Emerge (32 page)

The first guard marched over and lifted me to my feet by my hair. Then he slammed a fist into my gut. I fell to my knees and came close to falling on my face. Instead I lowered my forehead slowly to the ground while coughing.

“Marc, man, be careful. Justin said not to hurt him.”

The door slid open, and in walked my mother. It was about freaking time. After a quick glance at me, she faced the two guards, who stood at attention. “What have you discovered?” she asked them.

“Nothing, ma’am.” The guards exchanged a sideways glance.

“Justin will not be pleased.” She turned to me, reached down, squeezed my jaw with her hand, and forced me to look at her—all a part of the act she and I had discussed. “Who is working with you to help Christina?”

I smiled, knowing full well my mouth was bleeding. She cringed. “No one,” I said. “Christina has always been a rebellious one. She has a mind of her own.”

“That much is true. Well, we’ll have to tame her soon enough.” She sighed and turned back to the guards. “Jacob, Marcus, you will report back to your superiors at once. There will be a city-wide meeting this afternoon, and we need every guard and emergency worker to be prepared.”

“What about Mr. Layne, ma’am?”

“My own guards will place my son into custody. Now go.”

The guards turned and left without another word. When they were gone, I quickly turned. As soon as Mother had my hands untied, I scrambled over to my PulsePoint. “Took you long enough,” I said, while typing a message to Shiloh.

“Sorry. Wasn’t easy to round up enough of my trusted guards to change the course of command on a moment’s notice.”

“But no problems? Who’s guarding Willow?”

“If Christina comes up with a treatment and can make it to the floor where Willow is quarantined without getting caught, she’ll have no problem getting into the iso unit.” I heard the doubt in Mother’s voice.

My own PulsePoint pinged:
The guards are in. Cricket and Dax will be caught, but I’ll be close.
 

“What’s the status of the computer virus?” Mother asked.

“IT is still working on it. Right now I have to find Councilman Gatewood.” Mr. Gatewood was the one councilman Mother insisted we could trust.

“We better get going then. It won’t take long before Justin starts putting things together and locks us both up.”

My PulsePoint pinged with another message from Shiloh:
There’s a problem.

What?
I asked.

Cricket and Dax have disappeared. They’re in dark gray hazmats, so they could be anywhere.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“Kind of. Just try to blend in and act like you’re somebody.” My hand with the virus shook. I was holding a hugely lethal weapon, and I couldn’t take the time to stop and secure it inside my pack.
 

The halls were busy with people in red and charcoal-colored hazmat suits. But no one was even looking our way, which felt slightly eerie. One floor up and a long, colorful curve of a hallway later, we approached a double set of doors with leadership guards standing outside. I slowed. Dax was on my heels.

The guards didn’t even ask us any questions; they simply held the doors open for us. “Has to be West,” I said. “He must be here.”
 

Dax and I darted by the guards.
 

Just like the last time I’d been inside the isolation suite, we found several nurses monitoring Willow. I walked up to the glass to stare at her. She looked terrible. One nurse blotted Willow’s neck with white gauze.
 

“She’s bleeding from her pores,” I said, mostly to myself.

“Hello, Christina.”

I spun around. It was West’s mother, wearing black protective gear. “Hi, President Layne.”

“Please, call me Ginger. You did once upon a time.”

“That was a long time ago.”

Dax remained motionless beside me.

“It wasn’t that long ago. I remember it like it was yesterday.”

“President Layne, I have a treatment. I don’t know if it will help Willow, but I’m afraid it’s our last chance. I think it’s as good of a chance as we’ve had.”

If I hadn’t been watching her closely, I would have missed the glimmer of hope that flashed in the president’s eye. But she crossed her arms across her stomach and looked away, as if she was trying to hide her emotions. “I’m afraid it might be too late for Willow.”

I turned my head toward Willow. Nothing but the blinking lights on the machines beside her showed any sign of life. When I turned back, I caught President Layne blinking back tears. She was losing her daughter.

I reached out a hand, but stopped short of touching President Layne. “Ginger, if everyone thinks it’s too late, what do we have to lose by trying?”

A doctor and a nurse hovered nearby, awaiting some command from their president—the mother of their patient. She turned her head and gave them a slight nod. “Let the girl administer her treatment.”

The doctor gestured for me to head down the short hallway and into the room that would lead through the decontamination chambers. Just before I entered the room, I looked back at Dax. “Wait out here for me, okay?”

He didn’t respond, but his face tightened, and deep trenches formed across his forehead.

“Miss Black, would you mind decontaminating, then changing into another set of protective gear before you enter Willow’s room?”

I did as the doctor asked. After decontamination, I placed the vial of the Samael Strain into the container with the other vials. After I’d re-suited up in a charcoal hazmat, I pulled out a vial of my cure. Or what I hoped might be a successful treatment.

Inside Willow’s room, my heart constricted into a tight ball when I heard the labored sound of her breathing. Every time she inhaled, it was like she had been held underwater and was just coming up for that first breath of air.

I held the vial out to the doctor. “Here’s the treatment that I hope will help Willow. The dosing instructions are written on the side of the vials.” Thank goodness Caine had been so meticulous with his written instructions.

He stared at the vial for a few seconds before taking it from me. “Don’t get your hopes up. Her heart is weak. Her kidneys have shut down.”

“Try it, please.”

He took the vial from me and handed it to the nurse. I watched as she extracted the liquid from the vial into a syringe and then pushed the liquid directly into the IV line already in place.

It would take a miracle for this drug to work, and though I thought I didn’t believe in miracles, West was right: I was somewhat of a living miracle myself. And who was to say that my parents hadn’t left me with those beads so that we would one day discover their use?

“Do you have any idea how quickly this medicine might work?” the doctor asked me.

I hadn’t thought about that. With the rats, it had taken… “A day or two?”

The doctor looked solemn. “I hope she has that long.”

The nurses in the room continued to monitor fluid levels, Willow’s heart rate and blood pressure, and all the other machines. I wanted to wait with Willow, to see if she showed improvement, but I couldn’t afford to stay. The clock was ticking.
 

I stood up to leave, but before I did, I walked over and touched Willow’s hand. “I’ve missed you, my friend.”

As I stared at her—studying her pale face, the beads of sweat that formed along her hairline, and the open sores along her neck—I remembered clearly the pain and discomfort I had felt six years ago, when I was fighting for my life. I thought about how many times I had begged for God to just take my life, to rid me of the suffering, like he had done for so many before me.
 

On the other side of the decontamination chamber, I began to strip out of the protective gear. As I removed it, I noticed a small slice in the back of my suit and an area of wetness on my clothes where the disinfectant substance had seeped through. Had the slice been there all along? I hadn’t really had a chance to look at the suit when I put it on, because the doctor had helped me suit up.

I lifted my head, and right in front of me was the doctor, still protected inside a hazmat suit.

“That suit was left here especially for you by Justin,” the doctor said. “He said to tell you that he was sorry to hear about the waning immunity of your blood against the Samael Strain. Apparently Dr. Pooley overheard Dr. Hempel telling you this.”

Then the doctor turned and walked out of the room, and I stared open-mouthed at his retreating back. My hand shook as I just stood there. I couldn’t move. I was scared to.

A knock at the window alerted me to Dax standing just outside the room where I was changing. I swallowed hard and scrambled to slip into another charcoal hazmat, the only color in that room besides white and pale blue.

From inside my pack, I removed a second vial of the treatment. I opened the small refrigerator in the room and tucked the vial in a corner in the back.

When I exited the room, President Layne was waiting with Dax. “Thank you, Christina. You have shown my daughter great compassion. I only wish you two could have spent more time together.”

“She was my friend.”

 
“Cricket, we really need to get out of here.” Dax touched my arm, and I flinched, making him draw his fingers back. “You’ve got what you came for, and the president has promised us safe passage out.”

I turned to the president. “You have?”

“I was trying to think of a way to repay your kindness, and I’ve decided the best thing I could do for you at this moment is to show you a way out of New Caelum.”

“Thank you.” I had been wanting to leave New Caelum since the moment I’d arrived. But was I really going to leave without seeing West again?

“Cricket, come on. Let’s go.”

Just before leaving the isolation suite, I quickly sent West a note:
 

I left something for Dr. Hempel and the other sick child in the back of a refrigerator in the chamber outside of Willow’s room. Please tell Dr. Hempel thank you. Though I didn’t use his work, he did teach me what our medications had been missing. And West, I’m sorry our timing was so bad. I will miss you. I’m glad you found me, even if it was only for a brief time.

Love, C
 

The president and two of her guards personally led us down a back stairwell of the leadership wing to the ground floor. With each step I took, it became more difficult to breathe. I massaged what felt like a huge weight on my chest, trying to calm the panic I knew I was feeling both because I was leaving West…

… And because I’d just been exposed to the Samael Strain.

“Christina,” President Layne said when we reached the door that would take Dax and me back out into our world. “I am sorry for how our city has treated you.”

She had no idea just how badly her city—in the form of Justin Rhodes—had treated me.

“I so badly want to encourage you to stay here with us, but I promised West I would carry out your wishes.”

I drew back as if I’d been slapped. “West asked you to send me away?”

“No, sweetie. He asked me to see to it that he kept his promise to you. He would have been here to say goodbye, but our city is in a state of unrest and needs him. He’s going to be a wonderful leader.”

“He already is.”

President Layne smiled, and the warmth of it told me that West was going to be just fine in his city.

“You know that Justin and your council are corrupt, right?” I said.

She nodded. “I know. Fortunately for me, West already had a plan.”

“Cricket?” Dax had a hand on the door. He was more than ready to leave.

“President Layne, I have one last request.”

“Anything, dear.”

“Please don’t encourage West to find me again.”

 
I simply couldn’t bear it if he had to watch me die.

“Thank you for coming.” I stood at the front of a long conference table, the sleeves of my black shirt rolled to the elbows. The faces of each council member stared back at me with emotions ranging from curiosity to contempt. “We don’t have much time.”

“Westlin, what is this about?” the council member from the education sector asked.

“I called you here to—”

I was cut off by the sound of the door opening. Justin and three of his guards stood in the doorway. “Looks like I’m late.”

I smiled. “Actually, Justin, you’re right on time. We even saved you a seat beside Dr. Pooley. Your guards can wait outside.”

Justin turned and nodded to his guards, then walked to his seat, his narrowed gaze on me the entire time. He no longer wore protective gear—none of us did—as we were in a leadership room, far away from the medical sector.

“As I was saying, I called you all here today to talk about the condition of our city.” I gave Shiloh a quick nod, and she ducked out of the room as I continued. “Because I am short on time, I’m not going to tell you how I know the things I do, only that I have enough proof to support every claim that I will make from here on out—and I have shared that proof with key council members around the table.” A few of those members, who Mother was positive we could trust, nodded in support.

Shiloh appeared at the door. “Everyone is in place.” Mrs. Canary, Ryder’s mom, slipped into the room beside her.

“Wait just a minute,” Dr. Pooley stood. “She can’t be in here. She’s no longer a member of council.”

“Just what is going on?” Justin joined in. “Why are we allowing West to run any kind of meeting at all? Where is our president?”

Mr. Gatewood, the council member from the emergency sector, spoke up from his position on the other side of Dr. Pooley. “We’re letting him lead this meeting because I’ve already heard and seen enough of what he’s here to talk to us about to know that we need to hear him out.”
 

“And Mrs. Canary is here because I’ve asked her to rejoin the council,” I said.

“You don’t have the authority to do that,” Justin replied.

Shiloh moved to stand behind Justin. Her Taser was out, and Justin shifted uncomfortably.