The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (28 page)

“
Noah,” Haven whispered.
She looked at Colton. “What machine?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I
never saw it. But Bernam talked a lot about becoming a hybrid, so
my guess is that he figured out how to do it.”

Haven studied him carefully. “Why are
you telling me this?” she asked.

“
I need you to believe me
when I say that I’m not like Bernam and the others. I didn’t hurt
your brother. I wasn’t there when they took him.” Colton sighed.
“My mother left my father and I because Bernam threatened to kill
us if she didn’t join up with him. He tore my family apart. And now
my mother is dead.”

“
So you want revenge. You
want to kill Bernam.”

His eyes flashed with anger. “I want
to burn his world to the ground, like he did mine.”

Haven stared into his eyes for a long
moment, and she could feel that connective pull growing stronger
with each passing second.

She looked away when she heard the
door to the training room close loudly behind her.

Micah stood just inside the entrance,
sniffing and wiping away a tear. He looked alone and afraid. He
shifted on his feet and looked at Haven with sad eyes. She didn’t
realize how young he was until right then.

He walked to her with his head lowered
and she wrapped her arms around him, hugging him close. He sniffed
quietly into her shoulder and she rubbed his short hair.

“
It will be okay,” said
Haven. She couldn’t help but think of Noah and all the times she
comforted him after he had a nightmare. Micah had to be at least
twelve, but he looked so much younger. “He and Elena were very
close,” she said to Colton.

At the mention of the old woman’s
name, Micah closed his eyes and sobbed. Haven squeezed him harder.
She looked at Colton and nodded. “Let’s burn it down,” she said.
“All of it.”

34

T
he fire pit in the center of the dome room was cold and
dark.

Marius and Corva sat next to each
other, staring into the shadows between the grey stones. Dormer was
not far off; he pretended to be deeply involved with repairing a
small chunk of machinery and was ineffectively hiding his
melancholy.

Haven stood just outside the ring of
short chairs that encircled the pit with her hand on Micah’s
shoulder. Colton stood farther away from the pit as if he was
uncertain whether or not he was fully welcome.

“
So, that’s the deal,”
said Haven. She squeezed Micah’s shoulder as he stepped away to sit
in one of the chairs nearby.

Marius sniffed loudly and wiped his
nose. His eyes were red from crying but he had calmed down once
Haven started to explain her desire to rescue her brother along
with all the other prisoners at Bernam’s medical center. Dormer had
noticeably stood a little straighter when she mentioned a rescue
and had been inching closer to the conversation ever
since.

“
It’s too sad a time for
nonsense,” said Marius. He stared at the rocks.

Corva put her hand on his
back and rubbed it comfortingly. “Besides that,” she said, shaking
her head, “you two are in no shape to fight anyone. Haven, you can
barely focus your energy more than a few feet in front of you.
And
you
,” she
said, pointing at Colton, “you just had your ability swapped out.
It will be
weeks
before you’re able to use it properly again.”

“
You have guns,” said
Colton. “Haven told me.”

Marius shook his head, his heavy brow
drooping low over his eyes. “It is suicide. This is why we never go
to this place before. Only one chance,” he said, raising his
finger. “One chance to get inside before place is overrun with big
men with bigger guns.”

Haven took a step forward. “Colton
says that Bernam built a machine…”

“
We know all about that,”
said Corva.

“…
and that he made it work
using my brother—” She stopped to take a breath. “—using him as
some sort of lab rat. He’ll die if we don’t do
something.”

“
What makes him so
important?” said Dormer, no longer bothering to hide his interest.
“My brother has been Bernam’s ‘guest’ for months, and this group
never lifted a finger.”

“
Then why did you stick
around?” said Colton. “Why not try to save him on your
own?”

Dormer glared at him but said
nothing.

“
Well,” said Haven, “we’re
lifting a finger now. No one gets left behind.”

Dormer squinted at her suspiciously
and went back to tinkering with the machinery in his
hands.

“
You,” said Corva,
pointing at Colton again. “Why are
you
still here?”

“
Marius said that Elena
had a rule that anyone like you—like me—could stay, if they
wanted.”

“
Elena may have been the
one to bring you back here even though we should have left you out
in the cold, but now she’s dead,” said Corva. “She had a lot more
faith in human nature than I do. Why are you so adamant about
helping us?”

Colton looked at Haven, then quickly
away. “Bernam has to be stopped before anyone else is hurt. If
there’s even a chance that he can make himself stronger than he
already is, we have to stop him before it’s too late.”

“
We know about your
mother. Revenge can be lethal for both sides,” said Corva. “It
makes you reckless and puts everyone else in danger.”

“
We’re going,” said Haven,
looking around the circle. “With or without you.”

“
I’m going, too,” said
Dormer. He set down the chunk of machinery and crossed his arms. He
looked from Marius to Corva, daring them to argue.

“
No more waiting,” said
Haven. “No more hiding.”

“
Hiding is the only thing
that has kept us alive for so long,” said Corva.

Marius squeezed her hand and stood up.
“I will go. Otherwise you will all die, and Marius would be sadder
than he is now.” He puffed out his chest and nodded.

Corva looked up at him,
shocked. She sighed, then shook her head and stood up slowly. “I
still say it’s a bad idea, but if my husband is going along to keep
you alive, I have to go to keep
him
alive.”

“
You two are married?!”
said Colton.

“
Why look so surprised?”
asked Marius, genuinely hurt. “Marius not good enough for
beautiful, athletic woman?” He looked Corva up and down, then
glanced at his slightly-protruding gut and ran a hand over his
receding hairline. He grinned. “Point taken. Marius is very lucky
man!”

Despite his body losing the constant
battle with age, Haven could tell that at one point—probably long
ago, when he and Corva first met—Marius could have been considered
handsome.

He stepped over to lift Corva from the
ground but she held her hands up and stopped him.

“
Listen to me, all of
you,” she said. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to go about
this. One little mistake and we’re all dead.”

Micah, who had been listening intently
to the whole conversation, stood up next to Haven and gave Corva a
thumb’s up. He smiled broadly and pushed his glasses higher on the
bridge of his nose.

“
Oh, no,” said Corva.
“Absolutely not. You’re staying here. We need someone to get the
rooms ready for visitors in case any of us make it back from this
suicide mission alive.”

His shoulders sagged and he slumped
back down into his chair. He crossed his arms and
pouted.

“
That police cruiser we
drove back from Bozeman should get us there,” said Dormer. “And I
finished repairing the sedan.”

“
Okay, so we have
transportation,” said Corva. “But that still doesn’t get us into
the medical center. The entrance will be heavily
guarded.”

Colton stepped forward.

“
There’s another way,” he
said. “When Shelly took me—I mean, when one of
them
took me to the black building,
they pressed a button that had been installed in their car. A ramp
dropped down from the ground and led to a huge underground parking
structure. There were these tunnels that led off in every
direction. I bet you anything that one of them goes to the medical
center.”

“
That’s great,” said
Dormer, “but how do we get our hands on one of those
buttons?”

“
We draw them outside,”
said Haven.

Marius snapped his fingers. “Last time
they come swarming like bees for honey when we were there. They do
same thing this time, only we try not to crash all of the trucks,
yes?”

Haven nodded. “We save one to get us
into the parking structure.”

“
It makes sense that there
will be fewer guards underground,” said Dormer.

Corva looked at Colton. “How long
until Bernam uses his machine?”

Colton shrugged. “I’m not sure. I just
know that it’s ready.”

“
And it’s in the black
building?”

“
They just told me that
most of the place was off-limits. I was only allowed on a few
levels.”

Corva sighed. “It’s either there or at
Bernam’s medical facility. My bet is on the black building. I hate
to even think this, but we should split up after we’re in the
parking structure.”

“
I’m going for Bernam,”
said Colton quickly.

Corva nodded. “Marius and I will go as
well. Dormer, I know you want to find your brother. Can you watch
out for Haven?”

“
I can handle it,
yes.”

“
Good,” said Corva. “After
we clear out the entrance to the medical facility and grab one of
their trucks, I would be surprised if you had to deal with anything
more dangerous than a scalpel—but don’t get lazy.”

“
All those years in the
police force made you bossy,” said Dormer. He walked away from the
fire pit and opened the hood of the black sedan. Haven heard the
oil cap pop free.

“
Right,” said Marius with
a grin. “
Now
we
get the gun.”

35

C
olton stood atop a small sand dune, the wind whipping grainy
particles into his eyes. He blinked and rubbed at a piece of sand
stuck under an eyelid for the tenth time.

“
How long is this going to
take?” he asked.

“
Let Marius check,” said
Marius. He shifted the bulky automatic rifle slung over his
shoulder and looked at his wrist, pretending to read the time from
a nonexistent watch. “No idea.”

Corva smiled. She stood next to
Marius, anxiously watching the above-ground entrance to the medical
facility. Four heavily-modified black pickup trucks with extended
cabs were parked next to the small building.

Colton looked behind him. At the base
of the dune, Haven sat in the parked sedan with Dormer. The empty
police cruiser was a few feet away, pointed toward the faint dirt
road that had led them to the facility.

“
Let’s give another
‘hello’,” said Marius. He rested his open palm against the back of
Corva’s neck.

“
Just don’t waste it all
before we get inside,” she said.

“
Don’t worry. Marius has
plenty.”

Orange light flamed up from his
shoulder and cascaded down his arm like liquid. It flowed around
Corva’s neck like a thick necklace and moved over her arms to her
outstretched hands. The energy formed into a sphere the size of a
softball on each hand, then rocketed away, toward the
building.

Colton saw the two black streaks of
charred concrete on the roof of the facility from where Corva had
hit it the first time. Her second attempt hit the glass of the
front door dead center, shattering the panel into thousands of tiny
shards.

“
Bullseye!” said Marius.
He took his hand from Corva’s neck and the orange flames flickered
and died. “Now they will swarm.”

A minute later, a dozen men in black
military uniforms ran out of the building, each one carrying a
rifle. They hurried to the trucks and climbed inside, some of them
pushing the others out of the way for a chance to drive.

“
It’s like watching dogs
fight over the last chicken bone,” said Corva.

Marius barked laughter and Colton
couldn’t help but smile.

He had been feeling sick ever since
his mother had given him her ability. It still moved inside him
like a foreign presence, never quite settling down into that
comfortable spot he had known before Bernam had taken it from him
in the first place.

His stomach growled loudly—in the
excitement of leaving The Dome, he had also forgotten to
eat.

Colton felt a slight pull in the
direction of the police cruiser—it was like a giant, invisible hand
that tugged him toward the car. He looked down at Haven and saw
that she was staring up at him. She turned away quickly and the
pulling sensation disappeared.