The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (52 page)

“
She only found her
ability last year,” said Marius. “You remember what that was like?
How difficult it was to find where you truly belonged?”

Haven thought about it for a long
time, wanting to hate Bastian for blaming her for things she could
not control. She didn’t feel as if she had put off any
responsibility. She felt like she had done her duty during her time
at the Dome, just as she had promised Elena: to watch over her
people and keep them safe, not venture out into the world to hunt
down a madman that no one could find and that Haven thought was
dead to begin with.

Another part of her,
however, knew that she could have been doing more. She had heard
stories of others in suffering; people like her who did not quite
know where to turn. Yet she had been content—no, she had
been
happy
—to
live quietly at the Dome with Noah and Colton, and wait for the
evil to find her.

Well, it found her, and it hadn’t just
been taking it easy while it searched. It had been about its
business, murdering others and causing the kind of pain from which
a person never recovered. It tore apart homes and families and left
its victims bleeding in the streets.

But Haven had been safe; she had
managed to stay outside all of that.

Until now.

“
I guess I had to save
myself first,” she admitted at last, repulsed and relieved at her
confession. “I had to make sure that Noah would have as normal a
life as I could offer. It wasn’t just me who lost everything when
our house burned down. It was him, too.”

“
I just wish we would have
had you sooner,” said Bastian. He turned back to Roku and helped
him to his feet. Color was already returning to his face and he had
stopped sweating. Roku gave his arm a test-swivel in its socket and
winced at the pain in his side, but then he nodded to let them know
he was ready.

“
Right, then,” said
Bastian, rubbing his hands together. His good humor had returned
almost instantly. “Now that we’ve kissed and made up, any
suggestions on what we do next?”

Haven looked at him blankly. “I
thought you guys had a plan.”

Bastian and Roku exchanged
glances.

“
Well,” he said,
scratching the back of his neck, “to tell you the truth, we never
really thought we’d get past the doors.” He laughed, but clammed up
when he saw no one else thought it was funny. He cleared his
throat. “Right. We think they manufacture Fade somewhere in here,
and we know that Alistair spends a great deal of his time
overseeing the operations. If we can find a head office or an info
kiosk that we could access—”

“
Info kiosk?!” bellowed
Marius. “This is not downtown mall! We find guard, we squeeze
guard, guard talks. Good enough for Marius, good enough for you.
Let’s go!” He walked off toward the back of the room before anyone
could stop him. “Help look for door!” he shouted, his voice already
far away.

“
I don’t think he likes
me,” said Bastian.

“
I think you have other
things to worry about right now,” said Haven, then walked away to
find a path into the vast complex.

25

C
olton thought they were dragging him out to be executed. Two
soldiers had death-grips on his arms and were carrying him backward
out of the hallway that led away from the dormitories and into the
dome room. His heels scraped lightly on the floor and his arms
burned where the soldiers crushed his biceps. Three more soldiers
walked behind him, rifles held ready for any trouble. Kamiko walked
farther back, eyes smoldering with intense blue plasma, like small
stars set into her skull.

The soldiers turned right out of the
hallway entrance and followed the dome room wall until they reached
the door to the water processing room. Without a word, they dumped
Colton on the floor, then stood back, leaving a clear path for
Kamiko.

The ground crackled with electricity
as she floated over to him, her feet hovering inches above the
concrete. The ends of her black hair lifted away from her body and
swayed like drunken snakes around her head.

“
The Doctor is not
cooperating,” hissed Kamiko. She reached down and grabbed Colton’s
jaw, then drew him close. “For every hour he wastes, I will kill a
hostage.” She watched his face to gauge his reaction. It took
everything he had to show none. “Starting with the
boys.”

Colton could barely control the twitch
in his arms, the impulse to reach out for her and clap his palms to
her temples—to drain the life from her so no one else would ever be
hurt again. But he had no ability. His power was gone.

Kamiko saw the look of hopelessness in
his eyes and smirked. She pushed his face away and he fell against
the door.

“
Convince him it is in
everyone’s best interest for him to proceed with his
work.”

“
You don’t have to do
this,” said Colton suddenly.

Kamiko hissed again, an animal sound
that was a vicious complement to her bared teeth. The dark blue
flames in her eyes dimmed momentarily, just long enough for Colton
to see the eyes of a human—a real person. He thought he caught a
flash of doubt.

Then the flames returned, more intense
than ever, and the human was gone. “You have ten hours,” she said.
“Get me what I want, or everyone dies.”

She walked away without looking back.
Three of the soldiers followed her across the dome room toward the
Grove. Two stayed behind to guard the door to the water processing
room. Colton waited to see if they would try to hurt him, but they
simply stood like statues on either side of the door, looking out
into the middle of the room.

Colton touched his jaw where Kamiko
had grabbed him and felt the warmth from her palm, still glowing on
his skin as if he had stood too close to a heat lamp. After she
disappeared into the Grove with the three soldiers, Colton pushed
open the door to the water processing room.

Adsen was off to one side, eyes
closed, sitting on a wooden barstool with his head leaned against
one of the metal water tanks. The tanks stood vertically around the
room, lining the walls like pillars, connected by pipes and humming
equipment that purified the drinking water and fed it out to the
Dome.

The center of the room had been turned
into a science lab, with all kinds of brand new equipment set up on
shiny aluminum tables. The only piece of equipment Colton halfway
recognized was something that looked like a chemistry set he used
in one of his high school classes. Empty beakers and vials sat
glistening in wireframe holders over new Bunsen burners. Sealed
gallon jugs of various chemicals were lined up beneath the tables,
most of them labeled with large skull-and-crossbones.

It looked like a mad-scientist’s
play-set.

“
I heard everything,” said
Adsen, his voice croaking. He opened his eyes to look at Colton.
“She’s an evil woman, isn’t she?”

“
She’ll do it,” said
Colton. “She will kill everyone in here.”

“
Don’t I know it,” said
Adsen. “If she runs with Alistair, she would have to constantly
prove she wasn’t too weak for the job.”

Colton picked up an empty vial and
held it to the light. “What does she want you to do?”

Adsen sighed. “She wants me to perfect
death.”

“
By increasing the
lethality of Fade?”

“
Precisely.” Adsen
scratched at his beard. With his receding hairline and sharp
widow’s peak, he looked like a version of his brother that had been
shipwrecked on a deserted island for ten years and finally rescued,
just without the suntan. Adsen’s skin was sickly pale, as if he
were suffering from a bad case of the flu.

“
Why do they want to make
it deadlier? I would think it’s bad enough already.”

Adsen smiled weakly. “It’s never bad
enough for someone like Alistair. Tell me, if you were planning on
taking over the world, wouldn’t it be easier to eliminate your
adversaries before they knew you were a threat? I imagine it
bothers him that a small percentage of our population is immune to
the current version of Fade. He wants to rule out any margin for
error.”

Colton set down the vial. “What do you
mean, ‘take over the world’? There’s no way Alistair is powerful
enough for that.”

“
He is if there are no
more people like us. If he wipes out all of us quietly, in a way
that would never alert anyone, all he has to do is simply step out
of the shadows and declare himself King.”

“
People would fight back.
Regular people, I mean.”

Adsen shook his head. “Alistair could
burn entire cities to the ground if he wished. The only threat to
his power is his own kind.”

“
And he’s going to kill
all of us.” Colton couldn’t believe it. The diabolical,
world-ending schemes of madmen belonged in comic books and the
Saturday night made-for-TV movies that Colton used to watch with
his father. He remembered shouting gleefully at every idiotic move
the characters made.

This was the
real
world—a world where
one man was not supposed to be able to take absolute
power.

“
It would be better for
all of us to die in here,” said Adsen, “than for Alistair to finish
Fade. It’s a hard reality to face, Colton, but it is the only one
that assures the survival of the human race. And ours.”

Colton sat heavily on a nearby chair,
his face slack with disbelief. “There must be someone who can stop
him.”

Adsen shook his head. “There was a
Nova, once, long ago. The strongest of our people. He disappeared,
gone to the place where beings of pure energy go when their time on
this planet is finished. If anyone could have stopped Alistair, it
was he. Now we are alone. Now we are finished.”

Colton slammed his fist
down on the table next to him and glass rattled loudly. “We
are
not
finished.” He stood and walked over to Adsen, who backed away
slightly as if Colton might strike him. Colton spoke quietly so the
soldiers outside couldn’t hear. “You and Dormer tracked the
soldiers’ movements. You know where they will be and when. If I can
somehow get all of the survivors into one place during that window,
we might be able to thin their numbers. You could buy us some time
until we’re ready.” He waited for Adsen to reply, but only a small
groan escaped his lips. Colton reached out and shook him.
“
Think!
Is it
possible?”

“
Y—yes,” said Adsen,
pushing Colton away. “Yes, it’s possible. But I would still have to
give Kamiko real data in order to stall her. She would know if I
was lying. They always know. It wouldn’t do any good.”

“
You
sitting
here doesn’t do any good.”
Colton lowered his voice even more and took a step closer to Adsen.
“They’re going to start shooting my friends in less than an hour
unless you get to work.”

“
I don’t want anyone else
to die because of me. Do you understand what I’m saying, Colton? I
would have to truly
work
on Fade for your plan to succeed. That means I
would have to increase its lethality to one-hundred percent. No one
would be safe. I—I can’t do it.”

Colton’s fists shook with rage. He
wanted to strangle Adsen, but instead he smacked a beaker from the
table. It flew across the room and shattered against the wall.
Shards of glass tinkled to the floor.

Colton stood next to the table and
tried to slow his breathing. Adsen looked at the spot on the wall
where the beaker had shattered. Suddenly his eyes cleared and he
sat up straight. A blanket had been lifted from his sour face and
he smiled with an obvious glint of mischief.

“
I could do that,” he
said.

“
Do what?”

“
I could give them
progress. I’ll keep them jumping through hoops like dogs, all the
way until the very end, just long enough for your plan to work. No
one from the Dome will die, Colton, I promise you that.” He was on
his feet, one clenched fist held victoriously over his head. “I
will atone for my dark work!” His wild eyes searched the room,
seeing the lab equipment as if for the first time. He went to it
eagerly and picked up jugs of chemicals, reading the labels and
muttering rapidly to himself.

Colton took a hesitant step toward the
table. “Adsen, what do you mean, ‘dark work’?”

Adsen ignored him. He filled two
beakers with green liquid and set them atop Bunsen
burners.

Something clicked in Colton’s head,
and the answer was right there, waiting for him to reach out and
grab it. “You created Fade,” he said.

Adsen stopped suddenly. He breathed in
quick, rapid gasps, as if he were a rabbit frozen stiff by a
hunter’s flashlight. “I had to,” he whispered. “The things they did
to me…the things they did to the others…”

He turned to Colton for sympathy, but
found none.

“
You have to understand
what it was like,” said Adsen, pleading for understanding. “Endless
hours of torture. It would only stop if I agreed to help them. They
already had the base form of the virus, but they couldn’t make it
infect our clear cells. It withered and died in the bloodstream
before it became lethal.”