Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (27 page)

If I can get out this window and down to the ground, I can run, fast and far.

But the only way to do it is jump. I might be Contaminated, and so far it’s made me furious and reckless, but it hasn’t yet made me fearless. I don’t have time to strip the bed of sheets and make a rope. I barely have time to squeeze out the window onto the narrow ledge that leads from window to window. I tug the curtains closed behind me to give myself some time, and then I’m clinging to the ledge with my fingers tight against the bricks.

It’s like climbing the rock wall, except there are no soft mats to catch me and no conveniently placed grips. But I tell myself it’s just like the rock wall so that I can keep moving. Slide my hands, slide my feet along the ledge to the next window, where there’s nothing to hold on to but the glass, and I’m afraid to go across it in case the curtains are open and they can see me.

So I stay there, trying to force myself to move until at last there’s nothing to be done but to do it. My fingers slip on the smooth glass, but I find a place to hold on to above the window. I go as fast as I can. Hand over hand. Feet sliding.

I fall.

At the last second, I grab, fingernails bending and breaking. It hurts, though I’ve had worse. I swing, first from one hand, then grab with the other and hang. My feet dangle inches above the ledge below me. Above me, there’s a rattle of curtain rings, and a window, not the one I came out of, opens. I hear shouting and wait for someone to look out and down, but apparently they’re not expecting me to have jumped out the window, because nobody does. At least not on this floor.

I do hear sirens, though. Not fire, nor police, more like an alarm going off inside the building. And, even though my fingernails are split and bleeding and I’m dangling from a ledge several stories above the ground, knowing that the fall could break every bone and probably kill me—and that’s if I’m lucky—I start to laugh.

I laugh at the thoughts of Dr. Donna’s face and Cody’s broken nose and how I’m just a kid who got away. Wearing a collar, no less. I guess security doesn’t have to be so tight when almost everyone inside the complex has been made incapable of fighting back.

I can’t hang there forever. I work my way to the next
window, and the drainpipe there. I cling to that like a barnacle, waiting for it to break free of the brick and toss me to the ground, but it holds long enough for me to slide down it to the next floor. Then another. The rivets holding the metal brackets bite at me, tearing my skin through my tracksuit, but there’s no choice. It’s slide or fall. Or jump, I think when I ratchet down another floor and the agony in my thighs from the cutting metal makes me want to pass out. I’m still three stories up when I twist to the left and I see an open Dumpster. Can I do this? Hand over hand, my fingers cramping and aching, I climb out along the window ledges—these are bricked-up windows now, no longer glass—until I’m hanging over the Dumpster. If I’ve miscalculated, I will definitely break myself on the edge. Images of me hitting wrong and breaking my neck send me into a cold sweat, but I don’t have a choice.

I drop.

I fall.

I land up to my waist in a mess of cardboard and coffee grinds. Shattered glass slices my calf, and both my ankles explode into agony, but when I test my weight on them, they don’t seem to be broken. Breathing hard against the choking stink of the garbage, I crouch and try to gather my wits.

How long do I have before they come for me? Can they track me by the collar? I don’t have time to figure it out.

I pull myself out of the garbage and land, legs buckling,
next to the Dumpster. The sirens are still going off inside. The collar settles on my throat, and I wait for another surge of shock to disable me, but though I can hear the humming and the red haze filters around the edges of my vision again, my muscles don’t spasm.

I gather myself, looking around for any signs of something I can run toward. The parking lot is huge and mostly empty, but I’ll be totally exposed. Even when I get into the field beyond, anyone looking out the windows could see me. I have no place to hide. Nowhere to run. They’re going to find me.

I run, anyway, when a car pulls up next to me, and it keeps pace with me. The guy behind the wheel rolls down his window. “Get in.”

I stumble over my shoelace and hit the asphalt on my hands and knees. At least I’m hidden now by the car, which is between me and the building. Panting, my sweaty, stringy hair in my face, I look up at him.

“Get in,” he says again. “I got off duty twenty minutes ago, before the shit hit the fan, but when I heard what was going down, I thought I might find you. Get in.”

I know this kid. It’s the same young soldier who helped me get away that day when I tried saving those Connie kids.

I get in the car.

ELLEN’S SECRET ROOM SMELLS COMFORTINGLY
of antiseptic. My wounds sting from her cleaning them, but it’s not a bad pain. She’s bound my ankles tight with sports wrap, and has me icing them with these neat chemical ice packs that mold around them. She offered me some painkillers, but I didn’t want to take them. I can’t risk being woozy.

The soldier’s name is Brice, and he’s from Oklahoma originally. He has a girlfriend who still lives there, whom he’d like to marry, if he can finish his tour here in the black zone and get out of the army. The problem is that he enlisted just before the Contamination hit big-time, and they’re not letting anyone out anymore without a really good reason. That’s what he called it, too. A tour in the black zone.

“You make it sound like it’s a war.”

Brice, who doesn’t look nearly old enough to be thinking of getting married—and don’t think I’m not aware of
the irony of that thought—shrugs and gives Ellen a look. “Well. It is. Sort of.”

“The stories they’re telling us aren’t true, are they?”

Brice shrugs again. “Some of it is. Oklahoma had hardly any Contamination. Wyoming, Montana, neither. Parts of Colorado were hit real hard. Denver is a black zone, but only to just around it. Not like out here.”

“Almost the entire East Coast has gone black. Most of the West Coast. I’m guessing it’s similar in other countries. The large population centers were hit hardest.” Ellen pauses. “But I get my information from the Voice and Raven, same as everyone else. God knows you can’t trust what the authorities say.”

“They’re not just keeping you all in,” Brice says suddenly. “They’re bringing people from the other places. Shipping them here. If you test positive, you get relocated. All that displacement housing, who do you think that’s all really for?”

This seems to startle Ellen. “What about the people here who test negative?”

“If you have the money, you can get relocated to the green zone.” Brice shakes his head. “Probably even if you test positive.”

Ellen shrinks a little. “You’re sure about this?”

“I was on a detail when they sent one of the trucks in. They’re sending the really bad ones to the research center. Or … other places.” Brice looks uncomfortable.

“They’re killing them,” I say.

His mouth works. “I don’t know about that. I haven’t seen it myself. But I’ve heard that, if you get sent to one of the containment facilities, you’re better off dead.”

“It’s worse than the mental health system in the fifties and sixties. These people are declared incompetent, yet there is no treatment for them beyond the experimental, and there are too many of them even for the researchers. The sheer cost of keeping them fed and clothed and in good health …” Ellen shudders, putting a hand to her forehead. “Velvet, I’m not sure you understand, but you got the champagne experience. The others in the complex are not treated the way you were. And those who are just locked up, without being deemed of any benefit? Brice is right. I’m sure it would be more humane to have them all put down. The collars keep them in line, but the level of neglect in those places is horrifying.”

“I’ve seen it.” Quickly, I describe the wards, the room with the tubs, the stretcher. “But it’s not worse than the kennels.”

She makes a small noise. “Oh. Yes, it is. Much worse. There are all kinds of cages, Velvet, and not all of them have bars. And for the people in the Sanitarium, nobody is coming for them, ever.”

We’re all silent, thinking of it. I shake my head, which is enough to send a few waves of hazy red swimming around the edges of my vision again. I blink slowly to fend them off
and slip a few sore fingers beneath my collar again. It’s not hot anymore, but it is chafing my skin.

“Can we get this off me?”

“It’s not that easy.” Ellen offers me a drink, which I sip while she probes and pokes me. She touches the inside corners of my eyes gently, though even that soft pressure makes me wince. “My God. They butchered you, didn’t they? Donna has no finesse. Never did.”

“You worked with my dad, didn’t you?” I’ve already told her everything Dr. Donna told me.

“Yes. I knew you looked familiar the first time you came here with Dillon and your mom.”

Somehow hearing there’s something of my dad in me that a stranger can see makes me feel better. “I need to find him. And my sister. I have to figure out a way to get my mom and dad out of there.…”

“Velvet.” Ellen’s voice is gentle. “You can’t think about getting your dad. He’s not … he won’t be able to … he’s not like your mom, kiddo. I can tell you with every confidence, he’ll never be safe.”

I shift on the table and tap the collar, not wanting to hear her say that. “Take this off me.”

“I can’t just take it off without the key.”

“Paper clip,” I say, stone-faced.

“I can’t risk that.” Ellen shakes her head. “The collars are not designed to be removed without the key. I know you got your mom’s off without triggering Mercy Mode, but
your mom is a special case. And we don’t know how much better or faster she’d have recovered if you’d left the collar on. I know it seems like taking it off helped her—”

“How could it not have helped her? She was able to talk, and think!”

Ellen gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “With her unique reaction to the Contamination, there’s no telling how your mom might’ve done without the damage incorrectly removing the collar caused.”

I tap the collar again. “Dr. Donna said I’m the perfect mingling of my parents. Take the collar off me. I can’t have it on.”

“Calm down,” Ellen says, but too late—the collar beeps. “Velvet, please.”

I feel it sweeping over me, the rush and burn of paralysis. The twitch of muscles. The red haze. But I push back against it, refusing to give in to it, and in a minute, I’m breathing hard but still sitting upright. Ellen’s mouth is hanging open. I fix her with a steady look.

“Take it off.” When she doesn’t move, I hop off the table, forgetting about my sprained ankles. I pull the straightened paper clip from my shoelace and limp to a mirror on the wall. I angle my head from side to side, trying to find the tiny hole. I still can’t see it. In the reflection, I stare at her. “I’ll do it myself eventually, but it’s going to take longer.”

We stare at each other. I can see the struggle on her face, but there’s no way I’m going to spend another minute with
this thing around my neck. I probe the collar again, my fingertips seeking the tiny hole.

“Fine,” she snaps. “I’ll do it. But I swear to you, if you die, I will kill you.”

Suddenly, we’re laughing. Brice snorts with it, his eyes red. Laughing hurts all the parts of me that have been abused today, but I can’t stop it. And it feels good.

I hand her the paper clip, which she examines for a moment before shaking her head and opening the drawer to pull out a needle and a syringe. I flinch, imagining all the things needles have done to me lately, but Ellen makes a soothing sound and holds it up. She strips the plastic from it.

“It’s harder than a paper clip and won’t bend. And”—she demonstrates—“there’s a small hole in the tip, which I’m not sure you know, is a part of the key. This will work better. I think. I hope.”

I stand very still. “They didn’t make them very secure, did they?”

“When you tell everyone that they’ll kill the person wearing it if they try to take it off without a key,” Ellen says as she leans very close, focused on the collar, “it kind of deletes the need for a whole lot of safeguards. Keep in mind, Velvet, they also kind of
want
people to … well.”

“Die,” I murmur, closing my eyes. “They want us to die.”

It’s the first time I’ve said it aloud to someone else, that I’m Contaminated. It doesn’t feel so bad. At least, I don’t
feel any different than I did a few minutes ago, and it’s not like Ellen doesn’t know. There’s actually a sort of weight lifted off me when I admit it in front of her and Brice. Because this is who I am, who I’ve become. Who I’ve been for a long time, I guess. And though there’ve been a lot of things that happened that have changed me, in my heart I know that no matter what’s going on inside my brain, I am not a monster.

I’m still Velvet.

BRICE HAS GONE BACK TO THE BARRACKS
, worried that, if he doesn’t check in, he’ll get snagged for helping me. But not so worried that he regrets it, he said before he left. Because it was the right thing to do. There are lots of right things to do, according to him, and someone has to start doing them.

Ellen has made some dinner. I never thought I’d want to eat again. She insisted, anyway.

“Dillon could have been assigned to any one of several displacement housing complexes. I haven’t seen him, or I’d have told you already. They told you Opal had been placed in his custody?” Ellen watches me curiously as I dig into the plate of pasta she’d set in front of me.

My appetite’s back. Roaring, in fact. My stomach feels like I haven’t ever put food in it. I turn the fork in circles, loading it with pasta covered in sweet tomato sauce, then shove it in my mouth. After the weeks of bland hospital
food, anything with flavor is like eating rainbows.

“Slow down,” she murmurs.

“Yes. They told me she was with him. But that doesn’t mean it’s the truth, does it? They lied about everything else.”