The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (43 page)

“
How’s Corva?” asked
Dormer.

Marius didn’t answer right away. “Not
so good. She is strong, but this thing they did to her…” He trailed
off and left his thought unfinished.

Colton had been to visit Corva earlier
in her room. She lay on the bed, eyes wide open, staring up at the
ceiling. Her short, stark-white hair was wet and a layer of sweat
clung to her entire body. She shook as if she had a terrible fever.
Colton was able to speak with her for a few minutes before Marius
interrupted and said she needed rest. As Colton left the room, he
saw Marius kneel down next her and take her hand. He pressed it to
his forehead and muttered to her in Russian as tears fell from his
tightly-closed eyes.

The poison they had all been infected
with was hitting some harder than others. Little Micah was in bed
with symptoms of a terrible flu. His body shuddered with coughs as
he lay shaking on his cot, unable to drink anything but the
smallest sips of water.

Colton had peeled off his own shirt
earlier and looked at himself in the mirror. The thin black veins
that had appeared on his neck and forearms were spreading and
getting thicker. They crawled from his arms up to his shoulders and
down his back. The black veins on his neck reached up around the
back of his jaw and onto his scalp beneath his hair. He touched the
skin over one of the veins. It did not hurt. He pressed harder,
then released. His skin flushed white, then slowly the black veins
crept back. Whatever they injected into him was changing his
blood.

Changing into what?
he wondered.

13

T
he others on the balcony were deep in conversation when
Colton said quietly, “What happens when Haven comes back?” They
stopped and looked at him. It was obvious from the looks on their
faces that they hadn’t thought about it yet. “Because she’s
going
to come back,” he
said. “And when she does, she’s going to be royally pissed
off.”

Marius frowned
thoughtfully. “Haven is strong, but not strong like
her
,” he said, jabbing a
thick thumb downstairs. “She must not come back. There is nothing
for her here but infected people and a bad woman who wants to kill
her.”

“
Then we have to warn
her,” said Colton. He looked up to the peak of the dome room and
out through the jagged hole where the massive swirling fan used to
be. If the garage was collapsed, that hole was the only way out of
the Dome—and the only way to get up to the hole was by a long
series of ladder rungs—old, rusty hand-holds that ran up the inside
wall of the dome from the floor to the peak of the ceiling. Colton
looked at the rungs of the long ladder and his stomach dropped from
vertigo—halfway up the curved dome wall, whoever was climbing the
ladder would have a hard time not keeping their legs from dangling
in the open air beneath them. It was a long fall down to hard
concrete if they lost their grip.

“
You’re not getting
topside without someone noticing,” said Dormer. “Not without
a—”

He stopped talking at the sound of
rapidly-approaching footsteps. Kamiko led a group of four soldiers
up the metal stairs to the second-tier balcony.

“
There must be a cure,”
whispered Adsen as Kamiko and the soldiers approached.

“
What are you talking
about?” asked Dormer.

“
They wouldn’t have made
the disease without the cure. Find it and come back. It’s the only
way.”

Colton leaned forward.
“Where?”

Adsen said nothing. He just shook his
head and backed away from the approaching soldiers.

Dormer growled. “For God’s sake,
Adsen—”

Kamiko was already next to their cots,
looking down at Dormer. The soldiers stood behind her, full of
silent threat. She looked from Dormer to the rest of the group with
a flat expression devoid of any emotion except cold indifference.
Her gaze froze on Adsen.

“
You,” she said, then
snapped her fingers at the soldiers. “Bring him.”

They grabbed his arms and hauled him
roughly to his feet as if they were expecting some kind of
resistance. Adsen offered none. He groaned weakly as the soldiers
carried him away, held so high that his feet didn’t even touch the
ground.

Dormer stood slowly, facing Kamiko.
She returned his icy glare and smirked when she saw his fists
opening and closing in anger. Normally that would have been the
time for whoever was on the receiving end of Dormer’s anger to get
out of the way, but Colton knew his ability had been muted just
like the others in the Dome, and so all he had for Kamiko was a
murderous stare.

She glanced at Colton, then turned and
followed after the soldiers. Instead of taking the stairs, she
hopped easily over the balcony railing and fell toward the floor.
At the last moment, brilliant blue arcs of lightning shot out from
her back like spider legs and dug into the concrete floor. Her
descent slowed to the speed of a falling feather, and she stepped
down to the floor gracefully, as if she had just been helped out of
a carriage. The bolts of lightning receded into her back and, after
one more glance up at Colton, she followed the soldiers into the
holding cell between the training room and the Grove.

“
That’s my room,” said
Dormer, and sat down in a huff.

“
Looks like you sleep on
the couch tonight,” said Marius with a grin.

“
Will you help me get
out?” asked Colton, eager to get moving. He remembered Kamiko’s
threat of what would happen to his friends if he
escaped.

“
As I was saying,” said
Dormer. “You won’t get topside without a distraction.”

“
Now is as good a time as
any,” said Colton.

Marius clapped and rubbed his hands
together. “Marius does distractions very well,” he said.

A thought burst into Colton’s mind and
formed into a plan. There was no way he could disappear and leave
his friends to torture, but he still had to go out and warn Haven
before she stumbled headlong into a disaster. He had to at least
see her again, but if he could send someone else with her in his
place, then she would have more of a chance. He looked at Marius.
“You should come with me,” said Colton.

“
What?!” roared Marius. He
looked at the thin metal rungs bolted to the wall of the dome
leading all the way up to the ragged hole. “Marius does not climb,”
he said with a scowl.

“
Haven’s out there on her
own,” said Dormer. “Some of us need to stay here because not all of
us can leave. Don’t worry, I’ll stay and look after
everyone.”

“
What about Kamiko?” asked
Marius.

“
It seems she’s more
interested in my brother than anything else at the moment. I’ll
distract the guards so you and Colton can escape.”

Colton shook his head. “They’ll spot
us climbing out. We won’t be able to move fast enough.”

“
Leave that to me,” said
Dormer. He stood and walked toward the stairs. “Give me five
minutes. You’ll know when to move.” He descended the stairs and
disappeared into the maze of shelves and machinery that made up his
workshop on the first floor of the dome room. One of the soldiers
stood nearby, gun held tightly, watching Dormer closely.

Marius frowned. “Marius does not
climb,” he repeated. He sat there pouting like a child who didn’t
want to take a bath.

“
Adsen says there has to
be a cure,” said Colton. “Think of Corva and everyone else in the
Dome.”

“
Of course Marius will go!
But that doesn’t mean he must be happy about it.” He looked up
hopefully. “Perhaps you go up the ladder first and drop
rope?”

“
No,” said Colton as he
stood. “We go together.” He walked to the railing and looked down
into the workshop.

Dormer moved quickly, darting back and
forth between his equipment, constructing something inside a small
metal box that he carried under one arm. Marius walked over to the
railing, still grumbling, and stood next to Colton.

“
What’s he
doing?”

“
I have no
idea.”

“
Between you and me, I
think both brothers are a little loopy.”

Dormer fit a metal lid over the
exposed side of the small box and looked up at Colton. He nodded
quickly. The soldier next to him readjusted his grip on his rifle
and took a step forward, as if he sensed that something was about
to happen.

“
Here we go,” said Colton.
He eased away from the railing and toward the stairs as Dormer let
out a loud yell and threw the box as hard as he could. It soared
through the air in a high arc toward the middle of the room. Every
soldier turned and pointed their rifles at the moving object,
leading it with their sights along its trajectory.

Kamiko and two more soldiers burst out
of the holding cell door just as the box cracked onto the floor in
the middle of the room. It sat there a moment doing nothing. Dormer
looked at it in confusion. He turned to Colton and shrugged right
before the soldier closest to him tackled him to the ground. More
soldiers swarmed nearby, moving up and down the cluttered aisles of
his workshop with their rifles ready to fire. Kamiko walked to the
box, tapped it lightly with the tip of her shoe, and it
exploded.

14

H
aven slowed the car when a flashlight beam cut across the
desert ahead. She held up her hand for Bastian and Roku to be
quiet, even though no one had spoken for the last ten minutes.
Haven could see the dim outline of a mountain in the distance—the
mountain that sat over the garage entrance to the Dome. She quickly
cut off her headlights and killed the engine. She waited, breathing
in the darkness, her heart pounding in her chest. Bastian stirred
in the passenger’s seat, watching intently.

The flashlight beam shined in their
direction but wasn’t strong enough to reach them. The sky was a
deep purple and there was no moon yet, so the ground lacked its
usual ghostly glow. If there had been even a sliver of moon, Haven
doubted the car would have gone unnoticed by whoever was near the
Dome. Faint stars twinkled far away, their dim light doing nothing
to pierce the curtain of night that lay over the desert.

Sound carried well over the flat,
hard-packed ground between the car and the Dome. She slowly cranked
down her window an inch and listened. A light breeze was all she
heard. Haven wasn’t too worried until the person holding the
flashlight shined it on a dark figure—a tall soldier in body armor
with a big rifle—then another soldier before it finally clicked off
and the base of the mountain returned to complete
shadow.

“
Three total,” she
whispered. “We’ll have to walk.”

“
I take it that’s not
normal, then,” said Bastian, nodding toward the area where the
flashlight had been.

She shook her head and slowly opened
her door.

“
What about scorpions?”
asked Bastian quickly.

She looked at him. “You’re not
serious.”

“
No,” he said, trying to
cover up the fact that he was. “No, of course not. Let’s get
moving.” He popped open his door as quietly as he could, then
looked at Haven. “After you,” he whispered.

She rolled her eyes and eased out of
the car. The thin layer of loose sand covering the hard ground
beneath her shoes was comforting—it meant she was close to home.
Bastian got out quickly and never kept his feet in one spot for
more than a millisecond until he did a thorough scan of the ground
and found that it was clear. Roku stood next to the car, silent as
the desert around him.

After another moment of waiting, Haven
set out from the car toward the mountain. Bastian walked a few
paces to her right and Roku a few to her left. They hung back a
little and she was reminded of a video she had once seen of coyotes
stalking an elk in one of the National Parks. The three lead
animals formed an arrow aimed straight at their prey. It wasn’t
until the elk became aware of the three beasts that the other pack
coyotes appeared from the trees on either side, cutting off every
possible escape.

Haven wished some of her friends were
with her. Instead, it seemed they were stuck in the Dome, held
prisoner by whoever was in charge of the soldiers
outside.

Bastian stubbed his foot on something
and he leapt sideways. “A rock,” he whispered with relief. “Just a
tiny little rock. There’s no stinger or anything.”

“
Shhh,” warned Haven as
they got closer to the mountain. She could now clearly see the
soldiers moving around in the gloom. There was some sort of
makeshift tent or guard shack a good distance from the garage. Next
to the small structure was a large black helicopter outfitted with
massive machine guns on both sides. Light glowed from a spot on the
ground nearby, as if a big lamp was shining out of a hole in the
ground. The light illuminated the sleek features of the nearby
attack chopper. It took Haven a moment to realize that the light
was coming from a hole where the large fan in the ceiling of the
dome room should have been.

Static crackled from a walkie-talkie
and one of the soldiers lifted it to his masked face.