Amplified (7 page)

I let him
drag me to another bunker room which only had four bunks in it. I wondered if the one Rick was in was like this. I wondered if I could sneak in there after Rye went to sleep and slit Rick’s throat.

I shook my head. Morbid thoughts wouldn
’t help me now. I still had questions for him, and I’d make his death long and painful, just like my mother’s. Plus, I still had to ask about that antidote. His discussion about it had piqued my curiosity.

Rye threw himself onto
one of the bunks, letting out a breath as he sighed in pleasure. I took the one across from him and untied my boots so I could lie down. How he could relax so easily in a place like this was beyond me. I hadn’t felt safe to sleep without one eye open since I’d slept in my tiny cot bed in our mountain bunker. My mother had taken more than her life when she’d destroyed our home. My entire world had been there since everyone had died or turned into ferals. Now I had no choice but to plan a return to my old house in the city and scavenge for old stuff like photographs and what memories were left of our old life. It’d been so long since I’d been there, I was sure nothing was left to even go back to. We’d left it all boarded and locked up tight, but who knew if it had held against the end of the world?

“We
’ll have to exterminate them.” Rye’s voice interrupted the cool silence that had enveloped me. I pulled the thin blanket over me and rolled over to face him. “We can’t leave them alive, not after all this.”

“We could assimilate thos
e who want to join Blaze’s hive,” I whispered across to him. Avoiding his eyes, I bunched the pillow under my head. I knew why he said those things. It was true. In this world, why leave alive those who wanted you dead? I wished there was a better way, but there just wasn’t.

“Maybe. If there
’s too many, we’d never be able to control them if they don’t like it in our hive.”

“Who
’s to say they won’t like it?”

“Blaze won
’t allow them to join. It’s too risky.”

I close
d my eyes and hoped the darkness would allow me some rest. “I guess you’ll find out.”

“I guess.”

“You don’t oppose him much, do you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“You don
’t know him like I do. He’s only shown the surface to you and the others. He even suggested killing your friends, the humans.”

I sat
up but couldn’t fully since a bunk bed sat atop me. “What? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

His liquid steel eyes flashed under the hum of the f
luorescent light. “I wanted to, April, but he made me promise not to.”

“And me? What about me? Did he ever suggest killing me?”

“No.” Rye sat up, hunching down in the cramped space. “If he had ever suggested that, I’d have told him no way in hell.”

“Maybe he
’s thought it.”

“Maybe. But like I said, he didn
’t ever suggest it.”

“Why not? I
’m a much a threat as these people are.”

“You were alone,
April.” A husky voice interrupted us, and we both turned toward the source. Blaze’s face looked tired and dark, and I held my breath. How long had he stood there, listening in and knowing what we knew? He’d been quiet and reserved this entire time, taking it all in to ponder and digest. I’d forgotten he was even with us.

“One person can
be more dangerous than an army,” I whispered, and my thoughts went back to the destruction of Christian’s hive at the Stratosphere. I’m not sure if I was angry, but tears formed, and I sucked in a breath to steady myself before I focused my eyes on the hive leader. “Just like you are more dangerous to others than they know.”

Blaze contemplated
my words quietly but didn’t move. The color seemed to drain from his eyes. I’ve never really spoken with him much, not since he’d opposed my search for the city of Vida. Ever since, I’d stopped talking to him altogether and done what I wanted anyway. He was not my leader, and I was not his follower.

“No words have ever been
truer.” He narrowed his eyes on Rye as though mentally reprimanding him for what he’d told me.

“Don
’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be gone when this is all over.”

Rye abruptly
turned to me, his face masked in horror. “What?”

“If you wish. No one will stop you. You have your own free will.”
Blaze turned to walk away, as if he’d lost interest in our conversation.

“April, what are you saying? Why would you leave? Where are you going? What about Jeremy?”

“He’s fine. He’ll stay in the city of Vida. He already likes it there more than being with me. As long you guys leave them alone, he’ll be fine.” I emphasized my words about leaving them alone and narrowed my eyes at Blaze as he walked away, daring him to say otherwise. I knew he could still hear us.

“The city of Vida will never be under threat from us unless they atta
ck us first. You have my word,” Blaze answered over his shoulder before disappearing around the corner.

If I disliked Blaze any, I sure as hell hated him now. Even with his promise, I didn
’t like how he made it seem that he was doing me a favor by leaving the underground city alone.

“April…
.” Rye was on the floor, his hands on my arms. “You’re not going anywhere. What kind of crazy talk is that?”

I turn
ed and stared hard into Rye’s gunmetal eyes, knowing I was going to miss them like the dickens when I did leave. “There’s nothing here for me anymore, once I have what I want. There’s a medical research facility in California that I want to take the antidote to. They can help replicate it, and we can all put this crazy virus-infested world behind us. I just hope there’s still someone there who can help me.”

Rye
’s mouth hung open like there was nothing more shocking I could say and withdrew his hands from my arms, though the reddened imprints of his fingers lingered on my skin.

“
Not everyone wants to change back, April. You’re going to plunge the world into a civil war.”

“I don
’t care if I have to spray it like a pesticide. I will make everyone take this antidote, and life will return to what it was.” My voice rose over his, and my chest heaved.

He shook his head and sunk to his knees
. “Why would you want to take on that task?”

“For Jeremy.”

“He’s happy. Let him have his life down in the City of Vida. He’s fine. Why do you have to become the martyr here?” His eyes turned from hopeless to focused and then bled into fury. He was losing his patience with me. Might as well. I was done.

“Because
he may be happy, he may be a little boy now, but what about when he wants to leave? What will the world be when they emerge to try and repopulate the earth? It will be a wasteland, infested with vampires and ferals alike. It will be in tattered ruins. If I don’t fix this mess, no one will. Rick may not want to help, but I’ll make him and the rest of the world do what they should’ve done before this blew up into the wreck it is.”

I yanked the blanket back
over me and rolled to face the wall, hoping it was message enough for Rye to leave me alone. I was done talking. I’d made up my mind and not him, Jeremy, Blaze, hell, not even Sarah could convince me otherwise. I needed to do something. I couldn’t just sit there and let the time go flitting by with nothing but ashes left to the future. Nothing but soot and ashes.

As things stood, t
here was no future. No future for me, for Jeremy. How could he expect to live secluded, underground forever? How could he be denied the blue of sky, fresh air and snowy mountains? Were they that naïve that the world would work out in the end? Were people so hopeless as to give up on the world and leave it in ruins? How could this have happened?

I closed my eyes, squeezing fat tears onto my pillow. My mother would
’ve fought for it. I knew she would’ve. This was my future, our future, that I fought for. Why couldn’t anyone else see it that way? As the dawn approached, I shoved at the turmoil in my head and begged for rest. It finally came but not without due payment of nightmares of a future filled with blood and death.

Truth and Lies

The humming of the fluorescent lights illuminating the hall felt like a buzzing bee in my ears. I couldn’t sleep, and what little I’d gotten had left me weary and itching to move from the lumpy bunk I was lying on. Blinking, I focused on the lump covered in the scratchy grey military-issue blanket across from me. Rye was dead asleep, his soft breaths barely noticeable in the dim room.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, careful to not make any noise
, and pulled my boots on. I’d slept in my clothes, like I always did. Nothing beats being ready to go at a second’s notice. Patting down the matted mess my ponytail had turned into, I frowned and decided to let it be. No sense in trying to impress anyone there. I slipped my travel pack on and was ready to go.

Sneaking into the hall
, I glanced down the way toward the lab. It wasn’t far but wasn’t close enough to give me the heebie jeebies thinking about all the distorted things lingering in the tanks in there. It sent a shudder down my spine, but I let out a slow breath and decided to head down there anyway. I glanced around each door but only found empty bunks. It had me wondering where Rick was sleeping. Why did he make me feel that he was hiding so much more under that nerdy exterior of his? My gut feelings were usually dead on, and this one was screaming for me to talk more with him, alone. It wasn’t that he’d given me any hints or anything like that, it was just a feeling that he didn’t want to speak around the hybrid vampires, not about certain things. If I could find him, maybe I could squeeze out every little secret he held inside.

I followed the circumference of the lab, finding the place deserted. There were more bunks on this side of the lab
, but no one filled the empty mattresses within, and I wondered where the hell everyone had gone. There were more bunks farther down the hall where Rye and I had slept, but I hadn’t bothered backtracking to check them out. Maybe everyone was over there, and I’d missed them.

It wasn
’t a problem. I didn’t really want to see any of them at the moment. I didn’t want to explain my midnight stroll through this oppressive place.

I stopped, my heart drumming under my chest like frightened butterfly, warning me of something. Rick was nearby, and I didn
’t even know how I knew it. It was as if it was just a fact I’d been told somehow. I tiptoed farther down until I reached the last door of the hall of bunks. It was slightly ajar, and the darkness within told me he was probably asleep. I wiggled my fingers. They itched to reach in there and surprise the son of a gun.

Barg
e in or sneak in? I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I crept in anyway, making sure the door didn’t squeak as I focused my eyes into the darkness of the room.

“Are you
going to kill me now?” Rick’s disembodied voice hit me like an arctic wind. I swallowed but focused on the body lying in the bottom bunk.

My eyes adjusted, and I could make out
his back turned toward me and his face hidden as he stared at the wall. Vulnerable. He was a pompous man if he felt he was safe within my reach. I realized I had the upper hand and slipped in, turning the small bedside lamp on as I sat down on the opposite bunk. He shifted and turned to face me, his eyes shiny under the reading light.

“No. I
’m not going to kill you… yet.” I didn’t mean to sound so ominous, but I was tired of games. “I know there’s a lot more about what’s going on out there in the world, about this virus and why everyone is infected. I want to know everything, and you’re going to tell me.”

His nose flared as he studied me across the
narrow void between us. His eyes squinted just a bit. His glasses were sitting on the bedside table. Still, he took me in as if he’d just met me and had to memorize each detail of this potential specimen before he could splay it open or let it sit in a tank of overpowering formaldehyde, posed like a precious work of art.

“I know a lot of things, April.” My name on hi
s tongue made me uncomfortable as I remembered how he’d used his telekinesis on me earlier. “Why should I tell you anything? And what specifically do you really want to know? Some of it matters, some of it doesn’t. Your mother wasn’t much for words, so I can’t tell you if she was so unhappy here that it drove her to such a tragic end. I’m sorry I can’t tell you much more about her in that way.”

Now he was just pushing me.
“Well, with what you did with her blood… the antidote… can you cure everyone? The sick ones, the ferals and the ones with the green withering sickness?”

It wasn
’t exactly the question I really wanted answered, but it would do for a starter.

He sighed, ruffling his hair and coming
up to a sitting position. He leaned into his knees as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He reached over to clasp his glasses and perched them on his pointy nose before focusing on me once more.

“April, everything has a cure. There is a way to cure everyone
, but I’m afraid the cure can be worse than the disease itself.”

“What do you
mean?” My palms were sweating, the anticipation harrowing.

“I mean
there are those who would do anything to destroy it, hide it, use it for their own purposes, for power. There are those who would deem it necessary to make it mandatory for all to take the medicine. There are those who would refuse such an option. Maybe if we’d had this at the time of the outbreak it would’ve been more salvageable. But now, heading into a year and half after the event, nothing is the same, and it’ll never be the same. There are hunters and prey, there are strong and weak, there are vampires and humans. Nothing will ever be the same as it was before. Do you understand that, April?” His voice was deathly serious, and his eyes were filled with a threat that made me flinch.

“You won
’t give me the antidote recipe, will you?” It wasn’t a question. I stated it like a fact.

His lips curled up, showing off a perfect set of teeth. Tiny
crow’s feet framed his eyes as the smile met them. He could’ve been charming, in another life, for an older guy. I could see why my mother had liked him, if she had. I didn’t believe every word coming from his mouth. But I only felt the burn of pure, unfiltered hatred toward a man who could withhold such things from humanity. It wasn’t his decision to make.

“No
, April. I can’t give it to you.”

I stood up, glaring down at him and feeling my heart surge like fire, begging release from my ribcage.
He flinched, but only just. “You will give it to me. You have no right to keep it to yourself.”

“And what will you do with it? Would you take the medicine? Would you turn into a plain human again when so many beasts and monsters still lurk across the world?
Is that what you really want?”

“I don
’t know, but there are those who want it.”

“And you
are what? Their martyr?”

“It doesn
’t matter. It’s not your decision. You’re not God. You’re not the Devil. It isn’t yours.”

“It isn
’t yours either, April.”

I watched him through the pool of fury tears about to spill down my cheeks. My face flushed in heat as I tamed the hurt, the frustration and anger down into a tiny
flame flickering in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to hurt him, but doing so would squash any chance for a future for myself, for Jeremy.

“Why won
’t you try to help others? You’ve done so much damage. Just give it to me, and I’ll find someone who is more willing to explore the options. You don’t want to, I get that. But you have no right to withhold it from the world. Why even make it in the first place? You’re no king here.”

Rick
’s face had fallen into tight, serious mask, and his eyes stared back in a pregnant silence. I hated not being able to hear his thoughts as he heard mine. I hated him with every tiny morsel of my being, but I held my ground, knowing I would take what I wanted soon enough, even by force. This was but a formality, his chance to make it easier on me and himself. I was ready to take him to the pit of hell, kicking and screaming, for the antidote. He would burn for not handing it over, but that would come all in good time.

What surprised me
was that the moments kept ticking by, as though he was actually contemplating my plight and considering doing as I asked. Nothing would have been better than to do this the easy way, with his help. With him, the cure would be but a shot away, and not just for the ones that needed it the most, the ferals, but for everyone. Humanity could begin again. That was all I wanted, all I dreamed about anymore.

He sighed,
straightening up, still sitting as he bore his eyes into mine. The darkness within and the slight hum of his telekinetic power brushing against my brain made me twitch. Dammit, what was the bastard up to now? It was always no good.

“I will not give it to you. You don
’t know what to do with it, and it will only bring chaos and more destruction than you’ve ever dreamed of. I won’t let you do that. I may not have been the most righteous man here, doing what I do, but I will not be responsible for your careless deconstruction of what little remains of the world. That’s what you’ll be doing. There will be war between those who want the cure and those who wouldn’t dream of taking it. You’ll do nothing to bring peace or salvation to anyone. It will only bring more death, more pain. My answer is no.”

Before he could blink, his glasses skidded to the floor
, and my hand stung with a million tiny pricks of pain that burst across my skin as surely they did across his cheek where I’d slapped him with every bit of my inner hate.

“You
’ll do what I say, when I say.” I grabbed his arm and shoved him against the door, pulling out my gun from my pack. “Or you die. Choose.”

“Then y
ou’ll have to kill me.”

“Dammit, Rick. You
owe me this.” My voice quivered. I was so angered by his stubbornness, I would have been okay jabbing the damned gun against the back of his head and blowing his brains out. I had to think, calm myself before it did end that way. “You owe Helen this.”

At the mention of her name
, his head dropped. I eased him back a bit. Obviously, the mention of my mother had an effect on this guy, for whatever it was worth. I had to use it for all the power it could give me.

“I
’m truly sorry about your mother. Really, I am,” he said, his voice cracking.

Seriously? The guy was
about to cry. Great. He was nuttier than a squirrel’s hoard in winter. Did he really think I was going to feel sorry for him? Unbelievable.

“
Look, I don’t know who you think you are, but what you did to her, you need to make up for it. You can’t do anything for her now, but she’d want you to help me. I knew her better than you ever could have.”

He looked up at me, s
niffling like a little weasel. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?”
I restrained myself because I was about to strangle him. “I mean, if she really meant something to you, you have to understand that this cure… it’s our salvation. And she would’ve wanted it and given everyone a choice to be cured or not. She would’ve never wanted it to be just your choice, Rick.”

His tears remain
ed wet across his cheeks, but I could see I was affecting him in some way. Maybe he could listen after all. Maybe he wasn’t as lost as I thought he was. I was far from trusting him, that would be a battle for another day, but if I had his cooperation, it was going to be a whole lot easier.

After what felt like an eternity, his head began to bob
, softly nodding. He waited for me to continue, but I found myself at a loss for any meaningful words.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
I stood up and headed out the doorway into the darkened hallway where nothing met us but the humming of distant machines and the slight buzz from the lights. I heard him shuffling behind me hesitantly, but with each step, his stride turned more confident. I just hoped that he wouldn’t stab me in the back like Christian had. His betrayal was still fresh in my mind, and even though he wasn’t my boyfriend, our blood bond still messed with my head so much, it was enough to make me want to stake the bastard the next time I saw him. It hurt me, the thought of his love turning against me. After all we’d gone through, I had become soft, trusting and naïve to believe he’d never put me in danger. He had, and he would do it again.

Blood bonds suck.

~~~~~

The lab was quiet, like a lonesome
, eager pet waiting for its master. The master was Rick, who trudged along through the freak show of tanks, specimens, limbs, and whatnot, like it was another day on the job. I still couldn’t understand how he felt so at home there with death surrounding him. I guess it wasn’t much unlike the way it was above ground, outside in the city where all the buildings were infested with evil and teeth that just wanted to rip your flesh. Except he had it a lot better. These things weren’t trying to kill him at every turn. They just sat there and stared at us as we moved through the lab with their unwavering frozen stares, like they knew something we didn’t.