Fury: Book One of the Cure (Omnibus Edition) (16 page)

Numbly I sit alone at my desk, trying to work out what it was that caught my attention.

I’ve looked at it every way I can, and I’ve had Luke examine it every way he can.

Luke is a state prosecutor. He was best friends with a computer hacker, and had skills in hacking himself. He would have had access to the same information that I did—more, in fact. He looked repeatedly into Josephine’s child protection files, and he knew enough about hacking computers to be able to get in and out of a police station. Except that it’s supposed to be impossible to override the PRD system. So maybe he didn’t hack anything at all.

Maybe … maybe he didn’t discover the truth because he already knew it.

I can feel a tingling sensation in my fingers. I sit up straight, my mind whirling with possibilities for the thousandth time today. Before I convince myself out of it, I race from my office, using my prints to get me through several layers of security, down many hallways that all look exactly the same, and finally to Josephine’s room in the East Wing. I’ve never been here before. In all this time, I’ve never once come to see where she spends all of her time.

Doyle is standing at the door, looking intimidating. “No access,” he says.

“I’m her doctor,” I say. “I have full access to every room in this facility.”

He studies me skeptically and then reluctantly stands aside.

I place my print on the scanner and the door opens for a five second window to let me in. Josephine is lying on her tiny bed, staring at the ceiling. The room is small and sparse, the only other thing worthy of note being her roommate, a woman who is not a patient of mine, but who Josephine has described as near catatonic. Maria is curled in a ball, snapping her teeth repeatedly.

As I enter Josi sits up in alarm. “What’s wrong? Am I being moved?”

“I’ve just been thinking. I need to ask you some things, if it’s all right.”

“Yeah, sure,” she replies, making room for me on the bed. “Is something wrong?”

“No. I don’t think so.” I grip my hands together, unsure how to start. Now that I’m here, I haven’t got a clue how I’m supposed to ask these questions. I take a breath and tell myself to treat this like any normal patient—I’m confident and in charge. This is for her health and safety.

“Josi … Can you tell me about Luke’s apartment?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did it feel lived in? Did he have a lot of possessions? Personal items? Photos?”

Josi stares at me as though I’ve said something bad. Her eyes narrow cautiously. “He’s wealthy. His apartment wasn’t his choice. He didn’t like it.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“Okay, well no I guess he didn’t have much stuff. He was a bit like that—neat and tidy.”

“You were together for almost a year, right? Did you ever meet his family?”

“They were estranged. He had a bad relationship with them, so he didn’t see them.”

“Did you ever go to his workplace?”

“No.”

“Did you ever feel like he was lying to you? Like he was hiding something?”

She looks at me for a long moment and then says softly, “No.”

“Did he ever actually tell you he loved you? Did he say the words?”

Josi opens her mouth but nothing comes out. She looks like she’s starting to unravel, so I steer the questions in another direction. “Did you ever see him grow aggravated or angry?”

“He’s cured, Anthony. So no—never.”

“What about friends? Did you ever meet any of them? Or anyone at all who knew him?”

“What are you asking?”

I steel myself for the next question. “Did you and he ever get … intimate?”

“What?”

“Did he make love to you?”

Her eyes widen in disbelief and I can see the storm brewing inside her. She stands up. “Get out.”

“It’s an important question, Josephine. Did the two of you—”

“Get the fuck out of my room.
Now
.”

I get up helplessly. “I’m not trying to hurt you—”

“Get out!” she shouts. I flinch, so unused to rage. I don’t know what else to do except leave, but even though I’ve upset her, I think I have my answer.

Luke’s phone is ringing
again
. It’s been ringing every day for the last week, and always at really weird hours. He’s in the shower, but his phone is on the bedside table, and it won’t shut up. I click my tongue and reach over to answer it.

The caller ID reads
Lou
. I’ve seen Lou’s name on his phone several times before.

“Hello?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “I’m looking for Luke. Do I have the wrong number?” It’s a woman.

“He’s in the shower. Can I take a message?”

“Who is this?” the woman asks.

“It’s … Josephine.” For some reason my skin prickles at the idea of telling my name to a strange woman on the end of Luke’s phone, but I’m not sure why I should lie.

“Right. Well, Josephine, would you kindly tell him that Louise phoned? And get him to call me back, would you?”

“Sure.”

Louise hangs up and I stare at the phone. I’m tempted to scroll through and see if he has any photos in here.

Luke emerges from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. He looks slick and gorgeous, his dark hair wet, his chest and arms covered in a faint sheen of perspiration that defines his long, lean muscles.

“I need to ask you some things,” I tell him.

He looks over his shoulder and smiles. “Sure, sweetheart.”

“Explain to me why I’m here in this house with you. Because as I understand it, you saw a random girl in a club, decided to help her, invited her to move in and made your entire life about solving her problem. It’s a stretch, Luke.”

He frowns. “Are you serious?”

“Very.”

Luke breathes out in a puff. He walks to his side of the bed and sits down, running a hand through his damp hair. “Okay. You want the truth? I saw you and felt bizarrely connected to you. You were the only still thing in a world of agitated speed. You were lonely and pitiful, and I was inexplicably worried about you. I was also deeply attracted to you, and I’d like to say that I’m not controlled by my desires, but that would be a lie. At least a part of me is. We met. We talked. I liked you a lot, right from the start. I recognized in you someone who understood the things that I did. Someone who hated the way the world is as much as I did. I was excited by your obvious fury. I wanted to be close to you. I wanted to be with you. I can’t explain it any better than that. It’s all I have.”

His words take me back to that first night. He appeared like a dream, speaking in his deep, comforting tone. A part of me must have loved him from the very beginning, in that stupid club, even without knowing it.

I slide over the covers so that I’m sitting behind him, threading my arms around his shoulders and neck. “I love you,” I murmur against his ear, “but sometimes I feel like I don’t know you. Before we met, what did you want, Luke? What did you fear? What did your life contain?”

I can feel his lungs fill with air as he breathes. I move my right hand to rest over his heartbeat. The smell of him is so familiar it makes me ache. I love him so much that I actually
miss
him, even when he’s sitting within the space of my arms.

“I didn’t fear or want anything,” he says softly. “That’s what’s so scary, Josi. I was a ghost. I lived for work, moving through my life like I was underwater. I was a drone.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m alive again, sweetheart. You woke me up.”

“A cure for the cure?”

He smiles and turns his face toward mine, catching my lips in a kiss. My mouth opens with a sigh and I feel his tongue slide across my lip. He tastes sweet and lovely. He tastes like freedom.

“Who’s Louise?” I ask softly.

Luke stiffens. He pulls away, staring at my face. “What?”

“She just phoned you.” I glance at the clock. “At one in the morning.”

“My boss,” he sighs. “She’s hounding me.”

“Why?”

“Guess I’ve been letting things slip at work.”

I consider this. The woman on the phone didn’t sound like a professional figure—she sounded worried and jealous. Plus she phoned in the middle of the night. But the cure makes people behave weirdly. “Okay, well maybe you should focus more. Leave me to worry about myself.”

“The blood moon is less than a month away.”

I flop back onto the pillow and throw an arm over my eyes melodramatically. “Do you know what I’d like to think about?” I sit up and grin. “The resistance.”

Luke’s expression doesn’t change. He watches my eyes closely.

“Don’t you want to find them?”

He cracks his knuckles. “You know who else wants to find them? The Bloods.”

I roll my eyes.

“Don’t,” he says suddenly. “Don’t make that face like it doesn’t matter. You’ve got no idea who the Bloods are, Josi. You don’t know how dangerous they are.”

“And you do?”

“Actually, I do,” he says.

“So tell me about them.”

He stands up and walks to the window. Golden lights from outside dance across his skin and flicker in his eyes. “You don’t have to be given the cure to be a robot.”

I’m not sure that I know what he means, but I stay quiet, hoping he’ll keep talking. Getting Luke to talk about anything other than my curse is becoming almost impossible. Morsels of his life are so rare that if I had to live on them I’d be long dead. He disappears for several hours a day, but he never talks about his job, despite how many questions I pound him with each time he comes home. Legally he’s not allowed to speak about his cases—I’m just surprised at how strictly he follows that law. I understand what it means never to want to speak about your past—I loathe the very idea of even mentioning my childhood. But the fact that he seems to feel the same way makes me think he must have his own fair share of darkness, instead of the perfect life I used to imagine him having. Perhaps when he goes there in his head he’s met with his brother. I can’t imagine grieving for a sibling—it is too vast a sorrow.

He doesn’t seem to want to go on, so I prod at him, hoping for some kind of reaction. “What if the Bloods did come and find us? Wouldn’t that be better than this?”

“What’s
this
?”

“This land of drones.”

“You’d rather be dead than live here with me?” he demands.

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’ve been hoping all along that the Bloods would come for me, but they never do. They seem to be the only ones who can stop me now.”

“By torturing you for information and then slaughtering you?” Luke turns around, and I’ve never seen him look so cold. “You’re a child.”

“And you’re a coward,” I tell him softly, trying to hide how much his words hurt me. “You’re too frightened to fight. We could leave right now. We could find the resistance and join them. We could face whoever comes for us.”

“Do you know what the reality of that kind of life is?” he asks. “It’s isolation. It’s having no friends, no family. It’s living your life in fear, never having a place to call home.”

“As opposed to how we live now?” I cry. “This isn’t a home—it’s cold and empty. We spend our lives searching for something that doesn’t exist, and we dread the moon. Why couldn’t we do the same in a place where we could actually try to make a difference?”

“You idealize it.”

“I don’t idealize shit,” I snarl, standing up. I spread my hands. “My whole goddamn life has been a waste. Did you know that until I met you, no one had ever
touched
me, except to harm me? I’ve lived with more instability, more isolation than you could ever imagine. I don’t have any friends or family to leave. I know how to take care of myself. And what’s more—you know all of this about me. Which makes me think that
you’re
the one who doesn’t understand, Luke.
You’re
the one who couldn’t live on the outside.” And then I tell him again, “You’re a coward.”

He just stands there, looking wounded.

“Fight back!” I yell suddenly. “I can’t bear that you won’t fight back! Yell at me! Shout and scream and get
angry
!”

“Would you like me to pretend?”

I scream in frustration and storm out, locking myself in the bathroom. I turn the faucets on and start filling the bath. While I wait I can’t help pacing back and forward. Doesn’t he get it? If anyone in the world has the ability to reverse the cure, then it’s the resistance—they are the only ones who won’t have been given it in the first place. And no matter how much I love Luke, I don’t know how much longer I can be with a drone.

*

The boiling hot water loosens my muscles. I feel like a cigarette, even though I’ve never smoked one in my life. I consider calling out for Luke to get me one, but I’m not quite sure what the response would be, or if I’m relaxed enough not to scream at him again. I honestly don’t understand—if there’s even a hope that somewhere out there are other people like me, then isn’t it our responsibility to at least search? If it’s possible, wouldn’t he want his personality back?

That thought stops me short for a moment. It’s never occurred to me before that Luke might not be who he once was. And if he had the cure reversed, then who would he become? Is it possible that’s he’s an entirely different person? One I don’t know at all?

“Josi,” Luke says from behind the door, “I’m coming in.”

He opens the door, wearing cotton boxer shorts and nothing else. Without looking at me, he sits with his back against the tub, hands laced over his raised knees. “After the blood moon,” he says quietly, so quiet I almost think I’ve imagined it.

I hold my breath. I don’t need his permission—the truth is I could go on my own, but the thought of leaving him behind is too painful to entertain. “After the blood moon what?”

“We can look for them. If it’s really what you want.”

I run my hand through his hair, wetting it. He leans his head back against the lip of the bath, closing his eyes and enjoying the feel of my fingers. “You’d leave your job?” I ask softly. “Your family?”

He doesn’t reply. After a while he gets up and climbs into the bath with me, underwear and all. “Fuck it,” he announces wildly. “
Fuck it!
None of it matters anyway—everything in this whole goddamn world is bullshit. Everything except this.”