Tainted (31 page)

No answer.

My heart seizes on a beat and I drop my head. He doesn’t need to respond. My breaking heart knows the answer. He died to save me.

“Why did you do that?” I yell. Then the tears come. As if there hasn’t been enough water in these tunnels.

A weak splashing catches my attention yards down in the other direction, beyond where the floor dips. The broken water main’s discharge still runs over the floor, racing downhill in front of me. I stagger away from Jason’s body, water sloshing against my knees as I limp toward the noise, wanting to kill the source, to hold her under until her eyes bug and her lips turn blue.

Hailey lies on her back in rising water, a section of tunnel wall over her legs. She flails, unable to move it, unable to escape. Water laps across her face, sprays off her chin, up her nose and into her mouth with every breath. The fluid around her creeps higher, bubbling in her mouth when she begs, “Help me.”

“Help you?” She doesn’t deserve it. I should put a foot against her chest and hold her down. But she doesn’t deserve the escape of death, either, not after all the people she’s wronged. Hailey needs to face justice. I reach for a chunk of wood floating nearby to wedge the packed dirt out of her lap. “You don’t deserve help,” I tell her. “But I’m not my father’s monster. You are.”

She stills, her hair floating like black seaweed round her.

“You’re right,” she says. “I’ll always love you, Alex.”

Hailey lies back. Water rushes to cover her. Eyes locked on mine, Hailey opens her mouth and inhales a huge breath of fluid. Her will might be strong, but her body doesn’t want to die with it. She coughs and sputters, her mouth and nose frothing. Her body thrashes, legs and arms flail. I turn my gaze, focus on the floor and try to shut out Hailey’s death throes as I wedge the sodden stick under the hunk of wall.

My right leg shudders when I put weight on it. The packed earth slides an inch, but I can’t get enough leverage to push it off before Hailey’s fight for life dies. I give one last heave and the chunk slides off one leg.

Defeated, I use the piece of wood as a crutch, lean over and close Hailey’s eyes.

A weak trickle of sorrow burbles up. Even though she orchestrated the same death for Emma, no one deserves to die drowning, wanting the one thing they can never have. And maybe that’s the true sadness for Hailey, pity, because despite her obsessive devotion to me, she would never amount to more than a shadow to Emma’s sun in my life.

I turn, water churning around my legs, a used vial floating on the surface. Must’ve washed down the stairs from the mess Emma made in the lab.

I pull off my soaking wet shirt, tear off a sleeve and use it to bind the wound still leaking blood from my leg. If it wasn’t for my life-sustaining serum, I might’ve blacked out by now. I can’t give in. I’ve lost too much. And I can’t bear to have Jason and that monster at my feet lying only yards from each other. The piece of ceiling pinning him down is smaller than the hunk of wall on Hailey’s body – I
will
move it.

Hurt radiates up my right side with every step back to Jason.

“I’m going to get that rock off you,” I tell him. It’s too hard to think of him as gone. So I don’t. Not really.

I wedge the board under the edge, and lean my weight on it. The chunk shifts.

“Almost there, buddy,” I promise. I lift my foot off the ground and lie on the board. The piece of ceiling shudders, then flips off Jason’s back.

Glistening white knobs segment the dark puddle of mud along his spine. I refuse to see them for what they are: vertebrae and blood.

“There. Better, right?” I know Jason is really gone. If he were alive at all, he would be riding my ass about talking at a time like this.

Wincing at the ripping sensation in my thigh, I stoop to the wet earth, and hook my arms around Jason’s crushed chest. It gives in unnatural ways, stretching and constricting, feels like 3D puzzle pieces grinding against each other in a wet bag. Chunky red fluid gushes from his mouth and drips beneath us when I hoist him from the ground.

A fresh gush of hot blood courses down my leg and dots swim in my vision. Sucking air, I hook one hand in his belt and hug Jason to me and limp to the stairs.

“I’m not leaving you down here,” I promise.

Using my good leg for leverage, I drag us up one step at a time. Lightheaded, I stand at the top of the steps, waiting for the dizziness to fade enough to move him farther. The narrow hall leans in, the floor wobbles and my vision dims.

“Emma?” I yell. “Paul? Someone help!”

Jason’s broken body drags me down until we’re a muddy jumble on the floor. He’s so dirty. He shouldn’t be filthy after the sacrifice he made. I wipe hair from his eyes. Using my sleeve, I wipe the bloody foam from his mouth and nose, then pull him to me.

“I’m so sorry, Jason.” My throat burns when I breathe. “It should’ve been me. I should’ve died.”

I lose it then, become a sobbing, bawling mess.

The secret door swings open, bathing the tunnel in light. Emma pokes her beautiful face in and my heart breaks all over again. I reach for her with one hand, refusing to let go of Jason. She lets out a shocked little breath, then runs to me and drops down at my side. She flings her arms around us both. Emma’s so warm and clean and alive. She rocks a little, stroking my hair, my arm, my back.

“What happened?” she asks, her voice soft and thick with tears.

“He died to save me,” I choke on a sob, inhale a shaky breath and continue, “There’re tunnels under the building. The broken water main flooded them. The ceiling ripped loose and Jason pushed me out of the way. I couldn’t leave him down there. I couldn’t…” My sentence strangles off in another sob.

“Let me help you,” she says. “We’ll get him out of here.”

I nod, transferring Jason to her arms so I can use both hands to stand. She holds him like he’s still alive, cradling him, a tear falling from her eye to wash a little mud off his cheek. Somehow, little five foot five Emma struggles back to her feet with Jason still wrapped to her chest. I hook his legs up and help get him back into the lab.

“The table I was on,” Em says, guiding, knowing somehow that I’m barely holding on to Jason’s legs, barely holding on to sanity. The ridiculous unfairness could choke me.

We carry Jason to the table next to the Lazarus Protocol cabinet, the door still hangs open from when I grabbed the sedatives. The vials of life-reviving formula throw light back at me when I bend to put Jason on the gurney.

A dark, selfish need springs to life in me. I could wake Jason up. We have plenty of the formula. I don’t have to let him go…

Emma steps back, arranges his hands over his chest, and then drapes him with a blanket from the counter. Does she know he did the same for her? He helped me bring Em back to life. He covered her with a blanket to stay warm.

“We don’t have to let him die,” I mutter, my gaze on the rack full or formula vials. “I can bring him back.”

“Oh, Alex, no,” she says. Her lips press into a line, eyebrows tip down, and then she steps between me and Jason’s body. “Don’t do that to Jason. He’ll be in agony.”

“But I can bring him back!” She doesn’t understand. This isn’t Bree she’s losing. I’m losing Jason. “I can bring him back, even if I can’t cure him.”

“Cure him of what?”

“He’s dying Em.” I pace between Emma and the cabinet of life. “He has a genetic disease that’s killing him.”

“No, he’s already dead.”

Emma tucks the blanket tight around Jason like it will keep me from him. She grabs my hand, forces me to look at her.

“He died so that you could live. Don’t ruin that. Don’t take that away from him.”

“But I
hurt
.” I clench a hand to a fist over my heart. The loss is ripping me apart.

And I can stop this pain. I can be the monster my father was, stealing lives to revive me because he couldn’t stand to let me go. I cast a look at Jason’s mangled form, an inventory of needs opening in my mind: ribs, sternum, spine, lungs, heart… He could be remade – Jason could be like me. There are ways to make Jason whole again.

One look at his filthy face and I know the last thing I want to do is ruin Jason with my need to have him in my life. He told me once never to do that to him.

“You’re supposed to hurt,” she says. “But he doesn’t have to anymore. Let his sacrifice mean something.”

“I don’t want to,” I say, the loss knifing under my ribs.

“None of us do.”

Em takes the hand I offer, cuddles to my bloody chest. My father ruined lives and saved lives in this room. He truly saved mine when he woke me with Daniel’s love for Emma. “The truth is,” I whisper, “I would be a wreck without you.”

“Then do something to prove it.”

I turn us away from the Lazarus cabinet. We’ll both need it in a couple days, but I won’t bind my friend to it. Emma’s fingers are cool when she tucks them in the neck of my filthy shirt. Jason’s fingers are cold when I lay my hand over his.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Even when everything inside has come undone, Emma’s arms around my chest hold me together. Time ceases to matter, although the hurt goes on and on.

“We need to get you cleaned up,” she says, wiping blood from her hands off on her jeans. With a gentle touch, she peels my T-shirt away and exposes the long gash on my chest. “Where’s the antiseptic?”

“Second cupboard to the left,” I say, and point toward the row of cabinets across the table Jason’s body occupies.

Emma pulls the blanket up over Jason’s hands when she walks to the cupboard. “By the way,” she says, not looking at me, “Thanks for sedating me.”

“Um…You’re welcome?”

“No, really.” She grabs a big bottle of antiseptic and gauze pads and turns back to me. “I’d really lost it and would’ve done something bad.”

“That appears to be a side-effect of one of Hailey’s aerosols.”

I clench my jaws and let Em flush out both cuts Hailey gave me. “Oh my God,” she says, when I prop my foot on the chair by the wall. “That’s really gross. I can see muscles and stuff.”

A noise comes from the hall, rhythmic splashing like someone walking in the flooded hall. I straighten my leg despite the fresh hell Emma poured into the wound, and shove her behind me. My knife and Jason’s crowbar lie feet away where he fell earlier.

“Kid?” Paul’s voice comes into the room. “Please tell me you’re alright.”

I hobble to the door, meeting Paul when he limps in. Paul looks like hell, like something from a zombie movie, face all mottled on one side, bloodied, left arm crooked up to his chest, fingers hanging twisted.

“I’m in one piece,” I say, “But I don’t think I’ll be alright for a really long time.”

Despite his injuries, and mine, despite the awkward truth lying between us, I wrap my arms around Paul and hug him. He winces, then flings his right hand around my back and squeezes.

“I called the authorities,” he says, and pulls out of my arms. “They’ll be here soon. And Jason called Bree. She’s on her way. Where is he?”

The expression on my face must speak volumes.

Paul blanches, face going white, black, blue and seeping red. “Oh, Alex. I’m so sorry.”

I sniff back moisture in my nose, grab a pack of gauze and dry the cut in my chest. The physical pain is easier to deal with. “Did you get the files I sent?” I ask to change the subject.

“Yes.” Paul shuffles to the table, takes the antiseptic and some gauze and washes Jason’s face as he says, “Hailey created a wicked cocktail with aspects of the formula, the sedative and the cognitive control drug she and Katrina had engineered using the animals.” He grabs a towel, slides it under Jason’s hands, and cleans them too. “The results were short term, with no lingering side-effects.”

“So,” Emma says, and tips her head when she looks at Paul. “She told me to forget and I just forgot it all?”

“No.” He limps to the computer and logs on. “I figured out her encryption code from the pictures Alex sent me.” He pulls up a file on the computer in the lab and opens the last document. “According to her notes, the initial doses contained a chemical known to induce memory loss. The last batch she made without it but added a component meant to stimulate anger.”

“That last batch must be the stuff she dosed me with,” I say.

“The police brought me home because I had no memory of being at her house,” Em says in a musing tone. “The lack of memory must not have played to her favor. So, I’m really going to be OK?” Emma’s voice breaks, and she drags in a shaky breath. “It was all her doing? I’m not losing my mind?”

“No more blackouts,” Paul says with certainty. “The next injection will clear out everything she tainted your system with. You’re going to be fine.”

Emma pats her chest, her face and then smiles. “I’m OK.”

So, I didn’t create a monster when I brought her back. The true monster lies in the tunnel beneath us.

We all flinch when a sudden noise echoes through the lab.

“I asked my brother to take his snowmobile and get your friend Bree,” Paul says. Even bruised and bleeding, I can read the apology on his face. “The girl sounded frantic when she called the lab’s landline.”

No wonder Paul was so intent on cleaning Jason up.

Em wades through the ankle deep water, trying to make it to the doors. From where I stand, I see Bree toss the snowmobile helmet and tear at the zippers and Velcro fasteners on the insulated suit.

“Where is he?” she yells from the hall. “Jason, you have some explaining to do.”

Paul staggers, hobbling around the gurney to stand by me, obstructing the view of Jason’s body. Emma holds her arms out, a feeble attempt to stop Bree from charging in.

“Where is he?” she repeats. She looks from Emma, to me, to Paul, all of us injured and bleeding, and standing between her and the bed. Bree stops, gives a minute shake of her head, and Em moves forward, trying to wrap her best friend in a hug. “No.” Bree says. “
No
.
You’re all fine. He’s fine, right? Alex?” Her voice scales higher, panicky, and my throat hurts in sympathy. “Jason’s OK, isn’t he?”

I can’t lie to her. But the ache in my chest doesn’t want to voice the truth. To say it makes it true and I still want to believe he’s just sleeping. I hang my head, “I’m so sorry, Bree.”