The Ward

47


10:00 P.M., SUNDAY


“We need to leave. Now,” I say to Derek in the HBNC hallway.

He grabs my wrist, turns for the stairwell we just came from, but I pause. Any minute now, rations will go out. If more patients wake up as fast as Aven did, the nurses will put it together that the water in the HBNC wing might’ve been tampered with. And the first place they’ll look for the culprit is the stairwell leading to the western water tank.

“No . . . I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I shake my head, looking toward the entry doors.

“And you think that’s a better one?” he scoffs. “Nuh-uh. We’re taking the stairwell.” He tugs me in the opposite direction.

“Derek—you’re gonna have to trust me on this one. You can’t catch the virus, right?”

“No . . .” He narrows his eyes at me.

“Okay. Well—I have a secret. Neither can I.” I spin on my heel and start down the corridor. Hearing no footsteps behind, I turn around to find Derek standing there, looking like I bludgeoned him with a hammer. “I’m going through the other ward,” I call back. “You can come or not. Your choice.”

He jogs to me, in a daze, and we keep on going straight, since I’m the one in the scrubs.

Together, we exit the noncontagious ward, crossing from one end to the other. At the red double doors, I glance around, making sure no one sees us. One hand to the lettering that reads “Contagious,” one hand on the handle, I swing the doors open and usher Derek in behind me.

Then, we run.

Through the corridor. Past the glass and the patients behind plastic. Past the girl who looks like Aven. Down the stairwell.

At the staff exit, I shove open the door. Too much moonlight waits there, like a spotlight.

I’m sent careening onto the narrows, unready for a night without cover.


“Follow me,” I say, pulling Derek toward Mad Ave.

I want to get the hell out of here—I’m meeting with the other racers in thirty minutes—but first, I need to know where Derek stands. What kind of person he is.

Would he try to stop me if he knew what we were planning?

We sprint through the narrows, me in front, mulling over that question. But there’s only one thread to pull that could unknot the others—Aven.

I slow down. Tug that first thread. “Why save her,” I ask, panting, “and not the others?”

But Derek doesn’t answer. His eyes are someplace else, tracing the curve of my scalp. I look away, embarrassed. “What? You ain’t never seen a head before?”

He tears his gaze away, shakes off whatever feelings he had about me and my new do.

“Ren . . . that water,” he begins, no louder than the waves splashing back and forth beneath our feet. “You saw the album. You know it’s not just a cure. As soon as you turn it into one, the spring’s other . . . properties . . . are in danger of being exposed, too.”

“Immortality, Derek.” I watch him, shifting and pacing along the narrows. “Call it what it is.”

“Fine. Immortality, then,” he says, and meets my eyes. “You found a way to make a cure with one dose. . . . I don’t know how, but I believe you. And that’s good. It doesn’t change the facts, though—everyone will want it. First the water will be a cure, but once the people are healthy, it won’t stop there. There will be wars. More people will die fighting for the water than it could ever save.”

“Maybe that was a good reason to keep it hidden in the past, but with Callum’s serum . . . things are different, right? And it’d just be the Ward—you could help me get it out before the squadrons fly through.”

“We follow rules, Ren. Rules that don’t change on a case-by-case basis. Even when . . . feelings . . . are involved. Any one of us breaks those rules, our life is forfeited. Drinking the water may keep us from aging, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways for us to die.

“Kitaneh and the others—they’ll find out what happened here tonight,” he says, pointing back to Ward Hope, “and they will come after you.”

“And you’ll let them.”

He smacks his palm against the brick siding. “The Minetta must stay guarded! Life doesn’t exist without death. We protect one, we’re also protecting the other.”

Nodding, “Oh, I get it now,” I say coolly. “You’ll kill to protect life. Makes perfect sense. Then why save Aven? Why not just let her die with the rest of them?”

“Ren . . .” he begins. Then he loosens, defeated, and it’s as though he can hardly hold himself up. “I thought you were dead. And I’d only just begun to know you. To see you. Not the you that everyone else knows—but who you are when you’re alone. You’re not who I thought you were—you’re even . . . better.”

Right before my eyes, my heart undoes itself—I lean back against the brick. Under my feet, the narrows buck and sway and I tilt with them. “What are you saying?”

“I know what you saw. You saw the photos . . . but they’re not what you think.”

I look to his hand but see no wedding ring. He’s never worn it in public, if he wears it at all.

“Kitaneh and I . . . we were married as part of a contract,” Derek continues. “That’s how things were done in the early days. It’s a longer story. One for another time. But my point . . . When you kissed me, for the first time in ages—I felt something like love.”

He falls into me then, head hung low, and catches the wall. “I’m not saying you love me. But . . . you love the right people. I see that with Aven. And I thought that if you ever could, if you ever thought I was worth it—maybe it could be true. That I could be worth it.”

I’m caught, bridged between both his arms. Frozen, listening as he tells me these things I never could’ve imagined he’d say. I want to reach for him. I don’t let myself—nothing’s changed; I still don’t understand him—but in my mind, my hand is coiling itself in his bright hair. Next thing I know, it’s no longer in my mind. I’m touching his scalp, tracing my fingers down his nape. His hair bristles.

His breath stops short; I like hearing that—No. Dropping my hand quickly, I fold my arms behind my back. I don’t want to touch him. It just adds fuel to my weakness.

Derek’s brown eyes hold me to the wall. “Ren, you live harder . . . you love harder than anyone I’ve met. I wanted to earn it. And then I thought you were gone, and that it was too late. For me. For me to love you back,” he says. He drops his forehead against me so it’s cradled by my neck.

My tongue is blank. In my mouth, no words. The thoughts I had—all stunned away. I vaguely recall not wanting this—him, but all I’m left with are my vertebrae—each one a trigger, counting down to closer.

“Saving Aven was like saving a part of you. The part that you loved the most. The part I wanted to get to know,” he breathes, shaky.

Word by word, I’m unfolded. I wish my heart were made of paper, so I could write each one down where it belongs. As he traces his nose up the line of my neck, all the way to my ear, I know my heart will never be paper. Paper’s way too quiet. Bullet rounds, maybe. Rapid-fire.

Then, he pulls away. He searches my face. Eyes my mouth, thirsty. Like he’s never had a drop in his life. Leans in. With only millimeters to go, he stops. Miles and miles of millimeters, charged, electric power lines—“I don’t want the same regret twice.”

His lips are on mine, slow at first, hesitant, almost a tremble to them. Like he’s afraid. A moment later, he’s not. He’s the tide under a megawatt moon and this kiss is the ocean. Surge, then rush. No end to it.

Until, beep—my cuffcomm trills.

Looking down, I’ve got a message:

Serum’s made. Racers are here. Showed them Milo’s stats. Where are you? Vials are almost all filled.

“Brack,” I whisper. “I have to go.”

Derek looks back at me, his face drawn and hard—I can see it in his eyes. He’s read Callum’s comm. “Please, Ren,” he pleads, arm muscles tensed on either side of me. “I see what you’re planning. Once the others find out, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop them.”

“Can I ask you a question, Derek?”

He searches my face, not sure what’s coming. “Anything,” he says finally.

“Forget the others. What do you think is right?”

“It’s just not that simple. . . .”

I open my mouth, though I can’t believe what I’m about to say. What am I worth to him? . . . If he was just telling me the truth before, then my next words should mean something.

“Earn me.”

Derek looks up, runs a hand through the hair that’s fallen in front of his face.

“You said that’s what you wanted, right?” I go on. “Well, now you have your chance.”

I wait to see his reaction, but his face stays hard and I read nothing. I’m not sure if I should speak these next words. . . . They make me feel like I’m standing out on the highest rooftop during a summer’s lightning storm. Defenseless. But they also just might be exactly what he needs to hear.

“And I hope you do, Derek,” I say, a stillwater calm to my voice that surprises even me. “Because I could have loved you. Once upon a time.”

Spinning away from him, I don’t wait to see his reaction to that. I continue along the narrows, and when I hear him call my name, I turn off my ears and my head. All the places I hurt. I rip the paper in my heart to shreds, and I dry my mouth of the kiss. That’s harder, though. Salt water is everywhere. It’s below my feet and it’s behind my eyes. I run above it while wiping it from my face. I curse oceans, every one of them, until the moment my cuffcomm trills again.

?

That’s all it reads.

Faster. I pump my legs so hard my breathing goes thick.

The other racers are waiting.