Chapter 19
Looks like I’m right. Gwen Martin must be alive.
How do I know?
The piece of paper that Maverick found. Only it’s not a piece of paper.
Not really. It’s a building schematic, similar to the maps that Jules created.
It’s not handwritten, though. It looks like it was printed, and if there’s anyone still operating in this part of Manhattan to the point that they haven’t stopped relying on printers, I’m bettering it’s those monsters at the NRI.
Is it possible that there are other nefarious organizations keeping their base of operations in New York City?
Well, yeah. If there’s anyone who can find a way to make money off of an apocalyptic event, you’d find them in the heart of downtown Manhattan.
Same with having enough protection to ward off lurkers.
Though the entire city seems eerily abandoned when you’re walking on the once teeming streets, I don’t really believe that it’s just us, lurkers, and the remaining staff for the National Resilience Institute left in the city.
Even if it feels that way every time we cross over the GWB.
Still, Delilah took one look at the schematic after Maverick offered it to her, and she paled.
Thanks to the Injection she was given, she’s already a shade or two paler than her twin—something it took me a few days to notice, and seeing them together in daylight instead of under the cover of darkness—but she lost the last of the color she has.
Her hands shook. Her lips parted, her mouth forming a soft “O”.
It’s just the six of us now; nine if you count the two drivers and the hunter we lost already.
Each one was hand-picked by Veronica to make up this strike team, and their loyalty to her, to her cause, and the twin sister that Veronica is devoted to protecting…
that’s unquestionable. For one of the first times ever, Veronica went without sunglasses for this mission.
Delilah didn’t. Both the daylight and the torchlight were too much for her, and though I can’t see how stricken she is because most of her face is hidden by her oversized shades, her body language gave her away.
And then she dropped the bomb: the schematic is of the named NRI facility, and someone has even gone so far as to circle one of the locations on the page with blood red marker. How helpful of them. They circled it, then drew an arrow before adding the initials G.M. next to it.
G.M.
Gwen Martin.
Not only that, but Delilah doesn’t need to be a damn good map reader to know where Gwen has been moved to.
Of course not. After working for the NRI for the last nine years as a biochemist, she’s extremely familiar with the lab where her team—including Maverick’s late wife Lindsay—spent most of their days.
The Men in Black aren’t very subtle. I gathered as much when they captured us more than a month ago. They’re the type of cruel pricks who will snap an arm to make a point, and put two goons on a little blonde woman as though I was any kind of real threat to them without my lighter or my knife.
One or more of them killed Kristian and left his body behind as a warning that says: We know what you’re trying to do. It won’t work. But try again, and in case you need directions, here you go.
Assholes.
It’s obvious. I think we all know that. And while David hangs in the doorway, watching to make sure that this isn’t the precursor to an ambush, I stand next to Chase, waiting to see what’s going to happen next.
Maverick fell back as soon as he handed the page to Delilah, angling his body so that he’s blocking the sight of Kristian’s corpse from the rest of us.
Always the cop, I think. There’s no use in trying to preserve the crime scene.
We’re not investigating his murder. Shit, we know exactly who killed him and why, and though I feel bad for Delilah because she was the one who actually knew Kristian, I can’t find it in me to care that another NRI goon is dead.
But Delilah cares, and Veronica cares about Delilah, and Maverick is blocking both of the McLean women from having to deal with another death on their conscience.
It’s not fair. It’s not easy.
But it’s life after the Turning, and I hate how with every passing moment, I’m getting even more desensitized to the violence—even if I know that Xandra would be so proud of me.
You see, Kristian worked with the monsters responsible for the end of the world as we know it.
He knew what they were doing. He stayed after the Turning, and maybe he only did for the same reason Delilah did—who wanted to leave even before Jules’s cruel death, but who stayed because Veronica needed her to relay information that would help the rebels survive being so close to the city—but seeing him wearing the same suit and grey tie as the monsters who dragged us to the NRI…
he’s not wearing a lab coat. Not like Delilah did when we met her, or the Doctor, or the emotionally constipated woman with the clipboard who took our vitals.
I don’t know what that means after the Turning for his status at the NRI since Delilah did tell us he was on her team in the before times, but regardless… he was one of them.
And now he’s dead. If I have it my way, every last one of them will be.
But, first, we need to get Gwen. When a lurker’s bite can just make even more lurkers, it’ll take forever to eradicate them all.
Almost a year into this nightmare and there are still so many to fight.
And, yes, New Jersey is the most densely populated state in America.
We had more people to lose, more people to Turn, and it’s probably harder for us to survive than those who live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.
That’s why that antidote is essential, and until Delilah suddenly remembers that there is some other way for us to get our hands on the formula and the process to engineer them, I’m throwing my lot in with stealing the stubborn scientist.
Trap or not, we have a lead. We have to take it.
And that’s when Veronica finally speaks up.
“No fucking way, Dee. We abort. We cancel this mission, we come back another day after we reassess.”
“But if Gwen really is being held there—”
“There’s no way to confirm that. The only one of them that was feeding us intel has a knife in his chest. We don’t know for sure what they did to Gwen. That map there… they left that on purpose. That’s what they want you to think so you walk right into their clutches.”
“I know that. Don’t you think that I know that?”
“Of course I do. And you have to know that I can’t let you go back there. No one quits the NRI. Isn’t that what you told me? You defected, and you left, and I knew it would be better if you stayed at Sunnyside—”
“No one else could read Jules’s maps like I could,” argues Delilah.
“We could’ve figured it out. Delilah… they’re luring you back.
If you walk into that facility again, you really think they’ll let you walk out a second time?
And don’t give me that look,” Veronica snaps.
“I could order you to hang back, but then you’ll tell me that you’re the only one who can bring us to the lab where they’ve got Gwen.
If there are guards… you know them. You know all of them.
If anyone will be able to talk their way past them in order to get close enough to get to Gwen, it has to be you.
I look like you. I can talk like you, but I don’t know these pricks like you do.
Am I right, Dee? How much for your logic?
Isn’t that how you’ll argue your way into breaking into the NRI with the rest of us if we go? ”
A wistful smile tugs on Delilah’s lips. “You know me so well, Vee. Why should I bother trying to convince you that I… I have to do this when you’ve already laid out my argument so eloquently for me?”
Veronica growls under her breath. “I got you into this mess. If you hadn’t stayed as long as you did because I needed to know what was coming next for Project Phoenix, they wouldn’t be targeting you. And make no mistake… they are targeting you. We’re not prepared. We wait—”
“Gym class.”
Huh? I have no idea what that means, or why Delilah would say that to her sister, but Veronica obviously understands by the way her lips suddenly press together.
Delilah nods. “Gym class,” she echoes. “You don’t need to know who is watching Gwen or who is looking for me. You just need to be the leader I know you are. Sunnyside,” she adds softly. “Do it for your people.”
“Delilah…”
Despite Maverick standing in front of the corpse, Delilah glances at Kristian. “He died because he helped me. He helped us.”
“And that’s exactly why I think this is a really bad idea.”
The twins stare at each other.
I don’t interfere. None of us do. Not with this.
I know better than anyone what exists between sisters who came into the world together.
I also know what it looks like when one of them is about to do something stupid and the other can’t stop her.
I watched the entire exchange. Veronica might be the leader of Camp Sunnyside, but Delilah… she’s going to win this battle.
“They have Gwen.”
Veronica closes her eyes.
“They have Gwen,” Delilah repeats. “And if they know we’re here and they decide it’s not worth the trouble of keeping her alive when their plan to bait me fails… Vee, they might just kill her the second they realize this didn’t work.”
Maverick’s expression goes cold. Of all of us, he’s the one who understands just how valuable the antidotes are. Just how many lives we can save.
“In that case, we keep going. Because we have to make this work.”
I expect no less from him.
Same for Chase. He swears quietly at my side. I don’t blame him, either.