“Come on,” Ben says, tugging me through the door. He switches the glass so it’s not reflective and turns on the sound—I can’t think of any reason to do this except to torture ourselves with the sight and sound of Luke being torn to pieces. I stand in the doorway, calling for Luke to hurry up, but he can’t get to us. Josi is blocking the way, throwing him into the walls, hitting him with blows strong enough to do serious damage. He’s so quick, but she is faster—I’ve never seen anyone move like she does.
“Luke!” I shout. I can’t leave him out there on his own with her. I can’t lock this door until he’s safe. I will not.
“Shut the door, Anthony!” Luke yells at me just before he has his head smashed into the wall. I wince in horror, but he manages to stumble out of the way, dazed and very strong.
“Shut it,” Ben echoes but I can’t, I can’t.
I run back into the lab and grab the gun Josi dropped. It feels heavy in my hands, but I raise it and point it toward her. I’m shaking terribly and can’t get good enough aim. She has Luke by the throat, lifting him off the ground and pinning him against the wall. She has her back turned; as I move closer I have a clear shot.
“Don’t you dare shoot her!” Luke chokes out. “Don’t you dare, Anthony!”
I must. My inaction will never cause another death. I refuse to allow it. I aim the gun at her leg, trying to sight it like Luke told me in the car. That feels like a long time ago now. He’s choking to death—I can see it. His face has gone purple and he’s not even struggling. Some twisted part of him is determined to let himself be killed just so he doesn’t have to hurt her.
I take a deep breath and squeeze the trigger.
Nothing happens. Shit, the fucking safety is on. I fumble with the weapon, clicking the switch, then raise it to aim again. Except that within the tiny space of time it took me to do this, Josephine has dropped Luke—I’m not sure if he’s alive—and turned toward me. I raise the gun, shaking like a leaf. A shot is fired—it shocks me so much that I jerk my hand up and accidentally fire a second bullet. Jesus Christ! A third bullet is let loose, purely because I can’t stop shaking, and this one actually whizzes right past Josi’s ear.
She approaches, baring her teeth like a wild beast. It is truly terrifying to think that her transformation is caused by a drug that’s similar to what every person in the world has been given. I can just imagine a planet of rabid animals like this—a world of Furies. I wonder what—
“Anthony, run!” Luke screams. I blink, coming back to the room.
I forget about the gun. I can’t kill Josi, no matter what she’s about to do to me. I turn and run back toward the safe zone, but she’s much too fast. I feel her hands—small, slender hands—grab the back of my head and wrench a chunk of my hair from my scalp. A shriek of pain escapes me and I stumble backwards, straight into her waiting grip. Josephine has her hands around my neck now—one twist and I will be gone. I feel a rush of euphoria at the idea of this, but there is also a part of my brain that is still functioning well enough to interpret this as a panic response. A response of the cure.
“Josephine!” Luke shouts suddenly. He sounds close. I’m not sure Josi recognizes her name as much as she simply responds to the proximity of the voice, but she spins me around to face Luke. He is holding the gun I discarded, and within the space of a heartbeat, he fires one quick shot, skimming the edge of Josephine’s arm. She shoves me away, snarling in fury. The force of her push sends me heavily onto the ground and as I blink once, twice, I am lying on a sea of hot, jagged rocks. My body is alight, my mind is endless and white, I am shattering into a thousand pieces but I have absolutely no idea why.
Coughing, I force myself back to reality—it is too easy to escape with a disjointed mind like mine—to find that I am lying on the cold linoleum floor and I can’t seem to move. My back is hot like fire; there’s a searing sensation spreading from one point in my spine. I can’t move my legs, no matter how hard I struggle.
I look up, searching for Luke. Swallowing the bile in my mouth, I push myself up using just my arms. There are a thousand leaves in my mouth and I cry through the thick taste of them. I can see Luke now. He’s on the other side of the workbench, acting quickly, his hands fiddling with something I can’t see. Josephine is on the other side of the room, crouched over the ground. I have no idea what she’s doing, but something about it is eerie.
“Luke!” I hiss. There seems to be blood in my mouth now—where on Earth would that be coming from? What happened to the leaves?
“Hang in there, man,” Luke tells me softly, eyes flicking to mine briefly. He’s keeping a close watch on Josi while he does whatever he’s doing. “Can you get yourself back behind the glass?”
“Not without you.”
And then a miracle: Luke grins. “That’s touching, but you’re not particularly helping me right now. Get behind the glass and I’ll follow as soon as I can. I’m gonna need some serious ‘shrinking’ after all this shit—and you’re my man.”
In any other person this kind of mirth at a time like this would point to a malfunction in the brain, but for Luke it’s just … I think it’s courage. He has such spirit. When he smiles he really smiles.
Since I have no feeling in my legs, I have to flip myself onto my stomach and drag my body, inch by painstaking inch, toward the outer room. Something tells me not to look at Josephine as I pass her, but I can’t help myself. She’s still squatting over the ground, but now I can see what has her so captivated. On the floor is a pool of blood—I don’t know if it belongs to her or to Luke. She is running her fingers through it dreamily, making swirling pictures on the ground, smearing it on her skin, in her mouth, sucking her fingers and snarling, snarling.
It’s not the worst thing I have ever seen—I am a man who discovered his wife and daughter dead in their beds—but it certainly comes in second. Josephine has become like an animal, but what separates the drones from what she is? Wasn’t it me who laughed when he saw a girl dying in a car wreck? Wasn’t it me who walked away from my wife as she cried and begged, feeling nothing? How am I more human than this creature before me, smearing blood on her skin?
I reach out for the edge of the door, dragging myself forward. It hurts so much I can’t help but weep as my muscles constrict. I don’t want to think about why my legs won’t work. It’s too frightening.
Ben is there, hauling me by the armpits into the room and slamming the door shut. He locks it with a click; I hear the echo of it within the room for what seems like an eternity. He is staring at me, at my back. He wears a look of aghast pity. In his face are the flashing neon words it’s bad, very, very bad.
“Have you finished it yet?” I ask. More blood in my mouth. I must have swallowed pints of it.
Ben shakes his head.
“Then hurry!” I urge.
Ben ambles back to his small area of desk, clicking his tongue and shaking his head.
I close my eyes, preparing myself. Slowly I reach around to my back, fingers tingling. I don’t know what I will find, but I know that it will change everything. I feel something cold and smooth, something hard. I wince, but force myself to keep exploring. It is long and round. And as my fingers follow the shape of it, I realize that it’s some sort of pole. A pole embedded in my spine.
Luke
My hands can’t move fast enough. I am watching Josephine, crouched on the ground, and I am watching Ben through the glass, and I am watching as poor Anthony drags himself toward the fleeting idea of safety, the metal leg of a stool impaled in his body. I am watching all of these things while my fingers take the vial of yellow liquid, prepare a syringe, fill it with the drug and then move the sharp point of it to the vein in my arm.
Anthony
I am imagining a murder of crows flying through the air when Ben’s voice slices into my awareness.
“He has the vial! The Zemetaphine—oh shit, lad—what are you doing?”
My heart stutters to a jerking halt. “Is he … what?
??s happening?”
“He’s using it on himself,” Ben whispers.
Luke
I can’t see what she’s looking at, but I can see the dark tendrils of her hair, and it’s enough. It’s enough for me to imagine the life we could have led, the days we could have spent together. In the space of a moment, one single moment before I push the end of the syringe and an extremely high dose of virus floods my bloodstream, I experience the freedom of choice, the simplicity of liberation.
For ten years I’ve feared the cure more than anything. I’ve always said that I’d die before I let myself be injected.
But here I am, willingly dosing myself with something harsher, more destructive. Something that could make me a drone or a monster before it kills me.
And I couldn’t be happier. I am alive with choice, with freedom, with love. I’d inject myself with a thousand cures, because it would be my decision, my privilege, to die for someone I love.
Who has ever been as lucky as I?
I see the children, the three children. Two sons and a daughter. I bid them farewell, and I tell them I’m sorry. I’m sorry I don’t live in a world where they can exist. I want them, I want them with Josephine. I know they could have been wonderful, everything could have been wonderful, in another life.
But this is the one we have lived, this is the life that is ours, and I will own it, just as I always told Josi to own her crimes.
She stands up and turns around, and in the moment her red eyes find mine, I push the syringe into my vein and inject myself with Zemetaphine.
Josephine
There’s a rushing wall of sound approaching, and it hits with a sudden burst of sensory explosion. I feel, I hear, I smell, I taste, I see.
I am.
I am squatting in a puddle of blood. A strangled exclamation of disgust leaves my mouth and I haul myself to my feet, heart beating in panic. I am still in the asylum lab. The light is the same. The smell is different—now there is blood in the air. I turn slowly, terrified of what I will find. Things have been smashed and broken, pieces of the bed are bent and scattered on the ground, along with instruments from the bench. The stools are all broken, legs missing or splayed at odd angles.
And Luke. There is Luke.
He is behind the bench, and he is holding something. His eyes catch me, so green, and then he does something, and I blink, not understanding.
“Luke?” I say softly.
His expression changes. I read surprise, relief, despair. Together our eyes go to what he holds: it is an empty syringe. A tiny bead of blood wells on the soft skin of his arm. My mind is too slow. I don’t understand what’s happened.
“Did I do something?” I ask. My throat sounds raw and painful, but I can’t feel anything. “Where are the others?”
“Behind the glass,” he says calmly.
“Was that … just the start?” I have no sense of time passing—for all I know it could have been weeks.
Luke nods. “It was twelve minutes.” He’s breathing heavily. His pupils are dilated and his eyes start to dart around the room.
“What’s going on?” I burst out. “Are you all right?”
He seems to snap out of some daze, dropping both his arms and nodding resolutely. “I’m fine, sweetheart. Are you okay?”
I nod mutely. I don’t know when the next change will happen—it could be hours away, or it could be much sooner.
A voice enters the room. “Luke. We need you in here. Anthony is …”
Luke lurches for the door and I spin around to face the glass wall. I can see behind it now. Ben is in there, but I can’t see Anthony. I start to feel frightened. I walk toward the window, trying to prepare myself, but I can’t, I can’t. Marley is in my head, again and again. I can’t seem to wed the idea of the therapist I’ve spent a year with, with this man who experienced the death of a child. It’s a grief too big, too unfathomable. I don’t understand how it could fit within the small, contained body of Anthony Harwood.
Perhaps that is the answer: it doesn’t. Perhaps he no longer has the ability to grieve.
I peer through the glass. Luke and Ben are bent over something. I don’t see it until Ben straightens awkwardly, stretching his stiff back and shaking his head. Luke is speaking, stabbing a finger, face contorted strangely.
And then. And then.
My eyes move down to the body on the ground and I see. Anthony is lying on his stomach, and there is a metal pole cutting through his body. There’s blood, a lot of it, but he is still conscious, lying there and looking at Luke. I see his expression with a lurch of comprehension. There’s something so perfectly simple about it. Something pure. Something rare for a drone. Something human.
“Let me in!” I shout, banging my fists against the glass. “Please, let me in!”
All three of them look at me, and it is Ben who shuffles over to the door and unlocks it. Even though it is unsafe, even though it could mean the end of them all. I shouldn’t be asking for this, but there’s a savagery to the need in my chest.
“Just for a moment,” I breathe, entering the quiet, cool room. I can taste my tears, slipping down my cheeks. The three of them are staring at me. It is one of the worst moments of my life. It is absolute bewilderment—how could I have done this to a man I care about?
I sink to the floor, hands hovering above the pole. I look at Luke, who is pale and fidgety in a way I have never known him to be. “What do we do?” I whisper.
“If we pull it out, he’ll bleed to death,” Luke says.
“So then what?” I demand raggedly. “What do we do?” I look at Ben, but he spreads his hands helplessly. I swallow, make a decision. “He needs a hospital. I’ll open the door and let them in. They’ll take him and fix him.”
Luke opens his mouth, but then he breathes out in a puff and nods tiredly. “Yeah. All right.” We have been defeated and we all know it.
I’m about to stand when Anthony grabs my hand. “Don’t.”
I look down at him, at his face. I feel bruised by his eyes, by the sudden passion in them. I’ve never seen him look so alive, so human.
“If you open that door,” he tells me, “I’ll never forgive you.”
“I have to. Your life’s not worth less than ours, Anthony.”
He shakes his head. “I feel alive for the first time in years. I want and I imagine and I regret. It’s a perfect way to end it.”
I start to sob, the pain of this tearing through my body. It’s too much. I have committed too much.
“A man who cannot mourn his daughter should not be alive,” Anthony says softly. Luke places his hand on Anthony’s head. Something intimate passes between them. “Get her out of here,” Anthony tells him. “Save her, and save yourself.”
“Anthony, no, wait—” I blubber. His eyes shift back to me and he smiles. “You’re fine, you’re fine,” I say. “We can fix this. We just need to—”
“It’s okay,” he tells me. “You were the best patient I ever had, Josephine Luquet. You changed my life. Now pull the pole out.”
I stare at him, distraught. Luke has one hand in my hair, the other is still in Anthony’s. “No,” I sob. “There’s no way …”
“Luke,” he implores. “Please, just pull it out.”
Luke’s jaw is clenched. He’s looking between Anthony and me. Slowly his hand moves to the pole.
“No!” I snarl. “Don’t you dare!”
“Please,” Anthony begs.
“Get away from him!” I shout. Hands take me by the shoulders—it must be Ben—and pull me backwards. “Don’t!” I scream, sobbing so hard my chest is turning inside out. “Please, Luke—please!”
Luke looks at me. “He’s dead already, Josephine. This isn’t … this can’t be fixed. I won’t let him suffer.”
“No!” I scream, struggling forward. Ben has his arms around me and I know that I could throw him off and incapacitate Luke, and I could carry Anthony out of here and give him to the Bloods, but the truth hits me, a
well of grief—it would simply be prolonging the inevitable. Anthony is ready now.
A moan leaves me, a horrendous sob that racks my body and throws me to the ground. I can barely breathe I’m crying so hard. I want to die, I want to disappear, for all of this to be a terrible nightmare. But it’s not, and I cannot disappear—I must live through this, because it is my burden and mine alone.
“I’ll do it,” I weep. “I’m the one who killed him, so I’ll finish it.”
“Josi, I—” Luke starts to say.
“I’ll do it!” I sob, pulling myself forward. For long minutes I close my eyes and force myself to breathe, to push everything back down to where I can manage it. I reach for the pole, placing trembling fingers around the cold metal. “Hold his hand,” I tell Luke.
Luke reaches for Anthony’s hand and grips it tightly. I look at Anthony’s face.
“It’s okay,” he tells me softly. There’s blood coming out of his mouth. “None of this was your fault, Josephine. I didn’t listen to you—I should have. I get to die fighting for something important. I’ve never fought for anything before.”
I nod, touching his face once, stroking it gently, and then I pull the pole from his back.
Chapter Twenty-one
September 17th, 2064
Anthony
I don’t like impromptu meetings. I don’t like things that break my daily routine. But when the chief calls you, you go.
One of the nurses lets me into the medical station.
“Harwood, quick, get in here,” the chief tells me distractedly. I enter the observation area of the lab, surprised by his focus. As I move to the glass window, I see what is on the other side. I go quite still, unnerved by the sight.