In the End (Starbounders) (20 page)

Chapter Thirty-five

Hours later, when Gareth has gone, there is a knock at the door. I assume it’s Kay, but I look through the peephole just to be sure. When I see who it is, I fumble with the lock and yank the door open with shaking hands.

“Rice,” I whisper, not really knowing what else to say.

“Amy,” he says breathlessly, the expression on his face caught between worry and joy.

A moment passes, and I realize he’s standing there, waiting for me to let him in.

“Come in,” I murmur, stepping back and motioning him inside and out of sight. When he’s closed the door behind him, he just stands there with that same weird look, adjusting and readjusting his glasses.

“Amy, I’m so sorry I couldn’t come sooner. I’ve been—” He stops and stares at me. “I couldn’t get away. And also, I’ve been scared to come.”

“Scared?” I ask in a soft voice.

“Yes. I missed you so much. . . . It really freaked me out. When you left, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. So it took me a little while to find the courage to get over here.”

I don’t know what to say. These past months I’ve thought about Rice, about the moment I would see him again. Now he’s here, and it doesn’t feel real.

“Does that make sense?” he asks softly.

“I’ve . . . I’ve been waiting here. Not knowing anything. And you were too
scared
to come?” Did he think telling me that would make me feel better?

“I know, I’m so sorry. Please, Amy. Can you forgive me?”

Instead of answering, I take a step forward and tentatively reach out to him. Before I know what I’m doing, I wrap my arms around him. He’s thinner than I remember. I can feel his ribs. Everything I missed about him comes racing back—his solid reasoning, his quiet nature, the way he always makes me feel safe. I always feel
right
when I’m with Rice.

He runs his hands softly through my short hair and, taking my face in his grasp, he brushes his lips against mine—tentatively at first, then pressing more firmly.

He’s kissing me. And suddenly things no longer feel right—they feel horribly wrong. I break off our kiss abruptly and back away from him.

“I’m sorry, Amy.” He looks confused and under that, exhausted. “I just can’t believe you’re here,” he says.

“You must have known I’d come back.”

“Yes, of course you would.” He looks at the floor. “Baby’s here.”

“Yeah, Baby and . . .” I trail off, embarrassed. I’d thought about him so much, but what was truly between us? He helped me and promised to help Baby.

Baby.

I move away from him to peek out the window. No one’s out there.

“Rice, I saw a video of Baby. Kay brought it to me. It was awful. What are they doing to her?”

“I haven’t been able to get her away from Dr. Reynolds,” he says, pulling me from the window to sit on the sofa.

“Well, you have to try harder,” I tell him. Frustratingly, tears are starting to well up. I wipe them away angrily with my synth-suit-covered hands.

“I’ve tried, Amy,” he says gently. “It’s not a simple thing.”

I look at Rice in his lab coat and glasses. He’s so different from Jacks. It took some convincing, but once Jacks was on my side, he was there. He wouldn’t hesitate to help me break Baby out. He wouldn’t think about it.

I take a breath, collecting myself. Jacks isn’t here. For all I know, he’s dead.

“Have you been working with Dr. Reynolds, testing Baby’s blood?”

Rice seems again confused by my cold tone. “Yes, of course. It’s my job, and it lets me keep an eye on her.”

“Right. So you can watch them hurt her. Watch them brainwash her. How could you let this happen?”

“Amy—”

“You promised to protect her.” I’m taking out my frustrations on him, but I can’t stop myself. “If they needed a test subject, you should have volunteered yourself.”

Rice looks at the floor, his face pinched. He’s gripping one hand with another, but they’re both shaking.

“Dr. Reynolds doesn’t know, does he?” I ask him. “He has no idea that you took the original vaccine, too. Were you part of the original experiment? Were you a test subject?”

He sighs and shakes his head. “After my parents died, Dr. Reynolds took me in. He kept me out of the foster care system, out of the group homes. I . . . I helped him with his experiments, but only because I didn’t know what kind of a man he really was.”

I flinch away from him, horrified by his admission.

“Amy, he was like a father to me,” he tells me, desperately wanting me to understand. “When the original infection broke out, I was scared, and I injected myself with the vaccine. Reynolds never knew. Before you, the only person to know was Katie . . . the girl I told you about. The one who died setting up the emitters with me.” He looks up at me, his eyes haunted. “I would’ve told him if I thought it would make a difference. Just because I injected myself with the original vaccine doesn’t mean that I’m immune. Do you know how many times we’ve tested it since then? How many people we’ve sacrificed?”

“Rice, I really think there was something about that original batch that was different. Something that got into the mixture or wasn’t accounted for.”

“It was created in a lab, Amy, not some guy’s basement. We’ve replicated it thoroughly. We’ve modified the original, and still nothing. I’ve tested my own blood, and I can’t see anything in it that would suggest I’d be immune. Should I let myself get infected on the off chance that it will work, like it did for Baby? If I were gone, who would help her?” he asks quietly. “And besides, I don’t even know if Dr. Reynolds would let me take her place. He’s been training me since I was a child. He’s invested too much time and effort to let me go. He sees me as an
asset
,” he hisses, as if he hates the word. As if he hates himself. “He’d make me continue to test her and probably test myself as well.”

I feel my anger dissipating, like air leaking slowly out of a balloon. I’m left feeling guilty and ashamed of questioning Rice’s motives. Rice’s eyes are filled with hurt.

I reach out and take his hand. “I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I know you’ve done everything you can.”

“Maybe,” Rice replies after a few moments. “Maybe I could speak with your mother, tell her you’re here.”

“No.” I shake my head slowly. “She can’t be trusted. She sold me out to Dr. Reynolds, left me to rot in the Ward.” Even as I say it, I know it’s not as straightforward as that. My mother also told Kay where I was, and tried to protect me from Dr. Reynolds for as long as she could. “It’s better if she doesn’t know.”

“What about Dr. Samuels?” I ask. “He got you a message when I was in the Ward. He gave Kay Dr. Reynolds’s key card to break me out.”

“I don’t know, Amy. I don’t even know if I can approach him without being found out. Everyone is so afraid of being put in the Ward or simply getting expelled. Dr. Reynolds went overboard after your escape, questioning everyone’s loyalty.”

“But not yours?”

“No. He thinks of me like a son.” His voice is full of bitterness. “More like his trained monkey.”

“Rice? What happened? What made you start to doubt him, and then . . . help me?” I almost said
betray him
instead of
help me
. “Was it Marcus hauling me away to the Ward?”

“That was part of it, but before that I found something. . . .” He stops himself, rubbing his hands, hard, over his face. “I found evidence that Dr. Reynolds . . . had my parents killed so he could adopt me. So he could use my brain in whatever twisted way he saw fit.”

His hands have fallen from his face. His eyes are huge, his face a mask of such pain and self-loathing that I want to forget all the resentment I feel for him and wrap my arms around him again. But then the horror of what Rice has said sinks in, and I place my hand over my mouth in shock. It shouldn’t be surprising, the lengths that Dr. Reynolds would go, but I can’t imagine the pain that Rice must have felt when he found out. I place my hand on his shoulder, trying to be a comfort.

“I don’t know how I ever thought he was a great man,” Rice says quietly. “Now he just seems like a madman.”

A madman who has Baby
. I pull away. “Are you sure I can’t get in to see Baby?”

“I don’t know how, not without giving yourself up to him.”

“Do you know anything about Brenna?” I ask. “Are they doing the same things to her that they’re doing to Baby? I’m the one who brought Brenna to Ken. Any harm that comes to her is my fault.”

“Ken is working with her. He hasn’t told anyone that she’s immune. I only know he has her because Kay told me.” He drops his face a little closer to mine. “He won’t hurt her, Amy. He isn’t bad. He hasn’t told anyone about you being here, either.”

“I don’t think he’s bad,” I say. “He’s the reason I’m here. I think he’s just obsessed with finding a cure, or at least a vaccine.”

“Just like every other researcher here,” Rice says. “Even I . . . If I could just catch a break. There’s something I’m not seeing.”

“I understand the need for a Florae vaccine, but I wouldn’t trade Baby for one.”

Rice looks away, and I get the eerie feeling that he
would
choose a vaccine over Baby.

But then he says, “We have to be careful,” and I know he’s still on my side. “Dr. Reynolds is out of control,” he goes on, studying me. “It’s like you’re a ticking time bomb, Amy. You want to help Baby so badly, it’s all you see. If you let yourself go off, you’ll only make things worse for her. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know, but I feel so powerless. These last few days I’ve been bouncing off the walls. I think I’m going to lose it.”

“Remember when I told you to be strong, when you were in the Ward?”

I nod.

“And that worked, didn’t it?”

“It did.”

“So, again. Be strong.”

I look at him, into his pleading eyes, and I nod.

Rice stands to leave and we hug again, but my arms feel heavy and awkward. I don’t want him to go, but I don’t know why. I make myself step away and say, “Come back when you can.”

“I will,” he tells me. He leans in, and I think he’ll try to kiss me again, but he almost immediately changes his mind. He straightens up, gives me a curt nod, and then he’s gone.

During the next twenty-four hours, I can’t sleep or eat the food that Gareth leaves for me. All I do is think of Baby’s face in that video, pale and resigned. A ghost of the happy, vibrant girl I knew.

I sit cross-legged on the floor and close my eyes, trying to think of nothing. My mind automatically goes to Rice. The way he’s always cleaning his glasses and how his shaggy blond hair always ends up in his eyes. His striking blue eyes—intelligent, caring eyes. Part of me wishes that I could have kissed him again before he left, wishes I’d not let him leave at all.

My mind skips past Rice, and all I can do now is imagine the worst. All the people I know are in danger. And Jacks. The image of his face forces itself into my mind—his brown eyes clouding over into a milky yellow, his tattooed skin slowly turning green. I try to shake it from my imagination. I can’t think of Jacks right now. I just can’t. Surely, he fought them off. He wouldn’t have let his fear endanger his life.

But still, it wouldn’t matter, would it? Even a trained Guardian eventually would have been overwhelmed by the Floraes. The image of the monsters taking Jacks down returns; he’s changing into one of Them—

I shake my head.

I don’t care what Kay and Gareth say. I can’t wait for them, and I don’t care what’s out there. I can’t stay in this room a minute more. I go to the door, open it wide, and walk out.

Chapter Thirty-six

When I step through the door I nearly run into Kay, dressed in her synth-suit. She stares at me for a moment before whispering, “Amy, what the hell are you doing out here?” She grabs my arm and tries to pull me back in. “You know you can’t be seen.”

“I’m going to get Baby. It can’t wait any longer.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t be stupid. Do you think you can take on Dr. Reynolds and half the Guardians? You could die.”

“I would die for her, to give her a chance.”

“And what was your plan?” She raises her eyebrows.

“Break into the lab. I’ve done it before. Find where they’re keeping Baby . . . get her and escape.” As I say it aloud, I realize how ridiculous I sound. I have no real course of action, just a desperate need to make sure Baby is safe. “Kay, I can’t lose her.”

“I know, Amy, but have a little faith.” She holds something out to me. It’s a key card, Level One. “Ken gave this to me. We have to get into Dr. Reynolds’s office and see where he’s holding Baby. This card will give us access to anywhere in the lab. We should be able to sweep in and get her. We’ll stash you both just outside of New Hope, but within range of the emitters. Then we’ll figure out what to do with you from there.”

“What about Marcus?” I shudder slightly, remembering his ferocity and skill in all forms of combat, a result of his military training, as well as the ruthlessness of the Elite Eight—the Guardians loyal to him.

“Gareth is going to keep Marcus occupied, and we have someone on the inside who said Dr. Reynolds will be in psyche-evals all morning.”

“Rice?” I smile.

“No, he’s too close to Dr. Reynolds. We thought it was better not to involve him, so he can have plausible deniability. He’s our plan B.”

I nod, knowing that Rice won’t like being cut out of the loop. But at least now I have my chance. I’m going to get Baby.

Kay has me pull down the hood of my synth-suit and walk next to her, out of the building and across the Quad. I know I won’t pass for any of the male Guardians, the synth-suit is too tight fitting for that, but at a glance I might resemble Jenny, though she’s a little smaller than I am. Hopefully no one is paying close attention, and most of the people we pass don’t even spare us a second glance.

It brings back a strange feeling to walk to the lab where my world was shattered. I’d stolen Rice’s key card and broken in to confront my mother, who admitted her part in the Florae apocalypse, the creation of the bacterium that caused the infection. I shudder as we reach the black door, marking the lab as a restricted area. I glance up and find a newly installed camera staring back at us. I hold my breath, hoping our ploy will work.

Kay swipes the clearance card and the door unlocks. I release the breath I didn’t know I was holding. We walk right into the lab building as if we belong there, and take the elevator to the bottom floor, Level B5, where all the research happens.

Kay leads me through the hall. With my hood pulled down, I’m just another Guardian. Marcus’s cronies, the Elite Eight, have been conducting random inspections under Dr. Reynolds’s orders, so no one questions us.

We walk the labyrinth of hallways, through doors to restricted areas, and past an open doorway where a group of researchers is gathered around a table in a conference room. I falter and let out a small gasp.

One of the researchers is my mother.

She looks ragged, her face lined with stress. Kay sees her too and grabs my arm to get me moving again. I can feel my mother’s eyes on me as we hurry away. Can she recognize the shape of my body? My gait? Will she raise the alarm?

When we’ve turned a corner out of sight, Kay murmurs, “Do you think she realized it was you?”

“No.” I shake my head, willing it to be true. “She would’ve said something.”

“We can circle back a different way, hide you again.”

“No. Let’s stick to the plan,” I say.

Dr. Reynolds’s office is near my mother’s. I keep checking behind us, worrying that my mother has followed us, but the hall remains clear. Kay turns the handle and it opens.

A feeling of alarm tickles my senses. It wasn’t locked? We did have to go through multiple security checks, but still . . .

We slip inside the office, and Kay points to a camera mounted in the corner. “Last night I distracted Marcus while Gareth got into the surveillance room. I set a ten-minute loop of the empty office. No one can see us.”

“That’s why the door wasn’t locked: Dr. Reynolds would rather see what people are up to than prevent them from entering altogether.”

Kay nods as I shuffle through the papers on Dr. Reynolds’s desk. There are stacks of manila folders, names written neatly on the tabs at the side. Each folder represents a patient in the Ward. I open one: It details a course of treatment for a woman with “paranoid delusions of conspiracy.” I grimace, seriously doubting that the woman’s paranoia is a delusion.

I put the folder down and riffle through the rest, checking the name on each. No Hannah O’Brian.

Kay places an oversized sheet of paper before me. “Look.” It’s a map of the labs, just what we need. “Ken said Baby was in Florae Research.”

There’s a room at the center marked
FR LEVEL ONE CLEARANCE—FPV ONLY
. I jab it with my fingertip and look up at Kay. “FR—Florae Research? Has to be. But what is FPV?”

“I don’t know. Ken didn’t say anything about that. We didn’t have much time to talk, though.”

We study the map, trying to memorize the twists and turns that will take us to find Baby. After a moment of intense concentration, I say, “I think I’ve got it. Let’s go.”

Kay nods, placing the map back where she found it, under a pile of books. I make sure all the folders are on Dr. Reynolds’s desk the way they were before I disturbed them and join Kay by the door. Stepping out into the hall, we navigate the lab. We pass a few researchers, but none of them appear to give us a second thought.

At the black door labeled
FLORAE RESEARCH
, Kay swipes the clearance card. Nothing happens. The door doesn’t budge. Kay tries it again. Nothing.

“What’s wrong?”

She touches a clear pad next to the card reader and sighs. “Well, now we know what FPV means. Fingerprint Verification. We need a Clearance One fingerprint to get in.”

“What do we do now?” I ask, starting to panic.

“Well, we can start by not hanging out here, looking sketchy.” She turns and walks down the hall. I run to catch up.

“Do we need Dr. Reynolds’s fingerprint?” My heart sinks. If so, we’ll have to turn back now, before we’ve even begun.

“No . . . just someone with clearance. I think I know who we can ask.” We turn a corner, and Kay stops at a door. Again, I instantly think of Rice, but obviously, Kay purposefully wants to keep him out of this. “Who?”

“The same person who told us that Dr. Reynolds would be busy all day.”

She knocks, and after a moment there is a curt “Come in.” We step through the door into a small office, and I’m relieved to find Dr. Samuels seated behind a cluttered desk. He still wears the same yellow bow tie and tweed jacket, but looks older than I remember. Everyone’s appearance seems to have changed for the worse in the short time I’ve been gone.

Dr. Samuels stares at us, then reaches into a desk drawer and pulls out a pistol. I take a surprised step back as Dr. Samuels points it at us.

“You will
not
be taking me to the Ward,” he says, his face oddly calm. He raises the gun’s barrel to his temple, closes his eyes, and squeezes the trigger.