Amplified (5 page)

“Well, don
’t make me.”

“This way.” I let him go and held
the syringe pointed at him, nodding down to it. “You run, I stab.”

He bobbed his head up and down and turned forward, pointing ahead. We headed in that direction. Once we
’d turned down several halls and gone past the lab, I noticed Mercer and Christian were no longer following us. “Where did your fine leaders go?”

“Probably to round up everyone else in the armory.”

Nice.

“Where
’s that?”

“Toward the rear of the facility.”

“Any way to lock it down so they can’t get out of there?”  This wasn’t sounding good for us at all. We had limited weapons.

“Uh…
I… um….”

“Spit it out
, human,” Rye hissed. He had been next to me the whole time, but I hadn’t noticed with my focus on Rick. I gave him a tight smile and nodded.

“Yeah. I
can lock it down from my lab. It’s like a quarantine mechanism we set up in case there was a severe mutation that got out.”

I grabbed his arm and turned him toward the door to his lab. “
Don’t just stand there. Turn it on.”

Chemicals and Quarantines

“How secure are we in this lab? It’s made of glass all over the place.” Elijah pressed a hand against the cool surface of one of the see-through walls. He turned to view the hall in each direction, but no one was coming. Not yet. “I don’t like the looks of this.”

“It
’s a fortress, I assure you. The glass is extremely impact resistant and bullet proof. There is no getting in or out. It can also be sealed for quarantine protocols.” Rick pushed his glasses up slowly with his left hand. His right arm was dangling at his side, probably dislocated.
My bad.

“Get the armor
y and back section locked down now.” Rye wasn’t losing focus, and I was glad to have such stringent and focused warriors at my back.

“Okay, j
ust one moment.” Rick fumbled with his fingers as he hit a half dozen switches before turning three keys and flipping a bright red switch. A huge rumble shook the ground as the gates shut. Several monitors above this station displayed the rush of activity in the lower floors of the fortress. Only a few stragglers had been trapped outside the quarantine walls, and the bulk of the vampires ran at the noise of the large lockdown doors sliding down into place. I couldn’t find Mercer or Christian on any of the monitors and wondered where they’d gone off to. I hoped they were trapped behind the barrier, but they would know about this feature and had probably made it out before we’d gotten the doors secured.

“How long before they get the doors back open?”

Rick settled into one of the rolling chairs, sighing as his eyebrows furrowed with pain. He held his arm, dangling uselessly at his side. “It’s made to keep things inside or out. It could take them days to get it open again if they really, really tried to short circuit the system. They won’t die in there; there’s emergency supplies of food and water all over this compound.” He grimaced as he rubbed his arm, the agony making him sweat and pale before my eyes.

I stepped forward, motioning for
Elijah to help me. He threw me a knowing glance, and we both approached Rick. He flicked his eyes between us and paled even further. “I might need something for this pain… wait….”

“This
’ll just take a minute.” I grabbed his arm and braced a leg on one of the solid metal counters bolted to the floor. Elijah wrapped his arms around Rick’s chest and held on tight as I gave him a nice hard tug.

Rick
’s scream echoed through the lab, and I was sure the glass beakers and test tubes would shatter from it. I let his arm go and bent it, moving it around a bit to check mobility. This caused him further pain and had him passing out on the chair, slipping down before I braced his body against the chair with my weight. “Got a tough one here.” I patted his shoulder after I propped him up enough so he wouldn’t tumble to the ground. “Sorry about that. No, wait… not really sorry.”

Plopping down in my own rolling chair, I felt the fat
igue tugging at my bones. The sun had just barely gone down, but I was exhausted. What had happened to the days of staying up all night?

“You hungry?” Rye plopped an energy bar and a glass of water in front of me. Glancing up at his gorgeous
, gunmetal grey eyes, also encircled with a reflective strip of a yellow halo, I found myself smiling at him. I hadn’t really looked at him closely lately. He’d been around, holding me in bed, kissing my neck and making me feel wanted, but I hadn’t really let him in completely. Especially with the crazy blood bind going on with Christian.

But at that moment,
I made myself look, really, really look at Rye. I liked what I saw, and it warmed my insides with a spill of heat as his eyes hypnotized me. I took the food he offered, grateful that he could read my needs better than I could.

“Thank you. I
’m more tired than I thought. Maybe I should eat.” I unwrapped the foil covering and took a large bite of the thick bar. It was chalky and a bit tough to swallow, but hey, it was food, no matter how horrific it tasted.

“How are you feeling about all this?”

Ah, therapy time with Rye. Always the turn off for me. I frowned as I chewed.

“I
’m fine. No, really.” I chugged the water back and looked toward the rows of mutations nearby. A chill ran down my skin, but I tried not to shudder. “I still need answers, but this antidote… it really could be something.” Rye’s frown was prominent, and it made me wonder what he was thinking. “What do you think about it?”

“
It depends on if it’s for us hybrids or for the ferals only. If it’s for us, we could all be turned human again, and with the state of the world right now, that could be really bad.” He sighed, rubbing the fatigue from his eyes, making me realize just how exhausted and pale he was looking lately. “If it’s just for the ferals, that’d be amazing, to save all those infected, but I have a feeling this isn’t meant for the ferals at all. It’s meant to make all those with extra powers, like us, like you and me, to make us normal and human again. Do you think everyone will want that? I don’t. Who wants to give up power after having a taste of it? Who’d want to be utterly normal again?”

I nodded
and pondered what he said. He had a point. Who could give up the powers we’d been given after so long and all the trials we’d faced? I wasn’t sure even I could if it came down to it. What if it would be used as a weapon instead of the salvation everyone would initially think it was? That could be disastrous.

“I guess when Rick wakes up, we
’ll find out.” I tapped my fingers on the counter, which reminded me of my chemistry classes back in high school. I looked up to see Sarah take another chair across from me. Her bright smile always lifted my spirit, and I was relieved that she was there with me. She no longer looked peeved at me, at least. No one better to have than my best friend.

“Would you take it?”
I asked. She picked at her nails, frowning at her disintegrating manicure. Sarah always took care of herself, beauty queen style. Her flaming red hair was still pulled back into a ponytail, but she made that look stylish with smooth strands and a lock of her brilliant hair wrapped around the elastic. Me, I was the epitome of style neglect. My hair wasn’t smooth, but fine and flat, pulled violently back into a ponytail with wisps escaping the tie’s grip with each step I took. My face was free of makeup and clear, but I was no looker like she was.

“Maybe.”

Somehow, our stark differences hadn’t mattered so much before the apocalypse, but now? Now I caught Rye throwing her the tiniest of smiles before he looked away and fished out another energy bar from his supply pack to hand it to her. At least he was smart enough to have grabbed his pack from his room before escaping into this foodless lab.

I wasn
’t a jealous girl, but that one tiny look made me feel like a wallflower. Lately, now that Sarah was around me so much more, I’d felt inferior to her pretty face. Why that was bothering me now, I had no idea. I liked having my friend with me. I loved it, actually. Maybe it was all the company around me all the time. Before, I’d had no one except my family, and a year of it had turned me into a complete recluse. Breaking out of that habit was proving to be slightly difficult.

I just didn
’t know how to make it any better for myself. I was utterly clueless.

“I don
’t think I’d take it.” Rye fished out his canteen and took a swig of water. “It’s too dangerous. What if no one wants to take it? What good is it to take the cure and be defenseless? Unless it can be given in a mass dose to everyone, I don’t see it ever going anywhere.”

He was
right, and the thought of everything being normal again made my stomach twist. So easy to just shoot up the world with an antidote to make it all all right again, but it wouldn’t be easy. Nothing was ever easy.

Rick roused on his chair. S
weat gleamed on his forehead, but his pallor had subsided somewhat. Asleep, he’d looked harmless, like a school teacher, weak, pathetic. I knew better, though, and the urge to go and snap his neck again resurfaced. I sighed, closing my eyes to remember that I had so many questions to ask before I could kill him. Why is there always something in the way of a simple thing like killing someone?

I almost choked on the stifled laugh I let slip out. Everyone looked up at me for a moment, confusion
flashing in their eyes. I must have looked like I was losing my mind, but I pretended to have almost choked on the energy bar sitting half eaten in my fingers.

“I
’m okay,” I managed to squeak out. They all turned back to what they were doing, and I refocused my eyes onto the now groggy but awake Rick.

“Where
’s your morphine?” Elijah let his gaze slide over the dozens of cabinets and drawers lining the wall. “You’re going to need it.”

“Third cabinet from the left on that wall.” Rick pointed across from us and let his head fall back, his breath heaving from the pain. It probably wasn
’t as bad as it had been while it was dislocated, but he sure was a bit wimpy if you asked me.

I guess b
eing utterly human did have its disadvantages. Even superpowers like telekinesis and telepathic abilities didn’t make up for no tolerance to pain. What a pity.

Elijah
grabbed a vial of morphine from the cabinet. After plucking some alcohol swabs, two by twos, a filter needle and a Tb syringe with a needle, he made his way over to Rick. I watched him expertly snap the ampule top off, suck up the liquid, switch needles, tap the air out and dilute it with saline. I wondered how much medical training he’d had.

“Al
l right, give me your uninjured arm, show me a vein.” He snickered as he snapped a tourniquet onto Rick’s arm. Finding a vein didn’t seem too hard for him, and he inserted an IV port easily. The smell of blood seemed to heighten Rye’s senses, and I watched as he made his way to the farthest point in the large laboratory, away from Rick.

I sighed
, rubbing my head. I was relieved that the blood didn’t affect me like it did him. It was one advantage of being a hybrid human, not a vampire. Watching Elijah, I wasn’t sure how a vampire would not want to munch on Rick’s arm from the tiny amount of blood expelled from the IV site. Once he cleaned the site and slapped a tegaderm clear film on it, the smell seemed to dissipate, and Rye was able to come back to sit near me.

At least Rick didn
’t look like he was going to pass out again. His eyes were practically glassy from the nice dose of morphine he’d just received.

I jumped up and headed toward him, hoping he wasn
’t about to pass out again. “Don’t knock him out, I still need to interrogate him.”

Elijah
cleaned up the mess of papers and needles, dropping them into a sharps container installed on the wall. “He’s all yours, April. He’s just feeling mighty good right about now, not knocked out.” He stood up and walked away but not before revealing how tense his jaw was and how his fingers curled into fists with his hidden fury. He didn’t have to hide it; I could feel it coming off of him in waves. The narrowed glare he threw me topped the cake before he made his way to take my place besides Sarah. His demeanor grew less intense as he turned to throw her a smile. She reciprocated and began her usual torrent of chatting about anything.

It was nice
some people could forget so fast just what a predicament we were in. I was pretty sure Mercer and his gang were working diligently to get out of the quarantine area, and we were sitting here fucking around like it was afternoon tea. Yeah.

I took the seat
Elijah had emptied and rolled closer to Rick, who watched me cautiously. I had to admit, now that he was stoned on the morphine, he didn’t seem so scary anymore. I hoped he would answer my questions, or it would have all been a waste of my time and patience. Something told me that he held more secrets than I wanted to know. Regardless, I needed to know everything, no matter how deep or how far it went.