46. What Needs To Be Done
FORTY-SIX
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE
Seven
I clutched my stomach and doubled over with a groan, blood spilling between my fingers. Shouts erupted around me, incomprehensible through the ringing in my ears.
“What did you do?” I grated, glaring at Farida as I pressed firmly to staunch the blood. It was only a flesh wound, and it was already starting to seal up, but damn, it hurt!
“I’m making sure you know just how vulnerable he is,” she murmured, then stepped aside, and I saw Jack.
Jack, surrounded by Blaire and Roman and Ellis.
Jack, on the ground.
Jack, curled up in pain.
Jack, covered in blood.
Jack, so pale he was almost gray, his face tight and drawn.
Nineteen … hunched over a bullet wound … and in another part of R Block, Twelve, bleeding out their baby.
I staggered over to him, gripping his hand in mine. His eyes found me, cloudy with pain.
Kill the bitch! the whisper bellowed. I locked my muscles to stop myself from doing just that. Jack was my priority. I took my hand away from my clotting wound, pressing it to Jack’s stomach.
“You’re going to be fine,” I whispered, my voice shaking. Jack nodded, lips tight. Like he didn’t quite believe me.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Blaire screeched, her eyes blazing up at Farida, raising a bloodied hand to swipe her hair out of her face. Jack’s blood.
“Jesus, Far, this is extreme, even for you!” Ellis muttered. Roman looked gray and horrified, staring at Jack’s wound, then at Blaire. I knew exactly what he was thinking. It was the same thing I was thinking.
“This is a dangerous mission,” Farida replied tightly. “I know my methods are … unorthodox, but it’s only a shallow wound. Seven is already healed, and Jack won’t be far behind.”
I lifted my shirt, looking over the angry red line that had been a gaping slit in my stomach moments ago. The blood gushing from Jack was slowing, too. I let out a shaky sigh.
“If we want the best chance at success, we have to remove as many vulnerabilities as we possibly can,” Farida continued.
“But Jack isn’t a vulnerability!” I argued, lifting his shirt to check on the wound. It was closing, slower than mine, but it was healing. “You’re the one who said he’s our way back inside Taiga!”
“He himself isn’t the vulnerability … your Join is.”
Blaire sneered up at Farida. “What the fuck is your problem with people being Joined, Farida?” she demanded, getting to her feet. “You’re desperate to break us all apart!”
“Temporarily!” Farida roared.
A wind kicked up, gusting around all of us, blowing dust into my eyes and clinking Farida’s braids violently before dying off as if it had never been. I glanced down at Jack. His face had regained a little color.
What is she? I asked him.
No fucking idea … but if this is being on her good side, I never fucking want to get on her bad side.
Farida rounded on us, her expression determined, her eyes trained on my face. “You, Seven, cannot achieve everything you aim to inside that place if you are worried about putting your body on the line because it will damage his.”
I swallowed. Jack had gone very still beside me, his eyes darting towards Blaire. What had they spoken about just now?
“And if you sustain a serious injury, he will be incapacitated … possibly dead. Please, listen to me when I say this. I can help you break your Join—temporarily—so that you can both do what needs to be done and not have to worry about the other.”
Blaire scoffed. “Only you would think that not being Joined will stop them worrying about each other.”
“Seven, I don’t …” Jack began. But I looked down at his stomach. His wound was still sluggishly weeping blood in some places. The wound that wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t been attacked.
“We do what needs to be done,” I said firmly. “To protect one another. And to finish this.”
Bad. Wrong. Mistake , the whisper chanted. I ignored her.
Jack reached out for me, wincing as he tried to sit up. I scrambled backward, getting to my feet. If he tried to hold me right now, if I so much as looked him properly in the face, I’d lose my resolve. I’d tell them all to go to hell, and be selfish for once, and run with him. Let Baxter continue his sordid experiments as long as Jack and I were far away from it all. As long as we were together.
“Seven, this isn’t something you want to decide on your own,” Blaire murmured urgently, taking a step towards me. But I backed away, closer to Farida.
“Do it,” I muttered.
Without a second’s hesitation, Farida’s arms clamped around me, her palms pressed to my chest. Against my heart. Heat radiated. My lungs were on fire, but my heart felt like it had turned to ice. I couldn’t breathe. I held myself still as a statue in Farida’s vice-like grip.
“Blossom, don’t—” Jack began, but then he coughed and choked, his hands clawing at his own chest.
“What are you doing to them?” Blaire screeched, launching herself at Farida. Roman snatched her back before she could get close enough and whispered something urgently in her ear. The whole time, his eyes were trained on Farida, and there was something close to hatred in them.
The cold, the heat, pounded on through my chest, my vision going dark at the edges. And all I could see was Jack, choking on the ground, tears running down his face, his claws digging into his chest, leaving bloody marks.
Marks that didn’t show up on my skin.
Farida released me, and I collapsed to the ground, sucking in air desperately, as desperately as I had after they drowned me … repeatedly … back in Taiga.
What have you done? the whisper asked, horrified.
What I had to do … to protect him.
Jack rolled onto his back, gasping in breath after breath, his face haggard. Everything I felt for him … it was still there. The memory of his hands, his mouth … his cock … it was all still there. But he was gone from my mind. The warm, comforting feeling of him being there, a part of me … it had vanished.
I looked away from him, rubbing at the empty place in my chest. I hadn’t expected to feel the loss so keenly.
“We leave in ten.” Farida turned on her heel and marched back into her Vault.
Blaire, Ellis, and Roman looked from Jack to me. Ellis’s expression was pitying. Roman looked horrified.
Blaire … she was seething.
“After you lectured me about letting him decide … you took this decision away from him!” she raged. “I …” she turned to Roman, her bottom lip wobbling. “I can’t even imagine having a Joined who would be so callous.”
Roman wrapped her in his arms, ushering her away with a murmured, “I think we need to give Jack and Seven a moment.”
I blinked. Once, twice. It hadn’t been like that, had it?
Wrong! Broken! the whisper fumed.
I finally let myself look at Jack again.
He sat, knees up, elbows resting on them, staring at his hands.
“You’re gone,” he muttered. “It’s like … a gaping hole where you were. I remember what it felt like—I know it happened, but … I fucking hate this.” He looked up at me, his eyes cold.
“What the fuck, Seven?” he spat. “What happened to ‘we do this together or not at all’?”
I took a step towards him, aching to touch him. The need for him was still there … if anything, it was worse again. It was the same crazed feelings of the night he’d scooped me up and deposited me into the cabin.
“I feel fucking crazy with the need to fuck you, to bite you!” he snarled. “It’s like we’re back to square one. All those pent-up feelings, the things we were trying to fucking deny. How is this any fucking better?”
I swallowed around the throbbing lump in my throat. “Because now you can’t get hurt because of me,” I mumbled. Even I sounded completely unconvinced.
“I’m feeling pretty fucking hurt right now, Blossom.” He rubbed at his chest, at the same place I was hollow and aching. His eyes flashed up to mine, and there was the gold of the monster, set in a face that was twisted with bitterness.
“Is this just a fucking game to you?” he rumbled.
“I … I don’t know,” I mumbled. The itch under my skin was back with a vengeance, and I barely even registered what he’d asked me.
“Are you fucking for real?” He surged to his feet. I let out a sob of relief that his stomach had healed enough for him to move like that. But then he was storming off into the forest, snarling, “I can’t even fucking look at you right now!”
I watched, immobilized, as he disappeared between the trees in the early morning light.
Go after him , the whisper snarled, while the itch under my skin intensified until it was unbearable.
He doesn’t want to see me . Pain radiated out from my chest, worse than anything that had ever been done to me inside Taiga.
GO TO HIM! the whisper screeched.
My feet moved, and I was stumbling, rushing almost blindly through the trees. Following some primitive homing device that was leading me straight to him.