‘There must be some instructions we’re missing,’ Cole says, but I barely hear him over the thudding of my pulse in my ears.
Joy and grief are battling inside me. The last two years of pent-up emotion are rushing for the open door in my heart, fighting to make their way out.
But I can’t let them. I can’t break. My father left a mission for me. I look down for the plastic pieces of the ghost memo, but I can’t see through the tears in my eyes.
‘Catarina?’
I rub my eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ I blurt out. ‘I … I can’t handle this.’
I turn away, pushing through the bedroom door. My shoulder hits the frame as I stumble blindly into the hall. I can’t think about vaccines or viruses. I can’t think about my father. I need air, and light, and space. I need to get out of here.
My feet find the stairs, and one foam-streaked hand grips the banister as I run down to the living room and race to the front door. Military bags and weapons blur past in my peripheral vision, stacked in piles against the walls. I see disassembled rifles, the tube of a rocket launcher, a pair of silver handcuffs on the living-room table.
Somewhere behind me, Cole shouts my name. I burst through the front door and run outside, expecting him to chase me down.
But he lets me go.
CHAPTER 7
Two hours, four hours pass; I don’t know. It’s dark and the moon has risen by the time I make it back to the lake. My throat is sore, my eyes are swollen, and I’m still coated in filth from the blast of the infected flesh, so the icy waters are a revelation against my skin. I wade in until they lap at my throat, and arch my back to soak my hair, unbraiding it underwater.
Overhead, a thick band of stars glitters in a cloud-streaked sky. A flock of pigeons call to one another as they flap across the lake. They skim the water, dropping their beaks to drink.
How can the world keep spinning when its brightest star is dead?
The cabin door swings open, throwing a slice of yellow light across the grass. Cole emerges carrying a towel and a fresh pile of clothes. He’s shirtless, with a bandage wrapped around his shoulders – a blue transparent film that looks vaguely like plastic wrap.
‘Thank you for coming back,’ he says. The gravel on the path crunches under his boots. ‘I should have waited to tell you everything. It was too much to take in at once.’
‘I’m fine.’ I swipe a handful of water up to splash my eyes. And I am fine. I’m strong, the way my father taught me to be. Take the pain under your control, wrestle it into a spike. There are bloody half-moons etched into my palms, but the doors in my heart are locked. ‘I’m ready to talk.’
‘OK,’ Cole says, sitting down on the lake’s rocky shore, putting the clothes and towel down behind him. He must have bathed while I was gone. The light from the cabin falls across his back, catching the curves of his shoulders, leaving his face in shadow.
I sink into the water, watching him. I still don’t know what to think about Cole. He’s been honest enough so far, but he’s a Cartaxus soldier. My father made it clear that nobody wearing the antlers could be trusted, but I don’t know how to reconcile that with the message he left Cole.
Now, more than ever, I’m desperate for Agnes’s advice. She met Cole, she must have spent time with him, but now she’s disappeared. When I ran into the woods, I commed her over and over, but the same message kept flashing up. Out of range. Out of range. My mind spun to the worst-case scenario – that Cole had killed her – but when I slumped on the ground at the foot of a tree, I felt the weight of something in my pocket. A liquorice drop.
One of Agnes’s horrible homemade candies that I’ve turned down so many times before. I’d spend a night at her house every week or two, eating lentils, playing cards, until I found myself itching to get back to the lab. She always slid a liquorice drop into my pocket as a farewell gesture, even though she knew I hated them. The fact that she put one in my pocket when Cole brought me to the cabin means that she must have been alive and trusted him to take care of me. But it makes no sense. He’s a Cartaxus soldier, armed and dangerous. We’ve spent the last two years hiding from people just like him.
‘Why did Agnes trust you?’ I ask.
‘She didn’t at first.’ Cole’s shadow ripples across the rocks on the lake’s shore, dipping into the water. ‘After you passed out, she realized I was trying to help you, and you were hurt so badly that we didn’t have time to talk. She told me how to get to her house, and kept a gun trained on me while I drove, while I put you in the ice bath, and for a few hours after that. I think the frostbite changed her mind.’
I blink. ‘Frostbite?’
Cole stretches out one hand, the movement crinkling the bandage around his shoulders. ‘We ran out of ice from her freezer, and the bath you were in kept heating up. I had some freezepaks in the jeep. I used them to make more ice, but after a few uses they started to split.’
I close my eyes, empathic pain shooting through my fingers. I’ve split a freezepak before, and it wasn’t fun. The chemicals in the freezepak’s lining undergo an intensely endothermic reaction when they’re agitated. It’s strong enough to freeze whatever’s inside, and if the lining splits and the chemicals land on you, it’s enough to freeze your skin as well.
Cole bunches his outstretched hand into a fist, as though testing it. He unfurls his fingers slowly and drops it to his side. ‘She started to trust me after the first one split. After the tenth, she knew I hadn’t come here to hurt you.’
I swallow hard, trying to imagine the state his hands must have been in. Even with healing tech and anaesthetic, it must have been excruciating. No wonder Agnes warmed to him. Made him soup, let him stay. It still doesn’t explain why she left, but it’s enough to quiet my unease.
‘You didn’t call for help,’ I say. ‘Cartaxus could have sent a Comox. There’s a bunker just a few miles from here.’
‘I know.’
I scrub my hands across my neck, wiping away the streaks of dried foam. ‘You said my father left a message for Dax, too. He told him to keep this a secret, didn’t he? Cartaxus doesn’t know you’re here.’
Cole leans back, watching me. The light from the cabin catches on a pattern of ridges on his chest. It looks like some kind of upgrade, but I can’t make out the details. ‘You figured that out fast.’
‘I’m an Agatta. I thought we went over that.’
‘Of course,’ Cole mutters dryly. ‘How could I forget?’
‘I think I’m starting to understand what my father wanted me to do.’ I push back in the water, scrubbing my hands over my arms, trying to wipe away every last trace of blood and foam. ‘My father was a genius, but he wasn’t psychic. He couldn’t have predicted that his lab would be hacked, or that the vaccine’s source code would be destroyed. So why would he give you that note?’