I’m not sure what I expect Daniel to do. To say. But apparently he doesn’t know either. He just slides onto his stool in silence. He hardly even glances at my display. Maybe he just trusts me so implicitly it doesn’t matter.
Trusts my ignorance, I assume.
It’s a full fifteen minutes before he asks, “Any progress?” in a scratchy voice.
“Maybe,” I say slowly, dragging the word out. I think a half lie will keep him from questioning me too hard. Keep him working with me. Ultimately, we’re both trying to get a vaccine out of this. As long as our end-goals are the same, I’ll have to deal with not knowing his other motives.
He sit bolt upright. “What do you mean?”
“I . . . I . . .” How to explain this? “I kind of stumbled on a protein that I think is repelling the virus.”
I hear him suck in a quick breath and then the squeak of wheels as he draws closer. “Show me.” I start a new slide, taking the isolated protein and pairing it with the virus sample. The nucleus attempts to create new viral DNA, but when the mitochondria begin to build it into the proteins, the proteins simply resist. We watch as the tide turns slowly, very slowly, but soon the message returns to the nucleus that the foreign RNA is broken, and the cell reverts to creating its usual, uninfected DNA.
“Blessing of the gods,” Daniel says, his voice barely more than a hushed whisper. “Do it again.”
For an hour we test the isolated protein on three different samples. Daniel’s right, this simple protein won’t be enough to fight an already infected host—it simply acts too slowly—but it will work as a vaccine for those still untouched.
“Here, here,” Daniel says, his excitement bubbling over as he removes a tray of slides from a drawer beside him. Even though I’m not sure what to think of him, I can’t help but catch his enthusiasm. We really are making progress! “These are the other samples we have of the virus. Different mutations. We have to test them all. We can’t lose our heads over this.” His words attempt to be somber, but I can hear the nerves in his voice.
It’s after midnight before we finish testing all the samples, and I can barely see straight when Daniel flips off my microscope.
“We need sleep,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “This is step one—and it’s a big step—but we still have more to do. We have to figure out which proteins in the vaccine to transform into this new one, and then we need to find out how you can replicate it and what dose we’ll need and—” He stops talking and takes a shaky breath. “But this is the first step. Probably the biggest step. It’s the breakthrough we needed,” he adds softly, and for a moment it sounds like he’s talking to someone else. “This will keep her safe until I can find her. I know it. It has to be.” Then he looks into my eyes. “You’ve done wonderfully. I knew you could do it,” he says, although in my heart of hearts, I’m not sure he did.
But I keep my doubts to myself.
I keep one crucial discovery to myself too.
When I first started testing blood in the lab, I used a tiny drop of infected blood. And even though the isolated protein can repel the virus, when it has finished its job, it leaves the tissue sample unchanged—immune to further outbreaks, but not different.
But when I tried a drop of my blood, it changed the sample. The strange but subtle differences between my blood proteins and Thomas’s drawing? When I put my blood into the sample, it gets that extra . . . I don’t even know what it is.
But instinctively, I know what it must be: the chemical that makes me a Transformist, that makes me so powerful, that makes me immune. All of them wrapped up in that tiny something I can only see on the world’s most powerful microscope.
When I use my blood, the whole sample changes to produce that altered substance. The sample literally becomes just like my blood.
Logically, even a human could become like me with one injection. I understand Rebecca now in a way that I never have before. This is something I can’t tell anyone. A secret so dangerous it can’t be set free. Not even to Logan or Benson.
If I’m right—and if the Reduciata ever found out—they would kill the entire world just to get my blood.
TWENTY-NINE
I’m too tired to talk to Logan—to keep yet another secret from him—so even though I know he’ll be hoping I’m coming back to our room, I don’t. I need another night to myself. In my old room. In my own space. A place that belongs to me, me and not Rebecca.
Again, I wish I’d never decorated the room Logan and I shared that way. Because I’m not Rebecca. Over the last few days that has become so clear. I was Rebecca. I know that. But I’m not her anymore. I’m different. And Logan’s going to have to accept that.
I reach a line in the carpet and start counting steps to where the room I created is sitting behind a very plain wall—hidden from sight. I’ve counted my ninth step and am about to transform the wall back into a door when Daniel’s voice yanks me out of my stupor.
“Tavia, what are you doing here? I thought you were going to bed. You need your rest.”
My brain is moving so slowly that I can’t come up with an immediate response. “I-I-I just want to go”—and then I realize where else this hallway leads to—“check on Benson real quick. Look in on him. Make sure he’s okay.”
Daniel nods shortly, but he seems nervous. “Just be fast. Get to sleep. We have a big day tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” I walk past where my comfy bed is waiting for me with more than a little regret. Now I have to go see Benson.
As I walk I can’t help but wonder, what was Daniel doing there? Of course, that’s not something I could ask. Hopefully he’ll be gone when I come back in five minutes.
Fact is, I don’t even have to talk to Benson. He doesn’t have to know I’m there. A quick glance into the two-way mirror and then I’ll go.
And I won’t have been completely lying.
I push through the familiar doors to the prison area, but rather than finding the serene, tired environment I expect, I discover three security people waiting inside. All now familiar, if not friendly, faces.
“Perfect,” the woman says. “We were just trying to decide whether or not we should attempt to fetch you.” She rolls her eyes. “He’s been asking for you for hours.”
“Why?” I ask as she begins to unlock the door.
“He won’t say,” the woman says with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“I’m shocked,” I mutter. I glance through the window and see Benson pacing—more like stalking—from one end of the tiny room to the other.
I walk in, and the door closes behind me, but I just stand there, silent.
Benson stops and sighs in relief. “Thank you for coming. I wasn’t sure if you would be . . . sleeping.” He shrugs. “I swear I don’t even know if it’s day or night anymore.”
I don’t tell him that it’s two in the morning. That I didn’t respond to his request. That I didn’t want to see him at all. That seeing him makes every emotion in my body rage like a swollen river.
Each time I’ve come to see him he seems more like himself. His library self. The self I was so in love with.
Maybe am still in love with.
Seeing him like this breaks my heart all over again. I stand with my arms crossed over my chest as much to keep my fingers from reaching for him as anything.
“Did you finish your project?”
I close my eyes. “Not quite. But we’ve passed the biggest hurdle.”
“Thomas—my dad—I hate calling him that. Anyway, after you left he came back to talk with me. He told me that . . .” His voice trails off, and he just stands there. Silent and helpless.
“What, Benson?” I say, too harshly. I don’t mean it. My exhaustion is getting the better of me.
“So, you know how you got rid of your scar?”
I don’t know what I was expecting, but th
at wasn’t it. My chest spasms, and I’m sucking in loud breaths, trying to stay in control as I consider everything that lead to that decision.
He raises his arms—clearly wanting to comfort me—but I hold up a hand and he stops. Stands back until I’m in control again. “Yes, I did,” I say finally, ignoring the fact that I was freaking out only seconds earlier. “We’ve discussed this.”
“Could you . . . could you do it for me?”
My eyebrows lower. I don’t understand.
“My—my mark,” he clarifies. “Could you take it away?”
I think of the bone-deep weariness that even my abilities can’t ease. “Tonight?” I ask in a small voice.
He steps so close I have to steel myself against moving away.
Or closing the tiny gap.
“Thomas says you’ve decided to take me with you when you run,” he whispers, always wary for listeners. “The truth is, my chances of dying tomorrow are pretty damn high,” he says, his voice gravelly. “I don’t have the protections you do.”
“I won’t let anyone—”
“I know,” he interrupts, then reins in his temper. “But do you really think you can just walk out of here? That they’re going to simply let you go?”
I’m silent. I can’t count how many times I’ve asked myself that. I know we’re not going to simply be leaving—we’ll be escaping. Part of me is glad he knows it too. He’ll be prepared.
“I just . . . I just don’t want to die as a Reduciate. Surely you can understand that.”
I can. And he knows how much his mark has meant to me—irrational or not.
“It’s got to be a small thing for you, isn’t it?” he asks, his eyes pleading with me. “Please?”
“Of course I will, Ben,” I whisper.
He looks like he’s about to cry for a second before he nods stoically and turns to the side.
I was too distracted to realize what would inevitably come next.
He reaches for his shirt, and I can’t pry my eyes away as he peels it off, revealing his chest, bare from the waist up. He looks up at me after setting his shirt on the bed, and we’re both still as a veritable lightning bolt travels between us. His eyes darken with wanting, and I know he felt it too.
“Turn around,” I whisper, everything in my body shouting at me to go to him—to throw myself against his skin and soak up that tangible warmth only he has ever been able to provide. He turns, and I’m eye level with his black mark.
It looks ugly on his skin. Not for what it actually looks like, but for what it means. It’s not simply that he spent most of his life living in a Reduciate compound, it’s that he was a thrashing twelve-year-old boy, abandoned by everyone he loved. The lines are thick, but not crisp, and where the circle of the ankh curls out into the shepherd’s crook, I see a wave where the needle must have slipped, just a fraction of an inch. In my head I can hear Benson screaming, both from pain and from outrage. The scene is so clear in my imagination that I want to pull my hand back from the dark ink, as though it had a life of its own.
“Kneel,” I say, but I have to clear my throat and repeat myself before the word is understandable. He drops to his knees, and I pull up a chair. I sit close to him, my thighs on either side of his hips, barely brushing him, even though the brief contact feels like touching a hot iron.
I look at his shoulder and picture what his skin would look like without the mark. Then, with two fingers, I reach out to touch it.
And stop a hair’s breadth away.
Can I touch him without losing control? After such a long day, can I be strong for five more minutes?
I brace myself, but the feel of his soft skin under my fingertips still makes a shudder of ecstasy travel down my spine.
Focus, I tell myself. Just paint.
I make little brushing motions with my fingers, and like a gummy eraser, the black mark slowly smudges and then disappears.
It can’t have taken more than a minute or so, but the sensations that jolt through my body each time I touch him make it feel like an hour.
“It’s done,” I say, and my voice shakes even uttering those two tiny words.
“Is it gone?” Benson asks, and in his hesitation, I know he can hardly believe such a thing could be true.
“Completely.”
He drops all the way to the floor now, his chin almost touching his chest. “Thank you,” he says, and it’s whispered like a prayer.
He turns to look at me and seems to realize for the first time what an intimate position we’re in—his torso nestled between my thighs. I know I should stand, walk away, put distance between us, but his eyes paralyze me as he turns all the way around. His fingers tremble as he runs his hands very slowly up my legs as though he can’t help himself.
My thighs, my hips, my waist, then his fingers are gripping my ribs and his breathing is shallow and fast.
I can’t move. I can’t think. No, I can think one thing. Only one. How much I want him. How much my body needs to be next to his.
How long it’s been since I held him and called him mine.
My will is splintering, cracking, and I know in seconds there’ll be nothing left and I’ll be standing in a room with Benson, with his shirt already gone.
I’m on my feet before I can let myself regret my decision. I almost shove him over getting away. I can’t be feeling this, not now. Not tonight. My lungs are on fire as I back away, my hands held up in front of me.
“I can’t . . . I . . . I just—” But I can’t speak coherently. I fumble for the doorknob behind me and fling the door open, nearly barreling over the woman who unlocked it. I cross through the doorway, and though I hear Benson call my name, I slam the door against it.
And I run.
THIRTY
I shove the heavy door closed and press my back against it as though I were barring something out.
“Tavia?” Logan rises from the chair he was apparently lounging in, his feet bare, his belt off.
Where am I? I ran to Logan. I fled to our shared room. Our shared world.
That realization hits me like a boulder. I escaped to Logan.
“I—I—” Now that I’m here, I’m not sure how to explain why I came.
What I wanted. What the hell I was doing.
But on some level, it makes sense. For as long as I can remember, Logan—in so many lives—has meant safety to me. But what kind of safety is it tonight? Safety from Benson? Safety from myself?
“I came home,” I whisper. And even though the words feel strange coming from my lips, they feel so true. I know that this is where I belong. This is where Fate intends me to be. Not just in this room—with Logan. With my eternal lover.
I slide into his arms with an intrinsic naturalness that comes from thousands of lifetimes of doing this exact thing.
We fit like puzzle pieces.
A tremor of guilt ripples through me because I know that I might fight this fated joining another day. Assert my independence and insist that I do have a choice—that I can change my destiny. But today I’m out of energy to fight.
Today I will be precisely what the universe wants me to be.
And the universe wants me in Logan’s arms.
Tonight I hold nothing back. I always have before. Even that first night after his memories came back—so full of bliss and delight—I held back. Because even though the feelings were all there, Logan was a stranger. And I knew it.
Since then there have been doubts, worries. They were always present, gnawing at the edges of my subconscious.
They aren’t gone. If anything, they’ve multiplied.
But tonight I make believe.
Tonight I pretend they’re not there.
Tonight I give him everything.
• • •
The red numbers on the clock read 5:27 when I slip o
ut of bed early and transform Logan’s shirt into my own clothes.
I’m silent.
Because I’m sneaking away.
It’s easy to think your reasons are good enough in the dim, seductive darkness of the night. But even underground, without the sun, sunrise is illuminating, laying bare my secrets, fears, and justifications.
I look at Logan, still sleeping heavily, his profile barely visible in the murky darkness. I feel like I’ve used him. And even though I know he wouldn’t mind—he’s as bad as Benson at taking whatever he can get—I don’t want him to look me in the eye. To see that I’m unsure again.
To know that even as I lay in his arms last night, I dreamed of Benson.
So I make myself soft socks, pick up my worn Chucks, and slink away before he can wake up and catch me.
I descend the wide stairs to the atrium, where a couple of people are working on creating what looks like a huge Viking ship on one wall, and, without pausing to check it out, I go directly to hallway that will take me to the replica of my Michigan room.
I can’t face Daniel yet.
Can’t face anyone.
I drop into my twin bed fully clothed and sleep fitfully for a few more hours, plagued by nightmares. Shapeless forms chase me, their skin mottled with pox, like the diseases of the past. Right before I wake they catch me. They surround me, their reddened skin breaking and oozing, fingernails raking my arms, my face. They gather closer, closer, suffocating me, more and more of them, piling on top of me until I can’t breathe. Until the weight of them crushes the air from my lungs, breaks my bones, presses my insides.
I gasp for air as I sit up. Every part of my body is tingling. I’m not sure what time it is now, but there’s no way I’m going to get back to sleep. My shirt is soaked with sweat, and my sheets are clammy.
I can’t go back to Logan. Not just now—not ever. And not because of our differences or his lack of understanding about humans. Oddly, it seems like none of that matters anymore.