PODs (15 page)

“There’s no water!” I heard a woman shriek in the background.

“They’re cutting us off!” a boy cried.

The lights in their POD went out. The picture froze again, but we could still hear the cries of the people in the POD.

Katie sobbed Cam’s name.

“Katie,” Cam’s voice quivered. “I’m scared.”

The connection died.

My breath hitched in my throat. Tears stung behind my eyes; the lump in my throat made taking a breath hard.

“Cam!” Katie wailed. She threw herself at me and I hugged her close. “What happened, Eva?”

“I don’t know.”

David checked her computer, entering an online classroom with an active chat. It worked fine. He video-conferenced a friend in another POD. It worked fine. He clicked the icon to video-conference Cam. He got an error message—
contact not recognized
. He looked at me, his face grim as he came to my side.

“Sit down, Eva,” David murmured in my ear. With a hand on the small of my back he guided Katie and me to the couch.

I sat next to Tiffany as she clutched her baby to her chest, her face pale. Katie leaned against me. I put my arm around her, stroking her hair as she cried. “What happened, Eva?”

“I don’t know, sweetie.”

David typed furiously, his brow furrowed. Then he leaned back and stared at the screen for a moment before getting up and walking away from the computer.

“What happened?” I looked at David. “They shut off that POD, didn’t they?” In my head I could still hear the metal crunching as the tunnel that led from the main POD to the sub-POD was crushed. I could still see the fear on Cam’s face, hear the screaming and crying of the other residents.

Without power from the main POD, the sub-PODs had no air, electricity, or water. Too far underground to dig their way out—especially with the access tunnel crushed—they’d slowly lose oxygen and suffocate. Or maybe they’d die from dehydration first. It didn’t matter. The people in that POD had just lost their lifeline… and with it, their lives.

“They must have broken a rule…”

“Shut up, Josh! Those are
people
. It could’ve been us.” I snapped.
What an ass
.

“But it wasn’t,” David said, his voice soothing.

“What’s the big deal? We didn’t know those people,” Josh said, still playing his videogame.

“I knew them,” Katie whispered, tears and mucus running down her face.

I turned toward Josh, furious. “But it could have been us. It could be the next time. Who here is up to date with their coursework?” No one answered, and I got louder. “Well, if you aren’t current with your assignments, you damn well better get off your rears and get working on them! We can’t give the main POD
any
reason to shut us off. From now on, we stay current on our coursework, we don’t complain about our MREs, even if we get the nasty spaghetti three nights in a row, and we keep kissing their lily-white butts until we can get out of here.”

“Eva—”

“That includes you, David. I
know
you aren’t current in your coursework.”

So instead of relaxing, we spent our five-month anniversary in the POD doing homework and saying prayers for the poor people in Cam’s POD. They would have been better off staying topside—at least a person infected with the virus died quickly. The same couldn’t be said about slow suffocation in the dark—buried alive.

David sat at the end of my bed, the same spot he occupied every night after dinner. I looked at him. His brow was furrowed and he bit his lower lip. He always looked that way when he was concentrating.

“It isn’t the schoolwork, you know,” he said quietly.

“What?”

“The reason they shut off that POD. It wasn’t because of the schoolwork. It didn’t matter if they had all their assignments uploaded on time. It didn’t matter if they’d followed the water usage limits. It had nothing to do with any of that.” He turned and looked at me, his face grim.

“Okay, then what?”

“The blood tests.”

“What about them?” I sighed in frustration.

“One—or all—of them…tested positive for the virus. It’s marked in one of the databases I found. Cam and at least two of the others in his POD had been classified ‘Exposed.’”

I slowly crawled off my bed and closed the bedroom door. I shoved the books out of the way and sat down next to him.

“What do you mean? Surely they aren’t still testing for that. I thought part of the blood tests were for nutrition,” I whispered.

“They don’t know how long the virus can lay dormant before the carrier shows symptoms. You know that. They knew squat about it.”

He reached out and twirled a lock of my hair around his finger before sliding it behind my ear, making me shiver in response. His hand skimmed my cheek, his eyes following it. The pad of his thumb ran over my lips, and they parted slightly, a sigh escaping between them. His hand fell away and his eyes looked into mine.

“Eva—”

“We really need to get to work. I have a lot to do before I’m done.” I’m not sure how I kept my voice from quivering. My insides were—they had melted when he touched me, and I couldn’t remember why a romance in the POD wouldn’t be a good thing. When he touched me, when I smelled him, when I looked into his silvery gray eyes, I forgot all the reasons we shouldn’t be together.

“Yeah, I have a lot to do, too,” he said, frowning.

“David? Should we tell the others?”

“George, Seth, and Aidan already figured it out. I don’t know about Jai Li and Josh. If Tiffany and Katie don’t know already I wouldn’t tell them. It would upset Katie even more, and Tiff doesn’t need the added stress worrying would cause. She has enough to worry about with the baby.”

I nodded, but it felt wrong not to be upfront with each other. I wouldn’t want them hiding information from me if the situation were reversed.

David and I finished our work and went into the kitchen area. We sat next to each other at the table, looking at a crossword, our heads so close I could smell his minty breath. Katie laid her hand on my arm. Her eyes were red and swollen, and she was still making little hiccup cries.

“Do you really think someone got kicked off because they were late on their coursework?” Katie asked me.

My eyes darted to David before I answered. I didn’t want to lie to her, so I said, “I don’t know. But we all should make sure ours are done by the due dates.” I smiled, trying to reassure her.

“Mine’s done.” She turned and shuffled into the corner she’d occupied for the first few weeks of living in the POD. For the next week, she drew, worked on her coursework, and cried. She didn’t speak. She didn’t acknowledge us.

I
bolted upright in bed. The bed sheets were tangled around my feet, my white and brown comforter kicked to the floor. Another nightmare—I’d been having them since Cam’s POD had been shut off two weeks ago. Most nights I saw the faces of the people, that horrible moment when they realized what was happening and began to scream, but sometimes I dreamed our POD had been shut off.

I slipped a sweatshirt over my head and padded down the hall to the living area. I turned the corner and my breath hitched in my throat. David sat in front of his laptop at the kitchen table, his back facing me—his well-defined, muscular and very naked back. I felt a million butterflies swarm in my stomach.

Surely it’s illegal for him to look that good
.

I took a big lungful of air and walked toward him. “What are you doing up so early? Or haven’t you been to bed yet?” I asked, groaning inwardly when I got close enough that I could smell him—patchouli and citrus.

Is he torturing me on purpose?

I was close enough to touch him. I fisted my hands at my sides to keep my fingers from reaching out and trailing along his back muscles. My fingers had little minds of their own and it was a fight keeping them under control, mainly because I wanted them to glide against his skin…to feel the muscles beneath…

Oh, gads, I’m a train wreck!

He flinched at the sound of my voice, snapping his laptop shut. Looking over his shoulder, he smiled. “You look beautiful in the morning, Eva. Your blonde hair messy and falling around your face, your eyes—not quite blue, but not quite green—sparkling in the morning sun… or the simulation of the sun,” he said with a crooked grin.

“Stop joking around. What were you just looking at?” I’d seen the picture on his laptop before he’d shut it. People running around their POD, a look of terror in their eyes. I reached out and opened the lid of his computer. My arm brushed against his, sending goosebumps racing across my skin. I had to concentrate to remember what I was asking about.

The screen was nothing but static. “They cut off another one? Who?”

I let go of his computer and started to pull my hand away. He grabbed it, folding it into his own, threading our fingers together. He grazed his lips over my knuckles.

Oh. Wow. Do that again
.

My insides swirled out of place and did things I’d only read about in my mother’s racy romance novels.

“Yes. Someone I know from class. You don’t know him. And who says I’m joking?”

“What?” He was difficult to understand on a good day, but that early in the morning, seeing him in nothing more than blue pajama bottoms, his lips moving against my fingers as he talked, it was nearly impossible.

“You told me to stop joking around. I wasn’t joking.”

My heart was beating so hard and fast in my chest, I was sure he could hear it.

I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers. My fingernails bit into my flesh.

Say something, Eva! Do Something—anything. Just…something
.

“So…” I started, only to be interrupted by my yawn.
Except yawn, idiot! Kiss him…wait…what?
“What’s your theory on the PODs being cut off? Do you think there’s that many people testing positive for the—”

He stood, turned toward me, cupped his hand around the back of my neck and pulled my lips to his. That shut me up. Shock slammed into me, quickly giving way to pleasure, and pleasure to urgency.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, threading my fingers through his silky hair. David’s hand moved from the back of my neck to cup my cheek, his thumb caressing my skin. The other one moved to the small of my back, pulling me tighter against him.

He kissed me long, deep. It was sinfully erotic feeling his bare skin under my fingers. When he tore his lips away, he looked in my eyes. My first instinct was to turn away, but both his hands cupped my cheeks. He bent his head and grazed his lips over mine before looking at me again.

“I’ve wanted to do that since the first day I saw you. And each day I’ve known you it’s been harder and harder not to.”

“Well, what took you so long?”

He laughed before dipping his head again, leisurely exploring my mouth and lips with his tongue. I moaned when it darted quickly between my lips; his answering groan made me feel sexy, womanly. He wanted me as much as I wanted him.

He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me away, taking a step backward. “Eva, I…we can’t.”

Disappointment smacked me, and I took a step back. Embarrassment heated my cheeks and I took a deep breath before I looked up at him. My hands shook as I reached up to put my hair behind my ear.

“Yeah…um…we shouldn’t. A romance in the POD is a horrible idea. If it went south we’d be stuck looking at each other every day. It isn’t a good idea,” I shook my head. “No. Not a good idea.” I said what the rational side of my brain told me to. It wasn’t a good idea to get involved while we were living in the POD. Afterward, if he was interested, I’d be all for it. Well, truth be told, I was all for it now.

“Uh, that isn’t what I was going to say.”

“Then what?”

“No, you’re right. A POD romance is a horrible idea.”

My heart sank. I don’t know why. He was just repeating what I’d said. He was agreeing with me. Why did it disappoint me?

“What are you two yapping about out here?” Seth walked out of the bedroom rubbing his eyes. “You’re gonna wake the whole POD up.”

“They cut off another POD,” I said, thankful for the distraction.

“Huh. That makes three that we know of.”

“Three?” I turned to David. “When was number two?”

“The day before yesterday.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone? Don’t you think we all need to know?”

“Aidan and Seth know because they were online when someone mentioned it. We didn’t say anything to anyone else because I was hoping it would be the last and we wouldn’t have to worry about it happening again.”

“And those are just the ones we’ve heard about. Hard telling how many others may have been let loose,” Seth added.

I groaned at the thought. At least three sub-PODs gone, the people left to die agonizing, terrifying deaths.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us, David.” I said through clenched teeth before walking down the hall to my bedroom.

“Eva, wait,” he called after me just before I heard him snap, “Idiot,” at Seth.

I closed the bedroom door with a soft click, shutting him out, and leaned my back against it.