***
Blythe reaches the main room just as I’m finishing up with Tamryn. The two of us find Baron at a table full of his cronies, including Monkey Arms and his girlfriend, a chick with retractable metal spikes that protrude from her body. He gestures for us to join him and we do, chewing slowly on rubbery protein bars. No wonder they’re so hard up for food; this stuff’s God-awful.
“I’ve talked with Swan,” Blythe says to him, but also to me. I breathe a sigh of relief to know that Jenica and the Professor are all right. “They have agreed to a small share of the food goods in exchange for your helping us escape.”
Baron smiles. “You people are smarter than I thought.”
“She sent me her coordinates. They are closer to the center of the city, hiding out in a hotel room. Her DNA cloaking serum will wear off soon, so we’ll need to get a move on. The disguise will help her get through the streets if they need to be out in the open to meet us.”
“I assume this serum she speaks of is what you were wearing when you arrived yesterday,” he says, staring at me. “You had me fooled until last night when Captain Jack Knightly and Officer Grayson Barnes were discovered in Memphis, tied up and gagged at the bottom of a ditch. It didn’t take long for the authorities to discover that the two men they’d thought were traitors to their government were actually terrorists in disguise.” He laughs. “I’d have hardly thought you capable of such a thing, human.” He calls me human as if it’s an epithet. He will never let me forget that he feels himself superior to me in every way. “At any rate,” he continues when I only glare silently at him. “You and whoever was your accomplice in disguise should lay low for a while. It won’t be long before they find your DNA at Stonehead. Now that Officer Knightly’s is no longer attached to yours, they will be able to identify you. Besides Professor Hinkley and Miss Swan, you two will become America’s Most Wanted.”
I shrug. “We will take our chances.”
Baron nods. “You do that. Now, get your friend on the horn and give her these coordinates.” He slides a scrap of paper across the table toward us. “We will rendezvous here in two hours. I am willing to part with one of my smaller crafts for you to use.”
“We are grateful,” Blythe says.
I shoot her a surprised glance as Baron and his companions stand to leave us.
“What?” she asks when she catches me staring, mouth hanging open.
“How’d that taste coming up?” I ask with a laugh.
She laughs too. “Like shit, but we have to play nice with these freaks if we’re going to get out of here alive.” Her face is suddenly serious again. “Did you find Tamryn? Is she okay?”
Remembering our confrontation in the utility room wipes the humor from my expression as well. “It was hard,” I admit. “She’s not the same.”
Her hand covers mine on the table. “None of us are,” she says. “It’s not easy for any of us, life after the explosions. We’re all doing the best we can.”
“She’s happy here,” I confide. “She said as much to me herself.”
“It’s her defense mechanism,” she replies, her fingers stroking mine soothingly. “She’s been battered and broken, terrorized. We have all coped in different ways.”
“I offered to take her with us but she refused.”
Blythe smiles again. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you can’t save everyone, Gage.”
I lower my head. “I know that. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to try.”
“You saved Agata. And you saved me back at Stonehead. You’re a hero, Gage. You’re Agata’s hero.” I glance up and our eyes connect. “You’re my hero.”
Her words are everything I want to hear, but they settle in my gut like boiling acid because I know that I am no one’s hero. I am certainly not worthy of the infatuation I see in her eyes when she looks at me. Telling her the truth has just become even harder. Damn near impossible.