The Becoming: Revelations (34 page)

“Jesus,” Remy whispered. “Are you serious? You’re telling me Alicia Day has
intentionally
created a major outbreak inside the Westin for the sole purpose of … what?”

“It’s a punishment,” Dominic said. He squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head. “She’s punishing them for escaping.”

“Stop being so fucking vague!” Brandt snapped. “Punishing
who?
”

“Last night, we had three people escape from the Westin,” Dominic explained, his eyes still closed as he pressed his fingers against his temples. “A doctor, his assistant, and a man who was on lockdown on the eighteenth floor. The man was infected with Michaluk, and he knew entirely too much about what was going on in the Westin. Alicia was still trying to decide what to do about him when Dr. Rivers and Kim Geller sprung him and got him out of there.”

“Why was this prisoner so important?” Brandt asked. “What’s so special about this prisoner that she would want to keep him locked up anyway?”

“Like I said, he’s infected,” Dominic said. “I don’t know the details. I might have been her handler, but she sure as hell wasn’t willing to divulge
everything
to me. I just know he was important. I don’t know why. But I also suspect he lost his importance about the same time Alicia tracked down where you guys were, and that’s why she had him locked up.”

“Us guys?” Brandt repeated, raising an eyebrow. Neither of them had offered Dominic any introductions.

“I’m not an idiot,” Dominic said. “I’ve seen your picture and read your file enough to know beyond a shadow of a doubt who you are.”

“And yet, while you have the advantage of knowing who
we
are, you have yet to explain who the fuck
you
are,” Brandt snarled. “And, for that matter, who the fuck Alicia Day is. Because contrary to everything she said last year, I never once believed, for one single second, that she was actually a member of the Marines
or
an MP. So what is she? FBI? CIA? DOJ? What?” When Dominic hesitated, Brandt added, “Explain. Now.”

When Dominic finally spoke, his voice was hushed, low and steady. “DIA,” he said simply.

Brandt took a slight step back in apparent surprise, seemingly knowing what in the world the DIA was. Remy wasn’t so lucky. She frowned and shook her head, gripping the rifle tighter. “What the hell is the DIA?”

Brandt cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair. “I wasn’t aware it was that serious,” he said before glancing to Remy and answering her question. “The DIA is sort of like the CIA, but it investigates potential threats to military personnel and installations. They also infiltrate foreign militaries in some cases, in order to learn about their training methods and, ideally, their objectives. Among other things. That’s the best way I think I can explain it without confusing the hell out of you.” He turned back to Dominic and asked, “And what’s your relationship with Alicia? What’s her position in the DIA got to do with you?”

“I’m her handler,” Dominic said. “Or I was. I don’t think the DIA technically exists anymore, but considering Alicia’s current state of health and her participation in the testing of the initial pathogen, I’ve continued my work accordingly.”

“And what, exactly, was the DIA’s interest in Michaluk?” Remy spoke up, moving a few steps closer to the two men.

“The same as the military’s interest in the pathogen,” Dominic said. “Enhancement. That’s it. Alicia volunteered and was inserted into the program under the guise of an MP in order to receive the same testing the actual Marines were receiving.” His eyes flickered toward the looming tower behind Remy.

Brandt suddenly switched gears in his questioning, opting to bring it around to the original conversation. “So if everybody in the Westin is infected or will be soon, how did
you
get out? Are you infected?”

“No, I’m not infected,” Dominic answered. “You can look me over for evidence of that if you so desire. It’s nothing I haven’t been through before.” His dark eyes were serious and tired. “As for how I got out of there, she let me go. She gave me a chance to get out, and I took it. So I took the same route Kim, Derek, and Ethan took when they skipped out last night.”

Remy’s attention was piqued by the names Dominic rattled off. “Ethan?” she repeated, intrigued.

“Yeah, Ethan Bennett,” Dominic said with a short nod. “I’m sure you’re familiar with him.”

Remy sucked in a sharp breath of shock before she staggered over to sit against an air conditioning unit. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “Ethan is
alive?
But … but that’s not possible.”

“How is it not possible?” Dominic challenged. “I’ve been in contact with him at least once a day for the past month. Believe me, he’s alive.”

“But I heard him die!” Remy protested. “I
heard him die
while we were escaping. I heard …” She dropped the rifle on the roof carelessly and buried her face in her hands. She dug the heels of her hands against her forehead and fought desperately to breathe. “He’s supposed to be dead. He’s not … he can’t be like that. Not like the infected.”

“He’s not,” Dominic told her in a sympathetic, reassuring tone. “Well, he’s infected, but he’s not like
that
. He doesn’t try to kill people. He’s more like … more like Alicia, I think. He’s got the Michaluk virus, but the doctor he’s with is probably the only expert on this virus left alive in the entire world. He’s the one who’s come up with the medications the infected people take to keep from going homicidal.”

“So he’s
alive?
” Remy asked again, her voice even more incredulous. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Her throat felt like it was closing up, her lungs burning with effort as tears sprang to her eyes. She tried to suck in a desperate breath, but she couldn’t manage anything more than a faint whimper.

And then Brandt knelt in front of her and wiggled his hand underneath her pack so he could rub her back gently. “Remy, you’re hyperventilating,” he said in a low, soothing voice. “I need you to breathe, okay? Just close your eyes, relax, and breathe. In and out.”

Remy focused on the sound of Brandt’s voice, forcing herself to relax, forcing air into and out of her lungs as he murmured the instructions, until her lungs loosened and allowed her to breathe freely. Her hand found Brandt’s free one, and she clutched it tightly, digging her nails in as she buried her face against his chest and sobbed in a mixture of shock and relief.

Cade rubbed at her eyes as she crouched in the back of one of the multitude of Army trucks parked around the city, chewing idly on a granola bar Isaac had given her. She hadn’t gotten as much sleep as she’d have liked the night before; over half of it had been spent painstakingly attempting to assemble a rather small bomb out of the odds and ends scavenged for her by Isaac’s people. In the end, she’d thrown a screwdriver across the room in frustration, and the bomb remained unconstructed. It was something that would have taken Brandt’s expertise to accomplish, and in
that,
they were sorely lacking.

Ethan took a knee on the tailgate beside her and scanned the quiet street. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Keeping watch,” Cade replied through a bite of granola. She finished chewing and swallowed. “You know, the stuff we’re supposed to do so none of us gets killed.”

Ethan frowned and settled back on the tailgate, watching as she finished off her granola bar and checked over her weapons for the fifth time that morning. She had a lot of them stashed away on her person now, courtesy of Isaac taking up a collection of knives and guns and spare ammunition magazines for her use. As she worked, Cade felt his eyes watching her every move and, quite frankly, it bothered her.

“What is it?” Cade asked. She managed to keep the irritation out of her voice as she pulled the Glock from its holster. The Beretta still had no holster, so she’d taken to keeping it in her waistband. It wasn’t the ideal place to keep a gun, but it’d have to do.

“Are you genuinely not bothered by the idea of killing someone?” Ethan asked. He glanced at Isaac and Kimberly, who talked quietly, and Derek, who pored over papers and scribbled in a battered notebook. “You talk so casually about the possibility of having to kill Alicia. Like you couldn’t care less.”

Cade slapped the magazine back into the Glock and shook her head. “The way I see it, Ethan, she’s just another one of the fucking infected,” she said. Even
she
hated the coldness in her voice. “It’s just an added bonus that she’s the bitch who set the world on the path it’s on today.”

“It’s not too late to get the world off that path,” Ethan said. He looked across the street at the cars piled up there.

“I think I’d rather pull a Brandt and just blow the path up,” Cade muttered.

“Since when have you become so bloodthirsty?” Ethan asked, raising an eyebrow. Cade merely pulled the slide back on the Glock to chamber a round and then popped the magazine back out to add a bullet to it.

“Since that bitch killed Remy,” Cade bit out. “Since she threatened me and my baby and the life of my baby’s father.” She slammed the magazine back into the gun and grimaced. “
That
is why I want her dead.”

“This isn’t like you, though,” Ethan protested. “This isn’t the Cade Alton I know.”

“And what the hell would the Cade Alton you know do differently?” Cade asked, sliding the Glock into its holster. “What would she have done that I haven’t? Or what would she
not have
done that I have?”

“She certainly wouldn’t have gone out with the singular purpose of hunting down and murdering another human being,” Ethan replied.

Cade slammed her bag onto the tailgate. “Yes the fuck she would have,” she said harshly. “And she has before. What the hell kind of work do you think a sniper
does?
Sit on a box with a gun in her hand and look pretty? There might be a lot of jokes about ‘IDF babes’ and all that shit, but that
doesn’t
mean we’re fucking
lawn ornaments
or
pin-up girls!
We had
jobs
, and we did them above and beyond expectations, because we had something to
prove
. I took
every
assignment I was given without question, and I did a damn fine job of all eighteen of them. Not
once
did I miss a fucking target. And not
once
did I get caught. I was fucking
good
at it. So don’t tell me that the Cade Alton you knew wouldn’t have killed anybody, because she fucking damn well
did!
”

It took Cade a moment to realize that a hush had fallen over the back of the truck. She looked behind her and saw that the quiet conversation between Kimberly and Isaac had ceased; even Derek had torn his eyes away from his studies to look at her questioningly. She forced her gaze away from them, biting back the urge to snap for them to mind their own business, and refocused on the street, where more important things could have been happening.

“I only do what I absolutely have to do,” Cade said, dropping her voice so the others couldn’t hear, hoping they’d go back to what they’d been doing. “Just what needs to be done. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Ethan nodded and hooked his hands around his knee, not looking at her. “I know. I just don’t want to see you lose your humanity over this,” he admitted. “I don’t want to see you become like Alicia.”

“I’m not going to become like her,” Cade said. She wasn’t sure whom she was trying to reassure more: herself or Ethan. She shivered and rubbed her hand over her bare arm. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she added. “It’s stress. I’m not used to being in charge of this kind of stuff. I’ve been following Brandt for so long that I’ve forgotten what it’s like.”

“I understand,” Ethan said. He caught her hand and gave it a light squeeze. “We should get moving soon. I don’t want to wait too long. I want to get this over with.”

Cade nodded and stood, rolling her shoulders and adjusting her Kevlar vest. Since Isaac had opted to leave his own armor at the base, she was probably the most well armored of the group of five—if indeed a Kevlar vest could be considered “armored.” If she could have gotten away with it, she’d have left the heavy garment behind, but when Ethan had found out she had it, he’d insisted on her wearing it. So she was stuck.

After double-checking the fastenings on her vest, Cade faced the other three in the back of the truck, dropping off the tailgate to stand on the street. She instantly regretted the new position. The tailgate came up above her breasts, halfway to her collarbones, making her appear decidedly less imposing than she wanted. She blew out a breath before beckoning to the others. “Come on, let’s go,” she announced. “We’ve got to move if we expect to make it to the Westin within the next few hours.”

Cade turned on her heel, just barely seeing the grimace Kimberly gave her, and started to walk down the street. She didn’t bother to wait and make sure the others were, in fact, following her. There was bustling and thumping as the others grabbed their gear and disembarked from the truck. Kimberly’s quiet griping met Cade’s ears, but she shunted it aside and continued on.

Ethan caught up with Cade, and she glanced at him as he matched his pace with hers. “You know, you’re not exactly winning any brownie points with Kimberly back there by acting like this,” he said.

“I’m not trying to win brownie points with anyone,” Cade replied. “And I’m not here to make friends. I’m just trying to get us the hell through this alive.”