Breathless City Page 16

  Stella looked over the heads of the crowd as the numbers began to rattle off. She listened stoically as those numbers began to rise. How many people were “punished” in order for the administrators to hoard that many pills? How many people were killed under their system?

  How bad did they want her? Why fight over her on the night that shipments failed to come? Now, when it seemed like they might actually need all of those extra pills. They were wasting them on her instead. She would never understand them.

  She thought of Gavin again. Pictured him somewhere far away, somewhere safe, until the noise of the audience distracted her from her thoughts.

  “Eight hundred thousand!” called out the administrator of entertainment, rising from his seat in excitement. It was hard to look at the man, with all those golden chains wrapped around his meaty neck and emerald rings encircling thick fingers.

  “Eight hundred seventy thousand,” countered the administrator of shipments coolly.

  It had come down to the two most powerful men in the underground, men that were dressed in neat tailored suits, bidding for her with enough pills to supply over a hundred citizens for a full year. What would they do to her? Stella hoped that whatever it was, it would be over quick.

  “Eight hundred seventy-four thousand,” the entertainment administrator called out again, staring straight at Stella. She winced internally. She’d heard all the stories of what that man did to make his money. All those pretty girls vanishing, and how he had taken them away and let the guards use them.

  What did he want with her?

  “Now eight seventy-four, now eight seventy-four. Will you give me eight seventy-five? Now eight hundred seventy-four thousand. Eight hundred seventy-four thousand going once, going twice…”

  “Nine hundred thousand,” called out the administrator of shipments.

  The entertainment administrator pounded his table in rage, and his personal guards shot to their feet to rush at the guards of the shipment administrator. Through the commotion, Stella began to feel weary as she watched them. Even if she closed her eyes, she wouldn’t be able to shut out the image of all those great men, grown fat off their power. Men who were used to getting things their way and were quite unsure of what to do with themselves now that they had discovered that each one wanted the same thing.

  Then a louder voice rang out, cutting across all the others like the roar of an angry bull. “ZERO PILLS.”

  The auction stopped as all heads careened around to the back of the room to see who had interrupted them. Stella looked too, squinting against the spotlight in her eyes to make out the owner of the voice. He leaned against the back wall, clutching the brick as if that slight hold was the only grip stopping him from launching himself into the crowd. It was the last person she had wanted to see here.

  “Zero pills,” Gavin repeated. “That is my offer—zero pills.”

  Stunned, Stella couldn’t even bring herself to call out to him, couldn’t warn him to run, to get away, back to his home. Now, when he still had the chance.

  The shouting came again, all at once, as all the men in power tried to take charge simultaneously.

  “Who do you think you are?”

  “Get him out of here.”

  "You! Get that man! Bring him here."

  A handful of guards rose uncertainly, attempting to follow conflicting orders. They all halted when they heard Gavin’s next words.

  “My name is Gavin Owings, son of Arthur Owings, the founder of the oxygen factory. I’ve disabled communications at the shipment station. If you don’t let her go, none of you will ever get food or oxygen pills from the factory again.”

  Quiet murmurings from the crowd filled the room.

  “Explain yourself,” the administrator of entertainment demanded.

  “I guess you didn’t hear me the first time. The shipment station has been disabled, and your lives are at stake. Check it if you’d like,” Gavin said.

  “You can’t do that,” called out the administrator of entertainment.

  “I already have,” Gavin stated with an underlying power in each word that Stella had never heard from him before. “I’m one of the many men and women who work to get you the very pills you are using to sell this girl. I see that you’ve stockpiled pills, but it’s not going to be enough. What you are doing here won’t mean anything, because once you’ve run out of food, you are all going to die. It might take a week, or it might be months. But it will happen to all of you if you don’t free her.”

  With that said, Gavin uncoiled himself from his place against the wall and walked toward the stage. His walk was met with a stiff silence as the men considered his words and did nothing. Out of habit, one advance guard, with his arms crossed over his chest, stepped in Gavin’s path, blocking his progress.

  Gavin glared at the guard and asked him a simple question. “Are you really going to try to stop me?”

  Though he clenched his teeth and uncrossed his arms, the advance guard couldn’t think of anything to say. He, too, stepped out of Gavin’s way.

  Stella’s eyes fixed on Gavin as he walked up the stairs and joined her on the stage. Under her gaze, Gavin appeared self-conscious for the first time since he made his appearance in the administrators’ lounge. He bowed his head as he reached for the rope binding Stella’s hands and deftly untied it.

  Once free, Stella reached for his rough hand and held it. As they walked out together, Stella marveled at the fact that in full sight of all the power of the underground, all the administrators and guards, Gavin had just strolled in and taken her away.

  18

  Gavin could still feel the cortisol flooding through his system. He could hear his blood pounding and his body still tense with the remnants of anger. He had never seen anything like that before: Stella bruised and tied up on a stage, and everyone bidding on her as if she weren’t even human. Gavin didn’t even want to think about how they had ended up with so many extra pills, after all of the hours he had poured into harvesting them. He knew that once he got back home, he had to do something about it.

  The orders to leave the two of them alone had preceded them. Gavin found the route to the shipment station deserted. They had walked in silence, moving swiftly in case anything changed, back to the steel door that barred citizens from supplies that should have been distributed freely. If this was happening here, Gavin wondered for the first time, what was happening to the other settlements around the world? Were citizens receiving supplies elsewhere? Were the systems corrupted and flawed everywhere?

  Gavin removed the brass key from his pocket and slipped it into the steel door, unlocking it. He pulled the door wide for Stella to walk through and then followed after her.

  Caution forgotten, Stella walked around the shipment station, examining everything with wide eyes. She walked first to the dry dock, currently flooded behind four-inch polycarbonate Lexan, awaiting the arrival of the submarine from the oxygen factory, a submarine that hadn’t arrived as scheduled for the first time in over fifteen years and would never arrive again without his access codes.

  Her hands drifted across the chrome of the control center, with all of its buttons, its precise knobs and levers, now powered off and lifeless. Lastly, Stella came to a stop in front of a sleek glass screen before she turned around to face him. “What is it?”

  “I’ll show you.” Gavin typed in the complex number sequence without having to think about it, as his fingers had memorized the codes long ago. He was immediately rewarded as the machine hummed to life, warming up, as he reactivated communications. Then the lights flashed on, first across the keyboard in the neon green colors of the factory, then illuminating the glass screen with the image of an empty desk.

  “Hello?” Gavin called out. “Anyone there?” He heard light footsteps and caught a glimpse of tousled dark hair over a narrow face that stared blankly at him as if in disbelief without replying. Gavin didn’t know if he was imagining it, but for a moment it looked like those short fingers hove
red over the button marked “Cancel” before drifting away out of sight.

  “Dad, he’s on screen,” the man called out before walking out of the line of the camera.

  From behind him, Gavin felt the slender touch of fingers at his arm, and he turned to see Stella. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, and she wore a faint frown. “Gavin, who was that?” she whispered.

  “My older brother, Morgan,” Gavin explained. “He runs the shipments.” Stella didn’t say a word in reply. The touch of her fingers slipped away as Gavin once again heard the sound of footsteps hurrying over.

  Even as an image on a screen, his father’s presence was commanding. He was all masculine, with short-cropped hair and stubble on a crisp jaw line. The immaculate seams of his lab coat were stretched over solid muscles, and the badge reading “Arthur Owings, Founder and General Manager of Oxygen Factory” distinctly gleamed.

  But as Gavin looked at his father’s face, into gray eyes that were just like his own, he saw that they were marked with shadows that hadn’t been there before. Gavin felt a twinge of guilt that he was the cause. This whole week had passed in a blur and Gavin had been caught up in it all, moment by moment. He had never even considered how everyone at his home would react to his disappearance.

  Without wasting time, his father demanded, “Gavin, what happened? Where are you?”

  “I’m in the underground city of the New Jersey region,” Gavin said, answering the easy question first. He had to think quickly to decide how much of the story he wanted to tell.

  “How did you end up there?” his father asked.

  “I was hit in the back of the head when I was planting kelp. I lost consciousness and washed up on the shore,” Gavin replied, just laying out the facts.

  His father paused his questioning to process the details. “Do you have any idea who might have done it?”

  “I’m not sure,” Gavin stated, which wasn’t entirely honest. His memory of what had happened was a blur. Yet, throughout the course of the week, he had begun to string different events together. Everything from what Sam had told him about the “nice man” who had given everyone in Celia’s gang defective pills to all the hoarding abuse underground here… It all seemed to point to one person. Gavin just didn’t want to say his suspicions yet. Not without evidence that it was true.

  “Where have you been? You didn’t get…” His father couldn’t even say the words out loud. But the thought must have been torture. That his own son could have become contaminated out there and could be carrying the infection inside of him after all his work to stop that from happening.

  “I’m fine, Dad. I’ve been on the pill. If one of the infected had gotten to me, that would be obvious, anyway,” Gavin added.

  “I’m sending the sub out for you, Gavin.” As his father spoke, his long arms reached out for the control panel and sent out the instructions to do just that. His movements were stiff, with an almost lethargic touch, which made Gavin uneasy. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you what’s happened without you,” he added.

  He’d only been gone a week. What more could have gone wrong?

  “Who’s that behind you?” his father asked abruptly, suddenly realizing that Gavin wasn’t alone. Gavin heard the command behind the words, telling him to get away. He couldn’t mix. It wasn’t safe.

  Hearing herself mentioned, Stella strode forward in full sight of the screen, stopping right next to Gavin. His father’s eyes widened when he took in her albino skin and violet eyes. Gavin knew that his father recognized Stella for what she was, just as he had. Albino specimens of nearly every species were immune to the toxins—humans included. “Where did you find her?”

  “This is Stella. I didn’t find her; she found me,” Gavin said.

  “Her blood could be the start of the cure,” his father mused. “Or if that isn’t possible, it could at least be the blueprint for inoculations.”

  There was something in the way his father stared at Stella, as if he were appraising her, that was too much like what Gavin had just seen. As if Stella was back on that stage, with administrators fighting over who got to kill her, or worse. Almost possessively, Gavin wrapped one arm around Stella and held her close. “She isn’t some kind of experiment. She’s a friend. I wouldn’t have been able to make it here without her.”

  “I see.” Arthur Owings leaned away from the screen and his gaze flickered from Gavin to Stella with interest. “But that isn’t really up to you. That would be up to her. What would you say about it, Stella?”

  For a moment, Stella was silent as she observed his father, considering his words. “What do you want from me?”

  “All we would need is just a sample. Just a few drops of your blood should be enough,” Arthur Owings said, folding his hands together under his chin as he waited for her reply.

  “You think you can use my blood to stop the others from getting infected,” Stella clarified, and Gavin wondered how that must make her feel. She had the opportunity to deny the people who had hunted her for years, who had just nearly killed her. Now Stella had the chance to get her revenge against the men who killed her father.

  “All right,” Stella said with a nod. “I’ll do it.”

  “Gavin, would you do the honors?” his father asked him with satisfaction.

  Gavin didn’t have any other choice. He could feel his father’s eyes on him as he dug through his bag of things from the factory and pulled out a syringe.

  Stella held out her arm, palm upright. Gavin took care to disinfect the area around her wrist. As he brought the needle close to her vein, he paused. He didn’t want to hurt her, not even this small bit. She had been hurt enough already.

  “Don’t worry, I’m used to it,” she said. It was the amusement in her voice that finally snapped Gavin out of it. He gently pressed the needle into her vein and drew out the sample.

  The glass filled red. As Gavin withdrew the needle from Stella, he found himself staring at its contents with interest. While he knew that Stella’s skin was delicate enough for this sample to mark her with another bruise, the scientist in him was unabashedly curious.

  He considered the implication of his father’s words. Her blood could be a cure or an inoculation. Seeing firsthand the danger Stella went through by facing the infected, Gavin knew immunity didn’t mean everything. The infected could kill whether someone had immunity or not. But immunity gave Stella something no other human had—she alone could breathe.

  If his father was right, like he usually was, Stella’s blood could be the start of something new. For the first time, they were on to something that could bring the world back to normal.

  It was then that Gavin noticed the outside doors to the dry docks open with the entrance of the submarine. As all the water drained out and his way back home stood ready, Gavin had the sudden thought that it had never seemed to come so quickly. It was too soon.

  “Gavin, I’ll see you at the loading dock,” Arthur ordered, only looking from the sample to see Gavin’s nod in reply before the transmission went blank.

  Gavin stared down at Stella, who was wrapped snugly into the crook of his arm. Looking at her now, Gavin could see all the bruises spread across her fair skin, a reminder that Stella wasn’t all tough. She could be hurt out there so easily. He didn’t want to think about just how vulnerable she really was. He didn’t want to picture it, Stella walking back down all those hallways, facing the guards once again, and this time alone. He couldn’t stand it.

  “Come with me,” Gavin said.

  Stella looked up at him with wide eyes, and Gavin didn’t know who was more surprised—him or her. The words were out of his mouth before he had time to even consider what he was asking. Gavin had just asked Stella to leave behind her entire life, everything and everyone she had ever known, to come with him, someone she had only known for a week. Yet, as Gavin waited for her answer with his heart pounding so hard he could hear it, he was glad he had said it.

  “Would I never see the others again?�
�� Stella asked, quietly.

  “We have a transport submarine. You could take it out, and see them again.” A trip would be easy enough to arrange—though it would be the perfect opportunity for his attacker to strike again.

  “All right,” Stella said. Despite all she had been through, there was a hint of a smile just at the corners of her mouth. “Let’s go.”

  Carefully, deliberately, Gavin took Stella’s hand and interlaced her fingers with his. Stella wasn’t going to get hurt again. She wasn’t going to get taken advantage of again, not even if it was his people at the oxygen factory who wanted to do it. He was going to protect her. Together, the two of them stepped into the submarine.

  Through the murky water, there wasn’t much for the two of them to see, save for the occasional school of fish. Infection had left the majority of life unchanged underwater, though Gavin did spot some deformed fish mixed in. One fish with three eyes and a crooked spine stood out among the others. Another had a body twice as long as its fellows and undulated in a wild pattern through the water.

  Abruptly, Stella looked away from the school of fish. “I didn’t want you to come after me, but I’m glad you did.”

  Gavin looked at the little he could see of her in the artificial glow of light. More than anything, her pale beauty in the darkness was unearthly, and it was easy to believe she was a spirit or an angel. Anything other than the real person who had helped him through all this. He wished he could know what she was thinking.

  “Why didn’t you want my help?” Gavin asked.

  “I wanted you safe. I don’t think I could live with myself if you died.”

  Gavin swallowed reflexively, trying not to get caught up in emotions, but to understand her instead. “Did you even think you were going to get past the guards?”

  “There was a chance, even if it wasn’t a good one,” Stella admitted.

  She had told him to go home, knowing that she’d probably end up dying. Dying for him.