Emerge (8 page)

Dax scoffed behind me.

I nodded in understanding. “Key has a high fever. I don’t know what it is. Could be the flu. Their immune systems are most likely compromised from being locked up inside that airtight facility. I gave her fever-reducing meds, but that was hours ago.”

Caine turned to West and Ryder. “You two have been exposed to her. You’ll need to stay here at the hospital—but away from her.”

“Like hell we will,” Ryder said. “If you think I’m turning her over to you, you’re crazy.”

Caine stared at Ryder for a full ten seconds in silence. Then he pulled a weapon from behind his waistband and handed it to Dax. “Fine. Dax and Dylan will escort the three of you back to the entrance to the city.”

Dax cocked the gun and held it in the air, just looking for an excuse to use it.

I held up a hand, urging him to stand down. “Wait. Just stop.” I stepped up to West. “You don’t want this. Key will die if she has the virus. So will you if you get it.” I looked back and forth between West and Ryder. “And if my suspicions are correct, the virus is already in your city. They won’t take you back, which is probably why your PulsePoints stopped working. You’ve been cut off.”

West stared into my eyes. I wanted to turn away, but I didn’t dare.
 

Finally he turned to Ryder. “She’s right. We need their help. For Key’s sake, and for Willow’s.”

I gasped at the sound of his sister’s name. West lifted a brow; he heard me.

What’s wrong with Willow?
I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t. Did she have the Samael Strain?

Ryder let out a huge sigh. “Why should we believe that you guys can help us?”

Caine turned to me. I closed my eyes for a brief moment, then opened them and said, “Because if Bad Sam is back, I can produce Christina Black. That’s why you came, right?”

Ryder looked from me to West, who didn’t stop staring at me. “Fine. What do we need to do?”

“Dax,” Caine began. “You will return to the settlement and alert the town that we are in quarantine status until further notice. Everyone is to go into lockdown mode, and they are to know that this is not a drill. Bring Dylan and my daughter back with you. They’ll need to be monitored and tested for the virus. Let’s just hope that if this
is
Bad Sam, we can contain it.”
 

Dax nodded at each instruction. I couldn’t help but think about what Caine didn’t say:
If we can’t immediately contain the virus, our settlement most likely won’t survive.

“West, you and Ryder will follow me.” Caine grabbed the gun back from Dax. “And if you give me any trouble whatsoever, I won’t hesitate to send you back where you came from, and I will have no problem using force to protect my people.” He led West and Ryder from the room while I stayed back to speak with Dax.

Just before West disappeared, he looked back at me one last time, like he wanted to say something to me but wasn’t quite sure what.

It wouldn’t be long before he figured out who I was. One way or another, I knew he’d put two and two together. How could I have been so careless with the PulsePoint?

When they were gone, Dax started in on me. “What the hell, Cricket? Do you realize what kind of danger you’ve put yourself in?” He faced the window while running a hand through his sandy blond hair.

Not as much danger as he thought, seeing as I was immune to Bad Sam. “Yes,” I said simply.

“Why would you do that? What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that a girl needed my help, and I was able to provide it.”

The look on his face softened. “Have you given up? Is that why you keep disappearing and constantly putting yourself at risk? Are you planning to leave?” He touched my cheek gently, then slid his hand around to the back of my neck, holding my gaze with his chocolate brown eyes. “Sometimes I feel like… like you’re always just a day away from leaving me—from leaving Boone Blackston. Like you’re just going to walk off into the sunset and never return.”

I blinked up at him. “I’m not going anywhere.” Not yet, anyway.

He pressed my head to his chest and wrapped his other arm around me. “Don’t leave me,” he whispered. “If you go, I go with you.”

~~~~~

Dax unlocked the bell tower in the center of town. We raced up the six flights of stairs, and Dax entered the code to signal the alarm for a mandatory quarantine. The quarantine alarm—a verbal message over loud speakers—would continue to play for one hour from the time it was started.

I looked Dax in the eye, searching for a sign that he was virus-free. I didn’t think he had been exposed to Bad Sam, but I couldn’t be sure. He hadn’t been around Key since she’d gotten sick, but he’d been exposed to all three of the city folk on several occasions now, and had spent the night in the same room with West, back at the Biltmore Estate. We’d learned years ago that it didn’t take much to contract this virus—casual contact, breathing the same air as someone with symptoms. Key wasn’t coughing yet, but that didn’t mean she was safe to be around. Her temperature was climbing quickly, and other symptoms would soon follow.

My heart squeezed at the thought that either Dax or West would come down with the disease. My heart couldn’t handle seeing either of them sick with this fatal fever. They had both meant too much to me at different points in my life.

Dax crossed to me. “Let’s leave. Get away from here.” There was fear in his voice.
 

My heart felt tight, knowing I couldn’t leave with him. “I can’t. Caine needs my help.” I cringed inwardly at my choice of words. How would I explain to Dax that Caine needed my blood in order to continue working on the antibodies for a cure for Bad Sam? Dax and I had agreed a long time ago that we didn’t need to rehash every detail of our past—and I had decided that that included my intimate history with Bad Sam.

“Caine doesn’t need you. If this is Bad Sam, we both know our best chance of survival is to leave the settlement. Caine will understand that.”

Dax was right about one thing: his best chance of survival was to flee. Most of the people who had survived the initial Bad Sam outbreak did so only because they lived in isolated areas far away from the cities, away from the people who spread it. It wasn’t until after the virus had died out that settlements started popping up, formed by survivors who craved community.
 

But if the virus was back and the people dispersed, we’d be starting all over again.

I knew I couldn’t promise to leave with Dax, but the look on his face was desperate. “Let’s at least let Caine test us to see if we have the virus now.”

He nodded in agreement, though reluctantly.

Footsteps thudded on the stairs below. Nina popped her head through the opening in the floor. “What’s happened? Where’s my dad?” She climbed up, and Dylan followed.

“He’s at the hospital. It’s Key.”

Nina gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth.

“You don’t think—” Dylan grabbed Nina’s hand and pulled her closer. Exactly the way they shouldn’t react.

I shook my head. “I don’t…” I crossed to the window and looked out over the south side of town. “I don’t know.” I faced them again. “The four of us need to get to the hospital. We were exposed to them more than anyone else. We have to think of the townspeople.”

They all nodded silently. Nina moved toward the exit.

I started to follow, but Dax put a hand on my arm. “Who is Christina Black?” he asked, and for a moment, it felt like the Earth stopped moving on its axis.

Nina’s head snapped around to look directly at me, her eyes wide.

I turned to look out the window again. There were times when Christina Black had been gone for so long, I wondered if she had ever existed at all. “Christina Black was a little girl who came down with the Samael Strain. She was twelve years old, already an orphan, and by some grace”—
or curse
—“she survived the unimaginable disease. She was forced to start her life over with no family, no friends, no one to care about, and no one who cared about her in return.”

“She survived Bad Sam?” Dax asked. “I thought that was impossible. Where is she now? Why is this West looking for her?”

“Christina disappeared a long time ago. Before you and Dylan came to town.” I spun around, not making eye contact with any of them. “We need to go. Caine is expecting us.”

Finally, Cricket returned to the hospital. She had not yet looked my way. On purpose? Maybe. I wouldn’t look at me, either, after what I did to her.

The isolation unit I was in was obviously state-of-the-art, and I was impressed that Dr. Quinton had been able to keep it in such good shape. Pretty much every hospital in the country had built one of these units eight years ago, back when Bad Sam looked to kill everyone in its wake.
 

It was actually nine years ago when we first heard about the new deadly virus—one year before it reached our country. But it was across the ocean then, and no one thought for a second the disease would affect the privileged in a country with infinite power and money and the best health care in the world.

But of course it did. And when the first cases popped up, our government dismissed fears and ignored concerns. Hospitals built small quarantine and decontamination centers like this one, but that was mostly to appease the Centers for Disease Control.

And these small units proved to be not nearly enough.

But before these decontamination centers were even built, the future people of New Caelum had already formed a secret society of sorts. Some of the most influential, powerful, and richest people in the country, led by my mother, came together and decided to build their own city. A city with state-of-the art scientific labs, medical facilities, and living conditions fit for royalty.

And many believed one had to be near-royal to secure a spot inside the city. The people who built New Caelum predicted the world as we knew it was going to end, and they felt it was up to them to stop it—or, failing that, to at least ensure that our species survived.

Those who weren’t invited to join New Caelum—which was virtually everyone—thought they could control the spread of the disease with things like this infectious disease unit. Those poor souls thought they would survive the pandemic, just like they had survived every other crisis before it—with protocols and guidelines handed down from government powers.

And a few people who were invited to New Caelum—like Dr. Caine Quinton, a well-respected doctor according to my mother—declined. They chose to live outside of the city.
 

Most of them were dead within a year.

I fiddled with the PulsePoint I had found in Cricket’s bag. Caine had been nice enough not to take my belongings from me, and Cricket hadn’t asked for it back—not that it mattered. She probably knew as well as I did that it was useless without the owner’s fingerprint. And Cricket was not the owner.

No, this PulsePoint belonged to Christina. I knew this because I recognized the worn butterfly stickers on the back. She and I had been kids when we were first given these devices, and of course Christina had immediately taken to decorating hers—evidence of just how young we still were.

Critical questions swirled through my mind: Where was Christina now? Why did Cricket have her PulsePoint? And since it was useless to her, why was she carrying it around?

I tucked the PulsePoint back in my bag and looked out through one of the glass walls of my unit. Ryder was in the unit next to mine, and I could see Key shivering in a hospital bed two units over. Caine was with her, covered head to toe in a complete hazmat suit in surgical blue. Of course, the world had learned that even the most conservative precautions didn’t guarantee that health care workers wouldn’t contract Bad Sam. Yet still, the same man who had pulled a gun on us earlier today was now risking his life for Key.

Ryder stood against the glass that separated him from Key, monitoring Caine’s every move—and watching the suffering of the girl he’d loved since they were kids.

At least the isolation units were built with lots of glass. Patients didn’t go as crazy when they felt they were still around people.

Outside in the hallway, Cricket talked with Dax, Dylan, and Nina. As they spoke, she played with the hair on the right side of her head so that it covered her scars. Did she know that the scars didn’t stop her from being attractive?

I gave my head a shake. What the hell was I doing thinking of this girl as pretty?

As if hearing my thoughts, Cricket turned her head slowly toward me. Dax had a hand firmly planted in the small of her back. Were they an item? He treated her like she was his property, but I didn’t sense her reciprocating that same level of affection toward him.
 

I couldn’t help but smile at that. There was something about her that made me want to get closer to her. And there was something about the way he touched her that pissed me off.

Maybe in another life I’d get the opportunity to know someone like her.

When Cricket saw me smiling, she quickly turned away. What
was
it about her? She was a puzzle.
 

But it was one I didn’t have time to solve. I was here for one purpose only—to find Christina and get her back to the city. Mom seemed to think Christina had the answer that would save my sister from an ugly death. And if the girl who’d deserted me all those years ago could do that, then I’d find her.

Caine exited Key’s isolation room and entered the short hallway that connected our three iso units. Then he stepped into some sort of decontamination chamber, similar to the ones in New Caelum, and was sprayed head to toe with a sterilization substance. After a few minutes, he stepped out on the other side, minus the hazmat suit.

It was then that I noticed that Cricket and Nina had begun scrubbing in as if they were surgeons.
 

What are they doing?
I felt the start of a panic attack building in my chest.

When their scrubbing was complete, Nina proceeded to help Cricket put on her own hazmat suit. Nina suited her up, double-gloved her, and checked to make sure she was covered from head to toe. Dax watched all this with a worried expression, which didn’t do much to calm my building nerves. Why was I feeling so protective of this girl?