Chapter 14
Myra
“Those dumb motherfuckers left me behind,” Myra whispered, her voice quiet and venomous as she dragged the back of her hand across her sweat slicked brow.
“Of fucking course. I should’ve fucking known.
” She spat the words out like broken glass, each one cutting deeper as she forced open the sewer gate with a grunt and lowered herself down the ladder.
The Academy had drilled it into them to have cold hearts and to make even colder decisions.
Survival mattered more than sentiment, but still, some naive part of her had believed that they would come back for her.
That if she just hid for long enough, they’d return.
But even after the sun rose, no one had come looking.
Fine.
She didn’t need them. She’d been alone before, and she’d survive alone again. That thought was enough to carry her through the tunnels until she emerged back within the safety of the hospital. The anger, though, clung to her ribs like it was a part of her very being.
“Back so soon?” Cipher’s voice carried from the armory. He was cataloguing the day’s inventory and his glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose as he ticked off items.
Myra didn’t answer. Instead, she dropped her rifle onto the counter with a sharp clatter, followed by both of her handguns and the last magazine from her vest.
Cipher looked up with an arched brow. “I’m guessing it didn’t go well?”
“Nope,” Myra said flatly as she peeled off her vest. She nearly groaned at the relief of the weight being lifted, but she knew her shoulders ached from carrying more than just the gear.
“And the others…?” Cipher asked.
Myra shook her head as a bitter laugh caught in her throat. “Who fucking knows.”
Cipher leaned back slightly, adjusting his glasses with a slow push of his finger. “Alrighty then.”
There was no judgment or pity in the way he spoke to her. His calmness pressed against the raw edges of her fury, irritating her, yet offering a strange kind of relief she didn’t want to admit she needed.
“Can you meet me back in my room in thirty minutes?” she asked, her lips pressed tight.
They had done this long enough for her to know there was no need for games or theatrics. When she asked, he came.
Cipher glanced at his watch, and the faintest crease formed between his brows. “I can make it in forty-five. Will that work?”
“That’s perfect,” she replied without hesitation.
She tugged her long dark hair free from its braid, letting it fall loose around her shoulders before she turned on her heel. She didn’t look back as she headed for the showers, but the thought of Cipher waiting for her was the one thing keeping her from unraveling completely.
“Mhmm…” Myra moaned as a wild, reckless grin tugged at her lips.
Maybe it was the adrenaline still coursing through her from the night before, or maybe it was just the raw, desperate need for release clawing at her nerves. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
Her gaze locked onto Cipher’s, his soft blue eyes gone dark. His glasses had been tossed somewhere earlier, and he somehow looked more innocent without them. She loved the way his head fell back against the pillow, the way his hands gripped her hips hard enough to bruise.
Sometimes in moments like this, she wondered how the hell she had ended up here.
She was the soldier, the one bred for violence and survival, and he was their quiet tech expert who could lose himself in wires for hours.
She shouldn’t have found herself so enthralled by the way he touched her like she was the most valuable thing in the world.
Yet here she was, completely captivated by him and dangerously close to admitting that she didn’t just want him — she needed him.
That truth terrified her more than any infection ever could.
“Please, Myra,” Cipher begged, his voice rough as his eyes fluttered shut. His plea came out ragged and desperate as she moved against him.
“Please what?” Myra asked, teasing as she leaned forward and let her fingers weave through his messy blonde hair. She tugged just enough for his head to arch back and his hips to jerk upwards in a desperate search for the friction he craved.
He groaned, and his mouth fell slightly agape. “More. Faster.”
Her grin widened. “Yeah? Is that what you want?” she teased, pressing a kiss to the hollow of his throat before straightening and rolling her hips again with purpose.
Her palms flattened against his chest, feeling the frantic rhythm of his heartbeat beneath.
“You’re so good for me, you know that?” she whispered. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
“I know you do. I know,” he said breathlessly. Nodding his head as he looked back up at her with an unguarded expression. His fingers loosened their grip on her hips and slid up her sides, tracing over her skin with something close to reverence.
Myra’s own heart skipped in time with his as she watched the man beneath her fall apart under her touch.
His words felt like they were coming from a place between want and need.
She shivered under his roaming hands, her head falling back as the long waves of her hair stuck to the sweat dripping down her back.
Her fingers curled into his chest until her nails bit against his skin hard enough to leave her own marks there.
Proof, solid and real, that she had been here.
Just as the bruises on her hips showed he had been with her.
“Myra…” Her name was a prayer that tumbled from his lips between breathless pants that filled the air around them with heat. “I —”
She stopped him with a kiss, swallowing the rest of his sentence before he could say something that would turn this moment into something else.
The heat of the adrenaline still clawing at her insides drove her hips down against his with a reckless need.
But the way he held her now, the way his voice said her name, like he wanted her for something more than just a release, all of it felt like they were dancing far too close to something terrifyingly real.
“Just shut up and kiss me,” she murmured, her tone desperate for something she would not name. Her lips brushed his as she stared down at him in the near darkness of the room. Her chest pressed against his until she wasn’t sure whose heart was beating faster. “Just….kiss me.”
Cipher did as he was told.
“Do you want to tell me what really happened out there?” Cipher asked softly.
Myra’s immediate instinct was to brush him off, to throw up her usual wall of excuses and send him away the second they were done.
She had always told herself that what they did was enough.
But things had changed over time, and now she found herself curling against his chest and letting his fingertips lazily swirl around the ends of her hair instead of pushing him out the door.
“There’s not much to tell,” she finally responded, her voice heavy with exhaustion. “We were ambushed, they ran, I kept low until sunrise, and now,” she exhaled a long and bitter breath, “I’m here with you.”
“And…are you okay with that?” he asked, his tone cautious, the way it always was when he tested the edges of her boundaries.
Myra sighed. “Am I disappointed? Sure. But you know how it is. Academy rules. Mission first, people second. That’s the way it’s always been.”
“Maybe for them,” Cipher countered. “But not for me. If it’s ever us out there, I don’t care what the Academy taught us. I wouldn’t leave you behind.” His words carried a conviction that startled her, and before she could deflect, he leaned forward to press a lingering kiss to her temple.
A reluctant laugh slipped from Myra as she rolled onto her stomach to face him. “You already got laid. No need to play the knight in shining armor.”
He shook his head and his expression remained serious. “It’s not about that. I mean it, Myra. You know what you are to me.”
Her chest tightened at the weight in his words. She wanted to shove the feeling aside and make another joke. But instead she leaned forward just enough to brush her lips over his before whispering, “I know.”
Cipher groaned dramatically when Myra finally rolled out of bed and began looking for her clothes. “For a second there, I thought we were actually having a moment.”
Myra smirked as she tugged on her underwear, glancing at him over her shoulder. “We were, and now the moment’s over.”
Cipher tossed his discarded shirt at her, earning a giggle when she let it bounce harmlessly off her arm before slipping into her own t-shirt.
“I’m kidding,” she teased, stumbling forward just long enough to steal another kiss.
“I just need to check in, let them know I’m back, and stop by to see Jace.
” She started to button her pants. “But, Sable’s still out there so if you want, you could crash here while she’s gone. ”
Leaning against the wall, Cipher blinked at her, caught off guard. “Like…sleep here? At night?”
“Yeah,” Myra replied with a chuckle, tossing his shirt back towards him. “Unless that’s too official for you—”
“No!” Cipher cut in quickly, his tone just a little too eager. “I’d love that. I’ll be here, I promise.”
Myra couldn’t help but laugh at his seriousness. She smiled as she headed for the door and then paused, her hand on the knob as she glanced back at him. “I’ll see you then.”
Check-in was simple enough, though it never failed to irritate Myra.
All it consisted of was updating their barrack supervisor, an ancient, half-broken artificial intelligence unit that could barely tell left from right.
The machine was so run down that its voice box glitched more often than not, but at the very least, it saved them from chasing down admin officers.
That is, when it wasn’t malfunctioning.
After smacking the damn thing on its head a few times, Myra finally got it to blink awake. She watched the screen flicker on, waited for the confirmation that her return had been logged, and only then did she head toward the elevators.
Her destination was the eleventh floor, where the pediatric patients were housed. The hospital had wards for nearly every condition imaginable. Myra was headed to the Nephrology unit where Jace stayed whenever he was stable enough to be there instead of the PICU.
A sigh of relief escaped her the moment she spotted Jace’s name still written on the plaque outside of room 1107. She knocked gently on the door before slipping inside, finding him propped up in bed as usual.
“Hey, kiddo,” she said, sinking into the small couch beside his hospital bed.
Despite the chaos beyond the walls, Jace was every bit a normal twelve-year-old boy. He played on his gaming console until exhaustion dragged him under, only ever pausing for the schoolwork he begrudgingly tolerated or the procedures the doctors insisted upon.
“I thought you said you’d be gone for a while,” Jace said, pressing pause on the controller before rolling onto his side to look at her.
“There was a change of plans,” Myra said, trying to manage a faint smile. “Besides, I didn’t want to stay away for too long. Figured you’d miss me too much.”
Jace rolled his eyes.
Myra hadn’t known him before the outbreak.
She’d just run head-first into him one night when he was sneaking out of his room after lights out in search of a snack.
She should have reported him for doing so but she’d been unable to.
He just looked too much like the brother she’d once had.
The one she had tried to save by joining the Academy.
In the end, it didn’t matter that they weren’t family. A bond formed quickly between the pair, and now, despite everything, Myra cared for Jace far more fiercely than she’d ever thought herself capable of doing again.
A few moments later, the door creaked open and Carly, his nurse, slipped inside, datapad in hand. She gave Jace a quick smile and greeted Myra before moving to check the monitors by his bedside.
“Hey,” Myra said softly, pushing off the couch. “Can I ask you something?”
The nurse glanced up and nodded. Myra gestured toward the hallway and together they stepped just outside the room, out of earshot.
“They’ve started the transplant process, right?” Myra asked, her tone calm despite how nervous she really was.
Carly hesitated, her eyes darted past Myra, making sure Jace couldn’t hear before she leaned in closer. “He…he’s been taken off the list.”
For a moment, Myra couldn’t breathe. Her voice dropped to a low growl. “What the hell do you mean, taken off?”
The nurse’s grip tightened on the datapad as though it could shield her from Myra’s fury.
“He’s ineligible because his priority status was changed without permission.
They’re saying there’s a big punishment coming for Dr. Castillo because of what she did.
Admin wants to make an example of her. I guess they’re extending that punishment to Jace so no one will think of doing the same. ”
Myra’s jaw clenched so tightly it hurt, and she could hear her pulse in her ears. “So they’re punishing an innocent kid because of something someone else did?”
“I’m sorry,” Carly whispered as her eyes dropped to the floor. “But if I were you, I’d keep this between us. If they knew I told you…” She trailed off, swallowing the lump in her throat.
Myra stood in silence for a long moment and watched the nurse retreat back into Jace’s room. When she finally followed, she forced her expression back into something Jace wouldn’t question. But inside, rage filled her.
It had been Myra who had asked that Jace was moved up on the list. She thought she’d been doing something good, something that could save Jace before it was too late. But now, she’d put both of them in danger.
“Pass me the other remote.” Myra said, taking a deep breath and shaking off her anger as she settled back into her seat.
Jace quickly shifted in his bed, looking for the remote before tossing it to her and muttering something about how he planned to demolish her in the game.
On any other day, Myra would have shot back a quipped remark, but right now she could only focus on one truth.
If the Institute wanted to take out their rage on Jace or Luci, they’d have to go through her first.