|
|
Clark turns corners barely stepping on the brakes, making us all lurch to the side and pray over the armored van stays upright. Buildings blur by, a part of town I don’t recognize.
I thought it was over. I thought too soon.
James is alive. I brought him back to life, but his vitals are weak. His face is pale, his lips so white they make me fear I didn’t do enough.
After he opened his eyes, Blare ran out and got help. By then, IgNiTe had secured the building, the few remaining Eklyptors no match for our numbers. A few minutes later, Clark, Jori, and others rushed in following Blare. We loaded Rheema, Aydan, and James into the van and took off. Jori got hold of Kristen on the radio and explained the situation. She’s now waiting for us, ready to do whatever it takes to save James. I don’t even want to think about what she must be feeling. Will she blame me? Do I blame myself for never being strong enough, fast enough, brave enough?
James lays in the front row with Blare and I kneeling by his side, holding him in place, preventing him from sliding off the seat with every turn we take.
Jori is in the back, keeping an eye on Luke, Rheema, and Aydan.
It feels like forever before we arrive at a large, modern building. A sign that reads United Private Laboratories sits by the entrance to the parking area.
Clark follows the instructions from someone on the crackling radio and pulls right up to the front door. When he screeches to a halt, there’s a host of people already waiting. They have stretchers and medical bags with them and rush to retrieve James from the van. In a matter of seconds, they’re rushing him in, barking out instructions and forcing us to stay back.
Jori pulls Luke from the van, hands cuffed at his back. He stares at the ground, riddled with shame. He doesn’t even make eye contact with me. Others tend to Rheema and Aydan. They settle their unconscious shapes on stretchers, too. But there’s a difference. These stretchers have straps for their ankles and wrists.
I stand with the others on the sidewalk as they roll them inside. Then, like a zombie, I follow them inside and watch as they are pushed past a set of double doors where I’m not allowed to follow. Luke is taken through a different door, and I don’t care enough to ask where they’re taking him. James and Aydan are the only ones that matter.
As they roll Aydan away, his pale face looks calm, as if he’s just sleeping after a long night of hacking. He doesn’t look like a man possessed by an evil creature. Yet something dark slips into my mind, something I refuse to look at straight on.
“Where are they taking them?” I ask, not really expecting a response.
“To a secure area,” Clark answers behind me. “They’ll be fine.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and I nearly crumble. “Are you okay?”
I turn into him, bury my face in his chest and cry.
* * *
“DRINK THIS. YOU’LL feel better.” Clark hands me a tall cup of coffee. “Ten sugars. Just how you like it.”
I take the cup and cradle it between my hands, enjoying its warmth. A smile stretches my lips. The gesture feels foreign. My face is too stiff for such a lighthearted response. But it’s nice to know there is someone who still knows me. Clark witnessed Xave and I bicker over who should get the most sugar packets every time we bought coffee—moments from a past that, although inconsequential, make up the bulk of my simple, past life.
He sits next to me, nursing his own cup. We’ve been waiting for news for over an hour now, but no one has come to tell us anything. It’s like we don’t exist.
I look to the secured door. My heart does a weird flip again. God, I need to stop staring in that direction, especially since Blare is sitting on the floor right next to the door, her back to the wall, knees drawn to her chest, eyes closed as if in prayer. She almost looks like someone who believes in a higher power.
Jori, Spencer, Margo, and others are here too, pacing, talking on their radios, waiting for some good news.
“I’m so glad Kristen was here and not at one of the safe houses,” Clark says. “This place is as good as any hospital. It’s got everything.” He doesn’t seem to be talking to me. It’s like he’s just trying to reassure himself, which is fine by me because I’m all for reassuring rants right now.
Clark says this is one of the places where Kristen has been working on the cure. Apparently, she’s been conducting her work in several different locations, with different sets of scientists to help. It was naive of me to think she was doing all her work in an improvised lab. They’ve kept this a secret, making sure not to put all their efforts in a single place. This is the lesson they learned after they lost The Tank thanks to a stupid girl who was too weak to guard the beans and, instead, spilled them in the worst manner possible.
I drink the sweet coffee and close my eyes. Questions, so many questions, swim inside my head. I reach for the answers, but they don’t come. Mostly, what I find are doubt and fear.
Suddenly, Blare jumps to her feet. A second later the doors open and Kristen walks out. Her red hair stands on end. Her face is sallow, without makeup. She rubs the back of her neck, looking as if she hasn’t slept in decades.
Clark and I rush to her and come to a halt next to Blare. I stare at Kristen’s red-rimmed eyes, searching for some of the answers I’ve been desperately waiting for. For a moment, I think she’ll break down into tears and tell me all the things I don’t want to hear, but then she smiles, and the small gesture is enough to kill the worst of my fears, enough to make me forget all those times I thought she was a witch.
Clark slaps his thigh and laughs. “He’s fine then?” he says in a loud, rambunctious voice that causes the rest of the IgNiTe soldiers to come nearer, eager to find out if their leader will be all right.
“He’ll be fine. Sooner than most,” Kristen says, her smile deepening.
She patched him up and now James’s Symbiot healing abilities will do the rest.
Tears prickle at the corner of my eyes, the joyous kind. I’ve cried plenty in the last few months, but it’s always been about pain, not joy, not happiness. Emotions swirl inside of me. They surge at a dizzying speed. They’re all good, but feel completely foreign. Grief, pain, fear, those emotions I’m used to. But relief and contentment haven’t visited me in a long time.
“Hey, you all right there, Marci?” Clark mock punches me in the arm and gives me the biggest smile he has to offer.
“I’m fine,” I manage to say, then have to turn to hide my face and the tears that inevitably spill onto my cheeks.
“She saved him,” Blare says. “He was dead, by all rights. But Marci didn’t give up on him. She saved him.”
In a tone I barely recognize coming from her, Blare jumps into a detailed retelling of Elliot’s attack. She tells them about his secret mutation and his lightning-fast assault on James. She tells them how the poison stopped his heart in a matter of seconds and how she thought him lost forever.
In the same breath, she shares all the rest: my refusal to let him go, the unexpected use of my skills to draw out the poison, my desperate efforts to restart his heart.
Everyone cheers. Hands pat me on the back while I struggle to hide my tears. I cover my face, confused by all the emotions crashing into me. I want to hide and get a chance to compose myself, to understand what I’m feeling, but they don’t let me.
Instead, they pull me off my feet and lift me up in the air. They’re cheering, chanting and, some, like me, crying. They make my name into a song.
Most of these people don’t even know me, but they have a reason to celebrate. They have their leader and a new hope.
They pass me over the crowd, their hands supporting me, making me feel weightless. I throw my head back. Warm tears spill into my ears, my hair. They flow without regard now, as I finally let my emotions free.
I’m floating on my back, crying, laughing, daring to hope.
Seattle is free of its strongest factions.
Is the world next?
I embrace the thought, believe in it.
We can do this. We have each other.
Hands press against the back of my arms, my legs, my head. They got me and will never let me go. I’m not alone anymore and won’t ever have to be.