Chapter 30
thirty
Rue’s ankle throbbed with each step as Jess marched them through the corridors of Thwaites Station, the barrel of her pistol an occasional reminder against Rue’s spine.
The warmth of the station after hours in the Antarctic cold should have been a relief, but instead it felt suffocating, the recycled air heavy with fear and something chemical and wrong that caught in the back of her throat.
She glanced at Elliot beside her, his face a mask, giving nothing away.
Was this how it had started at Takahe, too—with betrayal from within, with friends turning to enemies before anyone understood what was happening?
“Move faster,” Jess ordered, nudging Rue with the gun.
“Touch her with that again, and I’ll break your arm,” Elliot said, his voice low and dangerous.
Jess laughed. “I’d like to see you try.”
She underestimated him, thought he was weak because he was easy-going and reasonable and a bit OCD. And, yes, he was all that, but he was also a Wilde, and Jess had no idea how dangerous the Wildes could be when backed into a corner.
Or, for that matter, how dangerous a Bristow could be.
“Why are you doing this?” Rue asked, not bothering to keep the disgust from her voice. She wanted to keep Jess talking and distracted, because distracted people made mistakes. “These are your colleagues, Jess. Your friends.”
“Friends?” Jess snorted. “No. Praetorian sent me to join Moretti’s little rescue expedition and disappear him, make him just another victim of the ice.
Koos, too, because I wasn’t supposed to leave witnesses.
It was only bad luck that he chose to come here and dragged us right into the fucking middle of the experiment. ”
“Experiment?”
Jess scoffed. “You really don’t know why Dr. Keene came here, do you?”
“Project Thanatos,” Elliot said. It wasn’t a question.
Rue turned to stare at his profile. He knew?
“It was in Helena Moretti’s files,” he said before she could ask. “She was at Takahe to study the pathogen.”
“Takahe was the first field test,” Jess confirmed. Her voice was devoid of emotion, like she wasn’t talking about a mass murder. “Of course, none of them knew that when they joined the expedition.”
Rue’s skin crawled. “You’re going to weaponize it.”
“We already are.”
They turned a corner into the central common area, and Rue stumbled to a halt despite the gun at her back.
No.
Among the Praetorian operatives was a face that didn’t belong—a face she’d last seen at Elliot’s birthday party.
Dark hair, bronze skin, and those unmistakable blue eyes that ran in the Wilde family.
He stood among the operatives, reviewing something on a tablet while two soldiers flanked him.
He wore the same black tactical gear as the others, but with no mask, his sharp chin and stern expression unmistakable.
Beside her, Elliot went rigid. His breathing changed, becoming shallow and controlled. “Cade.”
Cade looked up, his eyes widening slightly at the sight of them. For a fraction of a second, something like relief flickered across his features, then all of his shields slammed down.
“You’re alive,” Cade said, approaching them with measured steps. He looked between them, taking in their battered appearance. “When we heard about the crevasse, I thought?—”
“You thought what?” Elliot demanded. “That we were dead and your problem was solved?”
A muscle ticked in Cade’s jaw, but he didn’t reply.
“You bastard!” Elliot surged forward, fists clenched, but two soldiers shoved him back. “How could you work for the people who tried to kill Davey? Who nearly killed me?”
“I didn’t have a choice. Davey fired me?—”
“You quit!”
“I needed a job, and this is the only thing I’m good at,” Cade shot back, temper flaring in his eyes.
“What, mass murder?” Rue shook her head. “You’re better than this.”
His gaze went flat again. He was locking everything down, just like Elliot did when he didn’t want to show too much emotion.
“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about me.
None of you do, and that’s always been the problem.
” He turned away, waving a dismissive hand. “Lock them up with the others.”
“What about your daughter?” Elliot called as the soldiers dragged them away.
Cade froze. “I’m doing this for her,” he said so softly, Rue had to strain to hear him.
She’d known Cade was struggling after his falling-out with Davey, but this? Working with the organization that had systematically murdered research teams, that was planning to unleash a pathogen on the world?
“Nova will never forgive you for this,” she said, shaking with fury. God, if the betrayal hurt her this much, she couldn’t imagine what Elliot was feeling now. “When she grows up and finds out what you’ve done?—”
“She’ll never know.” Cade’s voice was steel, but she caught the flicker of pain that crossed his features before he masked it. “I’m her father. It’s my job to make sure she has a future to live in. I chose the winning team to keep her safe.”
With that, he turned away.
“This will break your parents’ hearts,” Elliot called after him, and there was so much heartbreak in the words that her eyes stung. “This person you’ve become isn’t the man they raised, and you know it.”
Cade’s spine stiffened, but he kept walking.
“Let’s go,” Jess said, shoving her gun into Rue’s spine again.
The soldiers hauled them past the kitchen, where she’d eaten breakfast just days ago, and past the rec room, where Koos had beaten everyone at poker and Tyler had spun his outlandish stories. Everything looked the same, but nothing was.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
The formerly locked door to Lab B stood open, guarded by another pair of armed soldiers.
They didn’t look like Russians.
She kicked herself for not realizing that the story about proprietary Russian research was bullshit before now.
Jess gave her an unnecessarily hard push over the threshold, and one of the other soldiers shoved Elliot. They stumbled inside, and the door slammed shut behind them with the finality of a prison cell.
Lab B mirrored Lab A, but this one was set up like a hospital ward, with cots spread evenly throughout. A window stretched across the shared wall with Lab A.
How had she never noticed it from the other side?
And there in his usual spot, bent over a workstation with his sleeves rolled up, was Dr. Keene.
He stared into a microscope, then all but bounced with excitement before scribbling something into a logbook.
He was so myopically focused on the pathogen, he wasn’t the least bit concerned that his entire team—including his grad students—was being held hostage in the next room over.
Bastard.
Rue turned her attention back to the others in the room with her.
Camille perched on a lab stool, somehow managing to maintain her air of sophisticated disdain despite the circumstances.
Noah hovered near her, arms crossed like he was her own personal bodyguard.
Which, hell, given all the other recent revelations, maybe he was. It made sense.
Moretti lay unconscious on one of the cots, his complexion pale, his head bandaged.
The cot in the far corner of the lab had been cordoned off with clear plastic sheeting, duct-taped floor to ceiling in a flimsy attempt at containment. Dr. Volkova was in there, bent over the cot, her elegant face pinched with concern behind her mask as she worked on her patient.
Tyler.
Rue’s breath caught in her throat. The young grad student was nearly unrecognizable.
His skin had taken on a waxy, grayish cast, and black lines spread beneath the surface like a grotesque road map.
His breathing came in wet, rattling gasps, each inhale a visible struggle.
Dark fluid stained his lips and the front of his shirt.
Takahe’s frozen victims flashed through her mind.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, drawing everyone’s attention.
Mia sat beside Tyler, holding a damp cloth to his forehead with a gloved hand. Her dark eyes locked on Rue and Elliot, swimming with tears, and she gasped. “You’re alive!”
“Holy fuck,” Noah said, and for the first time since she met him, his expression was something other than blank. In fact, he looked genuinely stricken. “We didn’t think you’d survived that fall. If I had known…” He trailed off.
Wait, was he actually a good guy?
Rue mentally scolded herself. She’d been viewing all of them as potential adversaries since before this expedition even started, but she’d been especially judgmental of Noah and Camille, and that wasn’t fair.
Yes, Camille was a spoiled pain-in-the-ass, and Noah was about as forthcoming as a brick wall, but they weren’t Praetorian. They weren’t the enemy.
“You did exactly the right thing,” Rue assured him. “That storm was a killer, and if you had stayed out in it trying to help us, it would’ve taken your lives. We only survived it because, ironically, falling into the ice protected us.”
In the quarantine area, Irina straightened from Tyler’s bedside and stripped off her gloves, disposing of them in a bin marked with a biohazard symbol before stepping out from behind the plastic sheet.
“He doesn’t have much time,” she said softly. “I don’t know what to do.”
Rue looked to Elliot, because he always knew what to do, but Cade’s betrayal had broken something in him.
He had that thousand-yard stare of a man who was exhausted from warring with himself and the world.
Her heart hurt for him, and she laced her gloved fingers with his, giving his hand a squeeze. He didn’t squeeze back.
She returned her attention to Irina. “Is anyone else sick?”
“No, it’s not airborne,” Irina said. “And, from my observations, unless you’re exposed to the pathogen directly through an open wound, it doesn’t actually spread that easily.
We’ve been taking all the proper precautions.
We’ve kept him as isolated as possible, limited contact, full gloves and masks, everything by the book. ”