The Becoming: Revelations (13 page)

“Alicia did,” the man panted out. He cringed and flinched in pain. “Alicia told us all of it. All about the whole mess at the CDC.”

“Alicia?” Brandt repeated. His face chilled as the blood ran out of it. His hands went clammy, and he curled his fingers into fists. “Alicia who?” He paused as a thought occurred to him, and just as quickly as his face had paled, it flushed with anger. “Alicia Day?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” the man acknowledged.

Brandt gritted his teeth and straightened, his anger getting the better of him. He turned on his heel and slammed his fist as hard as he could into the refrigerator’s stainless steel door. His knuckles split, but he ignored the blood that welled to the surface as he snapped, “Son of a
bitch!
That bitch got out?”

“What the hell is going
on,
Brandt?” Remy demanded. Brandt glanced at her and put his hand up, wordlessly ordering her to shut up before he turned back to the man in the chair.

“Where in Atlanta?” Brandt asked. He took a step closer to him and leaned only inches away from his face. “Where is Alicia? And where did she take Cade?”

“Wait, wait,
wait!
” Remy said. She pulled Brandt back from the chair and stepped in front of him so his attention was fully on her. He allowed her to do so only reluctantly, his eyes scanning her face as he gritted his teeth. “Who the fuck is this Alicia you keep referring to? And what the hell is going
on?
”

“It’s nothing that concerns you, Rem—”

“Like hell it doesn’t concern me!
This bastard held a gun to my fucking head!
” Remy shouted, her voice echoing through the kitchen. She jabbed her finger at the man in the chair. “
He
tried to shoot me! And that redheaded
bitch
told him to! I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know five seconds ago!”

Brandt hesitated, looking from Remy to Gray and then glancing at the man in the chair, who smirked at him despite the pain he was in. “Not now, Remy,” he said. He hated how much his voice sounded like he was pleading. “Not now. I’ve got to get information out of this guy, and I can’t do that and answer your questions at the same time.”

“Answer the question,” Gray said. He stepped into the argument and grabbed the man’s forearm. Brandt tensed, and he wrenched his arm from Gray’s grip.

“Not
now,
” Brandt repeated. He raised his voice just enough to show the two that he meant business. “Get the fuck out of here while I get what I need from him.”

“I don’t like this,” Gray said. He paced the creaky hallway floorboards, his hands stuffed into his pockets and his boots scuffing the floor. He glanced at the closed kitchen door and wondered what the hell was going on in there, what was taking Brandt so long to get whatever he needed from the wounded man. “I don’t like this at all.”

“And you think I do?” Remy snapped. She didn’t look at Gray. She stood at the end of the hall, staring into the darkness of the living room, her hands on her hips. “I want to be in there just as badly as you do.”

“What is he
doing
in there?” Gray asked in frustration. He approached Remy, and the woman shot him a warning glance that he ignored as he stopped beside her.

“Hopefully what I want to do,” Remy grumbled. She moved away from Gray and deeper into the living room.

“Which is?”

“Granting that motherfucker a slow, painful death.”

“Remy, that’s not right,” Gray started to protest. The woman turned on him and shoved him against the wall with a firm strike of her hands against his chest. He bit back a grunt as his shoulders bumped into the sheetrock.

“Not right? That’s not fucking
right?
” she repeated. “What the hell, you asshole? That son of a bitch and his fucking little friend put a
gun
to the back of my
head
. They were talking about how much fucking
fun
they were going to have with me, and I had to pretend like I was going to go along with something that I am
so
morally against just to give myself an opening to do what I needed to do. They were going to pull the damned
trigger
until I rolled over and
shot them
. What part of them nearly killing me is difficult to comprehend?” She braced her hands more firmly against Gray’s chest and pinned him harder against the wall. “Ethan would
never
have stood for this kind of shit. Even
he
would’ve thought it was okay for me to go down fucking fighting! Hell,
he
did! Are you telling me you think I’m not entitled to do the same?”

“I’m just not comfortable with the idea of you sinking to their level,” Gray said. He caught her wrists and squeezed them gently. Her pulse raced under her skin; he slowly and soothingly rubbed his thumbs over the soft skin on the insides of her wrists and tried to calm her down, pulling her to him in a tight hug. “You’re better than that. You’re a better person than that. You wouldn’t kill someone who isn’t infected and who isn’t directly threatening you at that moment. You’re too good to do something like that.”

Remy watched Gray with a wide-eyed, almost hurt expression on her face. “You say that like you’re desperate to believe it,” she said. Her fists slowly relaxed, her fingers uncurling.

Gray pressed his lips against her temple and sighed. “Maybe I am,” he murmured. “Maybe I want to believe there’s still some goodness in the world. Maybe I just don’t want to see you do something I know you’d regret later on.” She kept watching him, her eyes still wide, and he felt the overwhelming urge to lean in and kiss her. But that urge was broken when Remy sighed and pulled away from him.

“If you say so,” she said. “But that still doesn’t change the fact that I
really
want to shoot that bastard right in his ass.” She glanced at the kitchen door and crossed her arms, hugging herself. “You think we’re going to go after Cade?”

“I don’t think it’s a matter of if so much as when,” Gray admitted. He, too, looked at the closed kitchen door. Everything was silent on the other side. He itched to get in there, to find out what was going on in the other room. Brandt was hiding something, and Gray wanted to know what it was.

Gray wasn’t an idiot. He’d known all along that something wasn’t right with Brandt. Unlike the rest of them, the Marine had never been forthcoming about his past. Sure, they’d all had their secrets, things they wanted to keep hidden; no one wanted to tell every detail about themselves and their lives prior to the outbreak of the Michaluk virus. But unlike everyone else, Brandt had kept nearly
everything
hidden. All Gray knew about the man personally was that he’d come from Atlanta and had a sister there who’d died at Emory University—a sister about whom he never talked. Gray couldn’t help but be suspicious of what the man was hiding. And when Brandt had kicked him and Remy out of the kitchen to interrogate the wounded man in private, well, that had only heightened Gray’s suspicions.

As Remy paced down the hallway, her dark eyes fluttering to the broken front door with every other step, the kitchen door eased open, and Brandt emerged. The man looked tired; there were dark circles under his eyes, and his hair was a mess from running his fingers through it constantly. He met Gray’s eyes for a fleeting moment before he shifted his gaze to Remy. Gray grimaced.

“What’s the deal, Brandt?” Gray asked, breaking the silence and drawing Remy’s attention to them. She approached, walking slowly across the living room, appearing uneasy. “What’s going on?”

“They’re taking Cade to the Westin at Peachtree Plaza in Atlanta,” Brandt answered after a long, careful pause. “There’s a group of people living there. It’s led by a woman named Alicia Day.”

“Who you seem to know, judging by your reaction to the guy’s news in there,” Remy said. “Who is she?”

Brandt breathed out and looked away from them pensively, moving into the living room and halfway up the stairs to retrieve his backpack. He carried it back down as he answered, not looking at either of them. “Alicia Day is a woman I knew a while back, before all this shit happened,” he said. He waved his hand vaguely to indicate the circumstances they were in. “She was in the Military Police, Marine branch, as far as my understanding went,” he explained. “I knew her as an acquaintance, nothing more. We weren’t exactly close, needless to say.”

“Is that why she kept referring to you as Michael?” Remy asked. She leaned against the post at the end of the staircase railing.

“Yeah, it’s what I used to go by,” Brandt answered. He stopped beside Remy and set his bag and rifle down before sitting heavily on a step. He dropped his head into his hands. “It’s … well, this is a long, complicated story. I don’t want to go into details. I don’t have
time
to go into details. Cade’s more important than all this shit.”

“But you’re going to tell us the bare basics regardless,” Gray said firmly. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall across from Remy, effectively blocking any potential escape route Brandt would have had. “Because I absolutely
refuse
to allow me
or
Remy to go along and help you when you’re not being fucking straight with us.”

“You would,” Brandt muttered to the stair below him. Gray chose not to say anything in reply. Brandt heaved a sigh before continuing. “I wasn’t honest with you about my past in Atlanta,” he said. “I didn’t lie, but I didn’t tell you anything either. I guess I lied by omission more than anything else.” Brandt breathed out again, slowly and steadily. “I was at the CDC when it fell.”

Remy raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”

“No, that’s not it by far,” Brandt admitted. “I was … there were these tests. Like I told you last month in the back of that truck. The tests and experiments with the pathogen on Marines and other military volunteers.” Gray’s eyes widened as his brain caught up with what Brandt was saying. “I was one of the volunteers. One of the Marines that Michaluk was supposedly tested on.”

“Jesus,” Gray hissed out.

“I wasn’t one of the actual test subjects, though,” Brandt said in a rush. “Well, I was. But my doctor, the one in charge of my case, he said I was in the control group, not one of the groups getting the actual pathogen. He said I was being given placebos. Nothing more than that.”

“And this Alicia chick?” Gray prompted.

“I don’t know about her,” Brandt admitted. “She was there too. I talked to her a few times, but only fleetingly. She struck me as a hate-the-world type, and I never really enjoyed hanging out with those types of people. I don’t know anything about her case, though. Derek was never willing to enlighten me on details about her or anyone else. Hell, he screwed up and compromised the testing just by telling me I was in the control group.”

“So what’s this got to do with the bitch taking Cade?” Remy demanded.

Brandt lifted his head and looked first to Remy, then to Gray, and finally to the closed kitchen door. “Because for some reason, she’s fixated on this idea that I have the Michaluk virus and I’m just not showing symptoms because I’m immune or something. She thinks she can force me to, as the guy in there put it, ‘give up the cure’ and save the world or something.” His voice betrayed just how ridiculous he thought the idea was. “Doesn’t she know that if I had the fucking cure, I’d be shouting it from the rooftops?”

“Some people just aren’t receptive to reason,” Gray said with a sigh. “So why didn’t you tell us this before? Why wait over a year, when something bad has happened, before telling us anything to do with your time in Atlanta?”

“I didn’t
want
to not tell you guys,” Brandt said. “But I had to keep it to myself. I couldn’t let
anyone
know. Until a month ago, they all believed I was dead, and I wanted it kept that way. I didn’t want any of you in danger.”

“In danger from
what?
” Gray asked, unable to hide his frustration with Brandt’s evasiveness.

“From the Feds,” Brandt finally answered. Gray raised an eyebrow, and he looked the man over doubtfully. “Back in January of last year, when the Michaluk virus broke out and started to spread like hell all over the place, the Feds—the ones sponsoring the test to begin with—ordered the complete shutdown of the project. They sent in the Marines stationed at the CDC and an Army special task force to assist with the shutdown.”

“So they shut the project down,” Remy said. “So what?”

“So ‘shutdown’ entailed the complete elimination of everyone involved with the project,” Brandt said. His voice was hushed, his words a monotone. “The patients, the doctors, nurses, lab techs, everyone.”

“Jesus,” Gray breathed again before he could stop himself.

“I thought they killed them all,” Brandt said, closing his eyes. “That was my impression, anyway. Derek helped me get out. I never saw him again, figured he was dead. And I never saw anyone uninfected come out of that building. I thought they were all dead. I thought it was just me. I had no idea Alicia was still alive or even that she was a threat.” He shook his head. “I swear, if she’s so much as hurt a single hair on Cade’s head, I’m going to kill her with my bare hands.”

Gray believed every word Brandt said, and the older man’s tone suggested he’d let nothing stop him from being successful. He let out a breath and studied the man for a moment before speaking again. “So what’s the plan? How are we going to get her back?”