The Worlds We Make (18 page)

Just after the second guard change, the hall lights dimmed even more. Sleep seemed like a lost cause. My legs were sore against the hard concrete, and my arms still throbbed from being cuffed. My stomach was a knot of hunger. But at some point exhaustion overwhelmed my anxious thoughts and pulled me under. I woke with a start to the sound of shoes scraping over the floor just outside the cell.

Two figures had come to a halt by the cell door. I looked up blearily and snapped fully awake. One of them was Drew.

My pulse leapt, but I forced myself to gaze aimlessly at the wall where Anika was hunched in sleep, as if I didn’t care what was happening outside. I watched them from the corner of my eyes. My brother was facing the Warden who’d come in with him, a stocky guy with freckles who looked to be about the same age as Drew. In the neighboring cell, Leo stirred.

“I’ll be fine,” Drew said, touching the other guy’s arm. “Give me five minutes.”

The guy frowned, but nodded before he headed out. I heard him stop beyond the doorway and murmur a few words to someone there. Drew turned toward the cell. I pulled myself to my feet in front of him. My head swam.

It had been four months since I’d last talked to Drew face-to-face. Looking at him, I could almost believe it’d been four years. He’d turned nineteen earlier this month, but the weariness in his eyes made him look much older. He was thinner too. The sweater he wore hung loosely off his narrow shoulders, and his cheekbones jutted from his lean face. His light brown skin had turned sallow.

“You almost made it, Kaelyn,” he murmured. “You were so
close
. I did everything I could.”

Any doubts I might have had about his allegiances vanished. I ached to hug him through the bars. I’d gone without my real family for so long—it felt like a miracle having him there, alive if not perfectly well. But the handcuffs held me back. And if we had only five minutes, there wasn’t time for a real reunion.

“Can you get us out?” I asked under my breath.

“Not right now,” he said, stepping closer to the bars and keeping his voice low, “but I’ll try. It’s going to be complicated. I’ve got a lot of logistics to figure out.”

“We don’t have much time. The vaccine samples—I’m not sure how long they’ll stay cool enough, where I left them.”

He nodded. “I wondered about that.”

“And Michael…” I trailed off, not finding the words to express how frightened I was under the stoic front I was trying to maintain.

“I have to figure things out,” Drew repeated. “It’s more than just getting you out of this room. You’ll need a car to get away in. And something to stop anyone else from following you right away. I think I can make it happen, but it’ll take some planning.”

I hadn’t even thought that far. If he got us a car, we could drive back to the house, pick up the vaccine, and head to Atlanta in a matter of hours.

Atlanta, where Michael probably still had Wardens posted around the CDC.

“Our radio transceiver,” I said. “The people who brought us here took it. We’ll need a way to reach our contact at the CDC. She was going to tell us how to get to them safely, but she didn’t have the chance.”

“That won’t be too hard.” He smiled crookedly. “I’m kind of the main radio guy around here. It’s because I’d shown off my tech skills that Michael approved me coming down, when he heard you were heading this way and called for more support. I just wish I could have stopped this from happening at all.”

He fell silent, and for a moment, all we could do was stare at each other. He was really here. I’d known he was alive from the first time we’d talked over the radio, but it hadn’t seemed completely real until right now.

“Drew,” I said, “you’ll come with us, won’t you? If we can make it to the CDC, we’ll be protected there.”

Drew hesitated, and his gaze darted toward the doorway. Toward the freckled guy who was making the other guard chuckle at some joke. My brother’s expression was so familiar, and yet it took me a second to place where I’d seen it before. On Justin’s face, and Tobias’s, when they looked at Anika.

On Leo’s, sometimes, when he looked at me.

“Oh,” I said.

A flush spread across his face. “Zack’s a good guy,” he said. “He wouldn’t be with the Wardens if Michael hadn’t ‘conscripted’ his mom—she’s a doctor. He transferred down here so we could stay together. He even lied for me to get me in here.”

“Does he know what you’re really talking to me about?”

“No.”

“So you’re picking them,” I said, straining to stay quiet. “You’re sticking with Michael and the Wardens instead of coming with me? You won’t need them anymore, Drew. Once the CDC is making the vaccine, whatever power Michael has won’t matter so much.” I could almost understand why Drew had joined up with them to begin with, how it had helped him survive and keep track of what was going on, but how could he stay now?

“He’s not going to give up that easily,” Drew said. “What if you need my help here again? And I can’t just run off on Zack, Kae. I don’t know if I could have kept going this long if I hadn’t had someone who makes me feel the way he does.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I remembered with painful clarity how one fond look from Gav had been able to buoy me through an entire horrible day.

“Okay,” I said. “I—I’m glad you found someone.”

The someone in question peered around the doorway, his eyebrows raised. When Drew held up a finger, Zack ducked back out.

“I’ve got to get going,” Drew said. “But listen. Keeping you, and Dad’s vaccine, safe—that’s still my first priority. That’s why I lied to Zack, even though I think he’d understand. That’s why I’m going to do everything I can to get all of you out and on the road again. I swear.”

“Thank you,” I said, and then, before I knew the words were coming, “I missed you.”

“Same here.” He reached between the bars to quickly squeeze my hand. “Dad would be proud, you know.”

He was just stepping away when brisk footsteps echoed down the hall outside. Drew stiffened, and then strode toward the doorway. He was almost there when he had to dodge to the side to make way, as the last person I wanted to see swept into the room.

Nathan paused, slicking back a strand of his dark hair. He considered Drew and then us prisoners. I edged backward, hugging myself as if Drew had been harassing me rather than reassuring me. It was easy to pretend. Nathan’s pointed gaze was already making me feel queasy.

In the other cell, Leo sat up. I wondered how much of my hushed conversation with Drew he’d heard.

“This is quite the party,” Nathan said, his glib voice bouncing around the small room. Anika jerked awake, and Justin raised his head, rubbing his eyes. But Nathan turned back to Drew.

“What are
you
doing here?”

Drew shrugged. “I had an idea I thought might get them to fess up. It didn’t work.” He shot us a feigned glare.

“Really?” Nathan said. I shrank farther into the shadows at the back of the cell, hoping in the dim light he wouldn’t notice the family resemblance between Drew and me. We were hardly twins, but side by side, it might be noticeable.

Thankfully, it appeared Nathan had other things on his mind. “Trying to impress the boss, or figured you’d grab the vaccine for yourself?” he went on. “I’m not sure which is more stupid.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Drew said. “Like I said, it didn’t work.”

“I’m not surprised,” Nathan said. “You’re never going to
talk
anything out of them. Maybe Michael’s too much of a bleeding heart to see it, but it’s going to take a few cuts and jabs to open them up, so to speak.”

He strode closer to the cells, his smirk so wide it made the hairs on my arms rise. I clamped my mouth shut, suspecting any protest would only encourage him.

Unfortunately, not all of us had a fully developed sense of self-preservation. “I’ve been shot, and that didn’t break me,” Justin retorted. He clambered to his feet near the cell door.

“You heard Michael,” Drew said to Nathan with an edge in his tone. “No torture. Not yet, anyway. You’re planning to go against his direct orders, and you call
me
stupid?”

“If I bring in the vaccine, Michael’s not going to care how I got it.” Nathan clapped his hands together. “I think I’ll start with that one,” he said, nodding to Justin. “He’ll be fun. Where are the keys?”

“I have them.” The guard Zack had been talking to entered the room with his burly arms crossed over his chest and Zack close behind him. The older man didn’t bother to hide the disapproval in his frown. When Nathan held out a hand, he shook his head.

“I follow Michael’s orders.”

“And you really think they’re good ones?” Nathan sneered. “We’re babying these vermin. Give them one good ass-kicking, and you know they’d give it all up. Watch.”

With no other warning, he sidestepped and snatched Justin’s wrist through the bars. Justin jerked away, not fast enough. With a twist of his hand, Nathan flipped Justin’s arm upside down and wrenched it forward, so sharply Justin gave a pained gasp. I lunged toward them before I could catch myself, as if I could do anything to help with the cell wall between us. Gripping the bars, I braced myself for the sound of bone cracking.

“Hands off!” the guard hollered. When Nathan didn’t immediately let go, he hauled back and slammed his fist into the younger man’s face. Nathan staggered against the cell door, releasing Justin’s arm to cup his wounded cheek. Justin lurched backward, his face white and his jaw clenched tight. Then he sprang at Nathan. At the same moment, Nathan swiveled away from the cell, whipping a flip-blade knife from his suit jacket pocket.

“I could kill you,” Nathan snarled at the guard. In that instant, the rabid fury in his eyes reminded me of the bear chasing Leo and the boy, and I believed he would. But as Zack and Drew flanked the guard, that fury faded into hostile disdain. Nathan flicked the blade back into its handle.

“You’re going to regret doing that,” he said, and then glanced at us. “And I’ll be back, with Michael’s permission or the keys. So give it a little thought, whether maybe you’d like to spill your secrets without the pain first.”

He shot one last glower at the guard and stalked out of the room.

The guard was scowling. “Can’t wait for the day he pushes too far and Michael puts a bullet in his brain, like the last dozen guys who got too full of themselves,” he muttered as soon as Nathan was out of earshot.

“Don’t think I protected you because I like you,” he added, toward us. “If Michael gives him the okay, you’re all Nate’s.”

He headed back into the hall, with Zack trailing behind. Drew hesitated, looking as if he wanted to say something comforting. But I was pretty sure there was nothing comforting that could be said. He bobbed his head to me, and then the four of us were alone again in the darkened prison room.

Through the rest of the night, every time my mind started to drift, some sound would yank me back into consciousness, my pulse tripping with the certainty that Nathan had returned with his knife and a key. But it wasn’t until a while after the hall lights had brightened for the morning that more visitors arrived.

A guy I didn’t recognize came in just long enough to toss a box of crackers into my and Anika’s cell. They were crumbly and stale, but I gulped down my share so quickly I hardly tasted them. It was only a couple handfuls, not nearly enough to dull my hunger.

I had just passed the last of the water over to the guys when Chay strode in with Connor lurking behind him. “You,” Chay said, pointing at Leo. “You’re first.”

“First for what?” Justin demanded as one of our guards unlocked the cell door. Chay ignored him.

The second he stepped into the cell, Justin took a swing at him. “No!” I said. Chay caught Justin’s fist easily and shoved his arm against the bars, blocking Justin’s legs with one of his own at the same time. Justin winced. His wrist was mottled with purple splotches where Nathan had grabbed him yesterday.

“Cuff his hands behind his back again,” Chay said to Connor, jerking his head toward Leo. “I don’t want any more of this clowning around.”

“Asshole,” Justin muttered. Leo bowed his head as Connor escorted him out, looking as though he was biting back harsh words of his own. Chay released Justin and followed.

I stepped closer to the door, watching them prod Leo into the hall and then off to the right. There was nothing we could do. I tugged at my cuffs again, as if they might have gotten looser overnight, and the metal pinched my wrist. The pain was only a slight distraction from the fear stabbing through me.

“Sorry,” Justin said to my surprise, his voice hollow. “That was dumb. Last night too.” He leaned his head against the bars. “‘Pick your battles,’ my dad used to say. I know I probably couldn’t take that guy even if I had both my hands. I just really, really want to.”

“Me too,” I said. “But if we get out of here, I don’t think it’s going to be by fighting. I don’t want you ending up more injured, okay?” We needed him able to walk, able to run, if Drew could pull off whatever he was working out.

“Yeah,” Justin said. He twisted his own cuffs, looking miserable. If it had driven him around the bend having to sit in the trailer those three days, I couldn’t imagine how crazy this imprisonment was making him. But then he added, quietly, “I won’t go at them again. Not unless it’s really going to help us.”

Anika was staring off toward the doorway where Leo had vanished. “What do you think they’re going to do to him?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But whatever it is, the best thing
we
can do is say nothing.”

Her gaze flickered back and forth between me and the guards standing beyond the doorway. Her voice dipped to a murmur. “That guy yesterday. You knew him.”

So she’d noticed that last exchange between Drew and me. My shoulders tensed. I’d never mentioned my brother’s involvement with the Wardens to her; the last time we’d spoken to him, she hadn’t joined up with us yet. Now it was dangerous information.

“You said you had—” she started, and I cut her off. I didn’t know how carefully the guards were listening.

“Please don’t say anything about that, either.”

Anika lowered her eyes. “Okay,” she said. And then, “I
hate
this.”

It didn’t feel like much time passed before they came back, without Leo, and dragged Justin out. Anika sat silently against the wall, but the color had drained from her face.

“They’re trying to freak us out,” I said. “They could just be sticking them in some other room and leaving them there, for all we know.”

But it was working. I was freaked out. Maybe they weren’t hurting Leo and Justin, but probably they were. How far would Michael take it, at the start?

Not too far
, I pleaded inwardly.
Let them be okay.

When Chay and Connor came for the third time and marched Anika out without a word, a new thought made my heart seem to sink down to the soles of my feet.

What if Nathan was involved in this? Had he talked Michael into going along with his brand of torture after all? I’d have thought he’d be in here smirking at us as we were led to our doom, but maybe he was enjoying keeping us in suspense.

I had to be prepared for anything. Brace myself for the worse I could imagine.

I waited for a long time alone in my cell. Much longer than it had taken Chay and Connor to come back before. After a while, I forced myself to sit down and focused on just breathing. None of the others could give away where the vaccine was hidden, because none of the others had any idea. And if they’d given away
that
, surely someone would have come for me.

So Michael was still trying to convince them to talk. Not exactly reassuring.

When Chay finally appeared in the doorway once more, I was almost relieved, for about a split second before fear choked me. He recuffed my hands behind me, and he and Connor ushered me out of the jail room.

In the hall, we turned left instead of right. I tried to glance behind me, toward the direction they’d taken the others in, but Connor swatted my head.

“Just walk,” Chay growled.

They brought me up to a side door that led into a paved yard beside the main building. One of the police cars was waiting by the curb. Michael leaned against the hood, his eyes hidden behind bulky sunglasses. The panes reflected the pasty blue sky.

He straightened up as Chay prodded me over. The holster that held his revolver shifted against his hip.

“Uncuff her,” he said. “I’ll take the handcuffs and the key.”

If Chay thought there was anything unusual about his boss’s request, he didn’t show it. With a click, the pressure around my wrists fell away. Michael opened the front passenger door of the car. I stared at him.

“Get in,” he said tersely.

Was he taking me back to the house where Chay had caught us? Maybe one of the others had let it slip that the vaccine had to be there. I hesitated, but at the tightening of his mouth I ducked into the car. The inside smelled faintly of cigarette smoke.

“I’ll radio when I need you again,” Michael told Chay. He walked around the front of the car and got in beside me. I didn’t know where to look, so I studied my hands. The cuffs had rubbed my skin raw in patches around my left wrist, the one that had been restrained overnight. But the marks didn’t look half as bad as the ones Nathan had left on Justin.

“Where are my friends?” I asked.

“Where I want them to be,” Michael said. “Put your seat belt on.”

When I had, he leaned past me to grab a bandanna from the glove compartment. “Turn your head,” he said.

I stiffened. “Why?”

“Because I’m going to cover your eyes. Unless you’d rather ride in the trunk?”

I turned toward the window. He pulled the bandanna over my face and tied it behind my head. A sliver of light peeked around the edges, but otherwise I was blind.

“You uncuff me and then you blindfold me?” I said, not really expecting an answer.

“I don’t need you cuffed,” he said as he moved away. “When you’ve spent twenty-one years as a cop handling real criminals, you don’t feel too scared of one teenage girl. If you make the slightest move out of line, I
will
shoot you somewhere it’ll hurt very much. I figure you’d prefer to avoid that, and you’ll be more comfortable without the cuffs. I’m trying to be reasonable. But I can’t let you see where we’re going.” He paused. “Do you think I should put the cuffs back on?”

“No,” I said quickly. Even if I thought I could outmaneuver him, what would that accomplish? An accident in which I could be just as hurt as him? Getting myself stranded in the middle of nowhere with a wrecked car and nothing else?

“I am trying to be reasonable,” he said again, “so maybe you’ll do me the favor of being reasonable too.”

He started the engine, and the car rolled forward. I tried to relax into the seat, but the blackness before my eyes was unnerving. I flinched as we swayed around a curve I couldn’t have seen coming.

The rest of what Michael had said sank in as he drove. He’d been a police officer? One of the people who should have been protecting us?

My hands clenched in my lap. Obviously he’d given up that commitment the second things got bad. His comment about real criminals—what did he think
he
was now? What had his associates—Nathan, and Chay, and Marissa—been in their former lives? Probably not kindergarten teachers.

I couldn’t think of anything more unreasonable than what he’d ordered done in the last few months. Chasing down a group of teens, stalking them with the intent to kill. Looting all the hospitals and rounding up the surviving doctors, when it would have taken only one to maybe save Gav. Shooting Tobias, who still could have been cured, unarmed and alone in the woods. Chaining the rest of us in those cells.

Gav’s body wrapped in that pale blue sheet. The bruises on Leo’s cheek, Justin’s arm. What part of that was
reasonable
?

By the time the car eased to a stop and Michael jerked up the parking brake, I was seething under my terror.

“You can take off the blindfold,” Michael said. “We’re getting out now.”

I shoved the rough fabric away from my eyes. Michael had parked in a small lot outside a single-story building with walls of gray aluminum siding. There was nothing else around but patches of forest on either side.

Michael seemed to be waiting for me to move, so I stepped out onto the asphalt. He locked the doors after he’d followed and directed me toward the building.

“What are you going to do to me in there?” I asked, trying to sound defiant and not as panicked as I felt.

“I’m going to make you look at some things,” Michael said. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t know what to think of that. When he gestured again, I forced myself to start walking. At the building’s door, he pulled a key ring from his pocket. Inside, a flashlight sat on a small table at the far end of a hall. Michael picked it up, and unlocked the second door there. As it swung to the side, he flicked on the flashlight.

“I’ve outfitted this place with three generators,” he said. “Two for backup. And I’ve stockpiled enough fuel to keep them running for years. But I’m not wasting it on show-and-tell.”

I lingered in the front hall as he stepped farther inside. Part of me wanted to bolt. But bolt to where? He’d put a bullet in my leg before I made it two yards.

Cautiously, I approached the doorway. As my gaze followed the flashlight’s beam, my breath caught in my throat.

The room looked like Dad’s laboratory, expanded tenfold. Glassware and microscopes and dozens of machines I didn’t know the names for lined the counters. A shelving unit in the corner held rows of filtration masks and what looked like folded biohazard suits. Five industrial-sized fridges gleamed by the opposite wall.

“I started looking for a place to set this up as soon as I heard a vaccine prototype existed,” Michael said. “It’s been outfitted with the advice of my virologist and the two doctors with me who have experience with vaccine manufacturing. We just finished putting it in order two days ago. With this equipment, we’re capable of close to mass production. We have nine other doctors here to assist, and I can call down more from up north if necessary. The materials we need that have to be refrigerated, we’re holding at the training center until it’s time to use them.”

“Why are you showing me this?” I said, as if the sight hadn’t sent a shiver of excitement through me. I could picture scientists moving around this lab, processing vial after vial of the vaccine, until we had enough that the virus could never kill another person. It felt so real. So within reach.

“I want you to know that I’m not some goon who just hijacks anything that sounds valuable,” Michael said. “I want you to know that if the vaccine found its way to me, I’d have the means to make more—I might even have a better setup here than those cowards in the CDC do. It wouldn’t be in bad hands.”

I’d wondered if he’d planned to replicate the vaccine, but I’d never guessed he’d be this ambitious, that he could have pulled off an undertaking of this scale. And yet uneasiness was already trickling through my amazement.

“That depends on how you define ‘bad,’ doesn’t it?” I said. “What would you do with it, after you made more? What would people have to do
for
you to get it?”

He switched off the flashlight and nudged me back toward the hall. “People don’t value what they can get for free,” he said. “And they don’t respect the person handing it out, either.”

“So being respected is more important to you than saving lives,” I said. Now that the lab had vanished back into the darkness, the momentary excitement fell away in the wake of my anger.

“Keeping the vaccine out of my hands is more important to you than making sure
someone
is able to use it?” he retorted.

I swallowed. It could come to that, couldn’t it? Every day we resisted was another day’s chance the samples would be lost, or spoil.

“It’s not just up to me,” I said.