I veer the jeep off the road and through a gap in the trees, hauling us up a rocky, overgrown driveway. This is the doctor Agnes and I were going to the night Cole arrived. He was a neurosurgeon back before the plague. I used to babysit his daughters. His wife bred prize-winning horses, showed them all around the country.
They ate the last mare over the winter.
‘This is it,’ I say as we hurtle down the driveway. ‘Just a couple more minutes and the doc will have you back to normal.’
Cole doesn’t reply. His hand is still lying on his stomach, but his fingers are hanging loosely and his forehead is shiny with sweat.
‘Come on,’ I yell, elbowing him as we swing round a corner. ‘Stay with me, asshole.’ He doesn’t have much longer if he keeps bleeding like this. Not long enough to haul him inside and get the bullet out.
I let the autodriver take over, twisting in my seat to reach into the back.
‘What are you doing?’ Cole whispers.
‘Just hang on.’ I haul out my genkit. There’s a piece of code my father used on the night I hacked my panel, when I was bleeding out on the cabin floor. It’s called a jump, and it releases a violent surge of synthetic hormones and chemicals that swarm through the body, shocking the nervous system. It’s painful, and it’s dangerous. There’s a chance it’ll kill Cole, but he’s on the verge of death right now, and I don’t have much of a choice.
I flip the genkit open and jam the wire into his panel, urging the hard drive to spin up as the jeep barrels down the driveway. The screen blinks to life, and my fingers race across the keyboard, navigating through my stored files, searching for the code. Cole’s panel lets me in using its new password, and the genkit’s screen flashes with a burst of emergency messages.
‘I know,’ I growl. I know his blood pressure is dropping. I know his vitals are low. What I don’t know is whether jumping him will save or kill him.
‘What …’ Cole whispers again, just as I find the file.
My fingers hover over the keyboard. I don’t know how this code is going to work. My father wrote it specifically for me. It might clash with whatever tech they put inside Cole and kill him instantly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say as blood trickles from beneath the gauze, spilling over his belt. His lips form a word, but no sound comes out. In that moment he looks so close to death that I can feel his life rising from his chest, unfurling in the slow breath he exhales. For a moment I pause, lost in doubt.
Then his eyes flutter, and I realize that he’s dying, truly dying.
My fingers blur across the keys as I send the command.
CHAPTER 14
For a moment Cole sits beside me, pale and deathly still, as the jeep bounces across the potholes in the doctor’s driveway.
‘Come on,’ I whisper, but he’s not breathing. He’s not moving. Maybe his body couldn’t handle the jump.
‘Cole!’ I urge, grabbing his face. ‘You can’t die, dammit!’
His body jerks suddenly, his head slamming back into the seat. The cobalt dots of his panel flash wildly. The genkit lets out a series of high-pitched beeps, and his eyes blink wide, his body shaking with violent spasms. He throws his head back, letting out a roar, and his hand shoots up, hitting my chest hard enough to slam me against the window.
‘Cole!’ I shout, jerking into a ball, one leg caught below the steering wheel. The jeep’s dash flashes red, and it shudders to a stop. ‘Cole, stop it!’
But his expression doesn’t change. His eyes are shark-like, glassy and blank. He’s staring at me like he doesn’t even know who I am.
I bat at his arm, and his lips curl back. I scramble behind me for the door handle, wrench it open and tumble out on to the grass.
‘Stop it, you psychopath. You’re hurt!’ I struggle to my feet.
He pauses, swaying in the seat, the pad of gauze slipping from his wound. ‘Catarina?’ Recognition flickers in his eyes. ‘I feel … I feel cold.’
‘That’s because I jumped your panel. You’re dying, Cole. I need you to sit down so I can take you to the doctor.’
He looks down at his hands, bloodied and shaking, and blinks slowly at the gaping wound in his stomach. ‘Oh shit,’ he whispers, falling into the passenger seat. He grabs another pad of gauze as I climb back into the jeep.
‘I must be crazy,’ I mutter. We surge forward again. ‘I thought you were programmed to protect me.’
‘I glitched out.’
‘Yeah? That’s one hell of a glitch.’
‘How much time do I have?’ He unfurls an IV from the medkit, holding the saline bag in his teeth. He slides the cannula into his arm. His panel is still flashing, resetting itself as the jump’s nanites race through his cells. He stares at his forearm, blinking repeatedly as though trying to turn it back on.
‘A few minutes,’ I say. ‘You’re running on some seriously unholy tech. We’re almost at the doc’s. You just need to hang on a little longer.’
‘Who is this doctor?’
‘A friend.’ I grab the steering wheel, trying to dodge the worst of the potholes.
‘Do you trust him?’
I glance over at Cole. Marcus, the doctor, is a member of the Skies, and he hates Cartaxus even more than I do. Cole is clearly one of their soldiers, and we’re arriving in one of their jeeps, but I have to believe that Marcus will help us.
‘Yes,’ I say, flooring the accelerator. ‘I trust this man completely.’
The driveway rises, disappearing into a grove of towering cedars whose shadows race across the hood as Marcus’s house inches out of the trees. It’s a two-storey log cabin, its windows boarded over. The yard is overgrown, littered with trash. Marcus’s car is gone.
‘Come on …’ I breathe, scanning the house. We skid to a stop.
‘Where are they?’
‘I don’t know. It looks …’ I can’t bring myself to say it. It looks abandoned. Hopeless.
‘They’re gone,’ Cole says. He closes his eyes. The colour is already draining from his face. ‘It’s OK, Cat.’
The calmness in his voice stuns me. Something inside me tightens. ‘No,’ I say, swinging the door open. ‘I’m going to find them.’
He grabs my wrist before I can get out. ‘They’re gone. This isn’t your fault, but you need to work fast. Go into the back and get some paper to mark down the route to the lab. You’ll need to cut my panel out and freeze it, or you’ll lose the vaccine. Then you just have to make it to the lab. You can do this.’
‘Cole, please,’ I whisper. ‘Maybe I can stop the bleeding. Let’s go inside.’
‘There’s not enough time.’ His eyes soften. ‘It’s important you keep going. Now get some paper, hurry.’
I back out of the jeep, my eyes swimming with tears, stumbling blindly to the back. When I swing the rear doors open, something whistles past my ear, hitting a tree behind me with a crack.
Cole swings round, staring at me. I notice with a shock that his eyes are blue. The jump rebooted his panel, which means his implants aren’t working yet. We could be surrounded by Lurkers, and neither of us would know. He’s running blind without his tech. He grabs his gun and lurches from the jeep, letting the blood-soaked bandage fall to the ground.