Emerge (18 page)

Now she backed up and returned to her uncomfortable chair. She stared down at her feet, muttering something under her breath.

I kneeled in front of her and slid a hand up to her cheek. “Mother, what is wrong with you? Did someone give you something? To help you relax, maybe?” She was acting drunk, but it was early in the day, and Mother only drank an occasional glass of wine with dinner. She never overindulged.

“What?” Her voice rose an octave. “Of course not. That’s absurd. I am the president of New Caelum. I do not need the help of any drugs.”

I stood up and backed away a bit. “Okay. So what did Justin tell you about Christina?”

“Just that she called in on her PulsePoint, and that he was sending men out to get her. I just assumed she was somewhere inside the city—freshening up. I mean, can you
imagine
being out there all this time with such filth?” She squinched up her nose and shuddered.

Actually, yes, I could imagine it very well. “Well, Justin was mistaken,” I said. He had to be. Cricket would never have admitted to her real identity. “I did bring a girl back to New Caelum. She was sent to us by Dr. Caine Quinton. It wasn’t Christina, though.”
 

Mom’s shoulders rotated back at the sound of Caine’s name. “Dr. Quinton? You saw him? How is he?” She smiled politely while picking a fallen hair off of her sweater.
 

I crossed the room to check the liquor cabinet. Not that that told me anything. Mother always had a well-stocked bar for entertaining the council. “He was fine, Mother,” I said absentmindedly, then caught myself. “No, he
wasn’t
fine.” I faced her again. “He’s trying to run a settlement and build a healthy community.” I purposely left out the bit about our own Ryder and Key delivering Bad Sam to the people of that settlement.

“Well, of course he wasn’t fine. What did he expect?” She waved her hand as if dismissing both Caine and me. “He chose his path. He chose to play the hero and devote his life to helping the poor souls who were unlucky enough to find themselves stuck on outside. Instead of…”

“Unlucky?” I’d never heard my mother speak about those on the outside in that way. “You act like the people on the outside were just victim of some lottery system. Like they had a glimmer of hope in the beginning and just drew the wrong straw.”

“Oh, whatever.” She stood and walked to me again. “I’m just so happy to have you back. And with Christina.” She smiled. “Now, I’m going to have my bath before dinner. Justin will be here to eat with us.”

I started to tell her again that Christina wasn’t here, but I knew my breath would have been wasted. Not to mention that I’d have been lying.

~~~~~

“Get up, West.” a man’s voice barked, jolting me from my sleep. I grunted, my hand massaging the crick in my neck, and the voice sang, “I have a surprise for you.”

I’d fallen asleep sitting up in this very uncomfortable chair, waiting for my mother to finish bathing. Waiting for anything to happen, really. I knew that once I’d reentered New Caelum, I’d be at the mercy of the city’s rules. I’d been sequestered until I could be debriefed—and until it was proven that I didn’t have Bad Sam. Now I stared into the dark, almost black, eyes of Justin Rhodes.

I stood and backed away from him, rubbing a hand over my face in attempt to shake the fog from my head. I knew I’d lost a lot of sleep during the nights I’d been away, but I couldn’t believe I’d let myself fall asleep without knowing the fate of Cricket.

“What’s wrong, West? You’re acting a little nervous.” Justin undid the buttons at his wrists and began to roll his sleeves up to his elbows.

“I just woke up to you in my face, Justin. What did you expect?”
Asshole
. “Why? Is there something I should be nervous about?”

“Well, let’s see. You left the city without permission. For all we know, you’ve been exposed to Bad Sam multiple times. And then you ask to come back?”
 

Justin nodded toward two guards who stood just inside the door to our suite; they had masks over their faces and surgical gloves on their hands. At Justin’s nod, they left their posts by the door and crossed over to me.

I instinctively held my hands up and backed away. “What’s going on?”

“Just a precaution, my friend.”

One guard held my arms behind my back while the other rubbed a device across my forehead. “It’s normal,” the guard said—referring to my temperature, I supposed. He then pushed my shirtsleeve to above my elbow, tied a band around my upper arm, and proceeded to extract blood from my vein. After he had placed a piece of gauze over the injection site, the other guard released me.

Justin clapped his hands together. “Great. As long as your blood test comes back negative, it would appear that you are virus free.”

“It will.” I concentrated on keeping my breathing even and saying nothing that would upset Justin. “I’ve been careful, and I’ve shown no signs.” Not to mention, Dr. Quinton had determined that I was immune to Bad Sam.

“Also, I expect you to regularly submit your temperature through your PulsePoint now that you’re back.”

A door behind me opened. I turned to find my mother, dressed in a simple black dress. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun at the base of her neck.
 

“I thought I heard voices.” She breezed over to Justin and gave him a peck on the cheek, then wiped the lipstick from his skin.

“Hello, Ginger, darling.” Justin turned his head and spoke against her lips. When he faced me, he smiled. “I guess your mother told you?”

I gawked at their display of affection. “Actually, no, she must have left something out.” I pulled down the sleeve of my shirt; anything to keep my hands busy.

“Your mother and I are getting married.”

“Why?” It was all I could think to say.

“Westlin,” Mom scolded. “Don’t be rude.”

Willow and I hated this guy. My
mother
hated him.

“It’s okay, darling.” Justin hugged Mother close. “We’ll give West a minute to get used to it.”

“Was that the surprise?” I asked, remembering Justin’s irritating voice when he’d first entered. Mother didn’t seem the least bit worried that a deadly virus was sweeping through her daughter’s body, and I had to find a way to bring the conversation around to what we were going to do about discovering a cure.

“No. Actually, the surprise should be here any minute.” Justin glanced down at the mini-PulsePoint on his wrist, then smiled at me. “You’re going to love this.”
 

He walked to the entrance of our suite and with the click of a few buttons, the door slid open. “Ah. Here she is now.”

Cricket rounded the corner and approached the entrance to the suite, flanked by two guards. At the sight of her, I nearly lost my ability to breathe. She was dressed in a sapphire-colored satin dress. Her blond hair was pulled back and smoothly tucked into some sort of braid. Even the hair that usually hung against her cheek was braided along the right side of her head. She fidgeted like crazy with her hands, and her face tilted to the right.

She was beautiful, and my wildly beating heart was testament to that fact. However, that wasn’t the surprise; it was the color she wore that was the surprise.

“Welcome, Cricket,” Justin said. “This is my lovely fiancée, President Ginger Layne.”

Cricket held out her hand to Mother. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.” Her voice was even and seemed void of emotion.

“And of course you know our Westlin.” Justin gestured my way.

She turned to me, and that was when I saw the spark of pure, unfiltered anger in her eyes. She held out her hand to me. “Nice to see you again, West. And so soon.” The second sentence held an especially sharp edge.

I wrapped my fingers around her hand and squeezed, holding on to her palm long enough to feel a slight tremor in her handshake. When I looked up at her face, what I saw tore me apart. Though she was making eye contact, she was still leaning her head to the side, attempting to hide her scars. I could have punched Justin in that moment.
 

I swallowed hard. “Yes, it is very nice to see you again, Cricket.” The coolness of her hand warmed under my touch, and I didn’t want to let go.

“Uh-huh. Okay then.” Justin rubbed his hands together. “Let’s eat.”
 

As if on cue, a door slid open. A couple of servers rolled in a formally decorated table, then set chairs around it. Justin led Mother over and guided her to sit.
 

I turned back to Cricket. Her eyes had widened a bit. I ducked my head to get her attention. “Are you okay? Did they do anything to hurt you?”

“No. They haven’t physically harmed me. But West,” she said through gritted teeth, “what’s going on here?”

I brought a finger to my lips, warning her not to speak much. “We must eat first.” I leaned closer to her ear and breathed in a scent of jasmine, a favorite of my sister’s. Many of the city’s soaps and shampoos were produced by the men and women who worked in New Caelum’s greenhouses. “I’ll find you later. I promise. Just as soon as I’ve earned back my privileges.”
 

I pulled back, then offered her my arm. “Shall we?” As the gentleman I was raised to be, I led Cricket to a chair next to my mother, then sat as close as I could—but not close enough—on the other side of her.

The servers placed covered plates in front of each of us and poured wine in our glasses. Noting the look on Cricket’s face, and knowing that I was very dehydrated after my time on the outside, I motioned for the server. “Can we please get some water?”

The server looked to Justin. Only after Justin nodded did the server leave and come back with water. Cricket gulped down the entire glass when it was placed in front of her.

“So, Justin… Mother… when is the big day?” I lifted my water glass and saluted them, trying not to puke in the process.
 

Mother looked from me to Justin. “I guess it sounds sudden to you?”

“Sudden for you to agree to marry this man while I’m off on the outside of New Caelum trying to find someone who can cure your only daughter of the disease that killed off most of our country? You think that would seem sudden to me?”

Justin spoke through clenched teeth. “Westlin, careful.”

“Well,” Mother said, “when your sister became ill, the people of New Caelum thought it best to put the election on hold. Justin… my partner…” she smiled and nodded toward the weasel beside her, “…suggested, and I agreed, that a merger of our relationship would make New Caelum even stronger than it already is.”

Mother made marriage sound like a business transaction. And since I knew which party at the table needed strength in order to make it through another election, it was easy to see who was pushing for the arrangement. “So, this is for political gain?”

Justin stood suddenly, knocking over an entire glass of red wine. The wine streamed across the white tablecloth and almost into Cricket’s lap. She instinctively stood and backed away, letting the wine roll off the table and puddle on the floor at her feet.

Justin’s face reddened. His hands curled into fists against the tablecloth. “Westlin, I’m only going to remind you once: You will swallow this hostility and do what you can to help our cause, or the promise I made you when I allowed you back inside New Caelum will come true.”

The muscles in my back tensed as I considered whether Justin could come up with any convincing “proof” to convince Cricket, or anyone else, that I was capable of reproducing Bad Sam and sending it out into the settlements.

The servers cleaned up the mess enough for us to eat. I took my seat again.

“My apologies, Cricket,” Justin said across the table. “West and I promise to behave for the rest of dinner. Don’t we, West?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry, too.” I lifted my water glass to her. At that moment, I would have loved to have known what was going through her head about this city she’d run from.

Cricket sat back down without looking at either Justin or me. A server removed the cover from her food, and then did the same with mine, revealing plates of steamed vegetables, beans, and rice. Cooked broccoli and Brussels sprouts had never smelled so good.

“You may eat.” Justin smiled at Cricket.

I dug my fisted knuckles into my knees just listening to the way he condescended her, like she was a helpless child. She must have looked pretty unrefined to him when she’d first arrived, and he’d wasted no time making sure she got cleaned up and dressed in the perfect color. I eyed Justin curiously. He’d dressed her this way on purpose. What was he planning?

I ate a few bites of vegetables and rice. Cricket barely looked up from her food. I couldn’t decide if she was retreating into the shy, reserved girl that she once was, or if she was debating whether she could stab a fork in Justin’s eye and make a run for it. Either way, she didn’t come to New Caelum to be wined, dined, and patronized.

“Can we at least talk about my sister?” I asked, bursting the proverbial elephant-sized balloon in the room.

Mom stopped chewing for a minute, but after a quick glance toward Justin, continued to eat while Justin spoke.

“Your sister is doing okay,” Justin said. “She’s been sick for five days now. She’s definitely reached a critical time in the illness, and we need to decide how to treat her in the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours, or she’ll begin to hemorrhage from many different parts of her body, and her organs will begin to shut down.”

“Justin,” I replied in as level a tone as I could manage, “I mean this with the utmost respect for Mother, you, and our entire medical staff here inside New Caelum…” I wanted to hurl just hearing those words exit my mouth. “… but when can we expect Dr. Hempel to start working on the data Cricket brought in?”

“He already is.”

Cricket’s fork fell from her hand and clanked against her plate. She glanced from me to Justin. “Sorry. I just…” She swallowed. “Why am I not helping him?”

Justin touched the napkin to each corner of his mouth. “Because, Cricket, our doctors know exactly what they’re doing, and I wouldn’t be a very nice host if I didn’t see to it that you were properly fed. Look at you. You’re skin and bones. When you’ve both finished your meals, West will give you a tour of the grounds, and then escort you to the labs.” His PulsePoint pinged, and he glanced down. “Well, good news. It appears you’ve both been cleared of the Samael Strain.”