Part 21 (1/2)

Bowen glares and stands, his jaw muscles pulsing. He walks to the side of the pool and holds his hand up to the commentator. The commentator, round belly nearly popping the b.u.t.tons off his white s.h.i.+rt, reaches down and clasps Bowen's hand, ready to hoist him up. But Bowen yanks. The man topples over the side of the pool and lands on his back at Bowen's feet. He blinks, stunned, and the crowda”those who have braved the grenade to see what is going to happen nexta”gasps.

Bowen b.a.l.l.s his fist and hits the man in the face. The commentator's eyes roll back in his fleshy head, and his pudgy cheeks sag.

Placing his fingers on the commentator's ample cheeks, Bowen pries open the man's mouth and sticks his finger inside, removing a tooth-sized metal chip. He sticks it into his own mouth and glares up at the remaining people.

”Listen to me.” Bowen's voice drones impossibly loud, vibrating my bones, just like the commentator's. ”My name is Dreyden Bowen. This is Fiona Tarsis.” He points at me without looking. ”She's a Level Ten. And she's not a beast! She's been cured!” The crowd goes utterly still, staring down at Bowen with wide eyes. ”Now take a good look at the boy beside her. That's Jonah Tarsis. Her brother! You all came here today to watch our only hope for survival, our first real hope for the future, be torn apart by her own brother! You disgust me!”

The crowd inches toward the pool, all eyes on Jonah and me. The low drone of whispers fills the room. Women blink back tears, hang their heads in shame, and leave. Some of the men shout apologies. Others shake their heads and follow the women out.

Bowen crouches beside me. ”The militia should be here any minute, and doctors are on their way,” he says. He frowns and breaks eye contact, studies his hands. ”I'm so sorry, I didn't know how else to save you.” He looks as if he's about to be sick.

”What do you mean?” I whisper. The thought of medical help is a comfort to my throbbing body.

Without looking at me he says, ”When they took you in the tunnels, I knew you were going to go to the pits. Tommy and I got back to south gate as fast as we could, but when we told them you were cured and needed to be rescued, they didn't believe usa”locked Tommy and me up as traitors. But when Micklemoore came back to the campa”he had been out searching for youa”and found out that I had info about your location, he set us free and had us contact the lab with your whereabouts. Then Mickelmoore convinced the director of the lab to issue an order to open the gates for reinforcements, so the militia could help rescue you. So Tommy led the militia through the gate, and I came here through the tunnels.” Finally, he meets my eyes. ”Fo. The only way I could get them to agree to help was by telling the lab your location. I couldn't let you die in the pits. At least in the lab, you won't feel anything when you die. They're coming to take you.” His cheeks are pale and sunken, and blue shadows darken the skin under his eyes. A definite improvement from the last time I saw him, but still far from the glowing picture of health he used to be.

I reach a trembling hand to his face and trail my fingers over his bristly cheek. ”How are you?” I ask. Hope that he will live a long, prosperous life burns in my chest. I don't care if I have to go to the lab, as long as he survives.

He leans into my hand, and a hint of a smile touches his blue-tinged lips. ”I tell you you're going to the lab and you want to know how I am?” He tilts his head and kisses me so softly and so gently I could lean into his lips and fall asleep forever, but he pulls away and looks into my eyes. ”I'm glad you're alive.”

A door on the side of the pool opens. Bowen stands and grabs his gun, aiming it at a lone man wearing a long white jacket. The man puts up his hands and steps into the pool.

”Looks like the lab has arrived,” Bowen mutters, lowering his gun. His lips harden into a thin, straight line.

I look at the man in the white coat and my eyes narrow. He steps over Arris's lifeless body and walks toward me. Dark brows frame pale blue eyes. My heart starts pounding and a memory floods my vision.

Chapter 36.

Warm hands were on my icy skin, the first warmth I'd felt in a long time.

”I need you to wake up!” someone whispered. ”We need to get you away from here before they find out you survived the recovery period.”

I forced my eyelids open and stared into pale-blue eyes creased at the corners with worry and framed with black lashes. He looked away, and I followed his gaze to my arm. His warm, nimble fingers slid a needle out from the crease in my elbow. He moved to the other side of the bed and slid another needle out of the other arm. Tiny beads of blood pooled in the creases.

Next, he jabbed a needle into my bicep, emptied a syringe into me, and pulled it out. Fire seemed to spread up my shoulder and into my heart, making it pound, making it pump blood through my body so fast I started to tremble. ”I just injected you with adrenaline,” he said, wiping a drop of blood away. ”It won't last long and we don't have much time.” His warm hands clasped my shoulders and helped me sit. ”Can you walk?”

”Of course I can walk,” I said, and frowned. My voice felt broken, sounded as rough as a dog's bark. I put a weak hand to my throat and felt a fine chain beneath my fingers. ”But, who are you?”

”I'll explain as we go.” He gave me his hand, and I tried to clasp it but couldn't. My bones felt like liquid. He squeezed my hand and pulled, and helped me to my feet.

The moment I tried to stand, my knees knocked together and my arms flailed, like a newborn deer on brand-new legs. I threw my arms around the man's waist and sagged gracelessly against him.

Without a word, the blue-eyed man draped my arm over his shoulder, supporting almost all my weight. Together, we walked out of a dimly lit room that had a bed and nothing else.

The empty hallway was nearly pitch-black and lined with numbered doors. His shoes didn't make a sound on the floor. My white tennis shoes hardly touched it because my feet, like my legs and my voice, didn't remember how to work. We came to the end of the hall and stopped by a slick black wall.

”This is where it gets tricky,” the man whispered. He took a small metal object from his pocket and put it to his mouth. ”She's awake. Call Gary. We have to get her out of the lab tonight. I just took her off life-support, so it's only a matter of minutes before he realizes she's cured.” He took my arm from his shoulders and stepped away from me. My legs trembled beneath my weight, but not as badly as a few minutes before. I braced my shoes against the floor and held on to the dark wall for balance as the man typed something into a keypad on the wall at my left.

Light flashed beneath my hand. I squinted at the wall and realized I stood beside a floor-to-ceiling window many stories above the ground. It was nighttime. In the near distance, I could make out a wide stretch of connected buildings against a star-filled sky.

The lights flashed brighter beneath my hand. Nearer. A helicopter.

The blue-eyed man looked out the window. ”Oh no. We've got to go now!” he said, no longer whispering.

He grabbed me, lifted me off the floor, and cradled me in his arms like a baby. And then he ran.

My head bounced against his shoulder, lolling on a nearly useless neck, and I clung to his pristine white coat. At the end of the hall, we stepped into a pitch-black steam-filled room that reeked of bleach. He maneuvered through the darkness, stopped, and threw me down. I flailed before landing on my back in a mound of warm, dry cloth.

”Looks like we're going to use plan B,” he whispered. A light flickered, a tiny flashlight, barely illuminating the man's face while he scanned my body with it. The small light stopped on my arm. The man jabbed a needle into my bicep again and injected something into my muscle.

He leaned toward me, and his troubled face swirled in and out of focus. Lifting my eyelids, he shone the tiny flashlight into each of my eyes and nodded. The light went out. A fresh mound of hot cloth dropped onto me, making it almost impossible to breathe, yet my hands felt as limp and weak as flower petals, too weak to move the ma.s.s from my face. I relaxed into the warmth, content to be enveloped. My eyes closed, my mouth eased open, and I sank deeper into the warm fabric.

”Where is she?” a woman's voice asked, barely making it to my cotton-filled brain. I tried to open my eyes, to see who'd spoken the words. Because I knew that voice.

”She's in the linens. But we have to get her out now! There's already a copter circling the building. He knows she's awake.”

”Then Gary has to get her outside the wall tonight. He won't be missed. As long as he's back before sunrise, no one will suspect we had anything to do with her disappearance, and as long as she's sedated, she won't wake until we're with her,” the woman said.

”Outside the wall? Buta””

”She'll be sedated. She'll be fine. And you know Soneschen's got too many eyes in the city. She'll be dead before dawn if we keep her nearby. The other side of the wall is the safest place,” the woman insisted. Hands sifted through the warm linens covering me and circled around my neck. They fiddled with something and slid a chain away from my skin.

A lone pair of footsteps echoed on the floor. ”Gary! Take her. Quickly,” the woman said. ”To my old home from before.” The towels surrounding me started to move, being wheeled away.

Footsteps pounded on the ground. ”Doctor Grayson! You're to be taken in for questioning in the disappearance of lab specimen fourteen,” someone bellowed.

And then I floated.

”I know you,” I say. The man smiles, a gesture that doesn't reach his eyes.

”You remember me, then?” He crouches in front of me and visually scans my body.

I nod and look at the name embroidered on his starched white coata”Dr. Grayson. ”You moved me out of a bed and put me in some laundry.”

”That's right.” He glances over his shoulder, at the door he just came in through. ”We need to get you out of here immediately,” he says, looking at me again, pressing warm fingers against the pulse in my neck. ”Can you stand?”

”Wait. My brother. He a”

”That's Jonah?” Doctor Grayson asks, looking at the blood-covered body beside me.

”Yes. He's still alive. Can you help him?”

The doctor crouches beside Jonah and presses fingers to his neck. His blue eyes meet mine and he pulls a tiny clip from the pocket of his white jacket, lifts it to his mouth. ”We have an unconscious Level Ten in the pit. Get him medical help immediately. And take every precaution that he survives,” he says into the clip.

”Thank you,” I whisper.

The doctor's eyes move to Bowen. ”Are you Dreyden Bowen?” he asks.