I glance around the corner ahead of me, seeing a man with a gun and his hand against his lips. He coughs again and leans into the wall. I tuck the blade behind my back and walk toward him slowly, not making any sounds. He yawns and closes his eyes for a second. I almost stop and wait for him to open his eyes, but the coward in me pushes on. I pull the blade softly, not making a sound, and swing it wide as I reach him. His eyes fly open, but it's too late. His jugular is hit. He drops his gun, but I catch it as he slumps along the wall, bleeding out. I sling the rifle over my shoulder and tiptoe further down the hall. I reach a door and look back at Bernie. He pulls out the screwdriver he had before and drops to his knees, fiddling with it like the other one. He scans and the door unlocks. I push it open, peeking around the corners for movement. The area is completely dark. I step in and the light flicks on above me.
"I hate this city."
Bernie closes the door, standing under the light with me. The hallway only goes one way, so I walk ahead with the lights announcing me to anyone who is ahead. I can't see into the black oblivion of the rest of the hallway.
My breath speeds up with my heartbeat. I don’t know that we're in the right place, or that we'll see anything that helps. I don’t know if that was the last time I'll ever see Will alive. I don’t know anything, but that my feet don’t want to take any more steps, and my heart is aching like there is no tomorrow. Granny used to say that, ‘like there is no tomorrow.’
I stop when the lights show a door. Bernie opens it and closes it, "No."
We move ahead, keeping a close eye on the darkness, and the fact it isn’t moving or making noises.
My body hair is standing on end. I have a disturbing feeling that the infected are going to pop out any second. They always manage to when it's dark and creepy and you're lost. They may be brain dead, but they have an uncanny ability to time their arrivals.
My hands start shaking as I round another corner. Bernie is opening every door he sees, but is still moving along behind me. I reach the end of the hallway and glance back at him. In the white light of the spotlight, I see the frustration on his face. I feel it too.
We're wasting time. Will could be dying upstairs, Anna could be getting discovered, or Jake and Sarah could be fighting for their lives at the house. He sighs and messes with the scanner on the door and opens it. There is a flight of stairs before us. The lights are the dim, orange, round ones—thank God.
Bernie smiles, "About time." He walks ahead into the dim light and looks down over the edge of the metal staircase. It looks flimsy, and when we step on it, our steps echo.
I shake my head, "I don’t like this."
He shakes his head, "Me either." He starts down the stairs, but I grab his arm, "Let me go first."
I slip past him, wiping sweat from my brow. My footsteps are slightly quieter than his on the metal stairs. I walk toe first, looking down over the edge the entire time.
A red light starts to flash above our heads when we're halfway down. I look back at Bernie, "We've been discovered."
He frowns, "How do you know?"
I point at the flashing light, "Same alarm as the breeder farms."
He shrugs, "That goes off all the time. Random things make it go off."
I shake my head, "Not when I'm around; it's always me." I start to run down the stairs, wishing Leo was with me. His senses don’t get messed up by the buildings, he's a wolf through and through. I'm only a wolf in the woods. My eyes and senses are distracted by the building closing me in.
When I get to the bottom of the stairs, I see a panel and steam just like the boiler room at the farms. My belly starts to ache. I lift the rifle, looking around the room. Pipes and bits of machinery make up the room. The walls are dank with sweat from whatever these things are and the heat they're making.
Bernie walks to the panel, lifting a screen and turning something on. The light from it makes a new brightness in the orange glow and the flashing red lights. I think I might go crazy waiting for the dart gun or the real gun to hit me. I know it's an ambush; it feels like the one set for me with Marshall.
Bernie starts typing fast.
"Jesus. This thing is legit. It's old as hell, but it's legit."
I glance back at him, "How long?"
He shakes his head, "I just need to break the codes and launch it."
I sigh, "How long, Bern?"
"Ten minutes, maybe."
I sigh, "Shit." Ten minutes will feel like forever.
His fingers fly across the clunky keyboard. He wipes away sweat, almost in sync with me. The room feels like a steam bath like the one I went to with Granny. We were staying in a hotel in Vegas once. Granny wanted to go there so bad and Lenny said no, so she waited until he was gone on one of his trips and took me then. Just like she let me use her ereader, got me an Xbox, and let me play on her laptop, she let me be a normal kid when Lenny wasn't there. Looking at the clunky, old laptop I barely recall how to use it.
Bernie shakes his head, "I can't believe they put this here. I can't believe I never knew."
"Why did they?"
He shrugs, "Not a clue. Must be the fail safe, in case the wrong people get control again, or if another country comes to invade, I guess. We did this to every other country, so the threat of them coming for us was never a real one."
I scowl, "You did what?"
He gives me a blank stare, "We launched HEMP's over everyone. We killed the power grids in every country but ours."
I shake my head, "What about the cities? Will said that the other cities were like this one. Every continent had cities, there were ten or something."
He shakes his head too, "No. We wanted to end world wars and pollution, and we did. We were scared they would launch these over us, so we removed all threats."
I feel weird about the fact he knew they did this to other places, "Is this something you had planned to maybe do to the United States?"
He shakes his head, "No. I didn’t even know there was a contingency plan in place here. It makes me uncomfortable to know they had one for the breeder farms. It means they have fully lost control of the virus, with no possibility of getting it back."
The talk of the infected, combined with the flashing red lights, makes me considerably more uncomfortable. "Do you think the newer breeder babies are really immune?"
He shakes his head, "I don’t know what to think. I'm not a virologist. I'm a tech nerd…"
A noise cuts him off. We both freeze, except for his fingers. They continue to type. I scan the top of the stairs as I hear another noise.
"Bernard? Really?"
I know the voice instantly, as the face I barely recall hovers over the railing. "And you must be Emma. You look so much like her, it's frightening."
My stomach drops.
Bernie's fingers don’t stop but he speaks softly, "Michael, meet your daughter."
He laughs and shakes his head. He looks nearly identical to my father, but older and more tired. His eyes gleam, "You've been causing me some serious issues."
He starts down the next flight of stairs. I walk up them, glancing back at Bernie, "Don’t stop."
He nods, wiping more sweat from his brow.
I take the stairs two at a time. Michael stops walking, pausing and listening, "Bernard, stop that. You'll never break the code on that one."
I round the corner to the next flight but stop; he's there in all his glory. I've made him into a huge monster, but I see he's no larger than any other man I've killed with my bare hands.
He smirks at me, "You must have so many questions."
I watch his eyes, making certain I can see the plotting behind them. He takes a step towards me. I don’t move but his steps are timid. He's scared of me. He knows what I'm capable of.
"Emma, you were one of the first. We had twenty women come in, six of the babies died. The mothers of the ones who lived got very sick. The babies are too strong of a parasite and the immune systems we gave them were unstoppable. You could inject HIV into a Gen child and they will kill the disease. Your bodies actually destroy cancer cells when they try to form inside of you. I can inject your blood into people and it will fight disease and infection."
I hardly listen to him. I listen for the fingers typing and watch for the movement in his eyes.
"You are magnificent. God himself would bow before what I have created."
He puts a hand out for me to take, "I can show you the others like you. You can teach them how to control what they are and how to manage their moods and tempers. I know you can do it. The ones from the beginning are the special ones. We made the rest from you, from your DNA." He starts to laugh maniacally, like a cartoon character. I hear a gunshot and look over the edge at Bernie slumping over the keyboard. A man behind him with a gun pointed at his back looks up at me.
His eyes are so busy searching mine for the despair I know is there, that he misses the fingers reaching for the keyboard. He misses the determination in Bernie and assumes he's dead. But I know Bernie. I know his goal in life is to stop this. I only let my peripheral gaze see the hand press the last buttons, almost silently. I deadlock his gaze to mine as Bernie's fingers flutter over the keyboard. He presses the last buttons and the red flashes become sounds. The man's gun goes off again, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever Bernie did, it's done. I look up at Michael's face. His cocky smile fades. He rushes past me to the basement floor shouting, "STOP IT!"
The man dives for the keyboard but the beeping alarm and the flashing lights don’t end.
Tears threaten my vision. I see a countdown on the screen. The numbers look like it might be a minute. I break into a run, a sprint. My lungs are screaming for air in the dank room as they mix with a panic attack, and the possibility that I won't make it. I have a new plan, but I don’t know if it's enough. I run through the door to the hallway and sprint harder. The door to the far hallway is ajar with a boot. In the dim, orange light, I can see it's from the dead man on the floor. I snatch his pass and run for the far side of the dank corridor.
I don’t hear anything but my heartbeat.
She can't lose Bernie and Will. I can't do that to her. I run harder, getting back into the other building. The stairs and the passes can't go fast enough. My legs burn as I reach the lab where I know Will is.
I fling open the door and run across the floor. The lights can barely keep up with me but as I near the door to his room, I see the man with the gray beard. He points a gun at me, "Where is Bernie?"
I shake my head, sniffling almost and heaving for air, "He's dead. Michael killed him." I'm hoping he's on our side.
He nods, keeping the gun on me, "Good news."
I see his finger tense to pull the trigger, but there is a sparking noise and the lights cut out. We stand in the darkness for a second before I see the spark of light from the gun. I've moved but he doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know I can move silently. He doesn’t know I can see in the dark better than he can. When my hand grabs his forehead and my knife slices across his throat, he doesn’t know his death is seconds away.
I hold him tight, waiting for him to move his hands and fire the gun, but he drops to the floor. I feel around in the dark for his gun and take it from his still-warm, gripping hand. For whatever reason, that bothers me. I turn and run for the door. I have to feel in the dark for the handle. The scanner doesn’t work and the door won't open.
Frustrated, defeat starts to build but I refuse. The tears have started, but through them I feel for the place where the door clicks shut. I place the barrel of the gun on that spot and angle my body away from it. I fire but the door still won't open. I kick at it but it won't open. I drop to my knees, screaming and pounding on it. He's in there dying alone; the life support has cut off. I cut the power with Bernie and he's in there without me. He's dying without me. Bernie is face down in the basement with my screaming father, and I'm stuck in the lab with a dead man and my heart breaking.
I wipe my face and stand, turning the handle and kicking again. I hear the door make a noise and do it again. It makes another noise. My leg feels like it might break, but I kick once more, snapping something inside of the door. It flies open. I rush in, hands out.
I can't feel anything and I'm scared they took him away. The tracer won't work to find him. They've moved him and I've lost him.
"Will, baby you here? Will?"
I trip and fly across the room. My hands land on the edge of the bed as I fall. I grip it, scrambling to my feet and slapping down on him the entire way. His body is there. I think it's him. I run my hands up his bare chest to the bandage; it's him. I drag my hands along his face to where the tube is in his nose and the mask is on his face.
He's warm but the machines aren’t moving. I pull the mask off slowly, trying not to shake when I move my fingertips. I flip the nose thing out of his nostrils. His face is slack. I kiss his cheek, whispering, "Baby, don’t leave me. Please, Will. Don’t leave me."
I don’t know, nor care, where Michael is. I don’t know if I will make it out of the city, or if anything is ever going to be okay in this world with nothing. All I need to know is how to save him. I kiss his face again and part his lips. I breathe into his mouth. I remember first air. Mouth to mouth was not as important as chest compressions. I remember that. I feel for his heart and push down but the bed is too soft, it doesn’t compress.