6. 6
Elias was still when I returned to our room, and I paced in circles, thinking out loud until I tired myself.
I’d have to wait until supplies I’d requested came to start truly experimenting, but I desperately needed some time to play with this virus myself.
Dr. Novikov was kind enough to hand over a few files, lengthy reports about the virus and its properties.
Largely written in Russian, I would need some help from Elias translating them assuming he had a way to do so.
Along with the reports were attached photos, and I nearly scared myself shitless looking through them.
There was more to this lonely outpost that I hadn’t been shown yet. That was for certain.
What I had originally thought were shavings that had slipped into the sample, was actually the virus mutating the host into metal. Not just parts of the host’s cells, the actual host. I threw the files down. My elbows found my knees and I leaned my head forward into my hands.
This was not some virus the Russians needed assistance with, this was a fucking emergency.
It was one thing for a pathogen to eat at your brain, rabies could basically do that.
What was absolutely not normal was for a virus to turn someone into sheet metal.
I swallowed hard as I recalled how Dr. Fassi at the end of his life.
His skin was covered in blood and the lighting was poor, but I remembered how it felt when I tried to cut him.
The weapon in my hands had bounced right off of him, like he was made of steel.
If anything got infected with this, it would be a catastrophic problem.
I shivered at memories of my last day at Baker and Pryor, the image of Dr. Fassi dying twice prickling the hair on my arms. Evaluations, mandatory counseling, weapons training that made me feel safe in my body, I’d done what I was told would help me recover from the incident.
Until that moment, on the bed, surrounded by my next impossible task, I thought that I was okay.
Shaking hands gathered the contents of the bulky folder I was given and stacked them neatly then set them on the floor. I laid down on my side, bringing my knees to my chest, and focused on breathing, in and out.
My phone didn’t work, so I couldn’t call my mother or my father.
Elias was somewhere nearby, but I didn’t want to leave the safety of our room to find him.
All I had to ground myself was me. I couldn’t always have an emotional attendant, rearranging my feelings for me until the right ones were back on the surface.
I was already anticipating how hard it was going to be when we got home. Missions like this took their toll even on Elias, and he was accustomed to trauma.
November was the hardest month for me to remember.
Only six weeks after the event at Baker and Pryor, Elias was pulled away from me, sent across the country for Thanksgiving.
A whisper of Adrian Taylor, they’d said, and Elias was shipped off to kill him.
Taylor wasn’t there, of course not, but an abandoned basement lab was, and Elias was honored with the duty of eliminating every infected creature left behind.
By himself. He was vaccinated, so it was determined that he could be cannon fodder.
Before he left, he called my mother for me and told her to make sure I flew out to see them for Thanksgiving so I wouldn’t be alone. Elias was determined to see it through, to take care of the last threat to me, not that he had a choice anyway.
With heavy guidance and frequent calls from both of my parents, I eventually bought a ticket to see them. The day of, I barely made it to the airport because I was drinking at six in the morning just to work up the courage to leave the house.
I won’t forget the look on my parents’ faces when they picked me up.
I was in a sorry state, to say the least. I only spent a few days there, though they were hesitant to let me fly back to Virginia at all.
I slept in late every day, barely ate, and sat in silence on the couch next to my dad while he watched football.
He let me cry on his shoulder while my mom fixed the holiday meal.
They might’ve not realized being there had helped me, but it did.
I didn’t want to imagine how I might have been alone in Elias’s house, knowing what he was out there doing.
The night before I was set to go home, I received a single text from Elias for the first time in a week.
Made it out. Be home tomorrow.
I slept just fine that night. In the morning, my parents were thrown by the change in my personality, but drove me to the airport anyway. I would be okay if Elias was.
He wasn’t.
When he walked through the door, I was sitting at the kitchen island, scrolling on my phone.
I ran to greet him, and he held me, squeezing the life out of me, apologizing over and over again.
It was clear he hadn’t slept in several days, the bags under his eyes purple.
He wasn’t ready to talk about it. He wasn’t himself.
All he could do was collapse in our bed, waking every so often to make sure I was safe.
After sixteen hours he got up, showered, and told me everything.
The first few days he was there were simple.
He wandered around the facility, documenting everything he found, but he messed around with some electrical equipment and unleashed a nightmare.
The following forty-eight hours were hell on Earth, and he spent them fighting for his life, looking for an escape from the lab he’d locked himself into.
He was given a few weeks reprieve following that mission, as an apology from the U.S. Government for nearly killing him.
Our lives had improved since, but the terror, the helplessness I felt during that week was the only thing on my mind, and the aftermath of all the chaos loomed over me. It was happening again, and I’d have to go through it all once more.
“Cassie?”
My eyes snapped open to find Elias kneeling on the floor next to the bunk I was occupying. My vision was blurred but it was clear that he still had his coat on.
“Are you okay?” He asked, reaching out to wipe my cheeks with his frozen fingers.
“Of course,” I answered, giving him a weak smile.
He frowned. “You’re crying in the fetal position. What happened today?”
“I’m just worried.”
“About?”
My breath was uneven. “How difficult it’s going to be to recover from this. It’s bad.”
Elias shrugged off his coat, tossing it across the room toward our luggage. His chilled hand laid on my cheek. “Tell me about it.”
I told him about the lab, the photos, and the virus. I let him know my theories connecting it all to Dr. Fassi and subsequently Adrian Taylor.
“Oh,” he said, pensive. There was nothing else to say. He stared at me for a moment, shifting his gaze between my left and right eyes, examining me. He was probably thinking of Dr. Fassi, too.
“Tell me about your day instead,” I urged. Dwelling on the new virus was the last thing I needed to do. Without a way to experiment or to solve the problem, I would only drive myself insane with worry. And there was far too much to worry about.
“I mapped out the building, and I need to send that in, by the way. Do you mind if I sit at the desk while I tell you?” He needed to work, but didn’t want to leave me if I wasn’t ready for him to. Always thoughtful.
“Can I sit with you while you do it?” I asked. I preferred our usual position. He would sit in the corner of the sectional, and I’d lay the opposite way, watching tv, playing on my phone, sometimes just staring at his computer screen. My usual comforts weren’t here.
His eyes flitted between the chair and the bed. “I can sit in bed with you.”
Elias took off his fleece and set his gun, still in its holster, on the only sliver of desk not otherwise occupied by his equipment.
From his pocket he pulled a notepad, tossing it near where I was lying.
I flipped through it while he gathered his things and admired the various drawings of the building.
He’d sketched the entire thing, inside and out.
Grabbing the laptop from the desk, he rested next to me on the small bed.
I sat up, my head narrowly avoiding the metal frame of the top bunk.
My muscles ached from the position I’d stuck myself in, but I straddled him, and Elias made a little surprised noise as one of his arms wrapped around my torso, the other shoving the computer out of the way. I kissed him deeply, but briefly.
“We kissed so we can be made up now,” I said.
He smiled and kissed my cheek, and I quickly slid off of him, settling into his side instead. I laid my head on his shoulder, my arms finding their place around one of his. His arm flexed under my fingertips as he typed and clicked.
“I got a pretty good idea of the building today. I’m happy to report that there doesn’t seem to be a hidden basement anywhere.”
“I could’ve told you that,” I muttered.
“But I did find an electronically locked door that I couldn’t fudge my way past,” he added. “Weird hint for the password, too. It said ‘Your first dog,’ or something.”
“Huh. The computer in the lab wasn’t even password protected,” I said. “You’re telling me there’s a completely locked off section in this building?”
“Mhm,” he affirmed. “Judging by the size of the place, it’s only about thirty feet long, seems to take up the entire width of the building.”
“This was never going to be easy, was it?” I asked.
“No, Cassie. I guess it wasn’t.”
He had a program pulled up that was helping him turn his hand drawn map into blueprints. It was a large grid, and he was dragging squares around, labeling them, turning them into the outpost in no time at all.
“That’s pretty neat,” I said. “How you can just figure out the building like that.”
“One of the many skills beat into my skull,” he answered. “Though this one was pretty easy. It’s just a big rectangle.”
“Have you talked to Jordan today?” I wondered how often they needed to communicate.
“Just for a few minutes. I told him about the door. Though, after what you’ve told me, I’m going to have a lot more to pass on.”
“Oh my god,” I exclaimed. I was such a dunce. “Elias. Can you get some things translated?”
“Absolutely. What do you have?”
“Like, a fuckton of lab reports.”
He groaned. “That’s going to be tedious.”
“How so?”
“We don’t really have an efficient way to digitize them, so it would be really helpful if you wanted to start taking photos of them.”
I looked around. “Take pictures with what? You have a Nikon around here somewhere?”
“I’ll get it for you, princess.” He tried to squirm out from the hold I had around him, but I wasn’t letting go. “Are you good? Can we separate now?” He asked.
I nodded. “I suppose so.” I unhooked my arms from around him and sat up.
He grabbed the satellite phone and laid it gently in my hands. “Take pictures of everything you want to read,” he said.
We worked in silence for a while, just the sound of buttons clicking between us. Sitting on the opposite end of the bunk, I diligently snapped a photo of each file, report after report, photo after photo. I was halfway through when Elias spoke again.
“You know,” Elias pondered. “You’ve never sent me any photos of you.”
“What? Do you not have any pictures of me? Or us?”
“I have a few, but those aren’t the kind of pictures I’m referring to.”
“Naughty ones?” I asked. “No, I guess I haven’t.
” When I was younger, I’d sent out my fair share of nude photos to boyfriends, but that behavior largely subsided as I aged.
I didn’t have any qualms about it, but it wasn’t something I thought about.
Especially not now that I lived with Elias.
Aside from the missions he was sent on, we didn’t spend much time apart.
“Why not?” His eyes abandoned the computer screen to look at me.
“I’m not sure,” I said, shrugging. “I feel like you see me naked all the time, Elias. You already told me you get your rocks off to my O-face.”
“Only because you made me admit that. I don’t think I would have told you that otherwise,” he contested. “I was in a vulnerable state.” If memory served, he gave up that information willingly, but I wasn’t going to correct him.
“So do you really need pictures if you have memories?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, grinning. “I think I do.”
“You’ve never sent me any, either.”
“I don’t think men are allowed to initiate that sort of thing,” he said. “Unsolicited dick pics are frowned upon aren’t they?”
“We are in a relationship,” I said, giving him a look. “I don’t think the same rules apply to you as they do a random guy on the internet.”
“Okay, then I expect one back,” he said, then he furrowed his eyebrows. “I said that wrong. Not a picture of a dick. One of you. Naked.”
“You are such a freak, honestly,” I said.
“Give me a break, Cassie. This is all new to me.”
I cocked my head. “What’s new to you? Dating? Naked women? If I’m the first woman you’ve seen naked, you’re doing an amazing job.”
“Being obsessed with you.”
I blushed, even if I already knew it to be true. I was leaning against the wall at this point, files stacked neatly in two piles. Photographed and ready to be photographed.
I smiled at him, it was hard not to. “What exactly about me are you so obsessed with?”
His eyes narrowed. “I feel like I’m always telling you how much you mean to me. You make me.”
“You’re a romantic, Elias. It’s who you are.”
“No,” he scoffed. “I am not.”
“Sometimes you text me in the middle of the day to tell me that you miss me,” I said. I scooted closer on the bed so I could lay a hand on his leg.
“I can’t miss you?”
“You go out of your way to do the nicest things possible every single day. Today, you got my lunch for me after I was a total cunt. You’re always playing with my hair or holding my hand, and in between opening doors for me, you’re grabbing at some part of my body.
We can’t forget that you allow me to be the only person on the Earth to call you Eli,” I argued.
“The things you’re describing just sound like a healthy relationship,” he said.
“I’m not arguing that point, I’m just saying you’re a hopeless romantic,” I explained. “It’s not a negative. I’m very fortunate to be the object of your affections.”
“Don’t call yourself the c-word,” he chided. “Such a dirty word from such a pretty mouth.”
“I’m a girl, I can say it.”
“Oh, you can say it,” he said. “And I can hate the way it sounds when you do.” He looked down at his watch, eyes widening as he did so. “Thirty minutes left until dinner’s done. I guess we should go get some borscht or whatever they’re serving.”