Archive of Our Own

She wrenched the vent cover out of the way and crawled out.

Come with me.

Joel was a fucking asshole. And she was the biggest idiot in the whole of the Boston QZ.

She swiped at her stinging eyes and shoved the memories down, all those nights on the roof, all the food he’d brought her, the flannel, that outrage over her bruises and her black eye, and braiding her hair. Fuck – she was never going to be able to forget the way he looked so goddamn pissed the night he saw her bite marks.

They gave you a second infected bite – on purpose – just to see what would happen.

None of it meant anything in the end. Boiling rage carried her across the room and back, a feral scream itching for relief and two fists looking for a wall.

She ripped her clothes off and pulled her flimsy gown back on, throwing the stolen garments into the vent.

It ain’t your job to save the world.

Except it was her job. The asshole didn’t understand–no, he just didn’t care that her immunity was the key to saving humanity. No matter how much he confused her with the concerned looks and the questions, Joel was just another name on the list of all the people who didn’t give a shit. 

It ain’t worth your life—

But it was worth Riley’s? Worth her mother’s? She couldn’t just fucking leave the way his shitty brother had. If he really meant it – any of it – he would stay. But what was she compared to a real life brother? Just a pest on a roof he was glad to leave behind, the way she always knew he would.

Those last words kept echoing back through her mind, each pass cutting like glass: I ain’t your dad and you sure as hell ain’t my daughter. So why the hell would I care.

She was done. One-thousand-percent done. She didn’t fucking need him anyway. No more Joel, no more rooftop, no more stupid daydreaming about a stupid life that was never gonna fucking happen.

Come with me – fuck him for ever making her think she could.

She slid the vent cover back in place for the last time, shuttering all her foolish hopes with it.

~~~

The hunger that clawed at her belly was her only indication of the time when she woke. She stared up at the water stains on the ceiling that she’d been tracing for over a year, the same patchwork of abstract marks that she’d imagined into recognizable shapes like they were clouds. There was the spot in the corner that looked like a dog, another that formed half a pterodactyl, and the one by the door that looked like a sheep. She had only found that one the day after Joel told her—

The nightmare resurfaced in her mind, both real and not. She rolled to her side and pulled the threadbare blankets with her, up and over her head to hide the red blooming across her cheeks that no one was there to see anyway. Alone again. Always.

She couldn’t believe it — that she was never going to see him again. Not when just yesterday she’d been hoping he’d offer to braid her hair again. She couldn’t even picture the roof empty after all these months, couldn’t picture herself waiting for hours alone, stupidly hoping he’d show up one last time, all the while he would be halfway out of the QZ.

She huffed and burrowed deeper into her cocoon, pressing back against the sting in her eyes. There was no way in hell she was going back again. Let him be the one left wondering. Let him be the one stupidly waiting alone – pretending to be worried when she didn’t show, what a fucking lie.

Never. She was never going back up to that roof again. The vow rattled through her, ricocheting a trail of cracks in its wake.

I ain’t your dad–

Good thing too, Joel would make one shitty dad.

–and you sure as hell ain’t my daughter.

Like she needed the reminder; she didn’t belong to anyone.

~~~

She picked at a crack in the wall. The concrete blocks, once indestructible against bare hands, had weathered over time and some spots sloughed off like sand at her touch. A sort of slow motion collapse, if no one intervened.

When her anger had flared it burned through fast and hot, leaving a charred husk in its wake. A simmering orange core still glowed at the epicenter with plumes of smoke blanketing the abandoned wreckage. She’d been alone since before she was left to smolder, longer even than she’d been stuck here. Which just meant she should be used to it by now — should be used to the disappointment too. But the ache of both still clung.

Back to business as usual; alone all day, alone all night. Every night. Even tomorrow night.

It wasn’t always this way, this quest for the cure. In the beginning it had been far less isolated and the air had hummed with fervor and hope. After they’d double and triple confirmed her immunity and the reality started setting in, there had been a whole host of nurses, doctors, and scientists coming and going – hell, even a few FEDRA officers had joined in – showering her with attention, all day, everyday.

She recalled, with a pang of regret now, how she’d wished for a few more moments alone at the time. It had been overwhelming to go from disposable FEDRA kid that no one looked twice at to being revered as humanity’s only hope overnight. Especially when she couldn’t talk to any of them about Riley.

But at least she’d had company then.

Now she slid to the floor, wishing for someone, anyone, to talk to. Just someone to answer her questions and maybe rate her puns. Her arms looped around her knees as her gaze slipped over to the door.

If she closed her eyes it was almost like being back in her shitty FEDRA dorm during those few weeks Riley was missing but not yet gone. If she kept her eyes closed long enough, she could pretend that any minute she would climb in through the window and this time they’d stay in all night. And if she drifted just enough toward sleep, she could almost feel her sitting next to her.

Her head tipped unconsciously for a shoulder that wasn’t there, then lolled and she jerked back awake.

The sting of her absence hadn’t been as sharp since she found the roof but now that old wound was twice as painful.

The click of a key at the door had her scrambling back to her feet. Maybe they decided they needed her for a procedure today after all. Maybe she would get a few hours outside this tiny room, a break from tracing water stains and counting floor tiles.

Janet slipped in, a tray of food balanced in one hand.

“Morning,” Ellie said, forcing a smile.

She only responded with a curt nod as she slid the tray onto the small table.

“What’s on the menu today?”

Janet slid her a disapproving look, lips thinned to a frown. “Same as everyday, you know that.”

She worked her lips and bit down on all the puns that immediately came to mind: eggs-actly what I was egg-specting; orange you glad I’m not too picky; good thing this is my jam.

“Vitals,” she prompted.

Ellie stepped over and held out her arm.

Spence would have loved the breakfast inspired puns and she probably would have thrown out a few of her own. The two of them had left many a stoic FEDRA officer in stitches with their puns wars, usually just before descending into giggling fits themselves. She’d even brought Ellie a new copy of Will Livingston’s Volume Too after Ellie mentioned losing her old one.

That was back before everything changed, when she was still allowed to make jokes and ask questions. Back when there was still excitement around her immunity, rather than disappointment.

“Are we doing a procedure today?” she asked as casually as she could.

“Quiet. You know I can’t concentrate with all your chatter.”

She was a severe older woman, barely taller than Ellie herself and constantly sporting a scowl that would give Joel a run for his money.

Fuck, how long until she stopped making those comparisons?

“Fever seems to be gone. Headache?”

“Gone.”

She nodded, giving her a head to toe once over. “Eat up. We’ll be back to collect you later.”

“Collect me for what?”

“You know I can’t answer that,” she said, already moving toward the door.

“Can you at least say if they’re making progress?”

It had been months since anyone had told her anything about their progress, and even then, it had been Dr. Marlow who’d taken pity on her and given her a small update that left her with more questions than answers. A non-update really, since everything they’d tried up to that point had failed. But surely there was something more to report by now.

“I can’t say what I don’t know.”

“Well can you ask?” she pressed.

“What’s gotten into you today?” Janet demanded, one hand tight on the doorknob. “You know the protocol. Information is only held by those that need it.”

“But–”

“No ‘buts’ girl,” she snapped.

Ellie’s posture immediately straightened at her tone, mouth clamped shut and braced for a blow. It wouldn’t come, Janet never disciplined her. But she must’ve done her fair share with other kids because she had that look about her, the one that said she was tired of talking and ready to start swinging. Ellie’s fingers flexed against the echo of pain.

“Eat. Before it gets cold.”

Then she was gone and the lock clicked back into place.

It hadn’t always been locked. After they’d conceded that she was in fact immune, there was a brief window where she had free reign of the entire floor. Then one day it was like a switch flipped: almost everyone disappeared and the team dwindled down to just a select few that were approved to see her.

It’s for your own good, they’d told her, the lengths certain people would go to get a hold of you, the things they would want to try… It’s for your own good.

For the good of humanity.

Spence was one of the ones that disappeared in the switch, her first and only almost-friend in this never ending hospital stay. She never even got to say goodbye.

No one laughed at her jokes after that. No one brought her books or answered her questions. They kept the door locked and left her here. Her own room, complete with in suite bath and a very limited selection of entertainment. Three books, a cassette player with one tape, seven colored pencils and a notebook she’d filled months ago. The room was twelve blocks tall, seven and a half blocks long, and five steps wide. Two vents, one door, and no windows.

Her little prison cell.

At the back of her mind a traitorous thought formed; if she had agreed to go with Joel last night, she would have been done with all of this. No more blood draws, no more spinal taps or skin biopsies, no more passing the minutes by counting wall blocks or staring at the ceiling wondering if it was her imagination or if her eyes were leaking blood onto her pillow.

Her stomach knotted up with her dirty little secret, the one she could hardly admit to herself, let alone Joel: she wanted to leave, she’d been wanting to for a long time.

The urge to run crashed over her like a wave, to get up to the roof and wait as long as it took for Joel to reappear, to beg him to take her with him, to take her anywhere else.

She grabbed the plate of food and threw it at the wall with a strangled cry. The shitty plastic didn’t even crack. Both hands clamped over her mouth to catch the scream before it broke loose. She choked it back down, pulled the fragments back in.

She couldn’t leave. For Riley, for her mother, for everyone else who’d died while she was clueless about her immunity. She had to stay until they figured it out. That was her purpose. If she didn’t at least do that, then what was the fucking point of making it out of that stupid mall?

Joel said he would be back. In a few weeks. Maybe by then they’d have a cure and she could rub it in his fucking face.

Maybe if he asked again tomorrow night, she’d say yes.

Maybe he never really meant it and that’s why he took it back so fast.

~~~

She rolled the ball between her fingers, a double edged reminder she couldn’t quite put down.

We don’t give that up.

She did though, she had to. She couldn’t have them both.

When Joel had asked her to come with him, she barely believed it was real but she’d almost said yes. She’d been so close to saying yes that pushing back against that answer had hurt somewhere deep inside her chest and it hadn’t stopped since.

Her gaze slid over to the vent like it was something she wasn’t supposed to be looking at. Maybe… Her grip tightened around the ball. Maybe she should go back tomorrow, even if it would be the last time.

We don’t give that up.

But she had to. And Joel said he would come back, he said that he and Tess knew what they were doing and they’d be back just as soon as they found Tommy, he said—

So why the hell would I care.

Copper tang hit her tongue from a swift bite to the inside of her cheek and her arm tensed to throw the ball.

Her execution faltered at the sound of a key in the door and she quickly tucked the ball under her pillow as the door opened.

“Hey, Ellie,” Daimon said, a bit breathless. “You ready to go?”

Her brow furrowed. “Janet said the procedure was canceled.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I guess they un-canceled it.”

It was a little odd, considering it couldn’t have been more than an hour or so since Janet had dropped off dinner and the news. But it wouldn’t be the first time they’d changed course more than once in a day.

The sight of the empty hallway behind him caught her attention and she leaned to see more.

“Where’s the escort?” she asked when she didn’t find any sign of the familiar shadows that always followed her to and from procedures.

“What–oh, they’re on their way. They’re meeting us. But we need to get going, can’t keep Dr. Marlow and the others waiting.”

“It’s against protocol,” she said, mainly because it had been drilled into her, first as a trainee and then even deeper as a patient.

He gave her a skeptical look. “Since when are you a stickler for protocol?”

She almost laughed outright at the irony of the question, considering the evidence of just how little regard she had for protocol was less than five feet away, hidden behind a vent that no one bothered to secure. But bucking protocol in the middle of the night was far different than broad daylight.

“You’re not scared, are you?” he asked with a teasing lilt.

“No,” she said, even as her mind pivoted to the hole they would’ve thrown her in for less before they found out she was the key to saving the world.

“Then get off your ass already.” It wasn’t the biting order it would have been from anyone else.

Daimon wasn’t friendly the same way Spence had been but he was polite enough in the few weeks he’d been there. He didn’t snap at her for asking too many questions like Janet and the others, and he didn’t glower constantly like that asshole-Bradley he’d replaced. Dumbass-asshole-Bradley who’s temper had finally blown a fuse. It was his own damn fault too, she’d told him she was sick and he’d stayed right in the splash zone anyway, then hit her for it like it was her fault. The next day he was gone, dumb fucker got himself canned.

“Okay, okay,” she said, despite her lingering reservations. “Do you know what they’re doing?”

He shifted from one foot to the other and shook his head. “You know how it is.”

A resigned sigh slipped out as she tried to dismiss the discomfort that snaked between her shoulders at the unknown. It could be something easy, like a blood draw, or it could be something brand new, like the time they’d tried some mystery medication that would help them better analyze her immunity and she’d woken up three days later still struggling to breathe right.

The excitement of the early days was long gone, the novelty corroded away by time and monotony and pain. Procedure days used to be filled with hope, now they just felt like punishment. Which was especially terrible since they would be her main source of company again, now that—

She hopped off the bed, one hand absently checking that the tie at the side of her gown was secure as she went.

“Slippers,” he said, casting a look over his shoulder as his weight shifted again.

“You got a burr in your saddle or something?” she asked, kicking into the slippers that were scarcely better than going barefoot.

“Since when are you spouting southern phrases, city girl?”

Her amusement winked out — since she’d heard Joel say it.

She shrugged and responded flatly, “Ready.”

The hallway was empty as he looked both ways again before tipping his head for her to follow.

“That’s the wrong way,” she said when he went to turn left at the intersection.

“Not today it’s not,” he said, continuing a few steps ahead.

“Yes –” she looked back to the right, toward the stairs up to the procedure rooms “– it is. We always take the stairs down this hallway.”

“They’re set up in a different room this time. Back stairs are closer.”

The casualness of his voice was immediately undercut when he looked past her like he was afraid of finding someone there.

She took a step back. “Where’s the escort?”

“Ellie, we don’t have time for this, let’s go,” he said with an impatient gesture.

Something wasn’t right, she couldn’t pinpoint what but the air was thick with it.

“Go where?”

“I’m taking you out of here,” he said, voice dropping to a low hiss. “You’ll understand everything later but right now we need to move.”

A shiver traced up her spine and through her ribs, struck by a sudden and impossible idea. But what other explanation was there? No one else knew she was here. Her heart skipped in her chest, thrumming with the hope she thought she’d burned out of it. 

She leaned forward, breathless with anticipation, and asked, “Did Joel send you?”

Confusion flashed across his features and shattered her illusion of hope. And if Joel wasn’t behind this then—

He grabbed her arm before she could dart away and started dragging her roughly down the hall.

“Let go of me.” She tried to snap the words into something intimidating but he towered over her and his grip pinched tight enough to bruise.

“Be quiet,” he snapped with a jostle of her arm.

Fresh, sharp fear crawled up her spine and hollowed her out. All the warnings they’d ever given her of what others might be willing to do if they learned of her immunity; the ways they might try to harvest it.

“Let me go,” she demanded again, her voice steeped in desperation.

She clawed at his grip but it was useless. He pulled her forward harder with a grunt of irritation and she stumbled to keep her feet underneath her. Pain shot through her shoulder as he half dragged her on.

“Help!” she shouted blindly over her shoulder, “someone, help–”

He wrenched her around, pulled her clear off her feet and clamped his other hand over her mouth.

“Would you shut the fuck up,” he hissed in her ear. “Always fucking talking. Jesus christ.”

The grip and the hiss and the loss of her own footing flooded her system with a new level of fear. Her mind jumped between nightmares – laid out on a table as they dissected her arm, her bones, her brain. Unless he wasn’t after her immunity, unless he wanted something else entirely. Sold to a slaver or a collector, they’d never find her again, they’d never finish the cure, Joel would never know what happened to her.

She flailed against his hold, every inch of her body screaming not to let this man take her. She bucked, kicked, and screamed in vain against the dirty hand over her mouth. But her feet kept missing, her elbow thumped awkwardly, and her muffled screams barely made it to her own ears.

He was too strong, held her too tight against his chest, she couldn’t even reach the floor for an attempt at anchoring or leveraging herself against him. She was too small, he was going to take her and– and–

His hand slipped just far enough that she managed to hook her teeth around the edge and bite down.

“Shit– fuck,” he swore and jerked his hand free.

Ellie took the opportunity to swing her legs as hard as she could for the wall but his grip stayed firm and her feet fell short.

“You were supposed to come quietly,” he growled. She inhaled to scream again but it lodged in her throat when he continued, “I’m trying to save your life you stupid spoiled brat.”

“From–” she swung her heel for his shin and sent a jolt of pain up her own leg in the process “–what?”

“From FEDRA.”

She stopped thrashing long enough for him to pull her into a side room and shut the door behind them. He let her feet down but kept a tight hold on her arm.

“What are you talking about? You are FEDRA.” She punctuated her accusation with a yank against his grip but he held firm.

“I’ve never been a fucking FEDRA rat. We don’t have time for this. You have to trust me and stop fighting—”

“Trust you? I don’t know who the fuck you are or where you’re trying to take me,” she didn’t bother to keep her voice down. “Why the hell would I trust someone who’s trying to kidnap me?”

“Marlene sent me.”

“Who the fuck is Marlene?”

“She’s leader of the Boston Fireflies and she’s your only ticket out of here.”

She tried to back up a step and threw the words in lieu of a fist, “I’m not going anywhere with a fucking Firefly.”

“She was your mom’s best friend. She’s the one that left you the knife and the note. And she’s risking every Firefly in Boston to get you out of here tonight.”

Her head stopped mid-shake of denial and if he wasn’t holding her arm, she might have fallen on her ass. “How—”

“I told you, we don’t have time for this. We need to keep moving—”

“What about the cure? What about all of FEDRA’s research?”

He laughed but she didn’t hear any humor in it. “Those fascist fucks? They already have it and they’d rather off you than let anyone else have a shot at it.”

“That’s a fucking lie,” she snarled. “They would’ve told me.”

“You’re stupider than I thought if you don’t believe me. But that doesn’t change anything. They’d rather leverage it to keep control than use it to save lives.

“Unlike the Fireflies who save so many lives with their bombs.”

“We don’t have time for your smart fucking mouth. We have to move, now.”

He swung the door open and started dragging her again.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she growled.

Her bare feet scrambled for a hold on the ground, her slippers lost somewhere behind them, but she just skidded and stumbled forward. It was too much, too fast and she didn’t know what to do or who to believe. He had to be lying, he was kidnapping her for fuck’s sake, he had to be lying. They would have told her, someone would have told her.

But the knife. How else would he know about the knife? And Joel didn’t trust FEDRA either.

She grabbed at an old cart as they passed, it pivoted but fell from her grip and tipped over with a loud crash. Daimon spun in place, drawing a gun as he went, hand shaking as he scanned for a threat. When he clocked the cart she tipped, he pulled her on through a pair of swinging doors.

They stopped again. “Fuck.”

A beat later Ellie heard it too and he shoved her down a side hall as she shouted for help again.

“Here! I’m here!”

“Shut up,” he hissed, clamping a hand back over her mouth.

Too late, there were footsteps thundering closer and shouts for them to stop as he ducked them both behind a tall cabinet.

He fired a few blind shots around the corner. “Stay back!” He held her tight to his chest again, his hot breath at her ear made her skin crawl.

“Daimon, let’s all take a deep breath and not do anything we’ll regret.”

In all the time she’d been stuck here, she’d never been so happy to hear Dr. Marlow’s voice.

She jostled in his grip and caught sight of the armed contingent of FEDRA officers that lined the hallway, half a dozen in formation ahead of him. An impenetrable wall, shoulder to shoulder with weapons raised, it was reminiscent of the firing squad.

Her breath stopped and started again over skipped heart beats. They wouldn’t – not with her in front of him, not when they needed her, not when Joel said he was coming back and she still needed to say sorry for whatever flashed across his face last night—

“You're the one with a team of guns pointed at a kid,” he said. “Why don’t you back off and then we can talk.”

“Let me go,” she heard herself whisper. “Let me go and they won’t shoot.” She didn’t mean for it to sound like begging.

“Shut up,” he muttered.

“Where are you going to go, Daimon?” Dr. Marlow asked patiently.

“The fuck away from here,” he snapped.

“Don’t be crass. You’re free to leave, just as soon as you let Ellie go,” he said.

Daimon barked a laugh. “We both know that’s a fucking lie – no one is free to leave this place.”

She caught sight of a gun barrel trained on them. Heart in her throat, no air in her lungs. Would it hurt? Was this chilling fear coursing through Riley when she’d pointed the gun at her or was she already gone?

“Are you a solo agent or a Firefly?” Dr. Marlow asked.

“I’m not telling you shit.”

“Not even to save yourself?” His voice was steady and calm, like they were discussing business over coffee. “Treason will put you on the wall but rooting out traitors will make you a hero. Is this little show really worth your life?”

Distantly, she wished Joel was there. She had no idea, really, what he would have done if he was, but she liked to think he would’ve already disarmed Daimon and punched him in the fucking face, at least.

“I know what you plan to do with her,” he said, breath hot and heavy at her neck.

“You have no idea what our plans are.”

“What? Don’t want to admit that you’d rather play god than give humanity a fighting chance?”

“You’re rambling, son,” his voice sharpened. “Are you feeling alright?”

“You won’t be able to hide this forever. It’s more than just me who knows what you’re doing here and they’ll expose you for the selfish cowards you really are–”

In the span of a heartbeat there was a very loud pop that hollowed out her ears and then his grip and his breath and his weight fell away so quickly that she stumbled herself. The officers swarmed in to herd her away but not before she turned and caught a glimpse of the crimson stain seeping across the floor. More soldiers filed in from a door she only just noticed behind their hiding spot. Between the flurry of soldiers she saw two lifeless eyes, a slack jaw, and a hole in the side of his head about the size of her finger. The same size as the hole she shot through—

“Ellie? Ellie, dear, don’t look at that, look here.”

A hand pulled her attention sharply around and she was face to face with Dr. Marlow. His hand at her cheek felt closer than his words with her head still muffled under the hollow echo.

“Are you alright?” he asked, blue eyes piercing with concerned scrutiny.

She still couldn’t hear right, couldn’t get the image of crimson to stop flashing with each blink, but she licked her lips and nodded anyway.

He smiled, revealing his crooked teeth and slipped an arm over her shoulders to steer her further away. More soldiers passed in the opposite direction but she kept her gaze forward now. As they rounded the corner, he pulled her in tighter to avoid yet another passing officer. A shiver traced down her spine and she couldn’t tell if it was from the arm that tried to take her or the one steering her now.

Joel had put his arm across her chest once, to keep her from falling off the roof, to protect her. This didn’t feel like that.

~~~

I’m trying to save your life.

Fireflies. Marlene. Her mom. Blood. And a bullet hole.

They’d rather off you–I’m trying to save your life.

Around and around she went, replaying snatches and fragments she couldn’t seem to string back together. What did he mean – save her from what? And did they–did they really already have it? They couldn’t. Because they would have told her, they would have started distributing it. Wouldn’t they?

Was any of it true? Was all of it true?

“You were very brave back there, you know.”

She came back to the present room, to Dr. Marlow examining her arm. There wasn’t much to look at since most of the rawness from his vice grip had faded. Though, she could almost see the imprint of his fingers lingering on her skin.

“I didn’t really do anything,” she said.

He passed her a glance over the thinly rimmed glasses perched low on the bridge of his nose. “You kept yourself calm, stalled him until help arrived. That was very smart.”

She shifted in her seat, uncomfortable under the weight of his praise. It was the most one on one time she’d ever had with Dr. Marlow. usually Dr. Jones or Dr. Hadley was present for procedures and exams at the very least, and they always had the usual escort of two FEDRA officers standing guard. They were out in the hall now.

She should’ve known Daimon was up to something.

“Didn’t feel smart,” she admitted. “More like – I wasn’t thinking at all.”

“That’s because it was instinct,” he said. “You’re a born survivor. Your immunity is proof enough of that.”

“I figured that was just luck.”

“There’s no such thing as luck,” he said with a small shake of his head. Then he lifted her arm straight out and asked, “does that hurt?”

It did twinge a bit. “I’ve had worse.”

Her answer seemed to please him if his easy smile was any indication. “You tell me if anything else hurts, alright?”

She nodded and he bent her arm at the elbow, testing her mobility back and forth. It really was fine, no need to make a fuss. But she wasn’t in much of a hurry to get back to her room either, so if letting him articulate her arm like a doll delayed that for a while then she’d be Pistachio (or whatever that dumb puppet’s name was that Kwong lectured her about).

“Your resilience is part of what makes you so special,” he said.

She scoffed before she could think to hold it back. He raised a brow and she shrugged. “I don’t feel special.”

Maybe during those few early weeks, when everyone had been so excited, when it still felt like there was something to be excited about. But even then she remembered wishing her immunity felt a little more, well, more. Each passing day the disappointment grew bigger. She was supposed to be the key to saving the world but almost a year and a half later they had nothing to show for it. And if it never worked, if she was the only one to ever be immune…

He ran his hand up her arm one more time, checking her elbow and her shoulder, before moving to check her other arm.

“It’s often the most important work – the most important people – that go unnoticed and without gratitude. But that doesn’t diminish how essential they truly are.” He tipped her chin up to examine her eyes and then paused, fingers lingering as he spoke. “You really are remarkable, you know. Our little savior.”

A savior who hadn’t saved a single person yet. What a miserable fuck up.

Maybe they should just give up on her. Maybe if procedure after procedure was useless and she was willing to admit that she’d given up on herself a long time ago… Maybe she should go back. Maybe if she was willing to admit that he was right – it was all always a fairytale – maybe he’d change his mind and she could still go—

“Something troubling you?” he asked.

She worried her bottom lip and considered her answer. He was probably just being nice, pretending to care because she was almost kidnapped. And questions weren’t allowed anyway; information was only given to those who needed it.

But fuck she needed it.

“What did he mean, when he said ‘no one’s free to leave’ ?”

He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together. “He was a terrorist, Ellie, nothing he said can be trusted.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the non-answer. “But what did he mean? He said he knew what you were planning to do with me and he said—”

“He was a desperate, raving lunatic. He was only trying to save his own life.”

“He said he was a Firefly. And he said–” His eyes narrowed at that but she plowed ahead anyway. “He said you already figured out the cure.”

“He would have said anything to get you to go with him,” he assured her.

“But is it true? Did you figure it out already and just didn’t tell me?”

He held a placating hand up. “Ellie–”

“I just–no one’s told me anything in so long. Is it working or not?” She needed him to say yes, she realized, even though it hurt and confused her she needed them to have figured it out or at least be making progress. Because if they weren’t, she wasn’t sure how much longer she would last. “Please, I just need to know what’s going on. It has to work or else— please.”

Or else Joel was right and she could’ve gone with him.

He brushed his knuckles along his jaw and then scrubbed a hand over his mouth. Stalling to decide the best way to deliver the bad news or avoid the question altogether.

“To this you were called… that you should follow in His steps.”

Her expression must have settled somewhere between ‘what the fuck’ and ‘what the fuck.’ “What does that mean?”

His lips twitched with something like amusement. “I assure you, we haven’t given up. In fact, we finally had a breakthrough.”

Hope swelled in her chest and she found the first place her mind turned was Joel. If they already made a cure then maybe—

“A breakthrough, like –” she dropped her voice to a whisper, like asking too loudly might shatter the precarious moment “– like it worked?”

He nodded.

She jumped up, almost tripping when her gown caught on the edge of the chair. “Are you fucking serious?”

He was grinning now and nodded again.

“Holy shit!” It was over, she’d done it, they’d done it. “Holy shit.”

She could leave— I ain’t your dad.

Could’ve. She could’ve left. That offer expired. He probably would’ve rescinded it the moment she told him she wasn’t a lab rat anymore anyway.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” she asked, doing her best to push those thoughts aside.

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Only a few people know. We wanted to be certain that it was real before getting anyone’s hopes up unnecessarily.”

She nodded. It made sense, like Joel said, there’d been a lot of rumors of cures before. So many that some people were going to have a hard time believing this was real. Of course they wanted to be extra sure before letting the news spread outside the immediate team. Hell, she was the immune one and she was still struggling to believe it. 

“But you’re sure it works, like, you’ve tested it and everything?”

“I don’t know about everything but we’ve run plenty of successful trials, yes,” he said.

Successful trials. They had a cure and it worked. She could take it and shove it in Joel’s face, show him just how wrong he was to make fun of her for trying.

Unless he left before she got the chance. 

An echo of something too close to fear crawled under her skin. Maybe it lingered from the incident with Daimon, bleeding into her current thoughts. But maybe it was because he was going to miss it. Outside the safety of the QZ where he needed it the most.

She had to tell him. They could postpone leaving for a few more days, just long enough for her to figure out how to smuggle them a few doses. The cure wouldn’t make them invincible but it was a giant fucking leg up. He would wait, if it meant having a better chance at surviving long enough to find his brother, he would wait.

If he believed her.

She had to try, he might not even come back to the roof again before he left, still might not want her, but – we don’t give that up.

“Ellie, what’s wrong?”

“Hm?”

“Did you hear anything I just said?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Sorry, I just – I can’t even believe it. Could I… Can I see it? The cure?”

“I’m not supposed to show you any of that but…” He steepled his fingers and contemplated. “I suppose it could be our little secret, if you can promise to keep it?”

Her heart leapt again and she nodded with a cheek aching grin. “I can, I swear I can.”

She wondered if he could tell she was lying or if it was bad luck to make a promise she’d technically already broken. But she was trying to help someone and that had to count for something.

~~~

The floor was cold beneath her bare feet and the air was stale with bleach. Laundry shifts were mandatory for all FEDRA kids, she’d know that smell anywhere.

A long narrow hallway stretched out in front of them with doors lining both sides, it reminded her of the FEDRA dorm she’d left behind last year, only darker and damper. The already dim lights flickered as she trailed Dr. Marlow. Most of the doors were closed up tight but her steps slowed to a stop at one left ajar.

She craned to see the room beyond through the narrow strip, leaning one step closer and then another. The dim light didn’t illuminate much detail and as she drew closer still she thought her mind must be playing tricks the way it did with the water stains on the ceiling. The door swung open farther at her touch and the extra light made it clear: there were scratch marks streaked across the walls of the small room.

She startled when she realized Dr. Marlow was at her shoulder. “What is this place?” she asked in a whisper.

“You’ll soon see,” he said, crooked teeth poking through his easy smile. She had more questions, like why the hell were there little windows in each of the doors, but he pressed gently at her shoulder to usher her on. “Come now. This way.”

They continued through a series of hallways and a double pair of locked doors.

“These are a relic of what this facility was used for Before, an old security feature and part of why we chose this location. We needed to ensure everything was… kept safe,” he explained as he opened the second set of doors.

She nodded her understanding and ignored the small shiver that traced down her spine as he re-secured the second door.

The room beyond looked like something out of one of the old science textbooks she and Riley had smuggled back to their room. There were multiple rows of tables, lined end to end with equipment, some of it more polished than others. Her wide eyes traced over racks filled with little glass containers of varying shapes and sizes, even more of them were stacked at the back counter along the wall.

It was an effort to resist the urge to reach for each instrument along the closest table.

“What is all this?” she asked, pausing in front of one of the large chalkboards at the front of the room.

There were four of them, covered in lines of illegible equations and small diagrams that didn’t make any sense. She wanted to ask about each one of them, to understand what they meant and how they might add up to the cure.

“Research equipment, mostly. Microscopes, centrifuges, that there is called an incubator,” he said, indicating a larger box shaped object on one of the far tables. “Test tubes, petri dishes. All very standard and easy to come by Before but most of it has been scavenged from the surrounding cities. Some items were even sourced from other QZs.”

“Other QZs sent equipment here? For the cure?” she asked.

“For you,” he said. “For hope.”

Her gaze snapped back to him. “They know about me?”

“No,” he assured her, “that knowledge has been kept to a select few in Boston. But they know we’ve been making progress toward something life changing.”

He tipped his head for her to follow, through another doorway. She took one more look around the room and wished she could’ve seen it sooner, could’ve spent her days here watching them work, instead of locked up in that room.

The last thing her eyes lingered on was a bit of legible text tucked up into the top corner of the closest chalkboard: But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.”

She almost asked what the hell it meant but she’d already fallen a bit behind and had to hurry to catch up as Dr. Marlow entered another room off the hallway beyond the lab.

“Is this your office?” she asked, taking in the small crowded space.

“It is,” he confirmed.

“So, this is where the magic happens?”

He laughed and leaned against the desk while she explored. “Something like that.”

In addition to the desk covered in paperwork and books, there were several shelves and filing cabinets and even a bulletin board mounted on one wall. Most of the shelves were covered in books or dusty equipment. One frame held some kind of certificate from University of Eastern Colorado, school of medicine, with a name in large fancy script: David James Marlow. The shelf above the frame drew her attention next. A row of small glass jars that held something like dried flowers.

She stepped closer and realized with a small jolt of horror that they weren’t flowers at all when one of them moved.

“What the hell–”

“Samples taken throughout our research,” he said. “I’ve always thought there was a certain beauty in cordyceps.”

“Other than that whole mindless zombie thing.” The joke fell flat even to her own ears.

“An unfortunate side effect,” he said. “But even the ‘mindless zombie thing’ is magnificent in its own way.”

Horrible, cataclysmic, monstrous, revolting, terrifying – those were the words most people used to describe cordyceps. Never beauty, never magnificent. It made her skin crawl.

She moved over to the bulletin board which was covered mostly with schematic drawings of Infected and an assortment of other things, including more than one diagram of a brain, and, lined neatly along one edge, a series of small photos with white borders. Not so different from a strip of photos hidden in the depths of her bag.

There were at least a dozen and they were all kids, most of them staring vacantly at the camera. Except the bottom one, which captured a girl about her age with auburn hair and freckles. She sported a scowl with her hair tied back in a messy pony, looking like she might set the photographer on fire with her gaze alone.

“Who are they?” she asked.

“Reminders,” he said with a sad smile, “to keep us going.”

A gallery of the dead. How many of them would still be alive if they’d only found her immunity sooner?

“What’s that?” She tipped her head at the file spread across his desk, reaching for the first topic change she could find.

“Just paperwork,” he said, flipping it closed. “Of all the things to survive the end of the world, I wouldn’t have expected there to still be so much paperwork.”

She didn’t really understand why that amused him so much but she mirrored his smile and made a small almost laugh of her own, which seemed to satisfy him.

“Shall we continue?”

She nodded and did her best to shake the chill that had settled over her. As they left the room she noticed the file of ‘paperwork’ had her name on it.

He led her down the hall to another door and she was beginning to wonder if this building was a maze Before with all the doors and hallways and security precautions. When she stepped through the threshold after him she was expecting to see something more medicinal, like a stockroom of pill bottles or shots, hell even another lab room. What she saw was a big empty space.

“Over here.” He motioned her forward with a hand and she noticed the floor changed halfway across the room from the bare concrete to metal grating.

The concrete floor dropped down below the grating, she realized as she drew closer. It didn’t seem like the ideal place to store the cure for humanity but maybe there was some science thing she didn’t understand about storing it as low as possible or—

“What the fuck?”

She jumped backward several steps, stomach turned inside out and heart racing in her throat, she half pivoted to sprint back out the door.

And Dr. Marlow just laughed. They were ten feet from a small horde of Infected and the fucker was laughing.

“Relax, Ellie, this is an observation room, they can’t reach us up here.”

The assurance did nothing to stop the tremor from shaking through her from head to toe. A memory flashed, one arm wrenched behind her while the other was shoved through a hole in a door. Her hand automatically traced the second bite on her arm and the abrupt edge where they’d taken the skin sample days later. They hadn’t told her about that procedure ahead of time either.

She stayed plastered to the front wall while he smiled back, a few steps from the floor transition. There was that metal grate between them. But still.

“This was something they called a biohazard facility, from Before,” he said. “Many of the safety measures they utilized have been very beneficial to our work, especially after certain improvements were made.” He tipped his head toward the horde. “Come have a look.”

She swallowed down a dry throat and her thin breaths slipped in and out. But she gave her head a shake and took a step forward anyway.

As she approached and more of the room came into view, she realized the split level was much deeper than she originally thought and the idea that one of the Infected might be able to jump up and reach them through the grating was a bit generous.

The room below was empty of everything but them, four bare walls save for the tendrils and shoots of fungus that had grown across and part way up the surface.

It was a small group – she couldn’t quite count them all with the way they were huddled together there might have been a dozen – but still more than she’d seen in her lifetime as a QZ kid. Fourteen years into the apocalypse and until this moment the one and only Infected she’d ever seen was the one she’d killed in a dimly lit mall.

Well — two.

The stark light from the fixtures mounted to the grating cast them in far more relief than the dim neon lights of the mall. Even from a distance she could see the way their skin had changed color and texture, the way it split and peeled apart – like water damaged drywall, puckered and swollen as the fungus grew from within until it burst. Hidden until it wasn’t anymore.

They seemed to breathe together, a synchronized rasp rattling up from below. She could see the tendrils that never spread past the shallow layer of her skin, penetrated deep through their bodies and beyond. Some were obviously longer turned than others, with larger fungal growth obscuring their features, but a few still looked almost human. Almost.

Two of them had grown into the wall and taken on an almost skeletal quality, with plates protruding like ribs and dried shoots imitating bone. Only vaguely humanoid by now.

A sharp screech had her stumbling back a step, only narrowly avoiding ending up on her ass. Dr. Marlow was chuckling again. Dick.

Her mind spun with so many questions it made her dizzy.

“How… How did you get them in here?” was the first one she got out.

“There’s a drop grate, there.”

He pointed to a section of grating and it took her a second to see the difference. Hinges for one, and an unsupported perimeter with a locking pin. She leaned back unconsciously, wary of the weak point even with the safe distance between them.

“But how did you get them all the way here? Without getting infected yourself?”

“The first one was infected when it arrived at the gate but hadn’t turned yet. We had part of this facility set up already, a means to contain it, so we took the opportunity to keep it alive to study.” She crept back to the edge again while he spoke. “Most of the others are the result of unsuccessful trials.”

“Trials?” The question came out even though she was pretty sure she knew exactly what he meant.

“There were quite a few, especially in the beginning.” She tried to pick out any sign of remorse or sympathy in his tone but it was very clinical, as he’d been for most of their brief interactions before today. “A lot of trial and error, as is the case with innovation.”

It was foolish, in hindsight, to think they’d developed a cure without this particular horror – that she was the only lab rat.

She was no stranger to public executions, having witnessed them regularly with the rest of her classmates. The officers drilled into them that they were necessary and justified; for the safety of the QZ, for the benefit and survival of humanity.

Of course they had no qualms with this.

One of the Infected turned in slow, stilted movements and craned its head back to fix them with an unblinking stare. Ellie sucked in a breath.

“Don’t worry, they can’t reach us up here.”

That was maybe half her concern, but the other half was wrapped up in a vague familiarity that struck her. Like she’d been here before – no, that wasn’t it. More like she’d seen some part of this before, which didn’t make any sense. Still, the feeling burrowed somewhere deep beneath her skin as her mind snagged on another question.

“Who were they?”

They had certainly been people once and the way that one was still staring straight at them, she was beginning to question if there wasn’t still a bit human left.

“Some were seeking the refuge of the QZ, as I mentioned, but already infected when they arrived. Others were traitors and terrorists, like the one who tried to kidnap you today, or other criminals taken off the streets.”

It wasn’t the answer she’d been after. Not what were they, who were they? Parents? Friends? Did they have families that were still alive to miss them? Could they still remember – even down in this hole, weeks or months or years after turning – who they’d been before? Did they have memories of broken down arcade games or stargazing on rooftops?

Leaned against the wall off to the right was a small Infected, smaller than her. Had they been infected already or did they somehow commit a crime that warranted sentencing a child to death? She’d spent a lot of time over the past year and a half thinking about whether she should die for the cure, but she’d never stopped to wonder if anyone else would. If anyone else should.

“You infected them?” she asked, glancing sideways. “As punishment?”

“We tested them,” he said with an air of correction. “They were sentenced to execution for their crimes already. At least with this, they were able to serve another purpose – a greater purpose.”

Another shiver crawled down her spine and she shifted a few steps away as casually as she could. Then a few more when she noticed the one Infected seemed to be tracking her movement. A phantom twinge in her arm scattered her nerves.

“Do they… know they’re Infected?”

“No, not by now. There is perhaps a transition period where they still have some awareness of the mind but have lost control of their body. But this group has been Infected long enough that any trace of their human consciousness is gone. Their only thought, the only thing they know, is to spread, to survive.”

“Why keep them? Why not just kill them?”

“We’ve eliminated some along the way but as with most experiments, it’s beneficial to conduct longer term studies.”

There was that clinical tone again. But those were people once. People they infected on purpose. For a moment, she wondered if she should have gone with Daimon.

“Even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.”

She broke the staring contest she’d unwittingly entered and glanced over with a question in her brow. “That was on one of the chalkboards in the lab room.”

“It became something of a mantra around here. To remind us that there is purpose, even in suffering.”

“Sounds like Firefly bullshit.”

“Oh, far from it,” he said. “They deal in false promises and prophets. Our foundation is much stronger than that.”

She barely contained the scoff. “The whole world ended and you still believe that stuff?”

“Actually, I didn’t start believing until after the world ended,” he said.

It occurred to her now that she was well beyond her usual limit on questions but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was indulging her more than anyone else ever had. Other than Joel.

“So, you watched the world go to shit and decided you liked the guy you think did it?”

He huffed amusement and shrugged one shoulder. “Watching the world end might be the best time to find Him. If I hadn’t, I might never have made it here.”

She picked at a hangnail. “How do you figure that?”

“Well, I was in the Pittsburgh QZ when it fell in ‘17. Fireflies and FEDRA… They tore the place apart for years before it all collapsed. I left with a group of believers and it was our faith that delivered us safely to Boston.”

“You believe in God because you survived a trip up the road?”

“It was a bit farther than just up the road, but yes.” He gave her a knowing look, one of those stupid ones adults used when they thought she was too young to understand. “We survived, against all odds, without losing anyone. In fact we were able to save many more along the way and bring them here. To the one QZ where the only known naturally immune person was waiting.”

“Seems pretty lucky.” She tried not to think about how it was an echo of another conversation about traveling outside the zone.

“I told you there’s no such thing as luck.” His gaze returned to the Infected huddled below. “I believe everything happens for a reason. If Pittsburgh hadn’t fallen, I wouldn’t have ended up here. And if I hadn’t ended up here, those FEDRA officers who found you might not have waited to shoot, and then we might never have synthesized a cure. That’s something much more powerful than luck.”

Like some cosmic being cared enough to bring them together to make a cure but couldn’t be bothered to prevent the outbreak in the first place. Luck sounded better.

The watchful Infected was staring at Dr. Marlow now, that unblinking gaze locked even as its body swayed and its head ticked. There was something almost intentional about it, beyond the mindless survival instinct she’d learned about in school. It looked more aware, like it recognized him and wanted something more human than survival.

“So what’s the next stop on this tour?” she asked.

He motioned back the way they’d come, the only door in and out. When she moved to follow him, she noticed for the first time an assortment of weapons mounted on the front wall. An emergency stock. She glanced back at the layer of grated barrier between them and the Infected and wondered if they’d ever had to use it.

They backtracked a bit before following a hall opposite his office to another locked room. He stepped aside and ushered her in first. It was smaller than she expected, more like a large closet really, and like every other room down on this level, there were no windows to supplement the shit lighting. Only a step or two away there were a few cabinets lined against the wall, the two largest had glass doors.

“On your right,” he said.

She followed his instruction until she came face to face with a series of small trays lined up across one shelf. Each tray held half a dozen tiny glass bottles full of clear liquid with handwritten illegible labels. The shelf label was bigger with blocky letters: REPLICATION TRIAL #10.

“Is that it?” she asked, a bit breathless.

“That’s it,” he echoed.

She couldn’t believe it, she couldn’t fucking believe it. Right there, so close she could touch it, was the cure for cordyceps. She leaned closer until her breath fogged up the glass.

“Here.” He reached past, slipped a hand inside the door, retrieved one of the doses, and held it out for her. “Careful not to drop it, we only have a few viable doses at the moment.”

It was small and she was afraid if she held it too tight it might just break. “It’s so…” She tipped it back and forth, watching the liquid slosh with the motion. “It just looks like water,” she almost laughed. “Do you just drink it? How does it work?”

“It’s a shot.” He indicated a tray of syringes on another shelf. “And in simple terms, it introduces an altered strain of the fungus into the host. The altered strain reads as the infection but can’t spread far enough into the brain to assert control.”

“So… technically it infects you?”

“Technically, yes, I suppose it does,” he said through an amused smile.

Like me, she thought, it makes people like me.

“How fast does it work? Can it turn people back? Can you tell if someone’s had it or how do you know if they’re not gonna turn–”

He held his hands up. “Slow down, there’s no rush.” But it wasn’t a reprimand, he still had that easy smile. “To answer your questions: it works almost immediately, no – we haven’t been able to reverse those already turned, and the inoculation will leave behind a scar similar to yours but without the bite mark, which is how you would be able to tell whether it was from spontaneous infection or the serum.”

It felt good to have someone not only tolerate her questions but commend her for them.

“What if they haven’t turned yet? Like – those people that show up to the QZ already infected, would this save them?”

“That is a very good question,” he said. “All our research so far indicates that if the cure is administered before the spontaneous infection reaches and takes control of the host’s brain, the altered strain will be dominant.”

“Dominant?”

“It will overtake the unaltered infection and prevent the subject from turning.”

“Holy fuck,” she felt like screaming but it came out as a whisper. “It’s really real, it really works?”

This was shaping up to be the best day of her life. It fucking worked. It was real.

“I meant it when I said you’re a remarkable girl. None of this would be possible without you,” he said. “Our little savior.”

She caught his reflection over her shoulder in the glass door, he was looking at her with something she’d scarcely seen directed her way – pride. He was proud of her and it washed over with a shiver that was equal parts exciting and uncomfortably unfamiliar. She hadn’t done anything, really, other than let them poke and prod and take sample after sample.

She shook her head. “You all did the real work, I mostly just sat around.”

“Don’t dismiss the bravery of your contribution. There are many grown adults who wouldn’t have handled those procedures as well as you did,” he said.

He wouldn’t be saying that if he knew how many times she’d snuck up to the roof with no intention of coming back. She always had, in the end, but those weren’t the actions of a brave person. She was running on fear – that was what kept her going since the mall – fear saved the world, not courage.

“I see a lot of myself in you, you know.” His reflection caught her eye again as he continued, “You want to protect people, help those who can’t help themselves. You’re a natural leader, smart and loyal too.”

“Not according to most of my teachers,” she said with a nervous laugh.

“Well, they’re more concerned with raising soldiers than leaders. But I see the way you look at things, the questions you ask. You seek what others long for, what they fear.”

Her head tipped and she raised a brow in question.

“The truth, Ellie. The truth that I was shown when the world ended.”

“What truth?”

“That we – if we want to survive – must do what Cordyceps does: be fruitful and multiply. Feed and protect our children, secure our future, with violence when necessary.”

She was beginning to feel the size of the room and how the way they were standing put her in the corner. “But we have the cure now.”

“The cure will help but it’s manufactured. In order to ensure our survival, we need to lead with natural immunity. We need to ensure that it’s passed on to our next generation. The others… They don’t see the need. But you understand, don’t you?”

Not fucking really. The weight of his gaze turned uncomfortable as it slid between her shoulder blades like a bead of sweat. She did her best to disguise the shiver as a roll of her shoulders.

But before she could formulate a safe response, he took a step closer. So close now that she could feel his breath and she might have made a crack about invading her personal space the same way she did with Joel if it hadn’t felt more like being trapped.

The distorted reflection in the glass sharpened his features to something hawkish and the crooked tooth smile was back with a sinister air. “You’re a very special girl, Ellie. One of a kind. It wasn’t luck that brought us together, don’t you see? We were meant to find each other. To grow. To spread.”

His gaze shifted to something hungry and it dropped like a stone into the pit of her stomach. The rushing in her ears and the thrum through her veins pulsed out a synchronized warning: run, run, run.

“Just imagine what we could build together.” He reached up to brush a loose bit of hair back from her face. She twitched when his other hand slid between her shoulder blades to rest at the back of her neck with a possessive squeeze. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered, hot in her ear. “I can be gentle.”

She lunged, grabbing whichever finger she could and wrenching as hard as possible. He cried out and jerked back in surprise. She meant to run, moved to duck around him and get the hell out. But she was snatched back in blur and one shock of pain erupted at her shoulder, neck, and head, then a second compounded.

Black dots scattered across her vision as her knees buckled to the ground. Glass fragments littered the floor around her and something dripped down the side of her face onto her gown.

“You little tease.”

He pulled her up by one arm and she swung blindly for his face with the bottle still in hand. It cracked somewhere over his nose. She shoved around, not wasting a second to glance back before she darted out of the room. Heart racing and breath hitching, she ran back the way they’d come, doors passing in an adrenaline fueled haze until she made it to the lab.

She just needed her bag, her knife, then she could make a break for the roof—

She crashed against the locked security door. “Help!” she screamed, trying the handle anyway. She pounded against the door, streaks of red left behind. “Help!”

Her cry for help faded into a shaky sob that she couldn’t keep in. No one knew they were down here: our little secret.

A trap. And she’d walked right into it.

A loud crash rattled her spine and sent her feet moving again before she knew where to go or what to do. Hide – that was her only option. Hide or find a weapon. 

“Ellie…” he called her name with an eerie tone.

She ducked behind the cabinets of last row of tables.

“There’s no way out, Ellie. The doors are locked and I have the keys.” He gave them a taunting shake.

She crawled along the cabinets, one hand and one foot at a time, listening hard and willing her own breaths to stay silent as they heaved in and out.

“I always knew you were dangerous.” His voice was clearer, closer as he moved into the room. “You know the others think you’ve served your purpose now, that you’d be more useful on a slab. But I told them not to. And this is how you repay me?”

Another loud crash jarred her nerves and she clamped a hand over her mouth.

“Maybe I will let them cut into your brain…” His voice crawled up her spine. “Maybe a lobotomy will make you more docile.”

She needed those keys, which meant she needed a weapon. Inching closer to the end of the cabinets, her eyes landed on a discarded microscope. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing. Her fingers wrapped silently around the base.

“I’m the only one fighting for you, Ellie. You’re all alone without me.” She felt the sound of his fist hitting a wall. “Nobody else wants you but me.”

Come with me – she should’ve gone. Would he think about her at all? Would he remember the feral little girl on the roof that he talked to and fed and helped and saw when no one else did?

His footsteps drew closer and her grip on the makeshift weapon tightened.

“Ellie… Ellie…”

She took one more steadying breath before she made her move. The wind up was slower than she planned and he dodged easily. She ran, making a break for the hall, but he was faster. She pivoted. He lunged.

Pain swelled again and she thought her arm must be breaking in his grip. He threw her hard into the counter, the edge caught her right in the ribs and drove the air from her lungs. Shooting pain radiated up through her chest as she gasped for breath.

“Not so fast,” he hissed.

He rebounded her momentum and slammed her head against the counter. Fire, in her ribs and her scalp and her temple. The room tilted as she scrambled back across the floor. A flash of a boot and sharp new pain bloomed through her stomach.

“No one likes being rejected, Ellie – it’s humiliating.”

He kicked her again, a scream tore from her throat as she curled into the throbbing pain. She didn’t have limbs anymore, or muscles, just pain. Her lungs burned. His voice distorted. The room was upside down and dark. He was there and nowhere.

“Did you hear me?”

He hauled her back to her feet and grabbed a fist full of her hair to pull her face around to his.

“I said, you don’t know how good I am!”

Spittle hit her face and she strained against his grip to spit back. He pulled harder with the hand fisted in her hair to wrench her head back painfully, then forced her around and marched her forward.

“You have no idea what you tried to run away from,” he said low in her ear as he steered her down the hall. “But I’m a benevolent man, Ellie, I can forgive you. Once you see what I have to offer, you’ll be begging for it.”

She flailed and scrambled but her shaking arms were useless against his grip. Her feet stumbled as he drove her roughly, farther and farther from the exit. The tide of panic rose up her throat. Frantic breaths drowning in her own fear.

“I’ve been very patient,” he said. “Waiting for our moment.”

She grappled for the wall as he pushed her through the office door. Her nails scraped over the metal and one snagged painfully on the door stop.

“I have so much to teach you, Ellie, and I know how you love to learn–”

She bit down on his arm when he reached across her to close the door and his grip loosened just enough that a well placed shove broke her free. She ran. Almost lost her footing in the hallway. Observation room. Weapon. Her vision blurred. Keep going. She gasped. Survive.

The first weapon she grabbed was a long, heavy blade. It clattered to the floor. A split second of hesitation and she grabbed the closest handgun.

“You little cunt.”

She spun around, gun raised, and pulled the trigger. It stuck. She pulled again. It stuck again. Jammed. No, no, no, no, no.  

He laughed and there was nothing light about it anymore. He closed the door and slid the lock into place. She retreated a step and watched in horror as he picked up the blade she dropped.

“We could have done this the easy way,” he said, prowling a step closer. “But you’re a violent little thing, aren’t you?”

She squeezed the trigger again but it still stuck. She shook it and loosed a strangled cry of frustration. Just. Fucking. Shoot.

The blade clanged as it slid across the concrete floor onto the grating. She retreated another step and then another. He matched both, wedged between her and the other weapons now. There was nowhere left to run.

“All the better,” he breathed, licking his lips. “The fight is what I enjoy the most.”

Instinct drove her to dive for the blade but he was already there, knocking her to the ground, her chest and chin slammed hard against the grating, copper coated her tongue. She scrambled forward, fingers brushing the handle before he pinned her down and slammed her wrist against the grating.

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered, one hand sliding up her arm to slip under the sleeve of her gown. “There’s no fear in love.”

She screamed incoherent protests between begging sobs. The cold steel grating dug into her hips.

He moved back far enough to flip her onto her back. It was just enough space to kick out, her heel connected with his nose.

She scrambled back, grabbed the blade handle and rounded on him, a wild swing clipping his shoulder. He cried out. She swung again and caught the hand reaching for her. He stumbled back. She brandished her weapon again with a feral scream that tore from her throat. He stepped back further still, hands raised like he might soothe her.

Breathing hard she saw the pin in the floor for the drop grate. When she looked back to him, it was the first time he actually looked scared.

“Ellie, don’t–”

She pulled the pin and the grating fell open, out from under his feet.

~~~

She watched the blood pool, fresh and dark against the concrete floor, running between the tendrils grown across the floor like veins. He stopped screaming a while ago, probably when he stopped breathing.

When they were satiated, the watchful Infected turned up to her. Distantly, she wondered again if these Infected had any semblance of their humanity left, any recollection of before they were infected. Some small byproduct of the trials that were deemed failures. Aware of what was done to them but still puppets on the threaded strings of cordyceps. The vehement she saw in the eyes of the watchful Infected seemed to say: yes.

That spark of familiarity flared and she was finally able to place it — what remained of the hair was the same color as hers. She looked closer now that she knew what to look for and sure enough the height, the curve of her nose, the faded torn remnants of the last shirt she’d seen her wearing.

Spence.

Daimon was right, no one ever left.

She was a fool to think they’d just let her go after locking her away for so long. Even with the cure, why not keep her? No one would miss her. She was disposable again. Worthless.

A screech that tapered off into a hollow clicking sent her shivering. Suddenly afraid the rest of the grating might give out from under her, she crawled back to the concrete in a daze.

Out. She needed to get out.

She believed him when he said no one else knew they were down here but surely someone had heard something by now, surely others were on their way – cut into your brain.

Bag, knife— keys.

She stumbled from the room, shutting the door as she went despite the fog seeping into her mind. Her gown was ripped and untied, she fumbled a new knot.

Keys. Were they at the bottom of the pit, covered in blood?

She scoured through his desk, there must be more, a second set, just in case. Or another way out.

A small sob escaped her when she saw them on the floor by the door. He must have dropped them when he brought her back. How lucky, the thought drifted through.

Keys in hand, she still needed her bag and her knife. Then the vent. Then the roof.

She stopped.

Why the hell would I care.

She needed a bargaining chip. Something to trade.

She turned back and grabbed the folder with her name, noticing the picture taped to the front for the first time. With the white border. She left it ripped in tiny pieces and ran from the room.

Every instinct yelling at her to get the hell out right now. Fear thrummed up under her skin that he was moments from reappearing despite bleeding out on a cold stone floor.

Glass littered the floor. An entire cabinet was overturned. Dozens of doses of the cure, strewn and smashed. The second cabinet was standing but damaged from where he’d put her head through the door.

There was a tray of replication trial #10 still intact. The light hurt her eyes. She picked through the carnage and pulled them out, four little vials in all. A syringe too. She wasn’t sure why but some part of her knew that part was important too.

She hissed when sharp pain shot through her foot and cut through some of the fog, the involuntary jerk sent one of the precious bottles tumbling to the floor. She cursed and gripped them more securely.

Keep moving, keep moving, don’t stop.

She pressed ahead with a small limp to her gait, shifting the weight around as much as she could.

Through the lab, there were too many keys and it was taking too long and she looked back with a shaky breath at the sound of an Infected echoing down the hall. They were at the bottom of a pit, she reminded herself, they were at the bottom of a pit too deep to climb out of.

The first door swung free.

She struggled with the second. Different key. Shaky breaths rattled the silence. She expected to find someone waiting on the other side.

The second door swung free.

The hallway was empty.

It didn’t occur to her to wonder why or how, she just kept going.

She ran all the way back through that first dimly lit hall, forgetting the pain in her foot, forgetting those phantom scratch marks, forgetting the gallery of the dead she was meant to join.

The door to the stairwell closed behind her and she pressed back against it with labored breaths. Her legs shook, her knees threatened to buckle, and fear licked at her heels. She stalled out, paralyzed for a moment while she waited for the officers that were sure to appear.

But no one came.

Backpack. Knife. Vent. Roof.

She took off up the stairs at a run, ignoring the pain that spiked sharp with every step.

Everything else shut down except a single thought: keep moving, don’t stop til the roof.

~~~

She fell down to her hands and knees as soon as she hit the rooftop, arms and legs shaking from the exertion of the climb. The stitch in her side was so deep, she didn’t think she’d ever catch her breath again and the pain in her foot that plagued each step, receded to a dull ache. She registered distantly that the roof was wet, it was raining, or it had been.

If she couldn’t catch her breath and fully collapsed, maybe the rain would wash the layer of blood and grime away. Maybe then her skin would stop crawling.

She cast around for any sign of Joel. He would be here. He was always here. Even when he said he wouldn’t be, he still came. He would come again. He had to. Because if he didn’t…

It was still early for him to be there. She wasn’t sure how she knew that was true but it felt true. Past curfew but the sky still had enough light to hide most of the stars. Would he even come back after the last time?

I ain’t your dad – sure as hell ain’t my daughter – the hell would I care?

She pulled her bag around, clutching it tight as she dug through to reassure herself that the cure was still there, still intact. Her bargaining chip.

She sucked in the biggest breath she could manage, trying desperately not to fall into the black hole of what would happen if he showed up. Or what would happen if he didn’t.

Area Three.

She didn’t even know where in Area Three he lived. There were hundreds of people in any Area and she… She looked down at her bare arm, thought back to the clothes she’d left in the vent in her room. Stuck. Trapped.

That deep breath she tried to take wouldn’t come and the weight of everything fell down, crushing her.

A booming noise sent a new jolt of fear through her and drove her from her knees. She moved, bare feet slapping across the roof as they carried her before the thought fully formed. She wrenched the door of the cache box open and scrambled to fold herself inside, pulling the bag with her and the door closed behind her. 

She dug through it in the darkness until she found her knife, stowed away when she needed both hands for the climb. She clenched it tight and waited. For another crash, another scream, another whispered threat. For Joel. But the only sound she heard was her own ragged breaths and the small plink plink plink of the rain against the roof of her hideout.

Knees tucked to her chest, arms looped around her legs, she pressed her face into the crook of her elbow and let out a muffled keening until it dropped into silent hitched sobs.