In the End (Starbounders) (13 page)

Chapter Twenty

I immediately reach for my gun with one hand and pull on my hood with the other, then push Jacks against the wall. My Guardian training kicks in, and I scan the yard for any signs of nearby Floraes, but all I can see are frightened people, some running around without direction, a few too terrified to even move. One man sits on the ground, sobbing into his hands. A woman is knocked to the hard concrete but manages to regain her footing before she’s trampled.

“Do you have a weapon?” I ask Jacks.

He shakes his head. “I’ve never needed one.”

I grab the knife I keep on my left thigh and hand it to him. “If there’s a Florae, you’ll need this.”

I’m surprised when I look at him—his eyes have gone glassy with fear. “Don’t think about it. Just go for the neck or try to stab the brain through the eye.” I take a step away from the wall.

“Where are you going?” he asks, desperation in his voice.

“I’m going to find the Florae and kill it.”

“Are you crazy? You’re going to die.”

“I’ll be fine,” I call over my shoulder. “I’ve done it before. Trust me. Go back inside the wall.”

When he doesn’t respond, I stop and look back at him. He holds the knife limply at his side, his face slack. I can’t just leave him there. He’s petrified, and I have no idea if he’ll be able to defend himself. But I can find the Florae and kill it before an outbreak occurs. I could save hundreds of lives.

I go to him and pull up my hood just far enough for him to see my eyes. “Jacks. Go back inside the wall. Circle around to the cellblock and close the door. I’ll meet you at our cell. You’ll be okay in there.”

He focuses on me, shaking his head. “But it’s a
Florae
.”

“That doesn’t matter. If you see one, don’t think about what it is. Think about what you need to do to survive.”

Jacks nods, steeling his face. “Will you be okay?”

“I’m trained for this.” I put my hood back down. “You may know Fort Black, but I know Floraes.”

“Good luck,” he tells me, starting to sound like his old self. “I’ll meet you at home.”

Home.
The word sounds so foreign to me, but I nod. He turns and disappears inside the wall.

I wade into the chaos of the crowd, searching for a flash of green, listening for the creature’s distinctive snarl. It’s next to impossible to move through the mass of people struggling to escape without the slightest idea where to go.

“There!” someone shouts off to my left. “He’s changing!”

I fight through the tide of people fleeing the area and find a group of men beating another man. He’s unconscious and bloodied, but doesn’t look like he has begun to change, or even like he’s been bitten. I try to step in to stop them, but I’m knocked to the ground and someone steps on my arm.

I roll to the side and up to my feet and again try to stop them, but there’s no reasoning with the mob. Then another man is accused—one of the men who’d been beating the man on the ground. “His hand! His hand!” someone is screaming. I see only knuckles bloody from beating the first man, but the crowd sees a Florae bite, and they’re immediately upon him.

I leave the fighting men behind, trying to focus on finding the Florae. There could be dozens of them by now, but I can’t find a single one. I make my way across the exercise yard, the tents and cardboard homes mostly trampled under the feet of the panicked masses.

Through the chaos, I still can’t find a Florae. Did one really get inside? Someone must have seen it to sound the alarm, but then where is it? Feeding somewhere? It could still be consuming its first victim. I scan the exercise yard to see if there is a particular area that people are running away from, but everyone is fleeing without direction.

I hear a whimper to my left and turn to find a child peeking out of a tent—he’s hardly more than a toddler, tears smearing his face. I dive for him and pull him out just before a man crashes through the tent, dragging it behind him as he runs.

The child clings to me and my heart leaps into my chest. He can’t be any older than Baby was when I first found her. I search for a parent or anyone who can protect him, but everyone is concerned with their own safety, with fleeing or finding and killing the Florae. I carry the child to the wall, weaving around debris and bodies. Smaller fights are breaking out all over the yard as neighbors accuse one another of being infected.

I climb the steps to the top of the wall and find several others who’ve come up to escape the violence below. A woman clutching two children eyes me, her face wild with terror. I half-expect her to bolt when I approach her, but she just squeezes her children to her more tightly.

“Are these your children?” I ask.

“Yes, we were caught outside the cellblock. They wouldn’t let us back in. My husband’s a guard; I thought to come up here—”

“That’s fine. Can you look after him?” I place the little boy down onto his feet and move him toward her.

“What?” she asks, taking him despite the hesitation in her voice. “Is . . . Is he yours?” She sounds like she’s in shock, but she cradles the boy’s head against her breast.

“No. I don’t know who he belongs to. But he needs you.”

I look around the top of the wall and wonder why more people haven’t come up here. Out of the corner of my eye I see a man running toward us. I step out of the way and realize too late what he means to do. He takes a flying leap off the wall, landing on the ground outside with a sickening thud.

I turn back to the woman and see that she has crouched down and drawn the little boy and her two children tightly into her arms. “Now,” she says, “we’re going to play a little game and see who can keep their eyes shut the longest. No peeking or you lose.”

I back off and run along the wall for a better view of the exercise Yard. Looking down at the erupting violence, the absolute disorder, I realize that it’s a kind of madness. A Florae-fueled riot, without the Florae. I scan every inch of Fort Black within my vision and can’t find a single creature.

I go back down the stairs and make my way along the wall of the exercise yard, keeping my eyes peeled for the phantom Florae and avoiding the many fights that are still breaking out throughout the Yard. I’m halfway to Cellblock B when an announcement comes over the loudspeaker.

“Fort Black. This is the Warden. There is no longer a Florae threat. Please, stand down. The Florae has been dealt with.”

The announcement does nothing to lessen anyone’s aggression, and the riot continues to rage on. I’m even more convinced now that there was never a Florae, that it was all a mistake—or a calculated lie.

When I arrive at the cellblock, it’s a different place. People have locked themselves in their cells and wait patiently for the commotion to end. When I reach my cell, though, it’s empty. I should have stayed with Jacks. I’m debating whether to go find him, when he arrives at the cell door, breathless.

“Amy!”

I pull off my hood. “Jacks, I’m sorry I left you. . . . I thought I could help, but it was a false alarm.”

He stares at me for a second, then rushes to me and folds me in his arms. I’m startled, but as confusing as it feels, it also feels good.

“
I
should be sorry. I acted like . . . I should have gone with you. You could have been hurt.” He holds me tighter. Through my synth-suit, I can feel his arms, his chest. We’re the right size for each other—our bodies fit together perfectly.

“If something had happened to you . . .”

He pulls away and looks at me for a moment, studying my face; his dark eyes shine with a fierce intensity. And then it happens. Jacks is kissing me.

I can’t say I haven’t thought about what it would be like. Lying in my bunk at night, listening to him breathing, or watching his flexed back, marked with tattoos. I’ve thought about kissing Jacks. Even though I knew I shouldn’t. Any distraction is a bad distraction. And then there’s Rice, who creeps into my thoughts unbidden. I don’t know where I stand with Rice—he hasn’t tried to contact me, hasn’t kept his promise of keeping Baby safe.

But these thoughts vanish because now Jacks’s lips are on mine, his tongue uncertainly searching. And I can’t help it. I press into him, kissing him back, hard. It feels good. Right. And something happens to my legs—left to stand on my own right now, I know I’d drop to the floor.

He pulls me closer, his arms moving down my back.

“Ahem.” Someone clears his throat loudly and I jump back out of Jacks’s arms. My legs
do
work, but the skin on my face, my body, is hot and tingling. A man stands in the doorway, smirking. “Sorry to interrupt. That looks like it could have gotten . . . interesting.”

“Who the hell are you?” Jacks demands.

“I’m here for Amy.” He looks at me. “That’s you, right?”

“Yeah? What do you want?” I ask, my voice shaky.

“I’m here to take you to Ken Oh.”

Chapter Twenty-one

“You can’t go,” Jacks says, turning back to me. “Not now. Not with all those people killing one another out there.”

“I’ll be fine.” I don’t look at him. My face is still burning, but I’ve snapped out of the spell. “I’m not a Florae.”

“Do you think that matters anymore? They’re out for blood. No one is safe.”

“I’m going,” I say forcefully. I can’t waste time right now. This is the chance I’ve been waiting for.

“What if it’s a trap? What if Doc sold you out to that Reynolds guy?”

The thought had crossed my mind. “It’s not, Jacks. Doc said Ken would be contacting me. This is it.” And if it’s not . . . I’m willing to take the risk.

“Then I’m coming with you,” he says.

“Sorry,” the man from the doorway says. “I was told to bring her only.”

“I’m ready,” I say. Jacks grabs my arm, but I wrench it from him.

“I won’t let your feelings get in the way of what I have to do. You know what I’m here for.”

Jacks steps back, that stony look returning. “Yeah. I do. Because you don’t let me forget it for a second.”

“Well, maybe for a second,” the messenger chortles, listening. “She seemed to be concentrating pretty hard on you when I got here.”

“Let’s go,” I say, before things get uglier. I look at Jacks. “I’ll see you later.”

“Sure,” he says with a cold nod.

I follow Ken’s messenger down the stairs and out into the Yard. Things have quieted down a little, though it looks to me as though nearly all the makeshift homes have been demolished. The messenger leads me away from the Yard, back between the cellblocks. There are more agitated people here, and their screams echo off the concrete. Two men wrestle on the ground and I skirt around them.

We go all the way to the back wall, where the messenger nods to a guard and opens a door, the same door I saw Ken disappear through a few weeks ago. The door through which they take the Pox victims. I expect to see a dark, dank holding cell, filled with the dead and the dying. Instead, when I step inside, I am blasted with cold air. Air-conditioning. The door thunks shut behind me. The corridor is well lit and smells of lemon cleaner. Standing here, you have no idea of the turmoil raging outside.

“Where are all the sick people?” I ask the messenger.

He tilts his head, considering what I’ve asked. For a moment I think he’s going to ignore my question, but then he relents. “We have beds for them in the rooms back here. We try to keep them comfortable.” He holds up his arm, showing me the
POX
mark above the square tattoo on his wrist. “I tend to the weak and nurse the survivors back to health. What survivors there are, anyway.”

I nod. “And Ken?”

“This way.” The messenger leads me past several doors until we reach the one he wants. He pushes it open and motions me inside.

Inside is an office, much like Doc’s. The man sitting at the desk looks up at me. He’s Asian and has a heart-shaped mole on his left cheek.

The door snaps shut behind me.

I’m filled with so much joy, I can’t help but grin. My pulse is up so high, I think I’m going to rocket out of the ceiling.

Finally.

“You’re Ken?” My voice is shaking with anticipation.

He taps his pen on his desk. “Yes, and you’re Amy. You desperately needed to see me. What do you want?”

His abruptness throws me off. “I . . . I’m friends with Kay.”

“Friends? Right.” His lip curls meanly. “Because of you, my sister was demoted. I was briefed all about you when you escaped from the Ward last month. You’re paranoid delusional with a disposition toward violent outbursts. You killed an orderly, and somehow my sister was blamed for it all. You are
not
Kay’s friend.”

I take a deep breath. “I know what they probably told you, but I didn’t kill anyone. The orderly’s death was a lie,” I say, making myself speak in short, calm sentences. Losing my cool now would only make matters worse. “I’m not delusional. I was placed in the Ward because I found out about the Floraes, information that you all don’t want New Hope to know. Dr. Reynolds wanted me silenced. He wanted me out of my mother’s thoughts. He wanted me gone. I had to escape. Kay helped me because she cares about me.”

He shakes his head. “Kay doesn’t care about you. Kay cares about one thing, and that’s Kay.”

“Then why has she been contacting me to make sure I’m okay?”

“If that’s true, she’s taking another pointless risk.”

“It’s not pointless. She does care about me. She cares about you, too. She told me not to put you in danger.”

“And you’ve done a fantastic job. Threatening Doc with a knife? After that stunt, he had to tell New Hope that you were here. Dr. Reynolds was very eager to hear that bit of information.”

I take a step back and have to fight an overwhelming urge to run. Will he come for me now that he knows I’m in Fort Black, or is he just glad I’m out of his way?

I hold my ground. I have to see if Ken will help me with Baby, or at least tell me about her. “Kay said to tell you, ‘Ted doesn’t need you.’”

Ken looks at me a long time, his face unreadable. Then he stands, places a finger to his lips, and moves around me to the door. He opens it, waves for me to follow, and walks down the corridor. I follow him to another door and into a tiny, closet-sized room packed with a cot and a dresser. On the sparse dresser is a single notebook and a picture of two children, a boy and a girl, about ten years old. Their arms are around each other’s shoulders. The boy has a heart-shaped mole on his cheek.

Ken reaches to his ear, takes out his earpiece, and turns it off. He places it on the dresser next to the photograph. “This room is clean,” he tells me. “It was a broom closet, but I made it my bedroom in case I needed a quiet place . . . with no one listening.”

“Won’t they be worried you turned it off?” I ask.

“If they were listening in at that exact moment, maybe. Or if they try to contact me while we’re talking, but I’m not due for another check-in until tonight. I’ll take the risk.”

He’s still staring at the picture. Gingerly, he touches it, caressing the girl’s face, then looks back at me and produces a single laugh so quiet, I think I might be imagining it. Then he takes the notebook, tapping it absently on the dresser.

“Ted,” he says. “Did she tell you who he is?”

I shake my head.

“Ted’s a bear.” That little, nearly soundless laugh escapes him again when he sees my confusion. “Kay’s older than me, by all of twenty-three minutes. She always thought that meant something, that I had to do what she told me to. When we were little, I had this teddy bear. Ted. I loved that stupid bear so much, but Kay never saw the point of loving an object. She would take Ted, make me beg for him back, you know how children are. I would cry and tell her that Ted needed me, but she’d never budge. She would say, ‘Ted doesn’t need you. You need Ted.’ I’d usually have to do all her chores before she gave him back.

“When we got older, the few times she really wanted me to do something for her, she would always say, ‘Ted doesn’t need you, but I do.’ She hardly ever needs me now, though. Or if she does, she doesn’t ask.” He looks at me narrowly, then shrugs. “She’s asking now. She wants me to help you.” He puts down the notebook he is fiddling with and faces me. “If Kay trusts you that much, then I do too. What is it that you need, Amy?”

A wave of relief washes over me. “I need to know about Baby. She was taken by Dr. Reynolds,” I tell him. “They think she was bitten by a Florae and didn’t change.”

“You mean Hannah O’Brian?” he asks. I nod at Baby’s true first name, though this is the first time I’ve heard her last name. “She’s all any of the researchers are talking about. I have a sample of her blood in the lab.”

“Kay thinks you might be able to help me save her.”

Ken gives me a sharp look. “Kay must not understand. Hannah was part of the original experimentation process that produced the bacteria that created the Floraes. She was in the group that tested the vaccine. She’s the only human that we know of to have been bitten by a Florae and not turn into one. I’ve made a new batch of vaccine based on her blood sample.”

Something comes to me then, something Amber told me after she arrived in New Hope, after I saw her for the first time and nearly strangled her for what she did to Baby and me. I’d put her in the hospital. A flash of anger is dissipated by the memory of her in the Ward, her lobotomy scar across the side of her head.

“Someone told me there are children in Fort Black with the same mark Baby has, the triangle on the back of her neck.” It marked her as a test subject. It marked Rice as well, but Dr. Reynolds must see more value in him as a researcher than as a lab rat. Or is it possible that Dr. Reynolds doesn’t know Rice was injected with the original vaccine?

Ken shakes his head. “We had a facility near this prison. Not the same one that Baby was in, but we were performing similar tests there. When the infection broke out, we evacuated the children from that facility to Fort Black. The walls offered better protection. That was years ago, though. We hadn’t anticipated the chaos that Fort Black was in. We lost track of those children. . . . Not one of them made it to New Hope. That’s why Hannah is so important. Of all those children, all those locations, she’s the only survivor we know about.”

My jaw tightens. So they don’t know about Rice. How did he get the scar on the back of his neck? How has he kept a secret? I don’t dare say this to Ken. Instead I ask, “And how did Dr. Reynolds regain contact with Fort Black?”

“He never lost it. Like I said, after the infection, there was absolute chaos, but Reynolds already had the Warden on the payroll. Hutsen-Prime was doing some testing on the prisoners here before the outbreak. The Warden was more than accommodating. He just saw dollar signs. When we lost all our test subjects, that’s when Reynolds decided to use Fort Black as his ready-made petri dish.”

“And now? There’s no money anymore. But the Warden’s still allowing all the people of Fort Black to be experimented on without their knowledge. What does he get now?”

“Food, gasoline, power. He lets us conduct our research, and we help him remain king of his crumbling castle.”

It makes sense. It makes it hard for me to breathe, but it makes sense. Ken may be Kay’s brother, but the offhand way he delivers this awful information makes me want to . . . I don’t want to think about what it makes me want to do to him. I know that they’re trying to save the human race, but can’t they see that they’ve lost their humanity in the process?

I breathe and try to focus. “I understand that your research is important,” I say, “but they’re hurting Baby . . . Hannah. Your vaccines aren’t working. You have to try something else.”

“The replication isn’t working because the bacteria has mutated from its original strain.”

“My mother told me that. She said it went airborne, then changed again.”

“To a pathogenic bacterium . . . which can only be spread with an exchange of bodily fluids, such as saliva or blood.”

“Right, so if the bacteria itself has changed, what good is Hannah? You have the original vaccine; you can modify it without her.”

“Hannah is a medical miracle, one that researchers are trying to duplicate. We’ve given the vaccine to test subjects, but they still aren’t immune. They change when we introduce the bacterium, just like everyone else. There is an answer, though, and it’s somewhere in Hannah’s blood. If we can figure this out, no one else will change. I can assure you that Hannah is well cared for. She’s very valuable.”

I swallow. How many people have they changed trying to test a useless vaccine? “Kay thinks she’s in danger.”

“Kay doesn’t have all the information. She doesn’t have the clearance.”

“Kay knows more than you think.” But I don’t tell him how I know this. I can’t put Rice in danger. I change tactics. “Maybe you could request that Baby be sent here. Then you can have full access to her. It will only benefit your research.”

“I have her blood. That’s all I need.”

“Kay said you’d want her for yourself.”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” he asks, his voice getting louder with frustration. “Kay knows only a fraction of what she thinks she knows. I have Hannah’s blood. I don’t physically need her here with me.”

Despite myself, my eyes well with tears.

“But . . . you have to help me.” My heart has dropped into my stomach. He’s been no use at all, after trying so hard to find him. I wanted so badly for Kay to be right, for Ken to be the answer. He was my only option. And now I have nothing. All this wasted time and energy for a dead end.

“Look, I know you care about Hannah deeply, but she’s just one child. What is one child for the future of humanity?”

“I’m not willing to sacrifice Baby for the good of humanity. I don’t care how selfish that is. She doesn’t deserve to be tortured so others can live.” I look at him, into his eyes. “What if it were Kay?”

He stares back at me for a moment, then looks down with a sigh. “I’ll try to find out more for you, but that’s all I can promise.”

“Thank you.” I can’t help it. Despite the fact that I’d just been fantasizing about breaking him in two, I step forward to hug him. He tenses, so instead I hold out my hand for him to shake. Kay isn’t comfortable with hugs either.

Ken picks up his earpiece off the dresser, turns it back on, and places it in his ear. He pauses, staring at the notebook resting next to the picture of him and his sister. Without looking at me, he puts one finger on the notebook and pushes it toward me, giving it one last tap. I nod my thanks and grab the notebook, quickly shoving it into the pocket of my sweatpants. But I wonder why Ken wants me to have it.

He opens the door and walks me down the corridor, talking now for his earpiece’s benefit. “. . . so you see, Amy, I have absolutely no information to give you. I’m sorry. You’ll have to leave now.” He opens the door that leads back into the prison, mouthing,
Be careful
.

I nod and step out of the wall and into the prison, back into the sunlight.

The door closes behind me, and I take about five steps before I’m suddenly grabbed from behind. A massive arm clamps my waist and arms, and another encircles my neck. I was careless. Stupidly careless. The riot must have picked back up again. Someone—some huge, reeking man—is taking advantage of finding a girl alone and unarmed. But I’m not unarmed. If I can just get free for a second, I can reach my gun.