Emerge (12 page)

I snuck off into the night. Since I suffered from chronic insomnia, my eyes had gotten pretty good at adjusting to a soft moonlight, and I’d gotten pretty good at recognizing and reacting to the sounds of night. Not much spooked me anymore.

Of course, the streets were quiet. The settlement was under lockdown. Few people inside our little town would be bold enough to go against its mandatory quarantine. In doing so, they would not only risk contracting Bad Sam; if they were caught, they might be cast out of our community forever.

When I reached the front gate, a figure appeared in front of the small door to the right, just like clockwork.

“Who’s there? Stop, or I will have great pleasure in shooting you in your tracks.”

“Zara, it’s me, Cricket.”

“What the hell, Cricket? Do you not understand what mandatory quarantine means?”

“I don’t understand mandatory anything.” I walked closer. “I need your help.”

“Why would I help you? And you can stop right there. How do I know you don’t have Bad Sam?”

“To answer your first question, you’ll help me because you’ll get to test your bomb-building skills. And as for your second question? Because I don’t. Feel free to take my temperature. But if you’re worried about it, you can always stay three feet away from me at all times.”

Zara smiled, wiggling her fingers together. As I’d expected, the prospect of bombing something had overcome all other concerns, including her dislike for me.
 

“What are we blowing up?” she asked eagerly.

~~~~~

Zara and I wore gas masks and three layers of gloves as we placed the live Samael Strain into the box. Zara twisted and cut various different colored wires every which way. Then she added an additional container into the box.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“
That
is what will blow the lid off of the box and break the containers of virus. And
this
,” she said, pointing to what looked like a tiny digital clock, “is the timer. It’ll be synchronized with this larger timer.” Zara handed me a slightly larger digital clock. “Now—you said you wanted to set up a way to deactivate it remotely?”

“Yeah.”
 

“Then you’d better give me your PulsePoint. I assume you still have it?”

I took a step back, stunned. “How do you—? How do you know I—?” I stammered. “How do you know about the PulsePoint?”

Zara smiled, but didn’t answer. She turned and began messing with an old computer.

“Zara, I know you and I have never been close, but—”

She raised her brows. “Don’t get sentimental on me.”

“I’m not. But I
am
wondering who the hell you are, and where did you come from. How do you even know what the PulsePoint is—much less know that I might have one?”

Zara grinned widely then; clearly she had been keeping a huge secret from me all these years, and just as clearly, she was quite pleased with herself for having done so. “Let’s just say that although I wasn’t lucky enough to have
the president of New Caelum
help me flee the city, I
did
manage to escape before they sealed up the doors to the outside.”

“What? How did I not know this?”

“You never asked.”

“And you’ve known who I was all this time?”

“You mean, did I know that you were Christina Black, survivor of Bad Sam? Yeah, I knew. Why?” she asked coyly. “Was that supposed to be a secret?” Zara was enjoying this far too much for my liking.

“Please tell me you said nothing to anyone.” I’m sure my mouth hung wide open as I stared at this girl I barely knew—this girl I’d chosen not to know.

Zara shrugged. “It wasn’t my story to tell.”

I suddenly had a newfound respect for the girl in front of me. She could easily have used that knowledge against me.

“Now, hand me your PulsePoint.” I reached into my bag and pulled out the handheld machine. “You can’t turn it on, though. They’ll be able to—”

“Track you, I know, I know,” she interrupted, taking the PulsePoint from my hands. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

I watched as she removed some kind of small device from the old computer and plugged it into a socket in the side of my PulsePoint. “And that’s it. Everything is set up to synchronize as soon as the timer on the Bad Sam bomb is activated. When that timer runs out, the bomb will release Bad Sam into the air, and your PulsePoint will release a computer virus into New Caelum’s system that will shut down their air filtration system.”

“A virus? I thought we would just—I don’t know, blow up the filtration system.”

“That would be way more fun, but it’s not so simple. The system is too widespread; you’d never get to it all. But this’ll take the whole thing down. The bomb releases the virus into the air, the computer virus takes out the filtration system, and the whole city is flooded in minutes. You know,” she said, cocking her head to the side, “you’re lucky we’re such good friends.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. We were anything but “friends,” but I
was
lucky to have Zara on my side. What she’d designed was so much more sophisticated than anything I’d imagined.
 

“Thank you, Zara,” I said sincerely. “You’re… amazing.”

For a moment, Zara looked genuinely touched. But she quickly got her old swagger back. “So listen,” she explained, “assuming you don’t
actually
want to infect a hundred thousand people with Bad Sam, you
have
to deactivate the virus before the timer runs out. The deactivation option will be in the control menu. Because the timer is attached to
your
PulsePoint, only you can stop it.”

“But what about the bomb? How do I deactivate that?”

“No need, really. As long as the air filtration system is working, that’ll prevent the virus from infecting anyone.” She must have seen the shocked look on my face, because she added, “Or you could just tell them where the bomb is and let them toss it in the incinerator.”

I raised a hand and drilled my fingers into my chest, massaging the area over my rapidly beating heart. “What if I find I need more time? Can I reset it?”

“Cricket, you came to me because you didn’t want to get trapped inside New Caelum. You said this is your insurance policy to make sure you can get back out, right? So no resets—no stalling. If those people want to live, they have to let you go. Only then will you disengage the timer. This
is
what you said you wanted.”

She was right. I’d asked for a 96-hour timer. Four days. From what West had told me, and from what I knew about the course of the virus, that was about how long Willow had left to live. I would do what I could to help her—I would give them Caine’s research and my antibodies—and then I would get out. There was no point in staying longer.
 

Zara continued. “I’ll plant the bomb tomorrow. Hopefully before you’ve even entered the city.”

I shook my head. “What? No way. You’re not planting this. I’ll get it in there.”

Zara sat back in her chair. “Oh yeah? You really think Westlin Layne is going to help you plant a weapon of mass destruction inside his own city?”

I squeezed the bridge of my nose. “No, you’re right. What am I thinking? This whole idea was crazy. I can’t go through with this.”

“What? Yes you can. That’s not what I meant. Getting leverage over them was a great idea; you just need help to pull it off. You don’t want to get trapped inside that city, Cricket. Do you know what they’ll do to you when they discover that you are, in fact, the sole survivor of Bad Sam?” Just in case I was living in denial, she went ahead and told me. “They will hook you up to an IV and drain you of your blood.”

“I know. I know that. You’re right. This is the only way I can be sure to ever come back out of New Caelum.” And I would never let that bomb detonate. No matter what. I wasn’t capable of such destruction.
 

I just needed to make the people inside believe that I was.

“So we agree that I’ll plant the bomb?” Zara said.

“Fine,” I agreed. “How do you know so much, anyway? And how do you know all these systems? You couldn’t have been much older than me when you left, and you weren’t there for very long.”

“I’m a few years older than you. And my parents were on the original team who designed the PulsePoints and the computer network that runs everything inside New Caelum. I knew my way around those systems before they even existed.”

“What happened to your parents? Are they still inside?”

“They’re dead.”

~~~~~

The plan seemed cruel, but as long as no one tried to hold me hostage against my will, they’d have nothing to worry about. And the threat of spreading the virus throughout New Caelum was an incredibly powerful insurance policy if things went wrong.

On my way back to West, I pulled the PulsePoint from my pocket. Staring at it, I thought of the many times I’d wanted to turn the device on and see the picture of West and me from the day before I got sick—the day before everything changed. That was the day West took me to the roof above the president’s wing.

The day he kissed me. We were only kids. But I felt very grown up that day. And like nothing bad would happen to me ever again as long as West was in my world. God had taken my parents, but He had given me West.

That’s what people had told me… that God sometimes took the good ones to be angels in His kingdom. Of course, the problem with that was that my parents weren’t dead—at least, not that anyone knew. God hadn’t taken my parents to be angels to look over me; my parents had been cast out by the people of New Caelum, forever shut off from their home—and from me.
 

I had kept the PulsePoint with me all these years. I never thought I would have a reason to use it, but I had kept it anyway, knowing it was my link back to West. And it was my link to the city I had tried but failed to leave behind.

Now West was here, and the feelings I’d had for him way back then and the feelings I’d imagined over the last six years were real again—maybe even
more
real now that we were adults. But they couldn’t be. I couldn’t let the feelings I’d had as a child resurface now. We weren’t children anymore. My mission was to help Willow and then get out. Give the city a way to cure the virus, so they wouldn’t have a reason to exit the cocoon they’d built for themselves. And so I could exit with a cure of my own.

~~~~~

As soon as I reached the estate, I knew that something felt off. The sounds of the area were different—more awake than they should have been at that hour. I scanned the area, but saw no signs of anyone following me.

The sky was just starting to show glimmers of light on the horizon. “West,” I whispered. He was probably awake and thought I had left. Not to mention he wouldn’t know his way out of the estate without falling through some of the traps set by Mother Nature during six years of neglect.

I picked up my pace. Down the stone steps, through different overgrown paths, always changing the routes I took to get to my various hiding places.

When I arrived at the balcony, my heart plummeted. West was gone.

I let out a breath, staring at the blankets left beside the fire. Only embers were left now. I fell to my knees. West was used to Christina leaving him. Why should Cricket be any different?

Now what? I buried my face in my hands and massaged my forehead with my fingers, thinking. Could I enter New Caelum without West? Why not? It wasn’t like I had given him any reason to protect me inside the city. I would have been on my own anyway, with or without him. So if I didn’t need his help, why did his disappearance bother me so much?
 

Because I would miss him. I had longed for my best friend over the years, and seeing him now…
 

It had made me feel things I never thought I’d get the chance to feel again in this lifetime.

When I woke, Cricket was gone. I had obviously misjudged her. I had been sure she was planning to willingly help me; she wanted a cure to Bad Sam as much as I did.

I tracked her steps all the way back to the settlement gate. There I found her speaking with the same ill-tempered girl I’d seen her fight with the first day I arrived here. Just as I arrived, the two of them turned and disappeared inside the settlement. I waited, not knowing what else to do. To say I was relieved when she reappeared would have been an understatement, and when she started heading back toward the Biltmore, I breathed a lot more easily.

At one point, she stopped and pulled the PulsePoint from her back pocket; she stared at it like she might turn it on. But Christina’s PulsePoint would only work for Christina, I reminded myself. There was no way it could work for Cricket. Not even the best computer geeks could hack that device.
 

So why did she carry it around with her? Not to mention that if she
did
turn it on, New Caelum would immediately know where she was. Or rather, they’d know where Christina’s PulsePoint was. And they would undoubtedly send someone after it, assuming that Christina was the one operating it.

I’d rather that didn’t happen. Though we were headed for the city, anyway, I wanted to be in control of when we arrived and how we approached them, not ambushed by another search party.

Cricket replaced the PulsePoint inside her back pocket and took off toward the estate again. I followed, at a discreet distance, as she went all the way back to the balcony. Still hoping to gather more information about what she was up to, I hung back in the shadows and watched.

To my surprise, she fell to her knees by the cooling embers of the fire and buried her face in her hands.
 

Why? I thought she had deserted me, but it seemed she was upset that I was gone. Why would Cricket react that way? I had tasered her, tied her up, and questioned her unkindly about someone she was under no obligation to hand over to me. She had protected Christina, and a part of me admired her for that.

I thought about how Cricket had shown up and offered to help Key, even when Key clearly had a fever that could have been—and, we now knew, was—Bad Sam. Why would she have done that? Why would she have risked exposure, unless—did she already know she was immune? She hadn’t mentioned it, though, and she
had
suited up any time she’d entered the quarantine chambers.