The Becoming: Revelations (29 page)

“The government took over testing, took control of the pathogen, and ran with it,” Kimberly finished. “
And
they rammed it through to human trials as fast as they could.”

“We all see where
that’s
led us to,” Isaac muttered.

“And that’s where
my
involvement truly began,” Derek continued. “Despite the successes we saw in Alicia and Michael, the pathogen behaved differently in each of them. The pathogen made Alicia … aggressive.
Very
aggressive. Not quite the animalistic hatred you see in the Michaluk-infected out there,” Derek motioned vaguely toward the window, “but aggressive all the same. The baseline for it was there, most certainly. Alicia would get so … angry at the littlest things and turn absolutely violent. Not enough ice in her tea, the lights in her room were too bright, a nurse looked at her in a way that didn’t suit her, whatever. When it came to her, it was a constant battle, both on her part and on mine, to keep her aggression in check.

“Michael, though? Absolute model of perfection. He only experienced sickness for the first few days of testing as his body adapted to the pathogen’s intrusion. After that, he was perfectly fine, as if he’d never been sick. In order to keep the testing from being compromised, we told him he’d caught a virus at the onset of testing. We made out like we had postponed testing in order to treat what he had caught. In truth, though, the testing continued. By then, it was mostly monitoring, watching, and waiting to see what would happen.”

“And what
did
happen?” Cade asked nervously.

“Absolutely nothing,” Derek said. He sat on the arm of the couch beside Kimberly and clasped his hands loosely around his knee. Ethan thought he looked like a professor giving a lecture; the image suited Ethan’s perception of the man. “Like I said, Michael was the perfect model of what we wanted to achieve. Somehow, the version of the pathogen that had been introduced into his system … well, it certainly did
something
to him, because every single blood sample we took from him afterwards tested positive for the pathogen. But outwardly, he was asymptomatic.”

“So how did the virus get out, anyway?” Cade asked, her forehead wrinkling. Her grip on Ethan’s hand tightened, and he gave hers a comforting squeeze in return. He could imagine what she was thinking, how awful she probably felt as she learned about the things Brandt had never told her, the dangers he’d potentially posed to the rest of them for the past year.

“Excellent question,” Isaac agreed. “We all know the generally accepted and advertised story the government and media spread around. How accurate was it?”

“In every lie, there’s a fragment of truth,” Kimberly said.

“Calling it the Michaluk virus was a misnomer of … epic proportions,” Derek added. “If you wanted to be accurate in naming the virus after its originator, you’d have to call it the Day virus.”

“You’re
shitting me!
” Cade burst out in surprise. She half-rose out of her seat. Ethan tugged at her hand in an attempt to pull her back down. “You’re—that bitch—
she
started all of this? It’s
her
fault we’re living like this? Where’s my gun?”

“What do you need your gun for?” Ethan asked, pulling at her hand again.

“I’m going to hunt the bitch down and blow her motherfucking head off!”

“Whoa, whoa, Cade! Sit down!” Ethan ordered. He yanked more firmly at her hand and managed to successfully plant her ass onto the couch again. “We’re not going out about this half-cocked!”

“Who the hell said anything about half-cocked?” Cade snarled. “I’m always fully cocked, thank you very fucking much!”

Ethan blew out a heavy breath and shook his head. He was well aware of three sets of eyes on him and Cade, watching their exchange attentively as he tried to calm her down. He was tempted to tell them to get their entertainment elsewhere.

“Look, I was just as burningly pissed off about this a few days ago, when Derek and Kimberly laid it out for me, as you are right now,” Ethan admitted. “I wanted to wait for her to walk into the Westin and kill her sorry ass the minute she set foot inside it.”

“But you didn’t,” Cade pointed out, her tone accusing. “You could have stopped her then, and you didn’t!”

“I know,” Ethan said softly.

Cade slapped a hand against her denim-clad thigh and made a face at him. “It’s
her fault
Anna is dead! And Josie and Andrew! And every other fucking person we know!”

“Cade, believe me, I’m well aware of that.” Ethan didn’t need to be reminded of all he’d lost in such a short time. “But we need to bide our time. We need to be careful about this. And we need to find Brandt first. Because if we can’t find him, she’s our fallback option for a cure, and we can’t risk her death without having Brandt in our hands first.”

To say Remy felt despondent was an understatement. Her eyes swam with tears as Brandt dragged her by her wrist down the fire escape’s stairs, his grip tight and bruising. She stumbled down the steps, her ears filled with Brandt’s nearly continuous swearing, and thought of her dead friend in the apartment above them. Somehow, through a titanic effort, she managed to not release the sobs threatening to spill up from her gut. To make that extra noise might bring the attention of the infected on the two of them, and she wasn’t willing to put them in that kind of danger.

Two of them? God, the thought was horrible. Just a year ago, Remy had been practically surrounded by friends. There had been seven people who had become as close as seven people could get. Even Ethan and Gray, despite their near-constant bickering, had considered each other friends. And now they were both dead. They were
all
dead, except maybe Cade, and Remy had no idea where to begin guessing the woman’s location. It was just her and Brandt. And despite the time she’d spent in the man’s company, he suddenly seemed large and frightening. Never had he appeared so imposing a figure as he did now, his forehead scrunched in a low frown, a look of intense concentration on his face as he led her along back alleys and through shop storage rooms, always on the alert for dangers to pop out of the woodwork at the prospect of a free meal.

Remy would be damned if she let anything touch her at that point. She wanted to kill all of the infected in the messiest ways she could think of. She
especially
wanted to kill the redheaded bitch who shot Gray. She wanted to torture her, to inflict horrible pain on her, before she plugged a bullet into the woman’s head. She wanted the woman to feel every ounce of pain this last death had caused in her heart.

Brandt slowed his brisk walk, drawing Remy’s full attention back to him. He staggered sideways against the alley’s brick wall, bracing his hand against it, and vomited violently on the pavement beside a dumpster, a low groan shuddering up from his gut. Remy hurried to him and rested her hand on his back, her eyes watching their surroundings. His hand found her other hand and clung to it, squeezing tightly as he coughed out the remains of his last meal.

“You okay?” Remy asked once he’d straightened and let go of her hand. His shoulders hunched, and he still breathed heavily as he wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. His voice was hushed, rough and hoarse. “I’m not feeling great.”

Remy immediately pressed the inside of her wrist against Brandt’s forehead. “Are you okay?” she asked again, her tone urgent as a surge of fear washed up in her gut. His skin felt abnormally warm, but she wasn’t sure if it was from their running or from … “Are you … you’re not infected, are you?”

“You already know my suspicions on
that,
” Brandt muttered as she dropped her arm back to her side. He wiped at his mouth again and rolled his shoulders, a flicker of pain crossing his face with the movement. Before she could comment on it, he continued. “We need to find a place to rest. And then we need to decide what we’re doing next.”

As they began walking again, Remy asked, “What are our options?”

Brandt led her across the street, both of them keeping low between cars to minimize the risk they’d be sighted. It was only after they’d entered the alley across the street that he continued. “The way I look at it, we’ve got two options,” he said. He stopped to look at a rusted red metal ladder. There was no staircase on this fire escape, just a ladder going straight to the roof. “First option is we can keep tracking Cade and hoping we find her sometime soon.” He grasped the bottom rung of the ladder, tugging on it as if to test its integrity.

“And that’s assuming she isn’t dead,” Remy said.

“Yeah. That.” Brandt cleared his throat again and released the ladder. “Our other option is to abandon the search for Cade and instead go to the Westin and kick Alicia Day’s ass across the fucking city.”

Remy looked back at the alley’s opening. She remembered the last time she’d been stopped in an alley like this; Cade had been lying on the ground bleeding, and Ethan had …

Remy shook her head, trying to dislodge the memories from the forefront of her mind. Now wasn’t the time to think on that. The last thing she needed was to crack emotionally—even more so than she already was—and get distracted in the field. Especially now that she thought she heard the faintest sound of shuffling footsteps near the alley’s entrance.

“Brandt?” she said uneasily.

“Yeah?”

“Is there a third option? Like maybe getting the fuck out of here?”

Brandt looked at her sharply, and his eyes darted past her to the alley’s mouth. “Fuck, you’re right,” he said, motioning to her. “Come on. We can’t go up this ladder. It’s stable enough for you, but I’m not sure it’ll hold my weight.”

“Shit,” Remy muttered. She drew her bolo knife from its sheath. She figured a silent weapon was better in this situation than a gun. “Which way?”

Brandt scanned the alleyway before pointing to the dark outline of a door near the back end. “Through there,” he ordered. “Flashlights out.” He hurried to the door and kicked it hard; the doorframe splintered as the door flew open, banging against the wall beyond. “Come on. Let’s get in here before the fucking infected find us.”

Remy twirled her knife in her hand and squared her shoulders as she adjusted her pack. “I’ll lead the way,” she volunteered. The irresistible temptation of adrenaline surged through her veins at the idea of possibly getting the chance to kill something.

The anger Remy had managed to tamp down for the time it’d taken them to get to this point reared its ugly head as she marched, straight-backed, into the darkness. Pulling her flashlight from the side pocket of her bag and thumbing the switch, Remy shone the light down the short hall they’d entered. There was nothing there, much to Remy’s disappointment.

Brandt entered behind her and shut the door. “We’re going to cut through here and go out the first exit we see,” he said as he secured the door behind him.

“Aw, Brandt, don’t take all my fun away,” Remy said. Despite the jest her words implied, her voice was hard and low, loaded with the determination toward slaughter that seethed in her brain.

Brandt cast a worried glance in her direction. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking
you
that?” Remy asked pointedly. “You’re the one who managed to infect Gray just by blood contact.”

Brandt grimaced. “We haven’t confirmed that,” he snapped. “So don’t you even play like that.”

Remy shone her flashlight in his face and rested the flat of her blade against his shoulder. “And how exactly
should
I be playing, Brandt?” she asked coldly. Brandt swallowed as she leveled her gaze at him. “Do you remember what I said to you when we were on our way here?”

“You said a lot to me on our way here,” Brandt pointed out.

Remy pressed the knife a fraction more firmly against his skin. “You know what the hell I’m talking about,” she snapped. “I told you to give me a good fucking reason why I shouldn’t kill you.”

“And I told you,” Brandt replied. “Cade.”

“Maybe I don’t think that’s a good enough reason anymore,” Remy replied.

“And what the hell has changed between then and now?” Brandt demanded.

Remy snarled and slapped his left bicep with the flat of her blade. “You killed Gray!” she said, her voice rising in anger.

“I didn’t fucking shoot him!” Brandt protested.

“You might as well have!” Remy nearly yelled. “You took away any chance he could have had at surviving! You and your fucking … virus!”

Brandt stepped forward, looming over her. He batted the knife aside before backing her up until she pressed against the wall in an attempt to get away from him. His fingers wrapped around her upper arms, squeezing tightly. “It is not
my
virus,” he said. His voice was so low and his body so close to hers that Remy felt the words rumbling through his chest. “If I had known what the
fuck
they were really testing, I wouldn’t have gotten involved.
Yes,
I feel
incredibly
responsible for Gray’s death, just like I do for Nikola’s and Avi’s and Theo’s and, yes, even Ethan’s. It’s my fucking fault we’re in this situation, and if I could change it, I would. But guess what? I fucking
can’t
. So for the love of Christ,
stop making me feel more fucking guilty than I already do.
I can’t
handle
it. I’ve got enough fucking
shit
on my mind right now.”