Chapter 2
CHAPTER
TWO
BISHOP
Aubrey Malcolm had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen.
We weren’t supposed to talk to the prisoners. We weren’t supposed to interact with them. I knew guards did—they’d go into the cells at night and find the ones they thought were the prettiest so they could have their fun.
It was forgiven, even encouraged—the men and women behind the bars were considered less than animals by the company that hired my unit. I’d joined the Order to help people, at least that’s what I’d thought when I signed up.
It turned out we were nothing more than mercenaries in fancy jackets, with fancy dog tags that might as well have been collars.
We weren’t better than the raiders who roamed around and took what they wanted, we just did it with guns and authority, with the blessing of those in charge instead of the condemnation of the world around us .
We weren’t supposed to really look at the test subjects.
But I couldn’t help looking at him.
Aubrey Malcolm never put his head down, he never cowered when the guards came around. It didn’t matter that most of us were more rabid than the damn ferals that had all but ruined the world. We had permission to act like animals as long as we kept it private, and kept it to the captured.
As much as I tried to keep my squad in line, there were some men who didn’t respect rank or orders.
There were people who wanted nothing more than to cause hurt and pain, and I wondered sometimes if they hadn’t derived the RRV13 from people like them.
It wasn’t really a shock to realize the recruits who joined the Order did it for power, for safety, for security. There’d just been a part of me that had hoped some of the people who’d joined did it for the right reason.
To help.
Sometimes it felt like I was the only one.
Wanting to help was going to get me killed. Knowing that they were killing off the weaker people in the building, the injured, the children…
It was enough to make me hasty.
And knowing that they were taking the men and women who they deemed viable experiments and injecting them with some concentrated version of the rain to see if they’d either turn or inherit more of the strengths that came with the infection?
I wasn’t sure how I managed to follow protocol at all.
Especially when I realized that Aubrey Malcolm had disappeared from his cell and I hadn’t seen him in two weeks.
It took me that long to figure out where they’d put him, and a few days past that to get my watch duty properly transferred so I could be in the holding cell area.
Holding cells, fuck. We really were working for monsters, weren’t we? They’d neatly divided out the storage area into six stalls, putting up walls with fences and boards like they’d been trained to do it all along.
Aubrey Malcolm was at the very end of the row, sitting on a bed and idly spinning a little scrap of metal between his fingers. I wasn’t sure where he’d found it—they’d take it from him if they saw it.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to have that.
” My voice was careful when I spoke, and his gaze darted up to mine.
As soon as our eyes connected, the air punched from my chest—beautiful.
They were so fucking beautiful, even surrounded by bruises and cuts.
The latter bit of knowledge made my mouth twist in frustration.
I knew this place and my squad weren’t bringing people back here for good reasons, but seeing the physical manifestation of it on Aubrey’s face was too much.
“Are you going to come in here and take it from me, soldier?” One dark brow hitched, and there was a challenge in his voice I couldn’t quite ignore. My eyes dropped to the lock separating us, and I frowned.
“I don’t have the key.”
Aubrey glanced down at the metal in his hand, then back up at me. “That’s too bad. I might have given it to you. ”
The mischief in his eyes nearly made them glow—green like a demon, green like temptation. Green like everything I wasn’t allowed to have, like everything I wasn’t allowed to want .
The next day, when I came back to Aubrey’s cell, I didn’t have a key, but I did have food.
Maybe it wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but it was better than coming empty-handed, and I had no idea if they were feeding the people they brought back to the holding area any better than they were feeding the ones they had in the front cells.
As far as I could see, they gave them exactly enough to meet their nutritional needs, and made sure they had clean water.
But little bars packed with all the protein and vitamins a person required to function weren’t any way to live.
Aubrey’s eyes widened when I slipped a bit of dried fruit through the bars of his cell, but he stepped forward and took it with a cautious expression.
“Why?”
It was just one word, and I didn’t realize a single syllable could hold the weight of the world. The soft shape of his mouth formed into visions of trauma, into mistrust and pain that I couldn’t begin to imagine.
I’d never thought I was particularly lucky—I didn’t think anyone born in these times was—but I hadn’t realized until this moment that I didn’t understand exactly how much worse it could be .
I didn’t know one word could change a man’s heart that much.
His purpose.
I pulled another piece of dried fruit from the little package I had and deliberately took a bite so he could see it was safe to eat. He kept his eyes on my lips until I wondered if I was going to accidentally choke in front of him.
Finally, I swallowed and leaned forward. It was closer than we were supposed to get unless we were going into the cells with a purpose and a weapon. Close enough that I felt the metal of the wall separating us bite into my arm as I leaned against it.
He was still staring at me, though, still waiting for an answer I wasn’t sure I knew how to give. I finally blew out a breath and sighed.
“I don’t know. You just look like you could use some company.”
He stared at me for a few more seconds before finally bringing the peace offering to his mouth and taking a small bite.
I didn’t miss the way his eyes lit up, the soft expression that he quickly pushed aside.
“I mean, I could use some fresh air, and maybe some bandages. Can you do that too?” Aubrey leaned toward me.
Reflex told me to back away—I had no idea what he’d done with that metal, or what his intentions were.
“I wish I could.”
I stayed where I was as he dropped his eyes from my mouth to the center of my chest and tilted his head.
“Bishop.” My name on his lips was sin. It broke the chain of command and every rule and regulation I’d had drilled into me during training. “Hm. I didn’t know they let people who actually had a heart into the Order.”
His fingers moved, slow and telegraphed, stretching through the metal to carefully grab my tags so he could run his thumb across my name. My breath came in a shuddery sigh that was probably more telling than any words I could have said.
“There are a few of us,” I finally managed when he dropped his hand back between the metal and took a few steps to sit on his makeshift bunk, looking up at me as he took another bite of the dried fruit in his hand.
“Guess not enough to stop them from rounding up groups of people just trying to survive, though, huh?” Even with the accusation, he was rubbing the fingers he’d touched my tags with together like he could still feel the press of metal despite the distance he’d put between us.
“This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.” I’d heard about this city even before I’d joined the Order.
It rained so much that most of the people were carriers, and the population had dwindled from the constant exposure—people who survived stayed in the incubation phase more often than not, whether they were exposed to rain or bites.
There was possibility here. Hope that the scientists could find a cure, or at least synthesize something that could let the rest of the world process the virus the same way.
Where I came from, a few states over, I’d seen entire families turn because they accidentally drank contaminated water.
This place was supposed to be hope… but looking at Aubrey stuck in a cage, I was starting to wonder what the price of hope was really worth.
“I thought they were looking for a cure. I’m so sorry. ”
It was a shit apology, and I didn’t deserve the way his lips quirked into a smile, even though it split the cut open and made him bleed. He licked the trail of crimson away before answering.
“What cure? Do you know what that rain did? It woke humanity up—it gave them a reason to embrace their own vicious instincts. That’s it. Maybe we turn to rot in the end, but we were going to anyway, weren’t we? I’d rather go out in a blaze of fire than let myself drown in the storm.”
I spent the next two weeks coming back to Aubrey’s cell with little bits and offerings—fruit and stolen pieces of jerky.
A bottle of cold, instant coffee that was probably so far past expired it would have made most people cringe.
He took it all from me without question and smiled while he did it.
Every day, he’d reach his fingers through the metal and touch my tags gently before he’d settle on his bunk and we’d start talking.
Every day, I wondered if it was possible to love a person before you’d ever met them, because there was a part of me that felt like I’d loved Aubrey my entire life. Maybe that was just him, though. Maybe that was what Aubrey Malcolm and his foxfire eyes did to people.
It was the only explanation I had for the way I reacted when I came to the prisoner area and heard the sound of low grunts, the growling of a voice that wasn’t Aubrey’s.
The sound of skin slapping skin.
And I knew .
I knew when the food I’d brought slipped from numb fingers and somehow found itself replaced with my gun.
And I knew when I found his cell door open and saw Morris on top of him.
I didn’t think when I put a bullet in Morris’s shoulder, and I didn’t think when my boot collided with the side of his head to cut off the scream before he brought the rest of our squad down on us.
“Aubrey.” He jerked like I’d hit him when I kneeled beside him and untied his wrists.
He was curled in on himself, his clothes ripped, his brow bloody.
He looked dazed when he turned his head and his eyes met mine.
“Hey.” I pulled off my jacket, covering up the long gash that ran along the length of his back, trailing to the top of his ass. “Hey, let’s get you fixed up, okay?”
It took another few seconds of him looking at me to finally focus, and when he did, he smiled through a busted lip. “I don’t think anyone’s ever said that to me before.”
His voice was so hollow, and he was shaking when I helped him pull his pants up and tie his shredded shirt around his back as a makeshift bandage.
He closed his eyes when I secured my jacket around his shoulders, my fingers lingering, like that piece of fabric could somehow protect him from what had just happened.
And he kept his head down as I glanced between Morris still breathing on the ground and the open door.
Everything… everything was falling down around my feet—the world, who I thought I was going to be and what I thought I was going to do with my life—because I pulled Aubrey out of his cell and started walking.
I knew the so ldiers were light on duty at night, and I also knew there was an emergency exit stairwell beside the regular holding area.
He came to a standstill when we rounded the corner, his eyes fixed on the cells that were emptier than they’d been since the last time he saw them.
“We have to help them.”
I wanted to tell him there was nothing we could do—that I had the key code for the stairwell but not the prisoner’s individual locks.
But…
“You don’t look like you can help anyone.”
His brows came together, and his green eyes were pleading when they turned to me. Maybe he was running on pure adrenaline. Maybe it was determination. Whatever it was, the stubbornness in his gaze trumped the pain I’d seen on his face earlier. “I’m not leaving until those doors are open.”
Protocol.
Protocol said I should have left him in that cell and let Morris rape him. Protocol said I should turn him in to the head scientist. Protocol said I was fucked, and I didn’t care.
“Under an emergency, every door in this place automatically opens.”
“What kind of emergency?”
It was a bad idea—there was every chance we’d get caught—but I also knew they’d moved the chemicals from the storage room into a closet close to the holding cells.
I knew a lot of the containers had one word written across them .
Flammable.
“A fire.”
Aubrey’s eyes widened, but his lips quirked into a soft smile. “I know how to start fires, Bishop. Let’s burn this place to the ground.”