moved with us.
Darwin launched herself at the lieutenant with her gun at his temple. “Here are your options, sir.” She spat the word with venom that shook her body. Her hand remained steady. “Join up or die on the spot.”
The douche bag shook in his boots for a full ten seconds before capitulating. He gestured his men—his troopers to command now—to follow his deed and decree to the Reformed Corps by removing his Corps insignia and tossing it to the ground.
The arrival of Liz and Linc, Cannon and Nate, Sebastian and Farrow heralded the end of our tête-à-tête. Taking charge with Bas and Farrow beside her, Darwin ordered the defecting troopers toward the barracks, where they’d get the rest of the battalion on board double-time or go another round of dead-dead-dead.
Shehu and his men hung close to them, tightening the feeling of Freelanders and Revolutionaries with one specific goal: to unite in the fight for freedom.
Left beside the idling truck, I huddled with the people I’d made this journey with. They ignored me to take a closer gander at the infected civilians who were aimlessly wandering. To say my comrades were visibly unsettled was an understatement.
“What now?” Linc asked.
“We can’t let them spread the disease.” Liz popped her knuckles one by one.
“We have to kill them.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt my knees buckle, but I managed to remain on my feet.
“That’s drastic.” Nathaniel slipped a hand through his hair.
“So’s your fucking father,” I replied. “Do you think I take this decision lightly? Do you think I will sleep in peace ever again if we do this? There’s no other choice.”
“Kill the few to save the thousands?” For the first time, Cannon looked unsure.
“They have to die,” Linc whispered.
Whipping toward her husband, Liz hissed, “That’s a bit fucking cavalier!”
“Why are you surprised? You know what I am, what I’ve done.” Linc grabbed Liz’s shoulders. “You said yourself we can’t let the infection get out.”
“I didn’t mean we had to murder them.”
“If it were Leon?” Nathaniel looked at me, his voice cutting through the maelstrom of emotion. “Would you decide the same?”
If it were Leon…My heart stopped. I swayed because I’d closed my eyes and lost that one compass point to all this endless misery. If he had to die, I would be right behind him. Very few got second chances at life. No one, least of all me, deserved a third. I would honor our…love…and go at peace to be with him forever.
“If he dies, I die.”
“What about the cure?” Liz spun toward me. “Raine has it ready.”
“It’s too late, Liz. It’s too fucking late for that.” Linc hooked her chin so she focused on the infected. “These people are gone.”
“There’s not enough time, even if it works,” I said. “We have to replicate it, and they’re already in the advanced stages.” The sense of my argument didn’t make the reality of what we had to do any easier.
I watched a tear slip down Liz’s cheek. I felt as helpless as the people whose fate we were about to decide.
One of the infected approached us.
“Do it. Kill me.” The black-haired woman appeared wraith-like before me. Her skin was nothing more than thin parchment over bleached bone. “I don’t want to be responsible for”—her bone-rattling cough full of phlegm bent her in two before she straightened—“the deaths of others.”
“Jesus motherfucking goddamn Christ.” Cannon rattled off all the curses on the tip of my tongue.
I took her skinny arm in my hand and gently drew her into the shade of the truck that had been set on a collision course with Omega. “Is there anyone with you?”
“My husband was among the first subjects. He died.” She coughed, collapsing against the truck at her back. “No children.”
“You understand what you’ve asked for?”
“Please. Now. I won’t be part of the Company’s agenda. I’d rather die.”
I placed my hand on her cheek. “You are a brave woman. A warrior before all.”
I returned to the others. “We do this now before it can’t be contained.”
Despite their previous objections, it was clear there was no choice. The sag in all our shoulders said everything.
Nathaniel dialed up Darwin on his D-P. “We need insta-euth hypodermics delivered fast. There will be a supply in the medic building. Bring them all.” He ended the call. “We can’t do it…” He linked his fingers with Cannon’s. “We can’t let them bleed out; can’t let them bleed at all.”
“No guns.” I nodded.
The safeties locked into place with resounding clicks.
Darwin raced across the bald terrain, a big olive-green satchel slapping her back. She delivered it to my open hands.
“How goes it inside?” I asked.
“Better than out here.”
No doubt.
As Darwin sprinted back to the barracks, we passed out the doses and swirled the deadly liquid contents of the syringes. Puncture the vein, end suffering. So easy, so…enervating.
We broke ranks and began the cull. I heard every emotion in my head, in my heart. Terror of the unknown, hopes for a serene afterlife, silent good-byes sent to husbands, wives, children. And that was just the people we were…killing. On our side, I battled through an emotional miasma of disgust, shame, self-hate, and maybe a small glimmer of hope we were ending suffering.
The first plunger I sent home was to the woman I’d comforted. “This won’t hurt.”
“I know.” She watched me lower the needle to a vein in her elbow. “Do not worry. You are giving others life.”
As I depressed the plunger, I thought of doing the same to Leon, except with the cure. That was the only thought I allowed myself, the only way I’d get through this.
The drug hit her quickly. As her head rolled back, I cupped her skull and laid her out on the ground. My fingertips were no more than whispers upon her skin when I closed her eyelids.
I looked over to the tent and saw Cannon and Nathaniel inside. Neither was moving and Cannon’s face was corpse-white.
“What is it?” Nathaniel’s concerned voice pricked my resolve.
“She…That girl…” He pointed to a brunette laid out on a cot. Her face was so still it looked like a mask. Her open eyes stared unblinking. A locket hung around her neck. She was pale, possibly already dead. “She looks like Erica did, my sister, the night she…” Cannon swallowed. “Like my mom and dad when the Plague killed them all.”
Jesus Christ. How many more reasons did we need to stop CEO Cutler? Families ruined, lives destroyed, populations wiped out.
No more.
Rubbing Cannon’s shoulder, Nathaniel leaned in to whisper to him.
“I’m solid.” Cannon came back online just as another of our toughened crew got a bad case of the shakes.
Perched on the bed of a civilian, Liz’s entire body shook from earthquake-sized chills. As she struggled to hold her injection steady, Linc placed a hand on her arm.
“I won’t let you do this.” His voice was low and soft.
Liz stared blankly ahead. “I’m a soldier. This is what I do.” Tears ran down her face while she raised the needle for a second attempt. Shame and sadness wafted off of her like misty clouds before an incoming storm.
“Not this time, sweetheart.” With the gentlest movements, Linc plucked the syringe from her hand.
“What about you?”
“I’m capable of coming out of this in one piece.” Linc sneered at himself. “Think of all I’ve done before.”
“Don’t say that.” She stood abruptly to put her arms around his stiff form, but he backed away.
He jerked his head in the direction Darwin had taken. “You go help the others. We’ve got this.”
I couldn’t watch anymore. I became nothing but a robot carrying out a task. There was no honor in this. None at all as we made sure to euthanize everyone inside and out of the combat hospital.
On the drive back through Omega city, black twists of smoke spiraled into the air behind us. We’d burned the field hospital to the ground to contain the germs. The civilians gathering in the open bazaars of Omega knew the location from which the smoke billowed. It was a visible symbol of the Corps’s defeat. The crowds amassed in celebration, but even as we heard the sweet rush of their cheers, our vehicle was filled with an ominous air.
The mass graves we’d grimly dug and gently filled provided no solace, only cold comfort for what we’d done. I felt unclean. Dirtier than I’d ever been. Never had I killed innocents. Judging from the bitter metal tang of distress threatening to drown me, neither had the others.
My foot stammered on the gas, then stuck on the brake.
Sebastian reached for my shoulder. “We had no other choice.”
Even though my head believed him, my heart practically turned upside down in my chest. Sure. How to tell this to Leon? By the way, we just happened to slaughter a bunch of people infected just like you. But it’s okay, babe, because—you know—they had that rapid strain. And, oh yeah, I was the one who gave the kill order.
The only prescription to make this whole shit situation better would’ve been to find Cutler sitting pretty and ready to receive his own fair share of payback at the Corps camp. But of course there’d been absolutely no joy there either—he was not on site and probably never had been.
We figured out why quickly when the massive citywide D-Ps flashed to life and the giant mocking face of the CEO himself appeared in real living color, probably on a different fucking continent.
His smile was supercilious and his eyes, piercing. His fingers were steepled just below his chin as he relaxed in a big cushy chair in front of a giant glossy desk with an arrangement of InterNations flags hanging on the wall behind him.
“I have a special message for my people today.”
Gag.
“The infection is spreading, the virus multiplying. You have only the Revolutionaries to blame for this new infection. If they would simply give themselves up for the greater good, my friends, everything would return to normal.”
Normal as in having no personal rights, no freedom to choose, no electoral power, no prospect of a better future.
“And now I speak directly about the insurgents responsible for today’s batch of deaths in Omega. You see, my people, the cause for your celebration is not a victory against the Corps or the Company. Today, at the Omega Corps combat hospital, a group of rebels killed civilian patients in cold blood.”
Jesus Christ. Apparently he had eyes in the skies and just about everywhere else, too.
“You cannot win this war. Any further rebellion or anti-military action will only end in the loss of civilian life…and more often than not it will be caused by Revolutionary fighters.”
“Well, this is a clusterfuck of the highest order.” Cannon stared mutinously at his father-in-law in front of us.
I couldn’t agree more.
Cutler’s diatribe was cut short when the D-Ps fizzled and frazzled with static interference that always introduced a sound bite from the so-called Voice. What a relief. At least listening to a broadcast from him-her-whoever wouldn’t make me want to yank my ears off my head and throw them out the window.
I started to slowly ease down on the gas, maneuvering the vehicle through the crowded streets, when Cannon laid a hand on my arm. “We should probably hear—”
My foot slammed on the brake, hurtling everyone in the Cruiser forward.
The faceless Voice didn’t start in, no. Leon, my Leon, was up on the screen, bigger than life.
Foreboding didn’t so much as creep up on me as crash into me like a ten-ton weight. It was magnified by the fact that Raine had been the one to feed us false info about Cutler being on the scene. Leon was with Raine. And right now, Leon was getting a shitload of face time on the InterNations D-P.
“What the fuck?” Cannon shouted.
“Raine must’ve rigged something up…” Sebastian said.
“I’m going to rig something up. His neck with a rope…” I stared at the screen above, hoping like hell my instincts were way the fuck off-kilter, because at that moment every single sense inside me screamed with mortal fear for Leon’s life.
“Yeah, I don’ know ’bout y’all, but I got sick of listenin’ to dat asshole Cutler.” With a slight smirk, Leon started right in. His first words made me bark out a laugh. I wondered how many channels this was going out on. If, like the Voice, his reach was InterNations wide, wouldn’t that just yank Cutler’s nuts up to this throat?
“I got some really important news to tell you. I’m a rebel, a Revolutionary. I’m a freedom fighter, ’cause I believe everyone gets the right to love who they love and live how they wanna live.” His eyes shined with the beautiful truth. Pushing the sun-streaked locks off his face, he frowned. “Somethin’ else I gotta say. I am one of the people CEO Cutler personally infected with the new Plague. He thinks he can use us to kill our own people!” His gaze wavered off to the side and then returned to the screen. “I received an antidote today. I tried it.”
“He said he would wait, goddammit!” I yelled in disbelief.
“It din’t work.” Leon’s voice rang clear.
All the air was sucked from my lungs. I shook my head, shook it again, but I could barely make out the rest of Leon’s words through the buzzing in my ears.
When Cannon gripped my hand until I thought he’d crush my fingers to dust, I focused on what Leon was saying.
“I won’t let Cutler use me like this. I will not let dat bastard make my body his weapon.” His jaw set at a hard angle, he all but repeated what the female patient had said.
Cannon whispered, “The little shit’s gonna fucking sacrifice himself.” He sagged in his seat with tears pinging on his eyelashes.
Leon leaned forward. “I’m gonna do what I need to for the greater good. I’m encouraging anyone who was infected, like me, to do the same. We can make a difference dis way!” His fist came up to pound on his chest. “I will kill myself before dis goes any further.”
My chest started pumping like a bellows. That was the only way I knew I was still breathing. Other than that, I was dead. I knew tears were pouring out of my eyes because I had to swipe them away to make sure I could see Leon. Because I had to see him.
To think this might be the last time I see him alive…
A sob broke out of my throat before I wrenched open the door and evacuated the contents in my stomach onto the ground.
I was dimly aware of Cannon pulling me back inside the vehicle and saying, “Maybe Raine’s putting him up to this?”
My head was shaking again, and tears were flying everywhere. I had no voice. But I knew this was Leon’s choice. Thinking back to our fight when he’d thought he could never be enough for me, my heart squeezed until I thought it would simply shrivel right up in my chest and expire.
He’d flat-out told me he didn’t want me around to watch him die, didn’t want me near him at the end. This was deliberate.
He wasn’t going to wait.
With an almighty roar, I slammed my fist on the dash. The whole vehicle shuddered. He was still alive. He was still on the D-P. I cranked forward in my seat, my face almost up to the windshield.
What I witnessed wiped any last spark of hope from my heart. Leon started to talk, but he choked up. Tears slid in twin paths from his eyes, and he hastily brushed them away. He couldn’t smile. He was thinking about me. I knew he was. He was trying to say something to me, but I didn’t want to hear it. If he said it, I’d know this was all true and I was too far away to stop him.
His voice cracked. “Tiens-moi serré, Darke.” Hold me tight. It was what he’d wanted Liz to tell me the day Taft abducted him.
The screen went blank.
“NOOO!” My shout silenced all the others. I exploded inside the vehicle, arms flying, feet kicking out.
A hard punch to my cheek knocked the hysterics out of me. Cannon’s face appeared in front of mine. His bleak eyes and low voice carried through my heaving breaths. “Pull it together, man. We’ve gotta drive fast, right goddamn now if you have any chance of reaching him.”