The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (46 page)

“
Up until a year ago when
he was injected with Fade. The first round of tests were just
getting started, and Bastian was ‘volunteered’ to be in the first
batch of test subjects. Alistair used his virus on his own people
before hunting down others with abilities. He wanted to see how it
worked, to be sure he wasn’t wasting his time. Bastian was one of
the lucky ones who got the cure. Alistair had to be sure there was
a way to undo his damage in case he ever became infected with his
own weapon. He didn’t just want a cure, but also an inoculation to
ensure that someone who was cured could never be infected again.
Most of the test subjects were left to die, but Bastian and a
handful of others were successfully cured.” He paused for a moment.
“Bastian told me about someone else who works for Alistair, someone
else who was infected and then cured.”

“
Who?” asked
Haven.

“
A boy named Reece. And
there was a girl, too.”

“
Shelly,” said Haven
quietly. She remembered the bitter parting between Colton and Reece
after the destruction of Bernam’s medical facility.

“
Yes,” said Roku.
“Shelly.”

“
They’re still
alive?”

“
The last time Bastian saw
them, they were with Alistair, a part of his inner circle. Very
high up in the ranks of his new army.”

“
So, we find this
production facility,” said Haven, “where they’re manufacturing
Fade. And that will lead us to the cure?”

“
Yes.”

“
You’re sure?”

Roku was silent.

“
That’s what I was afraid
of.” Haven leaned back in her seat and watched the desert below.
Dark sand blurred past, occasionally pocked by quick flashes of
shrub and rock. Time passed slowly and she drifted off to sleep.
Her superficial dreams were filled with images of red flame and
death, and when she awoke, her body was covered in a thin sheen of
sweat despite the cold interior of the helicopter. “How long till
we get there?” she asked.

Marius looked down at the instrument
panel. “Not long. Fifteen miles ahead.” He reached out to adjust a
dial and the entire panel went blank.

“
What’s wrong?!” shouted
Haven.

“
Is not good,” said
Marius. He frantically moved the steering column, but it was loose
in his hands. The instrument panels in the cockpit were blacked
out. Marius flipped switches and twisted dials, then banged his
fists against the panel in frustration. He had no control over the
chopper.

With slow dread, Haven
realized the rotor was slowing down. The rapid
whup-whup-whup
of the blades became
a dragging
whoooosh,
whoooosh
, and it was only getting slower.
A red light popped on in the ceiling and a loud alarm blared as the
helicopter drifted closer and closer to the ground.

“
We will hit,” said
Marius. He tightened the straps on his chest and seat belts and
braced for impact. Bastian and Roku strapped themselves into their
chairs. Haven buckled her seat belt. She slipped her arms through
the chest straps on either side of the chair, almost like the
straps of a backpack, and worked quickly to buckle the clasp over
her chest. Her hands shook and she dropped both pieces.

The alarm beeped louder as
the ground outside rushed up to meet the chopper. Haven could no
longer hear the spin of the blades. They were in free fall. She
fumbled with both pieces of the buckle and brought them together
over her chest. There was a firm
click
as they locked, and she yanked
on the loose strap dangling from the buckle until the chest belt
was nearly restricting her breathing.

She looked out the side window and
everything moved in slow motion. Sound disappeared. Her hair
floated in front of her face as if she were underwater. Across from
her, Roku squeezed his eyes tightly together and gripped the sides
of his chair with white knuckles.

Through the window, Haven saw the
horizon rise up and disappear as the helicopter rolled onto its
side. She was looking straight down at the ground, and even in slow
motion, it rushed past the window with sickening speed. Haven
opened her mouth to scream when the helicopter hit the
ground.

Roku’s side of the chopper hit first.
There was a scraping sound that drowned out the screams. The noises
of the world around her came back to Haven’s ears louder than ever
as the blades of the chopper bent against the hard ground and
snapped off the rotor.

Metal groaned as the body of the
chopper twisted in two different directions at once. With an
ear-piercing explosion, the back segment of the body ripped off and
tumbled away behind the craft. Cold wind tore at Haven’s body as
she watched the back third of the chopper disintegrate across the
sand.

“
Hang on!” shouted Marius,
right before the nose of the chopper hit a huge rock.

The broken tail rose up into the air
and the helicopter flipped end over end. Haven saw dark sand, then
night sky—sand, sky, sand, sky, in rapid progression as the chopper
tumbled through the air. The last thing she saw was the ground as
it rushed up and slammed into the open tail of the
helicopter.

18

I
t took them a long time to get Colton down from the gaping
hole at the top of the dome room. He lay up there for hours,
staring up at the stars in the night sky. One of Kamiko’s soldiers
had to scale the ladder on the inside of the dome wall, just as
Colton and Marius had done to get out. The soldier made better time
than they had originally, but he also had the benefit of a fully
illuminated dome room to help ease his journey.

When the soldier finally got to the
top of the ladder and swung one of his legs up unto the sand, there
was a moment when Colton could have easily nudged him back over the
edge. With both of his hands groping for a handhold on the ground
next to the hole, the soldier would have fallen all the way down to
the concrete floor of the dome room. Splat.

Instead, Colton grabbed the soldier’s
armored vest and helped pull him all the way up. He didn’t know
what his previous insubordination would cost him or the others in
the Dome and he didn’t want to add any more punishment to the long
list.

The soldier got quickly to his feet
and unslung the rifle that had been strapped tightly to his back.
His face was covered by one of the tight-fitting black masks. The
sensor patches over his eyes were iridescent and honeycombed, like
the eyes of an insect. Now that Colton was getting a closer look,
he thought they might let the soldier see in several different
wavelengths of light. If so, it was a miracle none of them had
looked up while he and Marius were making their escape.

The soldier was a beast—easily over
six feet tall with shoulders broad enough to get stuck in a
doorway. Every soldier that Kamiko brought along had the same
physical build and the same gear. Colton’s optimism at somehow
getting the upper hand through brute force wavered and died.
Without his ability, he was nothing.

The soldier growled at Colton to stand
up. He did, and the soldier quickly shouldered his rifle and
produced a black belt from a pocket of his armored vest. The
soldier slung the belt around Colton’s waist and clasped a chrome
buckle in the front. Then the soldier knelt down and felt around
under the lip of the hole in the dome. He grunted and unclipped a
large carabiner from the last ladder rung, then snapped the clip
over the chrome buckle on Colton’s new belt. A long black rope
trail from the carabiner down into the dome.

“
Hey, wait a second,” said
Colton, but it was too late.

The soldier gave a quick tug at the
belt to make sure it was secure, then gave a small salute right
before he pushed Colton over the edge of the big hole.

Colton fell, waving his arms wildly,
hoping to grab the edge of the hole on his way down. It slipped
past his vision before he could touch it and he looked down to see
the floor of the dome room rushing toward him. He let out a yell
just as the rope attached to his belt snapped taught. His body
jerked downward with a jarring stop and one of his ribs
snapped.

Colton screamed as the rope swung him
sideways. His body hit the wall of the dome and he groaned from the
electric pain in his ribcage. He tried to grab a rung of the ladder
halfway down the wall but his feeble fingers slipped easily off the
rung and he swung back out over the center of the floor like a
giant pendulum. Above him, the rope was secured a few rungs down
from the hole. The soldier looked down on him and waved. If he
didn’t have the mask on, Colton was sure he would have been
smiling.

Suddenly he was moving again, but much
more slowly. The other end of the rope ran through a pulley
attached near the hole and down the back side of the ladder rungs.
Another soldier at the base of the ladder was slowly feeding out
more line to lower Colton to the floor.

He hung limply from the rope, spinning
freely as he dropped inch by inch. Most of the dome room floor was
empty of people except for a few soldiers rummaging through
Dormer’s work area. They were picking up equipment from the shelves
and throwing it to the ground if it held no interest. There were
three people watching the soldiers from the second tier balcony:
Dormer, his brother Adsen, and little Noah. They looked up at
Colton and he tried to smile to let them know he was okay, but the
rope jerked to a quick stop and his smile turned into a
grimace.

He was hanging a few feet above the
floor when the soldier tied the line off and walked
away.

“
Hey!” shouted
Colton.

The soldier ignored him and kept on
walking. He climbed the steps to the second floor balcony and drew
his rifle on Dormer and the others. He ordered them downstairs and
herded them across the big dome room and into the Grove.

After they had gone, Colton hung
there, spinning in the middle of the room like the forgotten meal
of a giant spider.

Across the room from the Grove
entrance was the door leading to the garage elevator. Next to that
was the small water processing room. The door swung open and Kamiko
emerged, her head held high in some sort of victory pose. She
didn’t walk across the floor to Colton. Instead, she hovered a few
inches above it, propelled forward by some unseen power. No blue
lightning crackled from her back like the long legs of a nightmare
insect. Instead, only a faint, dark blue glow illuminated her dark
eyes from deep within.

As she approached Colton, the hair on
the back of his neck stood up, as if she were overcharged with
static electricity. He felt his shirt move toward her as she drew
near and encircled him, studying his body as if he were a rat in a
laboratory. She reached out a slender hand and poked his shoulder,
stopping his slow spin. Even that slight touch sent electric
streaks of pain through his broken rib, but Colton forced himself
to remain silent. Instead, he grit his teeth and glared at her with
as much hatred as he could summon. The belt dug painfully into his
waist. He grabbed onto the rope above his head to keep from hanging
like a broken puppet.

“
Where did you take them?”
asked Colton.

“
They’re in the Grove,”
said Kamiko. “It is a beautiful place. I understand it carries a
great deal of meaning for your people.”

She looked at him as if waiting for an
answer. Colton made up his mind not to tell her any more than was
absolutely necessary.

“
Are your soldiers in
there as well?” he asked.

“
Most of them. Right now
every one of your friends is staring down the barrel of a
gun.”

Colton lunged for her despite the
stabbing pain in his torso. His broken rib-bones grinded together
as he wrapped his hands around her throat. It was like grabbing an
electrified fence. His fingers contracted painfully as electricity
coursed through his muscles, forcing him to squeeze even harder.
Kamiko was unaffected. Her eyes were sheathed in solid blue glass,
and she watched Colton indifferently as he struggled to let go. He
shook on the end of the rope as if he were having a seizure. Every
muscle in his body tightened until he thought they would tear in
half.

Finally, the current of electricity
stopped. Kamiko’s eyes cleared and Colton’s hands dropped loosely
from her throat. His eyes rolled back in his head as he hung
loosely from the rope.

“
As I was saying,”
continued Kamiko. She paced around him, tapping her chin
thoughtfully. “The fate of your friends is up to you. Either you
choose to cooperate and we can all work together, or you can
attempt another escape.”

Colton tried to force a weak smile,
but failed. “We’re all dead, anyway. You poisoned everyone in here.
We’re just disposable lab rats, isn’t that right?”

Kamiko looked at him for a moment.
“Not all of you,” she said at last. “If you cooperate with me, I
promise to take good care of your people.”

“
And if I
don’t?”

She took a step closer. “I won’t
hesitate to kill every single one of you, as I’ve said.”

Colton’s first thought was of Noah and
Micah. They were just little boys and had done nothing to deserve
such a cruel fate.