Emerge (16 page)

Despite how much I wanted to hold this vulnerable girl in my arms, I also wanted her to
want
to be in my arms—to forgive me for how I’d treated her when she’d found Key with Bad Sam. Maybe that would come with time. Maybe after we found a way into New Caelum and did what we needed to do there, we’d also find a way to stay in each other’s lives, get to know each other again. Maybe she would stay with me inside the city and find happiness beside me.

“West?” Cricket’s voice, still a bit shaky, was soft in the silence of night.

“Yeah?”

“What’s it really like inside New Caelum?” Where she had been rubbing my hands, she now absentmindedly played with my fingers, intertwining hers into mine. “I mean, you described what it looked like, but what kind of life have you had?”

“I’m luckier than some. I’ve been privileged as the president’s son. I’ve continued to go to school, though it did change somewhat this past year. Now that Ryder, Key, and I are over eighteen, we’re expected to work. Key works in the labs. Ryder is being groomed to work in leadership, near me actually. I work in my mom’s office.” I didn’t bother to tell her that I was being groomed to take over running New Caelum eventually, and Ryder was being trained to be my right-hand man.

“Are you happy?”

“It wasn’t easy to settle into a life on the inside, but it’s what I know. It was difficult at first to accept never getting to run through the forest or feel the rain on my face. It was like how I imagine living in outer space might be. But yeah, I guess I’ve been content.” Talking about life inside New Caelum took my mind off of the cold. Cricket was shaking less, but I didn’t dare loosen my hold on her. I leaned my head into her hair. It smelled fruity, heavenly.

“Do you ever go out on the roof?”

I stiffened a little. My fingers stilled in hers. “Only once after you were gone. It just wasn’t the same.” Cricket grew silent, but I wasn’t ready to let her stop talking. This might be the last opportunity we had alone for a while. “So, you remember being on the roof?”

“I remember,” she said, her voice low, almost a whisper.

“Mother thought you would become like a sister to Willow and me, but I already knew we’d be so much more than that.”

Cricket sniffed. She let go of my hand, and though I couldn’t see what she was doing, I was afraid she was wiping at her eyes.

“Hey,” I said, reaching for the flashlight. I flipped it on, but pointed it away from us so that the light wasn’t in our faces. “Turn to me.”

Though she hesitated at first, she eventually turned in the tight space to face me, but kept her chin tucked so that I couldn’t see her face. One of my arms was stretched out under her. With my other hand, I touched her chin and forced her to look at me. Moisture pooled in her eyes and spilled over. “Why are you crying?”
 

I could guess, but I wanted to hear her say it. I swiped my thumb across her cheek, clearing some of the tears away. Her cheek was silky smooth, cool to the touch. My fingers tingled as the cold air hit my tear-drenched skin.

She swallowed hard. “I didn’t want to leave you. You were my best friend.”

“Why did you?”

“I was sick and dying. I didn’t want you to see me die.” She sucked in an uneven breath. “And I was so pissed off at your mother for what she did to my parents.” For the first time, Cricket raised her hand and touched my face, tracing an imaginary line from my forehead down to my chin. “But I loved you.”

I closed my eyes, squeezing them tightly at the sound of her words. I’d loved this beautiful girl since I was a young boy, and now she was a woman and here in my arms. Even if it was only for one night, it was a gift. I was about to lean in and kiss her, when she continued speaking.

“I promised God that I would let you go, and I would leave the city, if He would save you from Bad Sam.”

“You didn’t have to leave, though. Turns out I’m immune.” I offered her a smile, attempting to lighten the mood a little.

“Maybe you’re immune because of my promise.”

I didn’t believe that, but it was silly to question it now. I touched her hair and moved it off of her forehead. “You look so different from what I remember, but your eyes… now that I’m truly seeing them… they’re the same. You are beautiful.” I tapped her nose playfully.

She immediately looked down.

“Don’t look away.”

After a few seconds passed, she raised her eyes again, peering through a veil of dark eyelashes. “You look almost exactly like I pictured you would. Well, except for a few extra whiskers,” she laughed. “I’ve dreamt of seeing you again.” A playful grin spread across her face, reaching all the way to her eyes. “Maybe not quite like this, but…”

“But you’ll take it?” I laughed. I slid my hand behind her neck, letting my eyes drift toward her lips.

Her smile faded. “West—”

I leaned in and cut off her protest with a gentle kiss. She didn’t resist. Her lips were soft and cool to the touch. I knew I should pull back, but I simply couldn’t. As I deepened the kiss, her lips warmed. She snaked her arm around my back, and I did the same, pressing her body closer to mine. Her feet hooked around my calves, our legs intertwining and getting tangled.

When we broke the kiss, I refused to let her turn away. We lay in silence for a while after. Many unsaid thoughts lingered between us—thoughts that threatened to change everything all over again.

The sounds of leaves rustling in the wind and tree limbs clacking together were the only things we heard for a while. Then, eventually, Cricket’s eyes closed, her breathing slowed, and her body relaxed. Tension seemed to fall away as she fell into a deep sleep in my arms.

I was terrified to fall asleep—terrified I would wake back up, and this dream would be over.

The familiar sound of the incinerator woke me sometime in the middle of the night. I was completely disoriented. The warmth of West’s arms around me comforted me at first, but then I remembered why I was facing him, and the feel of his lips on mine. The claustrophobic effects of being confined in a tight space soon crept in, and the sound of the incinerator, though far away, thundered inside my head.

I slowly eased out of West’s arms, hoping not to wake him. He was finally warm, and I was certain he hadn’t slept much since he’d left New Caelum.

I quickly dressed and, after stuffing new warmers inside my boots, slipped out of the tent and hiked over to the lookout to stare down into New Caelum. The activity at the incinerator was no mystery to me tonight, though. I knew exactly what the people in hazmat suits needed to rid New Caelum of—the diseased bodies of Garrett and his fleece-jacketed partner.

I lowered my gaze to the ground. I didn’t even know Fleece Jacket’s name. Would the people inside even tell the two boys’ families what had happened? Or were they simply human sacrifices to whatever New Caelum was trying to do?

I glanced over my shoulder in the direction of our little campsite, making sure West hadn’t awoken. The wind had died down finally, but it had brought much colder temperatures than we’d had in recent weeks.

As I watched the activity around New Caelum, I thought about each time they had run the incinerator in the middle of the night. The first time was three months ago, and I’d heard it three times in one week. Two weeks later, I’d heard it three more times. After that, I was so paranoid that I camped closer to New Caelum each night, sometimes allowing Dax, Dylan, and Nina to come with me. Dylan and Nina thought I just needed time in the great outdoors, but Dax knew I was building conspiracy theories surrounding anything the city did. He just didn’t know why.

And he knew me well enough not to press, or I would have shut him out.

Once I moved closer to the city, the incinerator stopped for a while. In fact, it didn’t run again for three weeks. Then it began to run on exactly one night every other week, almost always on a Thursday or Friday.

Though the frequency with which the incinerator was run had changed, it followed another predictable pattern. It soon became my favorite obsession to predict the incinerator’s activity? What night would it run? What time of night? For how long did it run each time?

Even now, as I parsed through the statistics I’d gathered, it continued to nag at me, until it hit me—

I sat up, staring straight ahead. “They’re conducting a scientific experiment,” I said to absolutely no one. “They’re running a controlled experiment, complete with exact, identified parameters.”

I climbed off my tree stump and ran over to the campsite. I carefully unzipped the tent, and crawled in, trying to be as quiet as possible. But when I got there, I couldn’t bring myself to wake West. I just sat there and stared at his face, the only part of him that stuck out of the sleeping bag, and I couldn’t help but smile. For a moment, I was taken back to when we were kids. I couldn’t see much of his face, which was partially covered, and it reminded me of how he slept with a pillow over his head when we were kids. On the first night I slept inside New Caelum all those years ago, Willow, West, and I camped out on the floor in the president’s room. We were all a little scared, so West and Willow’s mom let us sleep on the rug at the foot of her bed. That’s when I learned how he liked to cocoon inside blankets and sleep with pillows over his head.

Now I listened to West’s rhythmic breathing and wondered what was waiting for him back at New Caelum. Would he be welcomed back in, or would the people shoot him on sight now that they knew the others who’d left had contracted the virus? Was his life in danger?

My stomach tightened into a knot, and a lump formed in my throat. I didn’t know if Dax or Zara was dead. West’s friends, Key and Ryder, were dying in one hospital, and his sister, Willow, was dying in another. Dylan was now sick. It was happening all over again. The people around me were sick and dying or somehow being cut off from me. And no matter how many ways I tried to look at it, I kept coming back to the same conclusion—the return of Bad Sam and the killings were the fault of the people inside New Caelum. Just like it had been President Layne’s fault that my parents were cut off from our country during the initial stages of the pandemic. She’d been the one to give the order to shut down all air travel in and out of the country. West’s own mother had insisted that we cut our country off from the rest of the world.

And with that ice-cold order, she also cut off my desire to have anything to do with the world of New Caelum. My chance to grow up with West—for us to be together—was over. Even at twelve, I had thought we’d be best friends forever—in fact, I’d thought we’d be more than best friends. And now, I knew he had believed the same thing. But we had been so naive.
 

Was being here with him now a second chance? And if so, a second chance at what? What if he’d been raised to be just like his mother? No, I refused to believe that. Besides, his PulsePoint wasn’t working. Had his own mother cut him off?

I came to a decision. I wanted West to live, and I knew they would kill him if he returned to New Caelum. They sure weren’t taking names last night when they began shooting at will.

And that meant I would have to leave him behind.

I leaned down and placed a kiss on his lips, letting the warmth of his breath feather across my face before I pulled back. After leaving his PulsePoint where he would see it, I crawled back out of the tent, thankful that he was both exhausted and a heavy sleeper.

I gathered my backpack, loaded with only the few things I needed: the vials of virus antibodies, the beginnings of a cure that Caine had started, and my PulsePoint. And, of course, the countdown timer at the bottom of the pack.

I had very little time. If Zara successfully planted the bomb inside the walls of New Caelum last night, I had barely three days.

I hiked down the mountain at a good clip, attempting to cover my tracks the best I could as I went. But with only the moon to light my path, I stumbled a few times. Finally I was forced to slow down; the last thing I needed was a broken bone or spilled vials of viruses and antibodies.

When at last I reached the gate into the city, I pulled out my PulsePoint and typed a message to West that he would hopefully find when he woke.

Then I scrolled through my contacts, found the president’s private line, and pushed “call.”

The video call was answered on the third ring. “Hello,” said a man with dark hair and dark facial hair, trimmed short in almost a full beard. “Who are you?” he asked.

It was strange that this person didn’t automatically think it was Christina Black. Would my name not have popped up on the screen of the PulsePoint he was holding? Of course, I looked nothing like the Christina they were expecting.

“I need to speak to President Layne,” I said.

“I am the acting president. Who are you?” He narrowed his eyes, looking beyond me. “You’re outside.” His voice grew more concerned. “I demand to know who you are. I’m starting a track on this device.”

Without even giving me the chance to answer, the man covered the PulsePoint and began to issue a muffled series of what I assumed were orders. When he reappeared on the screen again, he said, “Who are you, and why do you have Christina Black’s PulsePoint?” Now he was getting closer to knowing who I was.

“I am with Christina Black, but by the time you reach me, she will be gone. If you would like a cure to Bad Sam, you will allow me to enter your city unharmed, and you will guarantee my safety while I’m there.”

The man smiled, and not in a way that made my heart rate slow. “What should I call you?”

“I’m Cricket, and I am your only hope for saving the president’s daughter and anyone else who has contracted Bad Sam.”

“Well, Cricket, I’m Justin. I think we can accommodate your wishes… if what you say is true.”

It didn’t take long to hear the scrambling of vehicles and feet. The outer gate of New Caelum clicked, then slowly began to open outward.

A truck pulled through. Headlights blinded me. From around the truck came twenty or so people dressed in red hazmat suits, holding firearms pointed directly at me.