Chapter 18
It takes longer than it should for us to move again.
Each one of us is stunned that we lost one of our number, but the truth of the matter is that we don’t have much time.
At the very least, we need to be in and out of Manhattan before night falls and the lurkers come out to feed.
Plus, the longer we’re in the city, the more of a risk it is that the goons at the NRI will figure out that we’re here.
We have to go, but no one wants to be the first to say we leave Aaron behind.
There’s nothing else we can do, though. The blowback from the blast took out enough of the side tunnel that even if there was something left to retrieve, we’d have to crawl through fire and unstable concrete to reach him. And then what?
No. The survivors have to come first. Dad taught me that. We mourn our dead, but it’ll be a slap in the face of their memory if we stop living because they did.
Veronica knows it, too.
She’s standing at the mouth of the tunnel with David now, the both of them staring into the smoke with the same expression on their faces that I probably had on mine a few minutes ago.
Veronica… I get it. She’s the one who told Aaron he could check.
I know exactly what she’s doing to herself because I’m doing it, too.
Someone has to be blamed, right?
If I hadn’t sensed something.
If she hadn’t agreed to let him go.
If Aaron hadn’t carried the torch down the tunnel.
If someone had been maintaining the gas lines after the Turning.
If Project Phoenix hadn’t destroyed the fucking world that it Turned in the first place.
Goddamn it. There are way too many ifs, and I’m sick and tired of seeing good people die. I swear, it’s like our own government waged a war on us without us knowing, and even though those idiots in charge were some of the first casualties, we’re still fighting.
We’re still fighting, and for the sake of those like Xandra and Aaron, we can’t stop until we win.
We’ve made it this far already. To stop now… no. We can’t, and if no one else wants to be the one to say it, I guess it’ll have to be me.
“How far?”
Turning slightly, Veronica looks over her shoulder at me. I’m the first one to speak up, and it’s no surprise that she defaults to leader, assuming that I’m talking to her. “What was that?”
But I wasn’t asking Veronica. Nope. I’m looking at her twin now.
“Delilah. You have the map. How far until we reach the access point?”
Nobody answers me at first.
I wipe something from my cheek. Dirt. Blood. Maybe tears? Could be. I don’t know. At this point, does it fucking matter?
“How far, Delilah?”
She finally stopped weeping, but the map is still a crumpled mess in her grip. “Holden—”
“Aaron is dead.” My voice breaks when I say it, and I hate that. Then I decide I don’t. It should break. “We can’t change that. But Gwen is still alive.”
David finally turns away from the fire.
“And if we turn around now,” I add, “Aaron died getting us halfway there for nothing.”
“She’s right.” David’s voice is husky and low. “I say we keep going. It’s what Aaron would have wanted. But I’m dousing my torch. I’m not risking another gas pocket like that. We can relight if the lurkers attack, but for now… Holden? You good with warning us if they’re coming?”
My stomach lurches. It doesn’t have anything to do with the lurkers. “You still trust me?”
Maverick comes over to me, chucking my upper arm. “Damn right, we do. You didn’t know what Aaron was walking into. So, do me a favor, and stop blaming yourself for that.”
I open my mouth, prepared to argue, when Chase cuts in. “You are, babe. I know you, and I know that you’re blaming yourself for what happened. But it’s not your fault. You understand me? It was never your fault.”
It doesn’t take a genius to know that he isn’t just referring to what happened with Aaron.
For so long, I blamed myself for being the one to survive when my twin sister died.
Somehow, that was my fault, too, even though there was no way for me to know about either gas leak until the fire set it off.
It’s not my fault…
A lump lodges in my throat. I force it back. Then, taking my torch from Chase, I swipe it against the wall of the sewer until all that’s left are the glowing cherry-red embers from the dying flames.
It’ll take a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the doom and gloom in the sewer. It’ll take even longer for me to look past the guilt in my belly and the ache that we lost another survivor, but there are five others depending on me.
Chase is depending on me.
“Nothing close,” I say softly. “But if that changes, I’ll let you know.”
Veronica watches me from her spot by the tunnel.
She nods, and begins to put out her own torch.
“Put out the fires. We have a mission to complete, and it’s better safe than sorry.
Keep your torch close and your lighter out, but don’t start a fire unless we can’t help it.
Be safe, everybody. We head out in three. ”
We need one small victory to keep up our spirits and we get one: Jules’s map is dead-on. Not only that, but we make it to our destination without running into another lurker or losing another member of our small strike team.
Following Delilah’s guide, we reach the access ladder after walking in the dark for another twenty minutes.
With Aaron gone, David is not in the lead, with Chase falling back and bringing up the rear.
David goes up first, calling down a whispered “affirmative” when the door at the top is able to be opened without any force.
He slips inside, checking out the basement before returning and signaling down to use that it’s clear.
So desperate for Aaron’s death to not have been in vain, I took that as a positive omen.
Delilah’s contact, Kristian, was actually a member of the antidote team.
While Gwen was the head of the project—and the only one with a didactic memory that means she should still know the formula while no other record of it exists anywhere else—Kristian was involved in the development of the antidote until Winston moved him to work on PP-57, the next batch of the Injection that—if our plan succeeds—will never see the light of day.
Because of his past relationship as a member of Gwen’s team, a few of the high-ranking members of the NRI were willing to let him talk to her, hoping that he might convince her to resume her work.
It had been months since he saw her, and it was only a recent slip-up that allowed Kristian to find out that Gwen was both alive and kept captive in a narrow, three-story government-owned building that masqueraded as a Cash-4-Gold place a few blocks away from the NRI’s main facility.
Kristian’s report said that the basement was the best way to enter the building, and that Gwen was kept on the second floor with enough lighting on around the clock to keep the lurkers from trying to break in and feed on her while she was vulnerable.
Just in case, there were two guards—grey tie-wearing Men in Black—who were responsible for watching over her.
We knew we would have to incapacitate the almost-lurkers in order to get our hands on Gwen.
That was unavoidable. If we lost any member of the strike team, that would be when it happened.
But we were supposed to sneak in through the basement and, using the element of surprise, try to flame them before they realized they were under attack.
When Chase, Maverick, and I were caught, we were hopelessly outnumbered. Here, we thought that seven against two were much better odds, especially if we burst on the second floor carrying lit torches.
But our torches are currently out, and it’s quiet. Too quiet.
I expected to at least hear something as we crept out of the basement, but there’s nothing. Same as we take the stairs, tiptoeing our way to the next floor where we are supposed to find Gwen.
According to the information Kristian gave Delilah, she’s supposed to be held on the third floor. We make it there without encountering another living—or undead—thing.
“This is wrong,” Chase murmurs.
He’s not wrong. I don’t like this. It’s a different sort of discomfort than when I sense lurkers or I just knew there was trouble waiting down that side corridor. Even so, I keep going, though I do reach behind me and find Chase’s hand to hold as I do.
Delilah leads us down the second-floor corridor, pausing halfway as she points. “It’s supposed to be the third door on the right.”
Shit. I see why she’s hesitating. The door’s open, and I still don’t hear a damn thing coming from the other side.
Veronica passes by Deliah, giving her a gentle squeeze as she does. “Stay here,” she murmurs though I think we all know it’s pointless at this point. “Let me check it out.”
“Vee. You need this.”
David lit his torch once he reached the basement. So did Maverick. Both men move to hand it to Veronica in case she needs to defend herself, and she flashes a quick smile as she accepts the torch from Maverick.
Then, because David is her right-hand man after all, she tells him, “Have my back.”
“Always.”
With a firm resolve, Veronica enters first—but she doesn’t go far.
In fact, she stops so suddenly, I wonder if she caught another whiff of gas, but that’s not it.
Instead of Veronica hurrying back, bringing the torch with her, it falls down at her side as her pretty face twists into a disturbed grimace.
And I know then that, whatever is in that room, I have no interest in finding out what it is.
Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way.
I want to stay back, but Delilah sees the look on her sister’s face and has the opposite reaction. She shoves past Veronica, and the heartbreaking sound of pain that follows makes me even more sure that I’d rather stay out there.
But I can’t. I know I can’t. And though Chase will stay out here with me if that’s what I choose to do, I tug on his hand and follow David and Maverick as they move through the open door.