Chapter 29
“You love me the most when I’m at my worst. How did I get so lucky?” – excerpt from a letter written to Donovan Shore by Amira Khalil
Marcus
This can’t be right. I’ve been crammed into the Prius of submarines for the past eight hours, and it looks like the boat drove itself to an abandoned island.
It’s an overgrown jungle, the small beach strewn with branches and rocks. There’s a neglected dock with weeds growing up through the wood slats.
A sign, the words so bleached by the sun I can hardly read them, hangs from a crooked post.
Island contaminated
Maintain safe zone of four miles from shore
Great. Either Tyrone fucked me, or this robo sub did. I need to figure out how to program my way out of here and hope the sub is enough to protect me from whatever contamination is on this island.
Movement on the dock grabs my attention. A man wearing a maroon T-shirt and gray sweatpants stands there, a canvas bucket hat on his head.
Waving his arm, he gestures for me to come closer. I furrow my brow and point to the sign.
Smiling, he shakes his head and points to the dock.
He looks human, and he’s alive. But I don’t trust anything after what I saw on Island Three. He could be a clone.
What else can I do, though? I need to get to Island Four and I don’t know where it is. Using the joystick on the control panel, I maneuver the sub over to the dock.
The guy who looks like I’m interrupting his fishing trip points to a spot in the water closer to the shore. I ease my pod over to it, and he gives me a thumbs-up.
Suddenly, the sub gets sucked into the water, the force so powerful and fast that I’m looking at the guy one second and I’m back underwater the next.
Fuck. I frantically push buttons, but this vessel isn’t under my control anymore. A powerful force that feels like a vacuum pulls me through the darkness. After around fifteen seconds, the bottom of the vehicle locks onto something, jolting me.
I brace myself, one hand on the dash and another on the door, as the sub is raised by something mechanical, the trip smooth and quick.
When the water slides away from the windows, I find myself in a dry dock. It’s like the one on Island Three, but smaller. Three people stand on a walkway, one of them holding a sign with letters printed in blocky black letters.
It’s not contaminated
Adrenaline is still pumping through me. I’m alive, and I could be dead if they wanted me to be. Still, I wish I had a weapon. I push the button to open the sub’s door and step out onto the adjacent dock.
“It’s okay,” the woman holding the sign says. “We got a message from Island Three that you were coming. There’s no contamination. That’s just how we keep everyone away.”
I breathe slightly easier, sizing her up. She’s tall and lean with shoulder-length black hair. She looks me up and down, her smile widening.
“Come on, cowboy. Let’s have a chat. I’m Cress.”
“I’m not staying long.”
The guy in the fishing hat walks in through a door on the side of the dock. He looks me up and down, too, shaking his head.
“Damn, dude. It’s Tarzan.”
“Evander sent me.”
Cress tilts her head to the side. “You’d be sitting at the bottom of the ocean if we didn’t know who you are, Marcus.”
“So you know what I want, then?”
She arches her brows. “You just knocked on our door and we’ve invited you inside. Come on.”
I want to secure a boat and get back to my island as soon as possible, but I guess I need to convince Cress I’m trustworthy.
I join her and the others, the fishing hat guy opening a heavy steel door.
“Hey, I’m Seth,” he says as I walk through the doorway.
He’s average in height, and he tilts his head back to meet my eyes.
“Marcus.”
We climb a flight of stairs that leads to a large room with nothing in it but a table and four chairs.
Cress takes a chair and gestures to the one across from her. I sit down there and one of the people with her, a man, sits beside her. The other two leave the room.
“Tell us about your island,” Cress says.
They’re both wearing regular clothes from before the virus. T-shirts and lightweight pants. I don’t know how much I want to say, but I’ve got no leverage. The only way I can leave here in one of their boats is by giving information.
“Our leader died. Dr. Randall McClain.”
“And which team was he playing for?”
“He was Team Regime when we got to the island, but once he saw what the experiments were doing to people, he changed his mind.”
This room is cool and comfortable, so it has to be air-conditioned. Cress is wearing pink nail polish. Their clothes are clean. Every detail tells me this island is more than it seems.
“And what about you?” Cress asks.
“I was on McClain’s team of scientists. We created aromium, the compound being used on my island. I also changed my mind because of what aromium was doing to people.”
The man, physically fit with inked-up arms, a short beard and shoulder-length brown hair, just watches me, not saying a word.
“Where are the rest of the scientists?” Cress asks.
No reason to lie about it. “Dead.”
“Cause of death?”
“They tried to go back to the mainland in a sub and the sub didn’t make it.”
She’s not giving a thing away with her expression or mannerisms. But I don’t like being on this side of the table. I prefer to be the one asking the questions instead of the one answering them.
“You’re with the ILF?” I ask.
“What makes you think that?”
“Evander told me.”
“Yes, we’re with the ILF.”
“You know who Olin is?”
She nods. “We’ve had very minimal contact with him, but yes. How is he?”
“He’s good.”
“What about Virginia Marsden?”
I drop my brows a notch. “What about her?”
“How is she?”
“Dead.”
“Cause of death?”
I shift in my chair, aggravated. “Choking. How long are you planning to ask me questions you already know the answers to?”
The man beside her crosses his arms. Cress’s lips quirk almost imperceptibly.
“What are your plans for your island?”
I scoff. “Stay alive. We didn’t know there was a way for us to leave until McClain died and that video came up about the sub.”
“Are you fighting Rising Tide?”
“As much as we can. I was starving them out, but then the New America pricks sent a human tank to Rising Tide and he kidnapped one of my people. I had to give up supplies to get her back.”
Seth comes back in the room with a glass pitcher of ice water and three upside-down glasses on a tray. He sets it on the table.
They have ice cubes. Unreal.
“Do you want to join the ILF?” Cress asks.
“Not now. I need to get back to my island. I want to get my people back to the mainland and I need a boat.”
Cress turns over a glass and pours ice water into it. “And you want us to give you one?”
“Loan me one.”
She offers me the glass and I put my palm out in refusal. She takes a long drink from the glass and says, “See? Safe. I wasn’t even thirsty until you got here.”
Cheeky. I am thirsty as fuck, so I pour myself a glass of water.
“Well? Can you spare a boat?”
She sits back in her chair, studying me. “Possibly. Tell me what you know about Briar Hollis.”
My chest tightens. I’m not giving up any information about Briar beyond the basics.
“She’s on my island. What else do you want to know?”
“Why are people on your island afraid of her?”
I bristle, tired of being fucked with. “Enough of the games. You seem to know things about my island. How?”
“We have our ways.”
“You expect me to be completely forthcoming with you, but you won’t tell me shit.”
She lifts her shoulders in a shrug. “You’re the one who wants something.”
“Aren’t we on the same side? Evander offered to answer every question I had, but you’re just fucking with me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Is there anyone on my island other than Olin communicating with the ILF?”
“No.”
“Why are you asking me why people are afraid of Briar? Did Olin tell you that?”
“No.”
I shake my head, frustrated. “Look, if it’s a no on the boat, just say so.”
The man beside her bumps his upper arm against hers lightly. She sighs softly.
“Your island is the one we know the least about. But that doesn’t mean we know nothing.”
I’ve led both sides. Rising Tide and the Dust Walkers.
No one but McClain has ever had communication capabilities.
McClain was only able to communicate with the mainland through the computer with a direct link to it, which I suspect comes from cables on the ocean floor.
I know its limitations because he showed me how to use it and explained it to me.
I can order more supplies through that connection and check records that were last updated several years ago, but nothing else.
“You’re surveilling us.”
She ignores me.
“Does Briar Hollis want what the ILF wants?”
“What does the ILF want?”
“The complete destruction of the New America regime. A restoration to democracy. Free and fair elections.”
I rest my elbows on the table, making them wait several seconds before I say, “There are people on my island who want that. Why are you singling out Briar?”
“She has ... a unique connection that’s of interest to us.”
The plant thing. I’m not letting them use her as their weapon.
“My connections can be more valuable to you.”
Cress almost smiles, her eyes sparkling with amusement. “What connections are you referring to?”
“My aromium connects me to wolves and endoliths, which are tiny organisms in rocks. I can make the ground open up if you want. Assuming that ground has aromium in it. It’s the same with Briar’s plants. I don’t know if our connections will be there anywhere outside of our island.”
Cress’s brows are pinched together in confusion. “We only have limited recent information on the aromium experiments, so I do want to hear more. But I was talking about a different connection that Briar has.”
I’m immediately defensive, but I mask it. “What connection do you mean?”
“Her sister.”
I lean forward. Finding her sister means everything to Briar. I need to play this right and find out everything I can.
“Mae,” I say.
Something sparks in Cress’s eyes. “Yes.”
“This is where you stop giving me crumbs and tell me everything. That’s the only chance you have of me taking anything back to Briar.”
“Congrats on that waterfall reunion with her, by the way.”
Her words hit me like a blow. For a second, I’m too stunned to respond, but then fury floods through me. “How the fuck do you know about that?”
The man beside Cress glares at her. I stand, my chair scraping against the concrete floor as it flies back.
“Answer the fucking question!”
“You and your fucking mouth, Cress.” The man’s voice is the gravelly rumble of a longtime smoker. He looks up at me. “We have eyes in the sky. And we are all on the same side. The ILF is very interested in Briar because we hope she can influence her sister.”
A satellite. It blows my mind that the ILF has such a valuable asset. Good fucking thing I took Briar behind the waterfall so they didn’t see her naked.
I put my palms on the table, thinking about how much I need that boat. I grind out my next words. “Influence her how?”
“To turn on her husband and join the ILF.”
“You’re saying her husband is in the regime?”
“Mae’s husband is a high-level New America commander. Briar knows him well. It’s Lochlan Murphy.”