Skylight (Arcadium, #2) (27 page)

Jacob blurts
out his words. “Liss is stage one. All those infected out there are
stage one.”

I glance over
my shoulder, not enough to bring Jacob into focus, but enough to
see him lean over and cover his eyes.

When he
straightens he says, “I’m stage two.”

I turn slowly.
Jacob is holding contacts on ends of his fingertips, and his eyes —
his real eyes — are the iciest shade of blue.

My mouth falls
open. My brain moves slowly; my thoughts are wading through mud.
“How?”

“I’m the one
that got away.” Jacob expels a bitter laugh. “You’re looking at the
original test subject.”

“This outbreak
is your fault?”

“No!” He says
raising his hands. “I’m not even infectious. Please, help me. I’m
not infectious now, but I will be in—” Jacob glances at his watch.
“In forty-six hours and twenty-three minutes. Roughly. If I don’t
get what I need, which is in a room at the end of this corridor.
I’ll devolve. And we can’t let that happen. I won’t be able to help
your sister. I won’t be able to help anyone. Are you getting this
yet?” He takes a moment to replace his contacts.

One thought
echoes in my head, circling, again and again.

What if Jacob’s
telling the truth?

“Florence,
please. You know the truth. You know I couldn’t let them take my
blood. You know I’m getting weaker.” He runs his hand through his
hair like he’s fending off a spider. “You know about Jessie. I
found her in a cupboard because I put her there when she was
infected. I administered my blood and she moved on to stage two.
Haven’t you noticed she wears contacts?”

I blink. The
second time I met Jessie — in the bathroom — she was complaining
about her contact lenses.

“She doesn’t
want to understand. She isn’t strong enough to hope there’s a cure
any more. But you are.”

My lower lip
quivers as I try to process everything. “And the other
soldiers?”

“They’re not
like me. They can’t do what I can do. They’re unstable, prone to
seizures and brain haemorrhages. They have weakness I don’t have,
which is why it’s so important they don’t catch me.”

“So why come
here?”

“Florence…”
Jacob seems to draw on every ounce of his strength to stay calm, to
stay in control of himself. “It’s not that simple.”

“Why didn’t you
give Liss your blood back in the hills? You could have saved us all
of this! I risked my life!”

“Goddammit,
because I need a serum precisely every six months to keep me at
stage two. My blood is too weak right now. I couldn’t be sure it
would work fully. Please, we have to go now or we might not get
another chance! I need to get the serum and we need to get out of
here. I can save her but I need your help.”

I’ve honestly
never heard Jacob say please so much. Or ever, actually. He glances
at the door every three seconds. I’ve never seen him desperate,
never seen him scared, not even when he was facing hordes of
infected. I suppose that makes sense, if he’s already infected he
probably couldn’t get infected again. Yeah, that’s confusing.

Maybe I’ve made
up my mind already but I say it anyway. “How can I trust you after?
You lied. You literally stabbed me in the neck.”

“I’m doing this
for you.” Jacob stares me dead in the eyes. “I give you my
word.”

Is that good
enough for me?

“What can I
say?” he says. “We all just do the best we can. We all make
mistakes, trust the wrong people and don’t trust the right ones.
It’s human nature. I can’t force you to do anything but if you walk
away you’ll not only kill me and your sister, you’ll kill all of
humanity.”

I already know
what I have to do.

“Fine,” I say.
“Make it quick.”

Jacob goes
straight to the door, not giving me a chance to change my mind. He
checks the corridor and beckons, before taking off at a run. I
follow, hanging back a bit so I can watch him. Whatever he dosed me
with wears off pretty quickly and I keep up just fine as we wind
around the curved white passageway.

When we reach
the coded door, I stand on the left and he stands on the right.

“I’ll say the
code,” Jacob says. “You just have to press the digits in the exact
same sequence, at the exact same time as me. Understood?”

I nod, hand
poised over the buttons — far more than Arcadium’s security system
ever had. This one uses numbers and letters on two separate
keypads.

“How did you
even get this?” I ask.

“Hacked into
the security footage. Jessie mouths each number and letter as she
goes. Ready?”

The code is
like ten numbers and ten letters all jumbled up. Jacob recalls them
from memory, like it’s as simple as remembering to buy the milk and
bread. He says the letters like T for Tango and B for Bravo. We
press the buttons in perfect sequence, slowly. So slowly that I
start to wonder when people will notice we’re not in the medical
room anymore.

Jacob says the
last number. We both press the button and there’s a loud beep. The
door lock flashes green.

“I’ll go
first,” he says, barging through.

When Jacob is
satisfied he gives the all-clear nod, and I enter.

The door closes
with a clunk behind me as I glance around the room. The walls are
optic white; the floors are mottled beige linoleum. Another layer
of security, in the form of a glass wall, splits the space in two.
I stare momentarily at a black and white screen mounted just above
my head. It shows the door we just entered, and the long empty
corridor.

Behind a wall
of glass are a few important looking computers with multiple
monitors, and a selection of glass-doored cases, maybe fridges,
full of medicine and coloured liquids, all shining under the
fluorescents.

The glass door
is barely visible except that it has another code box next to
it.

Once Jacob
inputs the code, the door reveals itself with a hiss and slides
open sideways.

“Here we go.”
Jacob steps through and heads straight for the cases, speed-reading
through the labels.

“Exactly how
much trouble will there be if we’re caught doing this?” I ask,
lingering close to the exit.

“Well,” Jacob
says frankly, “For me it’ll be incredibly painful experiments until
they’ve replicated my success and don’t need me anymore, and then
I’ll die. But you.” He glances over his shoulder. “They’d probably
just kill you. Which, in this case, would be the better option. The
far better option.”

I cross my arms
and just stand there, not sure what to do. “So how is your blood
going to help Liss?”

Jacob whips out
a case of little blue vials. They all clink together as he rifles
through the equipment draws. “As long as she’s in one piece it
should work. I can’t save the damaged ones.”

That’s why he
shuts infected up in cupboards and bathrooms and bedroom chests. I
get it now.

“And what’s
stage two like?” I ask.

Jacob pulls two
plastic wrapped syringes from his back pocket and pauses at my
question. He recovers quickly though, readies the syringe with
serum and jabs it into his arm. The liquid enters his blood stream
and he closes his eyes in relief. “I’m not sure I could ever
explain it to you.”

“Yeah,
right.”

Jacob smiles to
himself and resets his watch. “I didn’t understand at first what I
could do. It wasn’t until I was actually bitten by an infected —
her name was Marion. She took one bite and dropped to the floor,
completely motionless. I patched myself up and was about to leave
when I heard a woman calling out. I thought she’d come across the
infected so I burst into the room and… I couldn’t believe it. The
same woman, same clothes, my blood on her teeth. She didn’t
remember a thing about being infected, it was like she’d been
asleep the whole time.”

“And what
happened to her?”

“We ran
together for a while,” Jacob says, opening the second syringe. “But
we drifted apart. I didn’t tell her the truth and she could sense
it. Not being able to sleep anymore drove her crazy too. She knew
she couldn’t leave because I had the serum she needed to stay at
stage two. But the funniest thing happened.” Jacob stops to jab the
needle in his arm and watches the vial fill slowly. “She never got
tired or sick. In the end she thought I’d lied to her so she’d
stay. I didn’t know her change was permanent.”

“How come you
didn’t cure every infected you came across?”

“And how would
I do that? Let them eat me? It’s most impractical to keep cutting
myself open to feed them.” He lowers his eyes. “It’s not exactly a
cure, once infected, you are never the same again. You can never go
back to who you were.”

“But you’re
alive.” I watch the vial of blood like nothing else exists in the
room. “How do I give it to her?”

“I’ll find a
shot-gun. That’s the easiest and quickest way.” Jacob rummages
through the cupboards and emerges triumphant with a small silver
gun looking item. I’ve seen one before, when the scientist in
Arcadium tried to inject me with the virus.

I walk toward
him, toward the vial of blood. I never know what Jacob means to be.
If he’s good or bad, or if he just naturally swings from one to the
other. A few minutes ago he was kidnapping me and now he’s giving
me what I so desperately need. I can’t fathom him or his
intentions. Maybe that’s part of what runs through his veins. Maybe
he’s part Jacob, part something else.

I don’t get a
chance to question him further. As I walk forward, eyes on my
reward, which I now wholly believe will bring back my sister, a
siren sounds, piercing my ears. We both look around. I turn to the
monitor but it shows the corridor as empty. Jacob says something
but I can’t hear it so I run to him.

But before I
get there the door slides shut between us. I slam my palms against
the glass. It doesn’t budge.

“Jacob?”

He tries
punching in the door code in the single box on his side, but
nothing happens.

The siren dims
and a calm robotic voice comes over, loud and clear: “Lock down
imminent. Please proceed immediately to your nearest safety
point.”

The voice
repeats the phrase several times and then everything goes silent.
My ears keep ringing.

Jacob starts
flinging draws and cabinets open, looking for something. All I can
do is watch him through the glass, stunned. My eyes lower to the
vial of blood, sitting on the bench. It’s so close but so cruelly
out of reach.

“Skylight must
be overwhelmed!” I yell. “I have to get back to the others.”

I have to get
back because if I don’t, they’ll either go searching for me or will
wait until it’s too late to escape.

Jacob returns
to the door with a flat screwdriver type instrument and wedges it
in the door. Now I see there’s a tiny gap between the two panes of
glass; it hasn’t sealed properly. Jacob levers the tool in and
cranks back with all his might. The door clicks and shifts back
maybe half a centimetre, but that’s it. Jacob gives it another go
but snaps his screwdriver in half, so he discards it and scoots
over to the computer.

“Can you unlock
it?” I ask, angling my head so I can speak through the tiny gap in
the door.

“I’m trying to
find out.” Jacob’s face glows green from the monitor. His fingers
blur over the keys.

“How?”

“I really was
in the army and I really was in IT.”

“So you’ll open
the door from in there?” I sneak a glance at the vial of blood on
the counter top. A wall of glass separates me from my sister.

Jacob ignores
my question; he’s busy reading.

Finally he
looks to me. “No.”

We share a
moment of horrified silence and he adds, “Not right now.”

“But?”

“It might be
possible once lockdown is over,” he says, looking back to the
screen.

“If that ever
happens,” I say. “What if the centre is overrun? What if no one
survives?”

“Someone always
survives. Check your door. I think it’s just second-tier
containment on lockdown.”

I jog to the
entrance, checking the monitor is still showing it’s all clear,
then I try the door handle. To my absolute relief it opens. I can
get out, but I can’t leave Jacob. He has what I need. If only we
could trade places, I could make him swear to save Liss, but that’s
never that way, is it?

When I get back
to the glass door I try to pull it open some more with just my
fingertips, but it’s impossible. I glance at the vial. I can see
it, can almost touch it. I was within seconds of getting it. Why
didn’t I just grab it the moment he was done?

“But you have
to get out. You always win. You’re unstoppable. You’re Jacob, for
crying out loud.”

“You’re right,”
he says in the tone adults use to tell kids white lies so they
won’t start crying.

I’m completely
alone, and completely unable to protect anyone. Not Liss or Henry
back at home, not Trouble and Kean in Skylight. Hell… not even
Jacob and he’s in the same room as me. We’ve splintered somehow,
and I know it’s my fault. I want it to be, because they’re mine;
they’re my fault. I’m supposed to protect them.

“Listen,” Jacob
says, going still. “I only brought two syringes with me. You have
to go back to the medical rooms, find a needle and tube.” He picks
up the vial of his blood. “Something that looks like this, or a
syringe. It doesn’t matter.” Jacob doesn’t look at me, and I don’t
question him. I just turn and go.

I chock the
door open with my jumper, and jog as silently as I can, listening
for any sign of life. Since the sirens and the announcement, it has
been eerily quiet. I can’t help but wonder where everyone is. Where
are these mysterious safety points that we should go to? And are
they really safe?

I try to focus
on this one task. Every other item on my list can shuffle itself
into order for later.