The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (54 page)

Marius’s face turned bright red as he
shouted, “Don’t you lie to me! Where is the cure?!”

Dead Meat looked from Marius to Roku,
then to Haven. “There is no cure,” he said, almost sadly. “Once
you’re infected, that’s it.”

Marius yelled and hauled his foot back
to kick Dead Meat in the chest.

“
Waitwaitwait!” pleaded
Dead Meat, holding up his hands in defense. Marius paused with his
leg swung back. Dead Meat spoke quickly as he stared warily at
Marius’s black boot. “There was a rumor that Alistair had a cure
made for himself. After he was inoculated, he could never be
infected again. And then he had the cure destroyed so no one else
could ever be saved.”

“
Almost no one,” said
Haven, looking at Bastian. He swallowed hard and wouldn’t meet her
eyes.

“
But-but-but it’s just a
rumor!” said Dead Meat. “There was never really any
cure.”

Marius dragged him to his feet and
pushed him up against the machine. “Is it in this one?” he said.
Before Dead Meat could answer, Marius dragged him across the floor
and slammed him into another machine. “How about this one, huh? I
know it’s here somewhere. You would not make a virus without the
cure. No one is that stupid.” He dragged Dead Meat over to a large
bin and threw him over the top. The man screamed when he landed on
top of a pile of exposed needles. They stuck into his skin at all
angles like he was a giant pincushion. Marius jumped up over the
side of the cart and stood on the man’s chest, pushing him deeper
into the pile of syringes.

Dead Meat groaned in agony, his voice
quivering with pain.

“
What I say to you about
lying?” asked Marius gravely. There was a blank look in his eyes
that Haven had never seen before.

“
Marius, take it easy,”
she said.

Dead Meat twitched beneath Marius’s
feet. “Please,” he whispered. “Mercy.”

“
Why take it easy?!”
shouted Marius. “You are trying to kill seven billion people and I
should take it easy? Explain that one to me.”

But Dead Meat couldn’t explain. His
eyelids fluttered until they closed. His body went limp and he
passed out, stuck half to death with needles.

Haven turned around and saw Bastian
walking toward her with his hands up. “Let me explain,” he
said.

“
You lied to me,” said
Haven. Blue light flashed across her vision.

“
I know I did,” said
Bastian. He stopped when he saw the flames in her eyes. “There was
a perfectly good reason—”

“
No,” said Haven. She
didn’t recognize her own voice, so deep and full of anger.
Bastian’s promise of a cure had taken her away from Colton and Noah
and the others in the Dome. She realized then how much she cared
about Colton, about how much she would miss him if he were gone.
There was a pain inside of her that equaled the pain of loss she
felt when her parents died. At the same time she hated herself for
even thinking the loss of another person could come close to the
pain of her parents’ murder.

Still, it burned inside her. Hot
flames engulfed her body—flames which she meant to use against
Bastian for lying to her about the cure and for ripping her away
from everything she loved.

“
You knew he destroyed
it,” she said. Her voice was not her own. “You knew it the whole
time, and you let me believe it.” She stalked toward Bastian, her
feet burning against the concrete floor.

Suddenly Roku was there, standing
between them.

“
You did not come here
just for the cure,” he said. “You came here because I showed you
the pain of others, not just your own. It is happening everywhere,
Haven. You are not alone in your loss. Neither am I.”

“
You!
” she hissed. “You lied, too.”

“
Yes,” said Roku, holding
up his hands. “Because I have hope that it can be remade. Alistair
will know how to recreate the cure and—”

“
It will be too late for
them!” shouted Haven.

“
Remember what I showed
you,” said Roku. “They are not the only ones who
suffer.”

Sadness overwhelmed Haven. The blue
flame covering her body flickered but did not disappear. She
remembered the dream Roku shared with her—remembered how he lost
his family, as she had lost most of hers. She wanted to be back
with Colton and Noah and the others more than anything. Her soul
reached out across the desert, crying out for her home.

The last blue flame flickered against
her palms and she closed her fists to snuff it out. She looked up
at Bastian.

“
Tell me why you did
it.”

He walked toward her
cautiously, watching her hands. “We needed your help,” he said.
“You could have stayed back there at the Dome and maybe had a
fighting chance against Kamiko, but she was never the bigger
threat. That’s obvious now, after seeing all of this.” He gestured
to the nearby machinery. “If there was never a cure to begin with,
than you staying back at the Dome was pointless. You would have
gotten a lot of them killed or even yourself.
This
way,” he said, putting a hand
to his chest, “this way we have a chance to stop Alistair before
it’s too late. I lied to you. I feel terrible about that but it had
to be done. It
needed
to be done. People don’t think practically when they’re too
preoccupied with—”

“
With what?” interrupted
Haven.

“
With love.”

She looked away as her cheeks
flushed.

“
We have to be practical
if we want to succeed,” continued Bastian. “I don’t expect you to
forgive me, but I also don’t expect you to quit. If you do—well,
look around you. This is not just the end of our kind we’re talking
about anymore. Alistair is going to wipe out the entire
planet.”

She wanted to lash out at him, to hurt
him worse than she had been hurt herself. The urge passed like a
wave over her, and then was gone, leaving only a deep, empty
sadness in its wake.

Love.

She had thought about the word before,
but had never said it aloud. She was elated and terrified to find
that the word was inextricably linked to the thought of Colton. The
past year with him had been better than any other time in her life,
but in a different way, as if she was a new person when he was
around.

“
What do you say?” asked
Bastian. “Will you stick with us?”

Before she could answer, the door to
the storage room banged open and guards poured into the main
warehouse, each one carrying a heavy automatic rifle. A man in a
long coat walked among them, staying out of the way as the guards
advanced across the room toward Haven and the others. It was the
thin man from the airport, the one who had brought down Haven’s
plane.

“
I thought you took care
of him!” she said.

“
So did I,” said
Bastian.

“
Get down!” shouted
Marius. He grabbed Haven’s shoulders and pushed her roughly behind
a machine. She tripped over a protruding pipe and hit the ground
hard on her shoulder, then crawled next to the machine for
cover.

Gunfire lit up the room.

28

A
soldier came into the water processing room an hour after
Adsen began his work. He demanded proof that there was progress and
stood with his rifle in hand, finger on the trigger. Adsen handed
the soldier a thin manila folder and pushed him back out the door.
The folder contained scanned microscopic images of petri dishes, in
which Adsen had been experimenting with bacterial cultures. He had
explained each step of the process in detail as he went along, but
Colton was lost between his own anger and thoughts of
escape.

After the soldier left, Colton went to
the door and looked out at the dome room through the grimy glass
window. Kamiko stood in the center of the room atop the rubble from
the collapsed ceiling fan. She stared down into the heart of the
shattered fire pit as if the embers were ablaze. Colton thought she
could be considered beautiful, if only she hadn’t tried to destroy
everything he loved. She turned and looked right at him.

He walked away from the window and
joined Adsen in front of his colorful chemical set. Liquids gurgled
and boiled in beakers over open flames, and a thick substance oozed
down through a plastic tube and glopped noisily into a collection
tray on the table. A thermometer protruded from the mixture and the
temperature read two-hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

“
You’re really going to do
it, then,” said Colton. “Finish Fade.”

“
I said I was, didn’t
I?”

“
I thought you were going
to stall for time so Dormer and I could work out some kind of
escape plan.”

“
The only way back is
forward,” said Adsen cryptically. He picked up a vial filled with
black liquid and flicked the bottom. The liquid shimmered and
turned blue, then he poured it into the container of muck below the
plastic feeder tube. The mixture hissed and gave off faint grey
smoke. “A trick is most effective when it has an element of truth,”
he added. “My work will be your proof that we want to be obedient,
complacent—docile.” He flashed Colton a quick smile.

“
It looks like you’re
making progress.”

Adsen shrugged.

“
And if we fail,” said
Colton, “then Kamiko has the completed virus.”

“
So don’t
fail.”

“
Don’t finish the
virus.”

Adsen sighed and his whole body sagged
from exhaustion. “You need to leave. Right now. It’s my work. I
need to finish it alone. And besides, the less you know, the
better.”

“
The less I know,”
repeated Colton, shaking his head. “This isn’t the best time for
secrets, Adsen. It’s probably the worst time imaginable.” He
thought for a moment. “What if we destroyed all the equipment?” He
pointed to the labyrinthine chemistry set. On the table next to it,
glowing computer monitors flashed with complex molecular diagrams
and lines of indecipherable equations.

“
Then we’re finished,”
said Adsen. “This work is the only reason any of us are still
alive. Honestly, Colton, I expected a little more practicality from
you.”

Colton wanted to flip the
table over and shout, “How’s
that
for practicality?!” but he knew Adsen was right.
He hated him for trying to finish Fade. He felt betrayed and alone.
Going willingly toward the destruction of everything he loved went
against the grain of Colton’s very soul—yet what choice did he
have? Both paths were lined with razor-sharp knives and would cut
him regardless. He just had to trust that he chose the right
one.

“
Don’t just stand there
with your mouth open,” said Adsen. “It’s time for you to leave. I
don’t want you here for the rest of the process. Find Dormer, he’ll
know what to do.” Adsen waved Colton away and paid him no more
attention.

Kamiko was gone when Colton walked
into the dome room. Morning light filtered through the open hole at
the top of the ceiling. It came down as a solid shaft to illuminate
the spot in the rubble where Kamiko had been standing. Colton
walked to it and stood looking up at the ceiling, squinting into
the light. He followed the long ladder that ran down the wall to
the floor. Two soldiers stood at the ladder’s base, watching
him.

“
Where’s Dormer?” he
asked. His voice carried easily across the vast, empty room. At
first, Colton thought they would ignore him. A moment later, one of
them raised a finger from the grip of his rifle and pointed at the
entrance to the Grove. Colton flipped him the bird and walked
away.

The entrance to the Grove was directly
across the dome room from the garage entrance. Colton pushed open
the swinging doors and stepped onto soft grass. The air within the
Grove was clear and cool, and it cut through the fog in Colton’s
mind like a knife. The pressure that had been mounting at the front
of his skull faded away.

He coughed into his sleeve and swayed
on his feet. His right hand shook uncontrollably and Colton
squeezed it into a tight fist. As he did, thick, black veins bulged
on the back of his hand, pulsing with his heartbeat. The virus was
affecting him more with each passing hour.

The Grove was contained in a
rectangular, high-ceilinged room that burrowed farther out from the
main dome than any other part of the underground complex. Colton
looked up at the halogen lamp burning brightly in the ceiling—a
fake sun that added a touch of realism to the indoor
field.

He walked through the grid of ancient
trees. They had been transplanted at the time of the Dome’s
construction from the Old Home, the place where his kind had lived
and been safe for decades. Elena told Haven about it—and about its
destruction by the very people who had once called it their
sanctuary.

He placed his palm against the trunk
of a blackened, withered tree as he passed, remembering it was the
tree that gave its life to save Haven’s. She had been brought there
after grave injury and laid below its branches while Dormer healed
her wounds. The once-verdant green of the tree’s foliage had
browned and crumbled at Dormer’s touch as he drained its life and
transferred it to Haven.