Chapter 55
Kate
We crouch on the other side of the door that opens to the roof, peering through the crack.
The helicopter has landed, its large rotor blades still spinning as three men slide the door open and step onto the concrete.
They’re in hazmat suits with two cradling rifles in their arms, flanking the one in the middle.
Before I can take a steadying breath, blood splatters on the window as the pilot is shot through the skull. His body slumps against the controls. The rotor blades seemingly make it too loud for the others to hear the gunshots, as they don’t even flinch.
But the one in the middle notices as Michelle takes down his bodyguards from the building next door.
Their bodies drop and the last man startles, rushing to the safety of the chopper. Jordan is already through the door—she may not have made it if he hadn’t panicked and froze upon seeing the pilot dead in his seat.
Jordan grabs him by the neck and yanks him back. He lands in a heap on the roof.
I’m on my feet, rushing them, gun out and ready as I tower above him. “Don’t fucking move!”
The small window of his hazmat suit gives me a clear look at his terror. “Who are you?” he shouts. “Where’s Parker?”
“Parker’s fucking dead,” I yell. “You’re O’Brien, right?” His eyes go wide as saucers at the sound of his name. “Why are you doing this?” My voice cracks, my rage and despair and hopelessness bubbling over. “Why?”
“We didn’t know—”
“Bullshit!” I shriek, gun shaking in my hands. “You knew exactly what you were doing!”
“We were hired by the administration,” he tries to explain. “They wanted to test the virus, to see if it could be managed.”
“But it can’t. And you knew that.”
His hands lift in surrender. “I’m sorry.”
An unhinged laugh escapes me. “No you’re not.
You don’t fucking care. No one fucking cares.
” Everything I’ve buried is dragging itself up and out of me, roaring to destroy.
“We may just be lab rats to you, but we’re people—actual fucking people.
And you destroyed everything.” Something wet hits my cheek but I’m too lost in my wrath to care.
“You took everything from us, and all you can say is sorry?”
“We didn’t—I didn’t—”
“Shut up!” I scream, breath sawing in and out of my lungs. “Just shut up!”
“Look, I can get you off the island, I can keep them from finding you,” he pleads.
“He’s lying,” Jordan snarls behind me, but I already know. “He’ll turn us in the second he’s on that chopper.”
He starts blabbering now, promising us money, safety, anything—
I thought I wanted him alive so I could get answers. To figure out why this is happening to us.
But I realize it doesn’t matter. Nothing is going to change what happened, what they’ve done.
I send a bullet straight between his eyes, shutting him up.
My breath comes out in pants as I glare down at his body. Killing him didn’t get rid of the rage inside me.
“Kate, we have to go,” Jordan urges, prompting me to look forward to see infected racing through the door toward us, drawn to the commotion we’ve caused.
Without another look, we leave their discarded bodies on the roof for the infected to tear into as we climb into the chopper.
Michelle has thrown the dead pilot from his seat and is pressing a series of buttons I’m too afraid and wound up to ask about.
“Headsets on!” she shouts before we’re even fully seated.
She pulls up, the helicopter taking us into the sky.
I nearly press my face to the window as we get higher and higher, leaving behind a piece of me that will never be replaced.
I feel Jordan’s hand slip into mine, her thumb softly stroking my skin.
As the ground gets smaller, I turn to Jordan, her glowing eyes holding mine. “We have each other,” she tells me through the headset, her voice instantly soothing me. “Whatever’s next, we’ll always be together.”
Unable to fully express how much I need her, I nod and press a kiss to her forehead, her nose, her eyelids, before planting one on her lips. “Together,” I promise.