Chapter 26 #2
“Hold on to this. Only show this to Dr. Kumar and Dr. Allard,” I instructed, ignoring her question.
I rifled through the bag yet again, desperate for anything else that might help the child.
I unzipped the front pocket to find a folded piece of paper with the unit’s blood types, the medical information Owen had said Kumar left me. I slowly unfolded it.
Let the dead rest, Death’s Angel.
I read the words several times. It wasn’t medical information—it was a warning. Someone knew I had searched for those men’s files.
“You are, aren’t you? You’re going to protect her score, right? Daisy, you have an angel here.”
“What did you say?” I asked, staring between them and the note, fear coursing through me.
“You’re going to protect her score, right?”
“No. You said Daisy.”
“Yes, it’s her name. I loved daisies. You know the flower? My husband bought them all the time before the war. He suggested the name so I would always have a little flower with me.”
Innocent eyes, glossy from her fever, met mine. A little flower.
You have to survive now, little flower.
What if the girl didn’t survive? What if someone’s little flower died? The curtained walls began closing in on me.
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”
I sprinted from the Ward, the words on that note opening up the floodgates.
Was the note from Kumar? What did he know?
Why were we still playing games? We had destroyed the whole world, obliterated entire countries, eliminating billions of people.
We were all that was left and yet dishonesty and greed ran rampant. Had we learned anything at all?
Let the dead rest, Death’s Angel.
But it was the dead who were haunting me.
Not the ones on the list but the ones who were gone, whom I had failed.
Who else would I lose? The little girl’s face shifting to Bretta’s before morphing to my mother.
My sister. My brother. The carousel of people I had tried to save picked up speed to the soundtrack of my father’s knowledge and advice.
Blurring them together until all the people in the Ward I had cared for swam before my eyes.
Every member of Unit Seven. My chest was too tight.
As the pile of those I had failed outweighed the ones I had helped.
Leaving everything off-kilter, spinning faster as I ran back to the living quarters.
So I would always have a little flower with me.
Save her.
Helplessness washed over me, wrapping around my heart, giving way to the beast as it broke the surface, shredding my insides.
Would the medicine be enough to help Bretta?
The little girl? Was the illness bacterial or viral?
Would I watch them waste away like all the others?
Was I bartering with death like a fool once again?
My breaths sawed out of me. Would it be mercy if it all just ended?
I hated humans. I hated that I was the fittest in my family.
I hated that I didn’t know if I could save Bretta.
I couldn’t stomach what that would do to Ingrid.
Ingrid, who had hated me since Lily had died.
I had let her. Welcomed her hatred, letting it fuse with my own.
I detested what seeing her beg for her sister did to me.
The ghost it had unleashed—the memory I had thought I had buried far enough to never visit it again.
Ingrid’s desperation twins with the one I carried as I bartered with an unknown entity that didn’t care. Death had come anyway.
She’d kill me if I failed. I knew that in my bones.
I knew that if I failed again, I would be okay with it.
I’d welcome it. Give her a target for her anger so it didn’t swallow her whole as mine had.
Anger rampaged through me; at the path my thoughts had taken or perhaps at what life had become.
I didn’t care which. I welcomed it like an old friend, letting it fill all the places that hurt.
I opened the door to the living quarters, finding it mercifully empty. Alone, I let go, my brokenness contaminating everything. Potent and deadly, consuming me. I yanked one of my boots off, throwing it against the wall. A broken cry escaped me.
What was the point of any of this? What was I still fighting for?
I clawed the second one off, chucking it as well, only to find Tristian in the boys’ doorway, his dark brown hair unbound.
“What happened?” he asked, stepping over my boots. I was unsure what to say, how to say any of it. “Sasha?” My name a question as he searched for anything out of place.
“Go away, Hayes,” I demanded, the anger too big to hold. I wanted a wall of dirt. I needed to swing and swing and swing. Anything to keep my thoughts from devouring me alive. My hands shook. I needed something, anything, to make this feeling end.
“No,” Tristian said, folding his arms and widening his stance.
“I need you to leave.” It came out as a plea while my heart hammered against my ribs. I wanted out—out of this room, out of the Force, out of the unit that cared for one another, out of his blazing stare.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Tristian stated. I heaved deep breaths as I held his gaze. Something else twisted around my anger as it morphed into the only release I knew. “Talk to me, Sasha.”
“I don’t want to talk. I need you to leave.”
“No,” Tristian said firmly.
My anger misfired, as it always did. “Fucking go, Hayes. I don’t want you.”
Tristian stood, unmoving, unflinching, slowly taking a step closer to me. “We both know that isn’t true.”
The comment laid me bare. My teeth ground together as he took another step, walking into the eye of my storm unafraid. The winds shifted, churning, leaving me unsteady. The feel of him against me, his lips against mine…
“You should go, please,” I begged quietly, but I didn’t look away. I didn’t know if I could.
“Do you really want me to go?” Tristian asked, his blazing stare landing on my lips.
I reached for my anger, hopelessly clawing at it. I needed it to drown the thing twisting wildly in my core. Something too raw. My grasp came up empty.
“No,” I admitted, letting the terrible truth win.
“Okay. I’ll stay. What do you need?”
“I need…” I drank him in. That need for distraction I had starved since joining the Force slammed into me. I ignored what it really was, but I always had when it came to him.
Tristian raised his brow like he knew. He waited, his teeth running over his bottom lip. The thought of replacing his teeth with my own ensnared me.
“I want…” I swallowed, trying to rein in the desire that burned me from the inside out. At the thing he had ignited all those moons ago in the Ward. As he smiled when I had been vicious. Hating that he was right. That I wanted…
“Tell me what you want,” Tristian said roughly, a strain to his voice. I locked eyes with him; his body trembled like a private war raged within.
I would regret this. I would pay for this. I knew what happened to the people I chose to care about.
What was one more mistake?
Tristian’s eyes traced the outlines of my lips as he waited.
“Sasha, what do you want?” Tristian whispered.
I took one last breath.
I wanted life. Him.
Regrets be damned.