Outbreak (36 page)

As soon as we finished breakfast yesterday, Caleb started pacing back and forth. It’s become his habit after every meal.

Part of me thinks exercise must be on the little prisoner schedule he made for himself — either that or he’s just bored and anxious like the rest of us.

Sawyer is the only one who seems to be handling this well. She stares at Caleb as he paces back and forth across our small room and drinks lots of fluids. She takes her own temperature every two hours and even coaxed me and Caleb into letting her take ours. Occasionally, she’ll strike up a conversation, but it always circles back to “if we make it out of here.” After a while, we seem to reach an unspoken agreement that silence is better.

I’m relieved when our dinner arrives. We had
just
missed dinner when we were locked in here two days ago, which means fifty-three hours have passed without even a whisper of symptoms.

They send in a nurse in full hazmat gear to deliver our trays, and the smell of overseasoned institutional food fills the room. 

The nurse is a blond woman I vaguely recognize. She’s young, and her eyes dart warily between us as though we might suddenly morph into rabid dogs and maul her until she’s infected, too.

Eli takes his tray without really looking at her, but the nurse’s eyes follow him all the way back to his bed. I scowl at her when I take my tray, and she quickly averts her gaze.

Man, I
really
need to get out of here.

I try to focus on the food and instantly wish I hadn’t. Even though it comes from the canteen, there’s something different about the meals they send up to the medical ward. The rice is more like mush, and the protein cube is too salty and slightly cold in the middle. The vegetables are soggy, but I savor every bite and draw out the meal as long as I can. At least it passes the time.

I finish too quickly, and then it’s time for Sawyer’s temperature check and Caleb’s stroll around the room.

At twenty-two hundred, I crawl into bed and turn out my light. Caleb and Sawyer follow suit, and I know we’re all thinking the same thing: When we wake up, we’ll only have a few hours to wait. Then we’ll know if we’re getting out of here or if we’re going to spend our last days in the medical ward, battling an illness for which there is no cure.

A few feet away, Eli flicks off his light, but he doesn’t lie down. I can see his silhouette in the shadows: He’s just sitting there, staring into the darkness.

It’s impossible to tell if he’s worried about the virus, scared for Owen, or just angry at me.

I’m not tired yet, so I just lie there listening to the others’ breathing. Sawyer’s levels out after about twenty minutes, and when Caleb’s loud, rolling snores fill the room, sleep becomes utterly impossible.

Eli still hasn’t moved. He’s propped up against the pillows with one arm thrown over his knee.

I can’t take it anymore. I throw off my covers and roll off my bed. He doesn’t turn to look at me, but he stiffens slightly and watches me approach out of the corner of his eye.

The four feet between our beds feels like an enormous distance, but I force my feet to shuffle toward him until I’m standing at the edge of the mattress.

“Hey,” I whisper.

“What is it, Harper?”

His tone isn’t harsh, but it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth; it’s almost indifferent.

“I just wanted to . . . talk to you.”

“There isn’t much to talk about,” he sighs.

“I think there is,” I say, fighting to keep the hurt out of my voice.

“You didn’t talk to me before you jumped on Sawyer’s paranoid bandwagon and got us locked up here, so I’m not sure why you want to talk now.”

He still won’t look at me, and that aggravates me more than anything.

“I didn’t have a chance! It’s not like I could just come and find you and risk exposing more people to the virus!”

“We aren’t infected!” he splutters. “I can’t believe you’d think he’d do that.”

“I’m sorry, Eli. But it’s the only thing that makes sense!”

“It doesn’t make sense!” he snaps, whipping his head around.

Suddenly, I wish he’d go back to not looking at me. In the dim light filtering through the door, I can read the fury in his expression. It’s almost like looking at Owen.

“My brother wouldn’t try to bring down the compound if it meant killing me in the process. He only gave me the arrowhead to remember him by. He didn’t contaminate it with the virus.”

“Do you hear yourself? He and the drifters are releasing a virus in the compound . . . and you’re
in
the compound.”

“He didn’t want us to come back.”

“But he didn’t stop you!”

I instantly wish I hadn’t said anything. Eli is looking at me as though I physically struck him.

He takes several deep, angry breaths. “What would you have me do, Harper? Turn him over to Jayden?”

“N-no. But I don’t think you should put your life on the line when you’re stuck in here and he’s not. If he’s not worried about Constance, maybe you should stop lying for him. He doesn’t need you to protect him.”

“He’s not the only one I was protecting,” he says fiercely.

Now there’s a heavy guilt competing with my discomfort. “You still shouldn’t have lied. If Jayden finds out —”

“I told you. I’m handling it.”

“
How
?”

Eli’s jaw tightens, and his gaze becomes so intense — so accusatory — that I have to fight the impulse to look away. “Damn it, Harper! Why can’t you just
trust
me? Every decision I’ve made has been to protect you. How do you not get that?”

His words throw me off guard, but he’s right. 

When I finally speak, my voice feels very small. “I . . . I’m sorry.”

“Whatever.” He shakes his head, and it seems as though the fight’s gone out of him. “Let’s just get some sleep, okay?”

I nod and then realize he probably can’t see me. I back away from his bed and settle down on mine, fighting the tears that are quivering in my eyes. I know our shouting has woken Caleb and Sawyer, which makes everything ten times worse.

If I felt bad before, it’s nothing compared to how I feel now. I let Eli down — there’s no denying it. He finally let himself care about someone, and I destroyed his trust.

I think back to our night in bed together, embracing skin to skin, and imagine what it would be like to have that all the time. 

I could have had that. Eli was different around me —
we
were different — but I wrecked it.

When I close my eyes, a single hot tear leaks out and burns a path down my face. 

The worst part about the whole thing is that I might not have any time to repair the damage. If we are infected, this could be the end: the end of me, the end of Eli, the end of us.

* * *

When I wake up the next morning, Caleb has already started his breakfast promenade back and forth across the room. There’s a tray of cold oatmeal sitting at the foot of my bed, which means I must have slept right through the morning nurse’s visit.

Sawyer is sitting up in bed reading from the tablet, and Eli is nowhere to be found.

I hear the shower cycle running on repeat in the adjacent room, and dread settles over me as I recall our argument from the night before. 

It suddenly makes sense that Sawyer and Caleb didn’t wake me when breakfast arrived. I can only imagine how awkward it’s going to be with the four of us stuck together for another several hours.

“Morning,” says Sawyer in a groggy voice.

“Yes, it is.”

Sawyer picks up the thermometer from her nightstand and swipes it once over her brow.

“What’s the verdict, doc?”

“Ninety-eight point six,” she breathes. “Here, let me do you.”

She reaches over and swipes the cold metal over my forehead, and we both wait for the thermometer to beep.

“Well?”

She lets out a big breath of relief, and a hopeful grin spreads slowly across her face. She meets my eyes, and I know everything’s going to be all right. “Ninety-eight point four.”

I let out a burst of air I didn’t realize I’d been holding. We still have five hours to go to the seventy-two-hour mark, but it feels as though we just might make it after all.

“It’s too early to tell for sure, but I think symptoms would have presented overnight if we were infected,” says Sawyer.

“I guess we’re gonna be all right, then.”

She nods, but her grin slips slightly. “Is . . . everything
else
all right?”

She glances at the bathroom door, and I cringe.

“You heard all that, huh?”

“You guys weren’t exactly quiet.”

Caleb seems to quicken his stride, purposefully averting his gaze every time he paces in front of me.

“It’s okay, Caleb. I know you heard, too.”

He stops pacing, looking incredibly uncomfortable. “Yeah.”

“So what’s going on with you two?” Sawyer asks, handing him the thermometer and falling into girl mode.

“I don’t know. Things were good. But he’s really sensitive about the Owen situation, and he’s upset that I didn’t trust him.”

“He does seem to have a pretty big blind spot when it comes to Owen.”

I nod. “It’s tough on him because Owen is the only family he has left. He assumes that just because he has a conscience, Owen must have one, too. But god, they’re
so
different.”

“Is Owen a warm and fuzzy teddy bear who’s super polite and always shares his feelings?”

I snort. “No. He’s like Eli, except he’s a total asshole. He doesn’t trust anyone. And he hates me. Sometimes I think he might do the right thing, but as far as he’s concerned, the compounds
have
to be destroyed.”

“The asshole thing must run in the family,” Caleb mutters.

“Don’t think we won’t cut you out of this conversation,” Sawyer snaps.

Caleb looks chastened, but I swear I see a slight smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. And when Sawyer turns back to me, she’s
definitely
fighting a grin.

The shower stops running, and we exchange a meaningful look. A minute later, Eli comes out shirtless, drying his hair with a towel.

I try not to stare at his chiseled abs and chest too long, and Sawyer is blushing hard. Caleb looks annoyed.

We fall into a strained silence and wait for the hours to pass.

I wish Eli would let Sawyer take his temperature, but he’s wearing an expression meant to fend off anyone who might come near him.

Around noon, I hear some commotion in the hallway and a nurse’s bright voice yelling something down the tunnel. Then the door flies open, and a doctor I don’t recognize comes in wearing a hazmat suit.

“How are we all feeling today?” he asks, glancing around at us through the blue wall of his interface projection.

“Fine,” we all chorus.

“Well, that’s a very good sign.”

“We don’t have a fever,” Sawyer says, gesturing between us.

“I know. The vital signs our monitors picked up all look great. Do you have any other symptoms? Vomiting? Trouble breathing? Hallucinations?”

We all shake our heads.

“Well, that’s enough to convince me that we’re not dealing with a virus.”

I breathe an enormous sigh of relief, and Sawyer and Caleb look at each other as though they might start making out any second. Something is
definitely
going on between those two.

The only person who doesn’t seem overjoyed is Eli.

“So we can go?” he asks.

“Yes. Whenever you’re ready.”

Eli nods. Without another word, he pulls on his T-shirt and runs a hand through his hair. He glances at me once with an unreadable expression and then strides out of the room.

My heart sinks, and Sawyer throws me a sympathetic look.

I force a weak smile and turn to go, too, walking slowly to keep a little distance between myself and Eli.

I could still make it to training this afternoon, but instead of heading down to Recon, I punch the button for Systems to check on Celdon.

After being stuck in a room with Sawyer, Caleb, and Eli for two days, I’d really like to see a
different
friendly face.

As soon as I step off the megalift, the other lift beside it dings. I glance behind me to see who it is and almost throw up.

Celdon is standing in the lift, but he doesn’t look like Celdon. A deep bluish-yellow bruise spans the entire left side of his face. His eye is swollen beyond recognition, and he’s got a busted purplish lip. His blazer is ripped in several places and caked with a dark substance that looks like dried blood.

“What the hell happened to you?” I shriek, rushing up to him as he steps gingerly out of the lift.

He isn’t holding his ribs, but he moves with such precise, robotic movements that I know he must have injuries I can’t see.

“Can’t talk about it,” he groans. He limps past me down the tunnel toward his compartment and keys in. The sight of the place is astounding.

Trash and empty food containers cover nearly every surface, with the piles growing more dense in the three-foot radius around Celdon’s desk. There’s a pungent odor of rotten food mixed with sweat, and I’d bet Celdon hasn’t cracked open the curtains in days.

But that’s not the worst of it. Shards of broken glass sparkle like diamonds in the carpet, starting near the skeleton of his coffee table and exploding out from there. The white carpet is also caked with dried blood.

“Tell me what happened,” I demand.

“I can’t.”

“Did Constance do this to you? Did they hurt you to get to me? Is this because we went to 119?”

Celdon sighs, and it looks as though the movement pains him. “No. It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” I ask, feeling frustrated. Clearly Celdon is in trouble, but I don’t know if it’s the sort of trouble that comes from Neverland or from up above.

“It’s just safer if you don’t know.”

I open my mouth to argue some more, but the stiff set of Celdon’s jaw and the determined flash of his eyes says I’m not going to get anywhere today.

He drags in a deep breath, trying to hide his wince. “Listen. There’s something unrelated to all of this that you need to see.”