Breathless City Page 3

  He probably would have gotten eaten without her. “Yes.”

  Stella smiled, her pale lips parting over even, white teeth. “Then put this over your eyes.” She held out a white folded cloth.

  Gavin placed the material over his eyes, feeling it tighten as Stella tied it in a knot at the back of his head, blinding him.

  “This is the way my father taught me,” Stella said from somewhere in front of him. “The infected are blind. Learn to move like them. Learn to think like them. It’ll keep you alive.” Her voice seemed to come from somewhere else now. When she wasn’t speaking, her presence slipped away from Gavin into nothingness.

  “Come find me,” she said.

  All he was aware of was his own heavy footfall as he took a step in the direction he last heard her voice. At least he thought she was in that direction. The world around him was empty, except for the hum of electricity.

  Was he always so loud? Each step was a thud. The rustle of his clothes. The jangle of supplies in his pockets. Each sound was a new piece of information. Gavin had been born in a world full of noise. Normally, he focused on tuning it out.

  He treaded lighter, painfully aware of every motion: the light scuff of his boot against the concrete floor, the crunch of dirt under his foot. That noise was surely loud enough to bring the infected running from wherever they were hiding.

  Gavin stopped at the point where he had heard Stella’s voice last. He hesitated, unable to hear anything in front of him. As they had both taken oxygen pills, he couldn’t even hear the sounds of their breathing.

  “I’m here,” Stella said softly.

  Gavin felt the light touch of her fingertips trail against his outstretched arms. He started, wanting to rip the cloth away from his eyes. Gavin’s heart beat faster, though the touch was quick and light.

  Hesitantly, Gavin reached for her, grasping her small hand. Her fingers interlocked with his. Without his sight to get in the way, he focused on the warmth of her hand, the smooth texture of it.

  “How are you so quiet?” Gavin asked.

  “Practice.”

  Gavin was sure she was smiling again, even though he didn’t see her face. Then those little fingers slipped away, as if Stella had disappeared.

  “Find me again.” Stella’s voice came from a different corner of the room.

  Gavin locked in on the sound of her voice, picturing her location. Stepping carefully to dull the sound of his footsteps, Gavin sought her out.

  It was easy to forget that he was training for a suicide mission when all he wanted to do was seek out the touch of her soft skin.

  3

  “Thanks again for guarding him.” Stella said, after glancing down the bend of the stairway to make sure they were alone. The back stairway was rarely used, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. She’d left Gavin in an abandoned midlevel room, with the suggestion that he practice moving stealthily. There was no need to antagonize Xander further by parading Gavin around in the dining hall.

  Sam shook his head. “Almost wish I hadn’t. You’re risking too much for this guy.”

  “You heard about New York?”

  “Everyone’s heard about New York. Paul bet Dan his stash of green beans that Xander’s bluffing.”

  It was the one place Stella swore she’d never return to. Xander really had it out for Gavin, giving him New York for his initiation. No one with half a functioning human brain went into the city.

  Stella shook her head. “Xander doesn’t back down from the rules. Not for anybody.”

  “He’s more likely going to try to off him in the night. Or push a new partner on him first thing in the morning. Someone like Ben, who’ll take him a few miles out to feed the infected.”

  “That’s why I’m leaving at first light.”

  Sam’s eyes widened. “That’s against the rules.”

  “I know the rules, I taught him the rules. It’s not my fault Xander took them all to extremes.”

  “You really are going to get yourself killed.” Sam cursed in a low tone. “Stella, why are you doing this?”

  Stella peered around the stairway listening intently. She dropped her voice. “If you weren’t guarding him, he’d be dead already.”

  “Why? What’s he got on him?” Sam said, in a low voice.

  Typically new recruits were body searched. Anything suspicious would be taken from them and reported to Xander. But if the supplies were really good? It would be easy enough to steal pills and valuables. All they’d have to do was shoot the newcomer and claim that they were showing signs of turning.

  “He’s got oxygen pills numbered with three digits. I think he’s carrying over a year’s supply. Not the standard pills either, the high-grade stuff.”

  “Are you serious? Who is this guy, some kind of thief? He got connections or something?”

  “He got it straight from the source.”

  “Straight from the… are you talking about the factory? Stella, that’s not possible.”

  “Get him talking about any kind of science and see for yourself. He’s not from here.”

  “This sounds crazy.” Sam shook his head. “You sure you’re not just distracted by his pretty face.”

  “His what?” Stella rolled her eyes. “No. That’s not what this is about.”

  “You’re so defensive. No wonder Xander’s jealous.”

  “He’s got nothing to be jealous about. The only man I ever loved was my father,” Stella said, brushing aside Sam’s comments.

  “Sure doesn’t look that way, seeing how you’re always holding his hand.” Sam smirked when she glared at him.

  They walked down the length of the stairway, listening by the door that led to the dining hall. It was quiet. They were early enough to avoid the rush. Stela could grab enough food for the trip and slip away unseen.

  “You really think he’s from the factory, then?” Sam raised an eyebrow.

  “I do, and it complicates things.” Stella sighed.

  “How so?”

  “What would you do with someone from the oxygen factory?” Stella murmured.

  “I don’t know.” Sam frowned, mulling it over. “Try to get them to give me pills. Maybe even get them to build something. Someone like that has got to improve survival chances.”

  “Exactly. Anyone who gets their hands on him will try to use him.” The only problem was that keeping him alive without revealing what he could do was turning into a challenge.

  “What do you plan to do with him?”

  The first time she had seen Gavin, he had looked into her face and blushed. He was so quick to admit that he trusted her. His naiveté would get him killed in the wrong hands.

  “I want to keep him alive. Help him get home.”

  “Can’t you take him back now instead of risking his life in New York?”

  If only it were that simple. “The only way I can think of to get him back to the oxygen factory is straight through the heart of the underground. How am I supposed to get him through the underground city without help?” But it was more than that. People didn’t just end up washed up on a shore randomly. Something had happened to him, and Stella doubted it was safe to send him back without figuring out how he ended up here in the first place.

  Opening the double doors, Stella saw the one man she had attempted to avoid all night. As soon as she stepped through, his eyes locked on her. She didn’t even have a chance to turn back before Xander got up, crossing through the rows of tables over to her.

  Sam murmured, “I’ll take him with me.” Then he walked over to the food, crossing to the other side of the room to avoid Xander.

  The muscles in her legs tensed as Xander approached, stopping in front of her. He nodded toward the exit, gesturing for her to follow.

  Their argument over Gavin was fresh in her mind.

  She followed Xander to the rooftop, neither of them saying a word on the way. Xander walked straight to the edge and held the rail, staring into the horizon. Stella joined his side, lookin
g out across the desert sands to see what he saw.

  Here, from twelve stories up, the buildings still standing in New York City were clearly visible.

  So that’s how it was. He was playing on her fears.

  “How long has it been since the last time you’ve been out there?” he asked her. “Five years?”

  Stella didn’t reply. He knew how long it had been.

  “It’s gotten worse. I haven’t gone in a year myself. Don’t even know how bad it is now.”

  At least he still cared if she lived or not.

  Out here in the sunlight, away from the others, it was easier to remember who Xander used to be. He caught her looking over at him. “What are you thinking?”

  “I wish we could go back to how things were. You were my best friend.” When she’d first seen Xander, he was just a kid, struggling for fifteen minutes to open a can of Campbell’s chicken and dumplings with a dull knife.

  He brushed his fingers against her cheek, lacing them into her hair. “I don’t want to be friends.”

  “That’s not very nice.” Stella pulled away, choosing to misinterpret him. She looked down, as if hurt by his words.

  “People change, Stella.”

  “I know. I just didn’t want us to change.” There was a time when she would have wanted to be with him. Before he’d evolved into this unyielding man who wouldn’t change his own rules even to save someone he cared about.

  “Please don’t go,” Xander murmured, revealing a trace of who he used to be.

  She scooted closer to him and rested her head against his arm like she used to do when they were kids. “I can’t sit back and watch this one die,” Stella whispered. When she felt his arm tense, she reassured him. “You know me. I’ll be fine.”

  Xander hesitated, then pulled her into a hug.

  When he let her go, he nodded as though he had decided something.

  He unlocked the roof’s equipment shed, what he called his back-up plan, showing Stella a weapons cache filled with automatic rifles, ammo, and even hand grenades.

  “Take what you need,” Xander said, “and make sure that you come back.”

  4

  After their practice, Gavin was aware of every sound—the footsteps, electrical clicks, and even gunshots in the distance.

  Gavin practiced walking quietly, until his steps were less lumbering. They were about as noiseless as he could hope for, before he stopped and stood awkwardly. What would he say if someone asked him what he was doing? He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, waiting.

  As the back of his head touched the wall, he recalled a flash of blue—undersea, where he was last in the oxygen factory. He was in the seaweed fields surrounded by spiraling strands of kelp. He was taking samples from kelp that glowed with a genetically altered luminescence. Something was reflected in the metal of his syringe, something that surprised him. He couldn’t make out the reflection before the memory slipped away.

  The doors to the room opened and Stella’s friend Sam came in.

  “Come on. I’ve got to get back.” Sam held a tray of pasta without sauce and pickles that were discolored in the center. Gavin didn’t miss the look of suspicion on Sam’s face.

  Sam, like Stella, walked through the hotel hallways with caution. He paused at doorways, listening, before silently motioning Gavin on. Was this creeping around some sort of entrenched survival mechanism from living for years among the infected? Or was this his fault? Hopefully Sam was showing extra caution because Xander disliked newcomers who hung around Stella. If this was how Sam always walked around his gang, it meant he didn’t think he could trust the others.

  “Stella said you’re some kind of scientist?” Sam said in a low voice, when he was sure they were alone.

  “Not really.”

  “What does that mean?” Sam narrowed his eyes. “Either you are, or you aren’t.”

  “I can’t really say I’m a scientist because I’m not conducting any of the research. Not for the clinical trials, or the search for the cure.”

  “What do you do?”

  Gavin dug into his pocket for one of his pills. He tapped out a sequence on its outer shell. The pill expanded to full size, roughly the height of an oxygen tank.

  “I spend a lot of time harvesting, and with quality control. It’s a delicate bit of machinery. The pill needs to be able to do a lot of things. It compresses, to fit down the trachea, you know,” Gavin slid his finger down the front of his throat. “The windpipe. It also has to numb all the muscles involved naturally with breathing.” Gavin pointed to clockwork mechanisms and intricate gears. “This part releases oxygen and sets out alarms when it’s close to empty.”

  Gavin turned the pill in his hand, frowning. “I’m trying to fine tune the design, but the pill was never meant to be a permanent solution. Most of the research back home is focused on the cure.”

  “Put that away. Shrink it, quick.” Sam hissed.

  Gavin blinked in surprise. He repeated the sequence on the pill’s outer shell and pocketed it once the pill had shrunk back down.

  “I thought Stella had lost it, for sure.” Sam muttered. “You really are from the factory.” Sam crossed the hallway to one of the hotel rooms and pulled out a key. He unlocked it and entered the room, leaving the door ajar. “Come in. Lock the door behind you.”

  Inside, the layout of the room was nearly identical to the one Stella had left him practicing in. Limp curtains against the window. Bed. The electric hum of a mini refrigerator. A round table in the back was laden with medical supplies. There were pill bottles, discolored and covered in grime. Had Sam found those supplies out in the ruined city? They had to be expired. Some medications would still be effective, though less potent. But why wouldn’t they just use the regular supplies they sent to the underground city?

  “Can you help her?” Sam said from the back of the room, partially out of view.

  A girl lay limp on the couch. Her black curls were damp and plastered against round cheeks. Cold sweat broke out against the dainty features of a lovely face, made haunting by the pallor and sunken eyes. A red trickle slipped out from under her nose, which Sam wiped carefully away.

  Could this be a reaction to the airborne toxins? Gavin ran through the typical symptoms he had encountered in toxin simulations: fever, sure, but also skin and eye discolorations, which she didn’t have. He’d heard of her symptoms before. They were complications from something. Why couldn’t he remember? What happened to his memory during his accident?”

  Something clicked into place—Gavin remembered where he had seen this condition before.

  “I have something that could help,” Gavin unzipped his breast pocket, taking out a vial filled with a sky-blue liquid.

  Sam eyed the blue liquid blankly. “You’re sure?”

  Gavin nodded, rubbing the back of his neck. He had used this hundreds of times with the same results. Though he’d never had an audience before.

  Sam kissed the girl’s knuckles and then stood, walking out of the way. Making room.

  From closer up, it was clear that the girl was suffering from an increased reaction to the toxins. This would work.

  Measuring a few drops into a syringe carefully, Gavin felt the weight of Sam’s gaze. As Gavin disinfected the injection area at the girl’s arm, Sam clenched his fist, but didn’t say a word or make any move to stop him. Gavin administered the injection, plunging medicine into her system.

  In the time it took him to withdraw the needle and put away his supplies, the drug took hold, with a subtle shift from sickness to health. The girl’s face regained color, enough for Gavin to see that there was an olive tone to her skin. Her lips, too, seemed to grow pinker. Fuller. She began to stir.

  Sam knelt in front of her. “Natalia? Nat?”

  Her eyes flicked open in reply, and Gavin was startled to see that they were a honey color. Similar to the solid yellow eyes of the infected, though hers were light and clear. Natural.

  “Hey,” Sam said
gently. “You okay?”

  Natalia smiled at him in answer.

  “Let me know if she needs another dose later. Should be fine now, though,” Gavin mumbled, hoping not to draw attention back to himself. His words were lost on the pair by the couch as Sam pulled Natalia carefully into a hug.

  Gavin blushed at the whispered endearments from the couch. He scanned the room for something to do.

  The light fixture was flickering. Gavin grabbed a chair and stood on it, fiddling with the loose connections causing the issue.

  There. Fixed.

  “Thank you,” Natalia called out to Gavin, in a somewhat weak voice. “For whatever it was you gave me.”

  “Oh,” Gavin said. “You’re welcome.”

  “Are you some sort of doctor?”

  Gavin shook his head. “No, I just work with doctors.”

  “Do you know what’s wrong with me? What did you give me?”

  “You’re showing symptoms of immune suppression. An increased vulnerability to viruses, bacteria, and the toxins. That compound I gave you boosts the immune system.”

  “Immune… suppression? How did that happen?”

  “There’s a couple common conditions and diseases that can compromise the immune system,” Gavin said. “How long were you sick?”

  “A few weeks. Past couple of days, I just kept getting worse.” Natalia leaned against the faded velvet of the couch. “Sam was worried that we wouldn’t be able to hide it much longer.”

  “You don’t have any stiffness in your joints or wrists?”

  Natalia frowned and shook her head.

  “No increased thirst? Or blurred vision?”

  “No,” Natalia said in a small voice.

  “What did it start with?”

  “Before it got worse,” Natalia said, “I felt nauseous all the time. Threw up a bit.”

  “Oh. Well, women’s immune systems can get weakened if their bodies are suppressing a response to paternal genetic material… during pregnancy.”

  Sam and Natalia turned to each other, wide-eyed.

  “When was the last time?” Sam stroked her arm, reassuringly. But his voice was tense.