The Culling (27 page)

thirty-six

Viral infection
?

But deliberately making us sick is just the kind of thing the Establishment specializes in. I close my eyes against a wave of dizziness.

The vent in my chamber during that last trial. Digory said there was one in his, too. They were meant to gas either one of us, as each other’s Incentives
.

Which means if we’ve both been infected with some disease prior to starting
this
Trial, then—

“Cole!” I shout at the speakers. “What’ve you done to him, Slade?”

All of the Incentives have been infected with a mutated form of the Reaper virus, including Recruits Tycho and Spark. The virus has an extremely short incubation period.

Images of Mrs. Bledsoe hacking up blood bubble to the surface. Except her face changes to Cole’s. My knees buckle. Stark desperation rips through me.

When the gateway opens, your task is to retrieve the vials of antivirus and deposit them in the marked cryogenic chamber at the top of the stairs corresponding to your respective Incentives. In the case of Tycho and Spark, should you each procure an additional vial, you’re allowed to inject yourselves or each other with the antidote. But be cautioned that there are only four vials total.

Despite the increasing thudding in my head, my thoughts spin through a cloak of fog, calculating the different scenarios based on the amount of remedies versus the number of Incentives. The results of my calculations knife through my Reaper-dulled senses.

Ophelia doesn’t need the cure, so all she needs is one vial for Maddie.

I’ll need a vial for Cole—that makes two vials claimed. Then another one for Digory. That’s three.

That leaves Digory with only one vial, the
final
one, with either his husband or me as its recipient.

Which means I’m a dead man if he’s forced to choose.

Once you have deposited the antivirus in your respective Incentive’s chamber, they will be transported via pneumatic tubes to their final location and you must immediately proceed to your final Trial. Prepare to enter the gateway, Recruits.

The mechanisms on the door to the Biogenetics Laboratory grind and creak. The sound hurts my ears, which ache with a dull throbbing. Digory and Ophelia crowd against me, each of us facing our potential doom.

The gears of the door stop crunching and the locks spring free.

Even if I were to use my second vial on myself instead of Digory, then he’d be left to choose between the life of his husband and his own.

A quick glance at Digory’s pained expression tells me he’s been doing some arithmetic of his own.

The door arcs inward with a high-pitched squeak, exposing a flight of stairs. I fight the urge to push through.

The only way both Digory and I can both survive, with both of our other Incentives intact, is if we find all four vials—including the one intended for Ophelia’s sister. Effectively
murdering
Maddie.

The door swings open all the way with a deafening
clank
.

Already a fever’s baking my brain. Cold sweat weaves down my face. A vise squeezes my chest and I cough into my palm.

“How’re you holding up?” Digory whispers into my ear.
A red trickle’s threading its way down his left nostril and teetering on the edge of his lip.

I shake my head. It’s already started.

“You poor dears,” Ophelia clucks in mock sorrow. “See you on the other side.” She eyes us both up and down and tsks. “Well,
one
of you at least. Maybe.”

A broad grin tears across her face, growing wider and wider until I realize I’m seeing double. I grind the base of my palms into my eyes, then let my hands drop back to my sides. I blink a couple of times. Ophelia goes from a total blur to slightly out of focus.

Panic chews on my heart. I have to be quick if I’m going to find those antidotes before the virus takes hold. If I should go blind …

Cross the threshold and begin antivirus retrieval,
Slade’s voice booms.

Ophelia shoves me into Digory and disappears through the gateway.

I almost topple to the floor, but Digory’s arms engulf me and his hands lock against my stomach, propping me upright against him. My eyes finally tighten their focus on the blood streaking through his interlaced fingers.

“You
have
to keep it together,” he says. “We can’t let her get this, Lucian. Do whatever you have to—
she
will. Understand?”

I nod.

Then he releases me and dashes through after her. I seize a painful breath and lurch through behind him.

T
he gateway slams shut, with a terrible echo that penetrates my throbbing brain like shards of jagged glass.

“
Careful!
”

Digory’s warning startles me. I expected him and Ophelia to be way ahead of me. But they’re both standing close by, eyes riveted ahead.

I follow their gazes …

And gasp.

The wide steps that dominate the dimly lit compartment are no ordinary steps. For a horrified second I think that the virus has seriously impaired my faculties, to the
point where I’m severely hallucinating.

“What
is
that?” Ophelia asks, all traces of bravado leeched from her voice.

The stairs are not so much hewn from the earth as growing from it, each step pulsating with slimy moisture. Translucent membranes separate each rise. Pressed against these are writhing shapes, twisted bodies with misshapen fingers trying to claw their way out.

“The sign on the door,” I croak. “
Biogenetics
. It must be where the Establishment experiments with genetic manipulation … ” I stifle a cough with my fist.” And biological weapons, like the virus.”

Throbbing red and dark purple tendrils cling to the surface of each step like an arterial system, squirting random jets of a sickening yellow pus-like substance that coats the chamber floor in a gooey mess. With the door closed, cutting off any fresh air, the confined space reeks—a mixture of excrement and vomit … and something else …

Rotting meat.

I double over and cough up a dark wad that looks like tar.

But I know it’s not.

Digory rubs my back. “Lucian … ”

I shoo him away and straighten up.

Groans all around us, getting louder and louder.

It’s those shapes, trapped behind the stairs. Their moans rise and swell in intensity until a crescendo of doom vibrates through the air.

Above, on the landing of this organic nightmare, are three circular steel tubes, each large enough to fit a grown man. Even from down here I can make out the designations stenciled on each one.

Tycho Incentive Storage
Juniper Incentive Storage
Spark Incentive Storage

Ophelia pushes past us. “
Maddie’s up there!
” She bounds up the first two steps. One of the undulating tendrils wraps around her ankle and slams her down.

Splat!
She hits the viscous rise headfirst.

Without missing a beat, Ophelia pulls her torso up with her arms. Blood trickles from her forehead, mixing with strands of gelatinous slime that sticks to her cheek. The slime gives way with a sharp
rip
the more she pulls her way upright, tearing flesh from her face until she’s free.

“Ophelia!” I pitch forward.

But Digory’s arm shoots out and barricades the way. “
Look for the vials
.”

His eyes plead through the glaze that encases them. More blood oozes from his nose, as if it’s a spigot. Heat radiates from his body like a furnace.

I half nod to him and manage a grunt of agreement. When I swivel my head from left to right to pan the room, it feels like it’s going to slip free of the creaky bearings barely attaching it to my neck. I take in the solid walls, which ripple in the heat of my burning vision.

Digory wipes his nose and runs his palms over the walls as if searching for something—a hidden panel or concealed door, maybe? Soon the metal finish is streaked with his blood, and it looks like he’s trying to claw his way out his own tomb.

He turns. “
Nothing
!” Anger flashes in his eyes. He kicks the wall. The impact causes him to flinch and slump against it. I can tell by the effort on his face that he’s trying to keep himself upright and not slide the rest of the way down to the floor.

The
floor
.

I try to focus on the ground. “Maybe the vials are hidden inside the gunk
underneath
us?”

He weaves toward me. “But we’d have stepped on them by now … ” He sloshes his boot through the goop and almost slips. He looks back up at me. “Wouldn’t we have?”

I shake my head, making myself more dizzy. I search the room again, until my gaze lands on Ophelia … still tangled on the stairs, trying to pry herself free of the tentacle gripping her leg. “Unless the vials are somewhere we haven’t stepped
yet
.”

Despite the waves of pain and nausea, I squat, careful to avoid the flailing tendrils, searching through the opaque membranes between each rise of the stairs, past the silhouettes of disease-riddled victims, their glowing eyes blinking at me …

Those aren’t eyes.

I dig my fingers through the clammy diaphanous skin coating the stairs and tear a portion away.

The blinking is actually the green flashing of a miniature beacon. It’s attached to a transparent packet, which contains a hypodermic needle and a small bottle of clear fluid. The packet’s half-wedged into the muck.

I point at it. “That’s gotta be one of the four vials,” I whisper so Ophelia doesn’t hear. Considering both our handicaps, we need every advantage we can get.

Digory leans in, his lips grazing my cheek on their way to my earlobe, penetrating my fever with shivers that tingle through every nerve-ending. “You get that one and then keep looking,” he whispers back. He smiles at me despite the weariness in his eyes. “You’re going to make it, Lucian.”

Something about his tone saddens and frightens me. I clutch his hand. “We
both
are.”

His smile ebbs. “Of course. Keep moving.” He squeezes my shoulder then moves away, searching through another part of the membrane.

When I look back, Ophelia’s eyes are glued on me. The tendril that gripped her lies torn in her gore-streaked hands, leaking a dark pool by her feet.

She may not have heard us, but she’s
seen
… she
knows
…

Our eyes hold one more second. Then she whips around and plunges her hands through the membrane nearest her.

I shove my own hand through the gash.

Sharp fingernails dig into my flesh—

thirty-seven

I try to jerk my arm away, but it’s held tightly by an infected man with splotchy, yellow-gray skin and bloodshot eyes. His cheeks are gaunt. Blood vessels underlie his face like a road map.

To make these innocent infected people, whose minds are as scrambled as rabid Canids, protect the very antidote that could save their own lives is truly sickening. Revulsion and pity fuse in the pit of my stomach.

The man opens his mouth wide, releasing a jet of blood and teeth that douses my jumpsuit. That pungent, rotting odor wafts past his cavernous throat, suffocating me. It’s as if his insides have already putrefied.

This is what’s going to happen to Cole, to Digory, to
me
if I don’t get the vials in time.

Still in the diseased man’s grasp, I stretch my fingers until they’re grazing the packet of precious antidote, pulling it out by my fingertips … slowly … a fraction of an inch at a time … until I’m able to grasp it firmly.

The man senses what I’m doing and leans forward, his mouth opened wide—

I shove my other hand through and grip his scraggly hair, yanking his head back just before he can sink what’s left of his teeth into me.

And then we’re deadlocked, the infected man still grasping my arm, preventing me from pulling out the cure.

Somewhere nearby, Digory shouts something unintelligible even while Ophelia lets out a savage battle cry that pierces through the grotesque chorus of groans.

But I can only focus on holding my attacker’s foaming mouth at bay with the last remnants of my strength. I’m losing the struggle. Strands of his hair rip from his skull and through my fingers.

His mouth hovers above my arm—

My fingernails dig through the packet and grasp the empty hypodermic by the plunger, just as his craggy lips graze my flesh. I jab the plunger through his eye, feeling it sink into the mushy tissue. Warm pulp seeps through my fingers as I rip my hand away, snatching the packet free.

Digory’s perched on a rise above me, the upper half of his body buried inside another membrane. I can tell by the way his body’s thrashing that he’s struggling with someone, just like I was.

“Lucian!” His voice sounds muffled. “I
almost
have one! Don’t stop!
Keep going
!”

I’m torn. I don’t want to leave him. I
can’t
. But already I can feel the sickness overwhelming me, wringing the energy from me, fogging my brain and vision to the point where I can barely distinguish shapes a few feet away. I cough up another wad of bloodied phlegm.

If this is what it’s doing to
me
, I’m heartsick at the thought of what it must be doing to little Cole. But I can’t chance taking the antidote now—not until I’ve secured another one.

My breath comes in horrible rasps.

“
Got it!
” Ophelia’s shriek sounds like a battle cry. She’s little more than a blur, holding up an equally distorted reddish object.

The second packet.

That means Digory and I
have
to compete against each other for the remaining two packets of the antidote … and he’s practically got one already …

One of us isn’t going to make it.

Something grabs at Ophelia’s ankle. “
Don’t touch me
!” she shrieks. I can just make out the toe of her boot mashing against the thing, over and over. Loud splintering noises assault my sensitive ears.

CRACK!

She stops kicking. That can’t be a head slumping over at her feet, can it? But, as hazy as my eyesight is, I can tell that’s exactly what it is, or was, until she caved in its skull with her unrelenting fury. She flicks a clump off the end of her boot. Then she stoops and rips away more of the membrane, which comes loose with a
plop
.

Her head swivels in my direction. “I wouldn’t want the two of you to get lonely.” She giggles and sprints up the stairs.

“Ungh!” Digory grunts. He’s climbing the stairs, teetering up them, more like it. His hand clutches blinking green.

It’s official. Only one dose of antivirus left.

My wobbling legs give way and I sink to my knees, bracing myself against the rise above me. Then I’m pulling myself up to the next step, then the next, crawling, squirming like a slug even as I push my face into the slick-coated membranes searching for the final packet.

A choir of growls oozes out of the gap where Ophelia retrieved her vials, freezing me in place. A tangle of limbs pushes through, clawing at the air. Dark forms slink into the outer room with us.

That’s what Ophelia did by ripping out the membrane. She opened up the gap so that—

“
They’re getting through!
” The fear propels me up the next stair.

And there, flashing through the crystalline layer between rises, is the last of the packets, tempting me to my potential doom.

I plunge my hand through, heedless of the possibility that ravenous jaws are waiting to snap at my fingers and chew them off. But nothing stops me as I grasp the packet and pull it back through.

A shadow falls over me.

The infected are busy creeping through the opening Ophelia made for them and heading my way.

I tear the packet open with my mouth, leaving bloody teeth marks on it. Then I’m fumbling with the vial. My heart tries to lurch out my throat when the cure almost tumbles from my grasp. But I seize it at the last moment and shove the hypodermic inside it, letting it gulp up the precious fluid.

Digory kicks a snarling contaminated man in the gut and sends him reeling against two others, buying us valuable seconds. But just beyond them, more dark shapes loom, hissing, reaching for us.

I graze the skin above my vein with the hypodermic. I hate myself for being so selfish and for what this will mean to Digory. He’s going to have to choose between his husband’s life or his own. But if I don’t take the antivirus now, I’ll pass out before I can outrun this diseased mob and make it up to Cole with
his
vial.

Digory sees what I’m about to do and nods.

Then I can’t bear the pain of looking at him anymore and I turn away, plunging the antivirus into my vein.

It starts off like a small sting, then spreads like wildfire through my blood. I feel like I’m burning both inside and out. The needle clatters to the ground. I grip my stomach against the pain. My eyes dim even further. My head feels like it’s going to cave in and my brains are going to pop through my eyes and ears.

Just when the pain gets the most intolerable, it suddenly washes away like a quick-moving tide. The fever dissipates and the clouds over my eyes disperse. I still feel like a Squawker has plowed into me, but its more weariness than infection now.

I swipe at the cold sweat coating my face with my forearm just in time to see two of the sick grappling with Digory. If he weren’t ill, he’d be able to hold his own. But in his weakened state, they’re steadily gaining the upper hand. My eyes widen, now able to take in every terrifying detail.

One of them’s about to bite into the wrist holding Digory’s hypodermic packet.

“
Watch out!
” I lunge and shove the man away before he can sink his teeth into Digory’s flesh. The man falls to the ground and grabs my ankle, but I kick it away.

I spin around. Digory punches the second one in the jaw and he topples backward, sprawling down the stairs.

“
Th-thanks
… ” Digory rasps, trying to smile.

But my relief’s short-lived. Half a dozen more of the infected drones are scrambling up the stairs, trampling the two on the ground in their effort to reach us.

Crunch!

One of our pursuers grinds a heel into the jaw of the man I just pushed, and shatters it.

“
Let’s go!
” I grab Digory’s arm and sling it over my shoulder, running on pure adrenaline now. It’s awkward going. I’m too weak, and he’s too heavy. But I manage to haul him up the stairs, dogged every step of the way by the unrelenting pack.

Just a few more steps to go and we’ll be at the top, and I can get the remedy to Cole.

Recruit Juniper. Your Incentive has received the antivirus. Proceed immediately through the next gateway to your final Trial.

There’s the
woosh
of a door sliding open just as Digory and I stagger over the last step. Digory leans against the tube marked
Tycho Incentive Storage
.

Aside from the three steel capsules, one of which is now blinking green, there’s an open door with nothing but darkness beyond. Ophelia must be halfway to the next Trial by now.

I rip out my second packet and am about to shove it into the receiving slot of Cole’s tube when Ophelia steps out from behind the capsule and tears it away from my hand.

My breath crystallizes in my lungs. “What the
hell
are you—?”

“Now
you
can get a taste of what it feels like to lose someone
you
love, Spark.” A smile rips across her face, from one of her ears to the other. She draws back the hand clutching Cole’s salvation.

I stumble forward on liquid legs, my hands flailing for the packet.

Her face twists into a snarl. She hurls the cure back down the stairs …

I drop to my knees, watching, stunned, as the packet twirls end over end, the vial of antivirus glinting in the light, moving farther and farther away from my brother, taking his life with it in the process.

It shatters against the far wall, exploding into a million gleaming shards, just as my entire universe implodes in on itself.

As my cheek slams into the cold floor, I see Ophelia’s boot withdrawing. Then she runs through the door and disappears.

I punch my fist into the base of Cole’s storage tube—his
coffin
—feeling as if my soul’s been ripped out, and I squeeze my eyes shut for what will probably be the last time.

Recruit Spark. Your Incentive has received the antivirus. Proceed immediately through the next gateway to your final Trial.

My eyes flutter open.

I bolt upright.

Arms lock around me from behind and drag me away from the looming infected bodies, toward the gateway that Ophelia disappeared through.

I manage to turn around.

It’s Digory. He looks paler than I’ve ever seen him. Trails of dried blood cake his nostrils. A grayish film coats his once brilliant blue eyes.

But he still smiles at me. “
Lucian
… ” he croaks. “
You …
gotta … go … now
… ”

Behind him, Cole’s tube is blinking green, just like Maddie’s.

How is that possible? I
saw
Ophelia destroy Cole’s cure with my own eyes.

And that’s when it hits me. Digory sacrificed not only his husband’s life but his own, so that Cole might live.

I grip his forearms. “What about
you
? What about your husband?” My eyes flit toward the tube still pulsing red.

He shakes his head. “F-forget … about …
me
… save …
your …
brother
… ”

He collapses. I don’t have the strength to hold him up so I slide down with him.

Beyond us, the horde’s making its way onto the landing and lumbering toward us.

I seize Digory’s wrists. “
I’m not leaving you here!
”

I pull with every fiber of strength I have left, dragging him across the floor toward the doorway. One of the infected springs from the ground, gripping his ankle.

I pull Digory through the doorway and hit the button on the panel on the other side, praying it’s the locking mechanism.

For a split second, nothing happens.

The sickly woman opens her mouth right above Digory’s ankle …

Then the door
wooshes
closed again. There’s a sharp snap as it severs the infected woman’s hand and slams shut at last. The hand’s still gripping Digory’s foot, jetting out gobs of dark blood from the jagged end with each twitch.

Kneeling beside him, I pry it off and hurl it away from us. “It’s going to be okay now, Digory.”

His eyes are closed, his chest bobbing up and down with each raspy breath. I touch my palm to his forehead. It’s like touching fire.

Recruit Tycho, your actions have caused you to forfeit your participation. You must remain behind and await collection. Recruit Spark, continue now or face forfeiture as well.

I can see a light, down the sloping path Ophelia took.

What am I going to do? She’s going to reach Maddie before I reach Cole.

“Lucky,” a voice whispers in the dark behind me.

Even before I whirl to see the figure emerging from the shadows, I know who it is. That voice is branded into me forever.

Cassius.