The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (59 page)

She had died in his arms just as they
were reunited for the first time since he was a boy.

A tingling sensation swept over the
left side of his face. He reached up and touched his temple,
feeling fresh scar tissue. It burned under his fingertips. Tracing
it down, he followed a crescent moon of burnt skin past his left
eye. The scar arced inward like a parenthesis cupping his eye and
ended just below his cheekbone.

Kamiko.

Colton stood up and a wave of nausea
swelled through his stomach. He quickly sat down and covered his
mouth with one hand. There was a trash can nearby and he grabbed
for it greedily, then threw up black liquid. He wiped his mouth and
set the can aside, then slowly stood again. The nausea passed and
he went to the door. It was locked. He rattled the doorknob and
smacked his palm against the paneling.

“
Hey!” he shouted, more of
a croak than a word. He continued to hit the door until at last
there was a soft
click
and the knob turned freely in his hand. Kamiko was in the
next room, leaning casually against the wall with her hands at the
small of her back. She stared at the wall across from her and did
not acknowledge Colton as he slowly approached.

The room was narrow but long, with a
single overhead fluorescent light that cast a flickering green glow
upon the concrete floor and walls. A single table and chair sat
pushed into a corner, long forgotten. The door at the other end of
the room was solid steel, too thick to break through without his
ability. Colton eyed it hungrily but stood still, waiting to see
what Kamiko would do.

She turned her head lazily and looked
at him with her dark eyes. Thin strands of shiny black hair hung in
front of her face like wispy vines.

“
What have you done to the
others?” asked Colton.

She pushed off from the wall and
brushed the hair away from her face, slowly, one side at a time,
oblivious to the suffering of the world around her.

“
What have
you
done to them?” she
replied. Her voice purred like a kitten.

Colton took a step back, the confusion
evident on his face. She moved gracefully, languidly, her every
motion like a shifting pool of water, flowing seamlessly into the
next.

“
I
told
you not to try anything,” she
said. “I warned you not to be a boy hero.”

“
Are any of them still
alive?”

She looked into his eyes. Her dark
blue energy was gone, at least for the time being. She did not
float over the floor as she stepped closer to him, but walked
normally in slow, patient steps. Her eyes, what Colton once thought
of as black holes, were now noticeably dark brown, with tiny flecks
of gold around the irises.

She crossed her arms, then reached up
and twirled a strand of her hair with a slender finger. “They’re
alive,” she said at last. “For now. Your friend Dormer is in bad
shape. He will be sedated until the work is done.”

“
What about June and the
others?”

She shrugged.

“
What about Micah?” His
voice cracked when he said the boy’s name.

“
You saw him yourself,”
she said, still staring at him with those deep, dark
eyes.

“
How could you let that
happen?” he whispered, backing away. He hit the wall and stopped.
“He was just a child.”

“
Colton,” she scolded.
“How many children do you think will die once Alistair releases his
plague upon the world? How many innocent lives will be lost? What
does it matter if one of them goes ahead of schedule?”

He ran at her and screamed. He got
both hands around her throat and slammed her into the wall. She
stared at him calmly and kneed him in the groin. He coughed out all
of his air and fell to the ground in a fetal position, rocking from
side to side, unable to breathe.

Kamiko knelt down and traced a sharp
fingernail over his new scar. “I gave this to you so would always
remember me.” She looked over his writhing body. “You don’t have to
go with the others,” she said quietly, as if it embarrassed her to
speak the words. “You could come with me after my work here is
done.”

He looked at her like it was the most
absurd thing he had ever heard, because it was. Then he saw that
her face was about to twist from hope to rage at his reaction and
he settled back down to the ground. He let his eyes play over her
slim body, pretending to admire her every curve. She softened under
his gaze, becoming more feminine in that mysterious way mastered by
so many women before her.

“
If you promise me they
won’t die,” he said. “I’ll follow you anywhere.”

Kamiko smiled and put a gentle palm to
his scar. Then she pulled him roughly to his feet and pushed him
face-first into the wall.

“
Don’t make me regret my
decision,” she hissed in his ear. He nodded and she released
him.

Kamiko walked to the steel door and
hit it three times with her closed fist. A moment later, there was
a loud mechanical whine and the door slowly opened. She walked out
into the dome room, then stopped and turned back to Colton. He
followed her, hesitantly at first, unsure of what she would
do.

“
Go see the Doctor,” she
said. “He’s falling behind schedule.” She turned away abruptly and
left him standing alone.

Three soldiers stood near the
dormitory hallway. One of them leaned against the wall for support,
but the others paced back and forth impatiently. The bodies of the
dead soldiers still lay strewn about the floor in front of the
elevator hallway door. Colton waited until Kamiko disappeared down
the dormitory hallway. He walked quickly to the training room and
ducked inside before anyone tried to stop him.

Micah’s body was on the cold ground.
Colton picked him up gently and carried him back into the dome
room. One of the soldiers stood outside the door and raised his
rifle.

“
Put him down,” he
said.

Colton shook his head and said, “Shoot
me.” He walked past the soldier with his eyes closed, hoping he
didn’t catch a bullet in the back.

35

A
fter Colton took a few more steps, he looked back. The
soldier stood there, his rifle held loosely at his side.

The Grove was the only room in the
Dome that had not been tainted by the arrival of Kamiko and her
thugs. The grass was still as vibrant, the air as crisp and cool as
the day Colton had first arrived at the underground
complex.

He walked through the grid of healing
trees and over the small hill on the far side. Tiny blue lights
danced slowly over the surface of the still pond. Colton knelt down
and laid Micah’s small body against the base of the willow tree
next to Elena’s grave, as if he had simply fallen asleep for a
light afternoon nap.

Colton made a silent promise to come
back and bury him as soon as he could. He rested his right palm
over the boy’s eyes and said goodbye.

All three soldiers were by the
dormitory hallway when Colton walked out of the Grove. He went
right past them. Their heads turned to follow him, but they said
nothing. He walked directly to the water processing room and pushed
through the door.

Adsen was still inside, rushing around
his makeshift lab like a mad scientist whose creation was about to
explode. He muttered to himself and did not notice Colton staring
down at Dormer, who lay unconscious on a small cot next to the
aluminum tables in the middle of the room. A thick plastic tube
burrowed into a vein in Dormer’s arm and fed blood to a machine on
the table.

“
Were you working for them
all along or did you switch sides at the end?” asked
Colton.

Adsen let out a shriek and
whirled around to face him. “Colton, good heavens! You nearly
scared the life out of me!” He put his face too close to a computer
monitor and read off some numbers, then scribbled the numbers on a
notepad. “You shouldn’t be in here. I already told you that. You
should be out
there
trying to stop the madness.”

“
We missed our chance,”
said Colton. “We were only able to get some of the soldiers. We
failed.” He looked down at Dormer. Dark bruises covered his arms
and neck. A large cut started over his nose and ran up his scalp,
all the way to the back of his head.

“
Yes,” said Adsen. “I was
made aware of the…particulars.”

Colton took a step closer. “So you can
stop now.”

Adsen’s pencil froze in place. He
peered at Colton over the top of his reading glasses. “What do you
mean, stop?”

“
I mean you don’t have to
prove to Kamiko that we’re cooperating. It was all just a
distraction anyway, right? But we failed, so now it doesn’t matter
if she knows you’re not making any progress. You need to stop
working on Fade.”

Adsen sighed. “Do you know why I’m
drawing blood from my brother?”

“
Because you’re
crazy?”

Adsen smiled without
humor. “The same reason I drew blood from myself.” He rolled up his
sleeve and showed Colton a dark bruise on his forearm. “Do you know
what connects us, and
only
us?”

Colton thought for a moment. “You’re
the only ones not infected with Fade.”

“
Correct—well,
mostly
correct. I fear
the only reason I am not infected is because I had no ability in
the first place. They drained it out of me while I was stuck in
Bernam’s facility. I am, for all intents and purposes,
normal
.”

“
So you’re drawing
Dormer’s blood to see if the improved Fade will infect it. Doesn’t
take a genius to figure that one out.”

Adsen smiled at him and there was a
genuine twinkle of joy in his dark pupils. “It does if creating a
more powerful virus is not your true goal.”

For the first time, Colton noticed a
row of medical syringes laid out on the table. Adsen picked one up
and pulled out the plunger. He selected a vial of bubbling yellow
liquid from the apex position of his chemistry set and carefully
tipped it into the syringe. When the small reservoir was full,
Adsen replaced the vial over an open flame and put the plunger back
in the syringe.

“
You might want to try
this,” he said, and handed Colton the syringe.

“
I’m not injecting that
poison into my veins.”

“
Use your head, Colton.
Put the pieces together quickly, before we run out of
time.”

Colton concentrated as best he could.
What was another reason to draw blood from an immune patient if not
to learn how to infect their system?

“
You made a
cure.”

The smile on Adsen’s face grew into
one of great pleasure and relief. “Well done, my boy. Well
done.”

“
But how?”

Adsen filled the other syringes, one
at a time, carefully measuring out just enough liquid to fill the
tiny reservoirs. He talked as he worked. “To tell you the truth, it
was something of a miracle. It was only possible because the
genetic makeup of the virus and the cure are nearly identical until
after the very last chemical process. I was able to give Kamiko
reports on exactly what I was doing as I went along, because I was,
in essence, furthering the capabilities of the base virus. Only in
the final report—which she has not yet received—would it become
obvious that I had deviated from her orders. Here,” he said,
offering the syringe to Colton. “I doubt we have much
time.”

Colton took the syringe and held out
his arm. He made a fist, pumping it hard until the black veins
under his skin bulged out. He rested the needle over the thickest
vein in his forearm and then stopped. Adsen watched him eagerly,
his breath coming out in short gasps.

“
What are you waiting
for?” he asked.

“
I’m trying to decide if
you’re lying.”

“
You’re already infected,”
said Adsen. “What good would it do to infect you again?”

“
How should I know? You’ve
already lied, Adsen. Why didn’t you just tell me you were working
on a cure?”

Adsen turned away and ran a hand
through his slick, thinning hair. “I couldn’t risk you knowing the
truth. If they took you, and—and they tortured you…” His hand went
to his neck and scratched at a faint scar over his throat, usually
hidden beneath his shirt collar. “I know their methods. It was too
great a risk. You would have talked. I’m sorry I kept you in the
dark, Colton. I’m sorry you hated me for it. But it was the only
way.”

Colton stuck the needle into his vein
and pushed down on the plunger. The hot yellow liquid shot into his
arm, burning like acid as it surged through his veins. He dropped
the empty syringe and staggered backward. Adsen watched him with a
mix of horror and wonder.

“
Tell me how you feel!” he
whispered.

Colton smacked his lips. They had
suddenly become dry as a desert. “Weird,” he said. “Like…like
someone pulled out my skeleton.” He held up his fingers and
squinted at them. There were twenty on each hand, wiggling back and
forth like earthworms.