In which suspicions are confirmed and Hakon gets the stink eye from two aces.
Chapter 16
Sweating Rust
The seizure drowned Aiden's mind.
From one moment to the next, he'd forgotten where he was, how he'd gotten here, or why he'd bothered to begin with.
He even forgot his name. Or maybe what'd actually slipped his mind was what a name was meant to be.
For an excruciating moment, which might as well have been an entire season passing over him, Aiden's world shrunk down to two things: the shrill whistle in his ears, and the jagged, murky-blue tendrils that spilled across his vision like ink.
Then the floor bucked him off.
Which came as a bit of a surprise, really. He didn't remember falling. Nor were floors known to buck. But there he was, turned onto his back, until a hard point of pressure set against his chest, where it pinned him to the hard ground and kept his spine from contorting. Then there was a harsh sting on his scalp.
Someone had grabbed him by the hair. Either to tear his head off, or, maybe, to stop his neck from twisting.
Aiden wasn't sure.
Aiden wasn't, in fact, sure of anything.
Eyes locked onto him. Golden eyes. That, he knew (in an odd, deep-down sort of way), was wrong. They shouldn't have been golden.
"Inhale," snapped the golden eyes and that was when Aiden noticed something hard shoved between his teeth. A wild heartbeat later liquid fire rushed down his throat and Aiden did the only reasonable thing: he hacked it all back up with a single, violent cough. The fire cared little. It kept on coming, until it had all but filled up his chest, turning his lungs to ashes and his heart into a brittle lump of charcoal.
And slowly—like a boot being pulled from thick mud—Aiden's mind came up for air and things that'd made little sense prior, suddenly came into stark focus.
Take the pressure on his chest. That was Zofia's knee.
The hand in his hair? Yeah, also her's, though she'd let go by now, leaving behind a tight, uncomfortable echo where she'd yanked on it.
The eyes?
Grey. Not golden.
Aiden stared dumbly at her. Or maybe through her. It was hard to tell. Not only was she poorly lit by the flashlight he'd dropped, but his eyes ached, making it hard to focus. Generally, he found a lot of things hard to operate right now. Like his arms, for example. When he tried to reach up and push her off him, they refused. The most he got out of them was a single, pitiful flop.
"Convince me you're not about to fancy a late-night snack," she said.
Aiden's mouth (which felt like it'd been lined with cotton and then set on fire) mangled a perfectly fine "What?" coming up. In hindsight, it'd sounded a lot like a Biter moaning for a, well, bite.
"Not helping. What's my name?"
Determined not to mess up again, Aiden focused. "Fi?"
The point of pressure on his chest grew heavier. She scoffed.
Realising his mistake, Aiden raised his arms in the most placating of gestures he could manage without them dropping right back down. "Zofia," he corrected himself. "It's Zofia."
"Hm," she intoned and got up, which lifted the pressure from his chest but apparently not the one that'd seeped into it.
Afraid he'd seize again if he got testy with the aftertaste of fire still smouldering in his lungs, Aiden decided he'd stay right where he was for a bit. On the floor. With his eyes turned up, his heart beating a little too loudly, and Zofia's shadow being splashed across the ceiling like a two-headed ghost.
"They're just going to keep coming, aren't they?" he asked and leaned his head to the side. The realisation that he kept finding more ways in which his life had changed now that he was bitten came with a pinch of existential agony. But at least the floor was comfortable and cool against his cheek and ear. He took that and held on to it.
Zofia pulled a drawer open and didn't acknowledge him until she'd plucked a plastic-wrapped biomarker from it.
"You mean the seizures?" she eventually offered and turned to face him. "Yes, I suppose they will. You'll learn to manage them eventually though."
"What about you? Do you still get them?"
"Sometimes. Not near as often as Crane though." She lifted the biomarker to her mouth, pinched the plastic between her teeth, and began to tear it open.
"Okay. And I guess that inhibitor didn't—I don't know—inhibit?"
Zofia let go of the wrapper mid-tear. "It did. You wouldn't have made it all this way without UV light otherwise. It just didn't last as long as it should have."
"Should have," Aiden repeated. "Why?"
"Do I look like I got me a PhD in virology?" The way she looked at him before she finished ripping up the plastic with her teeth made Aiden think yet another quiet gulp.
"You might?"
Her eyes narrowed.
"One thing 's clear though," Aiden continued, "you look like someone who knows a lot more about those things than you let on. You and Crane." He paused. And then, because the floor instilled him with a stability he so very much craved and which brought with it a slice of courage, he added: "Say, why do you call him Crane anyway? I thought you two were married?"
"Habit," she answered in great detail (though, to be fair, it was more than he'd expected). "And alright. I'll make a guess. Get up." She waved the biomarker at him.
Aiden grunted and began the slow process of getting a pair of still wobbly knees to extend. Once he'd come up, she pointed at his arm. The inside of his left forearm, to be precise; the one most riddled with holes.
"It's probably down to those. And Waltz."
Aiden's stomach decided right then and there that it preferred the floor. It plummeted.
"Do you remember what we said back at Hakon's shed? Crane called the inhibitors Antizin on steroids, but that's not entirely true. Antizin is a suppressant. That's also what I gave you just now. You take it, the virus stops multiplying and your immune system regains a bit of ground. End of. The stuff these inhibitors are based on though—"
Zofia hooked a finger under his right wrist to pull his arm up. The touch was an unexpected point of cold pressure against his skin and nearly had him shuffle a step back before he piled together his remaining resolve.
"—that's different. Yes, it keeps the virus out of your noggin. That whole blood-brain barrier thing, remember? That's what keeps you from turning. But it doesn't send the virus to sleep. What these injections are designed for is a lot more involved."
Aiden had listened—intently, this was his life now, after all—when, finally, she settled the biomarker around his wrist. His attention turned to an uncomfortable squirming. "Meaning?"
She huffed. "I don't got all the answers for you because I don't speak scientese, but here's the short of it: think of the inhibitor as a trojan horse. You know what that is?"
"Yeah."
"Right. So. It pretends to be the virus, or, rather, it's a version of the virus that's been heavily rigged, allowing it to pass out new instructions. New dos and don'ts. Things like do increase bone density, but don't make the hair fall out. Do heal that bruise, but don't get funky with it. That was the inhibitors' original purpose; a way to tame the virus, if you will."
"Tame the—"
She snapped the marker shut, and Aiden's thought was rudely interrupted by a sharp bite of pain to his wrist. It'd felt a bit like a bee sting. When he glanced down, a drop of blood formed under the band and trickled down his skin. The band itself had fastened tight, though not uncomfortably so.
"Ouch."
"Apologies," Zofia said. "You've been chipped, I should have figured it'd smart."
"I've been what?"
"Chipped. The marker inserts a sensor under your skin so it can keep track of your viral load. It's paired up with the band itself, which is why I suppose you can't just go around yanking them off other people's arms and sticking them on your own."
Aiden's head spun. "And you just so happen to know that too?"
Zofia turned his wrist up, showing a line of vertical lights mounted in the marker. Most were green. Two glowed a nasty red.
"No. I read the instructions," she said flatly and pointed at a sheet of paper plastered to the biomarker cabinet.
. . .
"Oh. Right. Anyway, now that I feel stupid… you still haven't told me what the inhibitor not working on me has to do with Waltz."
"I wager it works just fine," she said. "Just different. Because whatever Waltz did to you changed you."
Aiden's stomach insisted that the floor wasn't enough and tried burrowing down to the next level.
"Or were you a perfectly ordinary teen when you set out to be a Pilgrim? A very very lucky teen who didn't catch a nasty bug, get eaten, or dropped dead from exhaustion?"
The way she laid out the words told Aiden she already knew the answer.
But how?
How did someone he'd only just met know? Aiden wrestled with that realisation; with the sudden bright light that splashed against a piece of him, a piece he'd kept carefully out of his mind for most parts of his life. Because how did you accept—or even say out loud—that some sick bastard had jabbed you with needles over and over again and left you changed?
It'd sound ridiculous coming out of his mouth.
"I guess not," he finally admitted, giving the skin near the biomarker a skittish scratch. "There was always something off about me."
"What gave it away?" Zofia asked.
Aiden turned the question over in his head. There were a number of moments in his early life that'd puzzled him, but one stood out in particular. "I was maybe thirteen? Broke an ankle hauling logs. Pretty badly, too, according to the camp's doc anyway. He said I wouldn't be walking for weeks."
"But then it only took a few days, hm?"
"Yeah."
Her eyes fixed on him. Steadily. It creeped him out, since, all of a sudden, all he could think of was the sheen of white gold he'd sworn he'd seen earlier. Twice now.
"Anything else?"
Aiden pinched his tongue between his teeth. Am I really doing this?
Yeah. He was doing this.
"I guess I've always been stronger? The loggers loved thirteen-year-old me, right up until I busted my ankle. The camp bullies though? Not so much. I was a scrawny kid back then, so what do they do? They tried to fuck with me. A lot. Except kid-me wouldn't go down."
With every word (words he'd kept ridiculously guarded until now), Aiden felt like he'd shucked off something weighty and constricting. It baffled him, but it didn't shock him into silence.
"Then there were the bouts of flu and whatever going through the camps and none ever got to me. Or even if they did, I got over them in a day. And, ah, you know, I thought I was pretty damn fast. Until today, anyway."
There was a faint twitch in Zofia's lips. Like she'd been about to smile, but then reconsidered. Probably on account of what stood in front of her.
A freak.
Aiden looked down. First at his feet, at shoes that wanted to fall off given the chance, and then at the biomarker with its... three red lights. Not two. Three.
"How did you—" Aiden started, except then the know ran headfirst into a wall and he felt like an absolute idiot. "Waltz," he blurted. "You're looking for Waltz because he's done something to you too."
A moment passed in which Zofia gave him nothing but a flat stare, one blunted by how she opened her mouth twice, only to close it again.
"No," she eventually said, her voice careful. "Waltz had nothing to do with it. He's just—" She pulled her shoulders up and threw a few biomarkers into her pack. "—he might just be the only one left alive who can figure us out."
Us.
Them.
Aiden leaned his head to the side. He'd started chewing on about a hundred follow-up questions when Zofia indicated his biomarker.
"But you're running out of green lights. And I'm not in the mood."
"Not in the mood for kicking me around if I have another seizure?"
"Not in the mood for talking."
"Fine. So what? We get me back to Hakon's place?"
"Mhm. That's the plan. Once there, we get you under a UV light, but until then—" She swiped something from the biomarker cabinet's top and held it up. "—if you see it go down to three green blips, you have a puff from that."
The item she held was small, L-shaped, and mostly purple.
"It's an Antizin inhaler," Zofia clarified. "You shake it, like this, then you stick it into your mouth, like that, and depress the top. It'll tide you over."
"Yeah. Okay. Thanks."
"Three green blips," she repeated.
"Then take a puff. Yeah. I got it."
"Or if you feel another seizure coming, of course."
Crestfallen, Aiden raised his hands to his head, where he pressed his palms to the sides of his skull. An agitated groan rumbled from his chest.
"I hate this."
"That's fair. Now go on and hate it while filling up this bag. And don't tell another soul about what you just told me unless you're itching for another hanging, you hear me?"
When he looked up, she'd thrown a medic satchel at him, which Aiden snatched from the air with a downward swing of his arm.
"I hear you," he said. Right as yet another green blip winked out to be replaced by seething red.
It astonished Kyle how there wasn't a hole in Hakon's floor by the time Fi came back. He had, after all, worked those damn floorboards pretty fucking hard, his knee bouncing at a relentless worried-about-Fi-bounces-per-second.
But. Hey. There it was: a quiet and polite rap of knuckles against wood, and, thus, the end to the torment of one Kyle Crane and one dirty floor.
He was up like a loaded spring.
Though once he reached the door, Kyle slowed and sorted his face into a mask of nonchalance, like he was a man who cared very little about who he found outside. Then he propped the door open, leaned his busted arm awkwardly against the frame, and grabbed the door in a sexy kind away, head tilt and all.
"'sup?" Kyle said.
Fi ignored him. She looked to the side, to where Aiden stood crowding in under the UV light flooding the porch and said: "See? I told you he'd be at the door in an instant. He's a bit of a pooch like that."
"A— a what?" Kyle spluttered. "A pooch?"
"Yes." Fi's eyes turned back to him and he admitted himself murdered on the spot. Not because she glared or scowled. No. It was the smile she carried; a small, tamed thing tucked up into the corners of her lips. "Lies right by the door, with his chin on his paws and ears all droopy."
"Hey. Nothing on me is droopy."
"Mmh." Her attention shifted back to Aiden. "Go find a spot close to the UV light inside and try and stay close to it. And keep an eye on your marker."
The kid nodded, pulled a medic bag's strap higher onto his shoulder, and then made it one step before Kyle found himself in his way. Aiden's eyes cut up. They were a ghastly, bright pale blue in the UV light. Bright in colour, anyway. A weary gloom swam in them, accompanied by puffy, dark skin. They'd been put there by Villedor's welcome package, Kyle figured.
A bite, plus the complementary hanging.
Kyle stepped aside. Aiden slunk on through. When he refocused on Fi, her smile had long vanished.
"How'd it go?"
Fi's answer was to creep out from under the UV light, further out onto the porch. Her hand came up. Beckoned him.
And. Yeah. Fine. Okay.
Maybe he was a bit of a pooch, because there were few things in life that made Kyle comply quite as quickly as that.
Villedor woke with a clamour at first light.
Kyle though? He'd been up for a while already, driven from the shack by the constant bite of UV light. The predawn sky treated him much better.
And—for a good while—it felt as if he'd been given a chance to air out his mind. To throw some proverbial windows open, that kinda thing. To breathe. For real. To shed that constant weight pressed onto him and clear out that stupid-ass fog choking up his think-meat.
It was nice.
And, at the very same time, terrifying.
Because if two days and two nights of being kept from the dark fucked with his mental faculties that much, then those inhibitors better work. Else he…
Kyle grimaced.
Else you're really fucking boned, buddy. In the end is nigh kinda way, too. Not the fun one.
And Kyle did not approve of nighing ends. Or ends that nighed. Whichever.
Sighing, he thought about their last dose from last year's haul; the one safely wrapped up in his pack and the same one Fi kept telling him to take.
Hell, no. The last of their H0-3 (along with the last hit of Antizin; or last drag from a joint; or cookie on a tray; or bag of fucking tea) had always been meant for Fi.
That was just how it worked.
Sorry, babe. I don't make the rules.
. . .
Yeah, okay, so he did. And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
Kyle rolled his one good shoulder back, extended his spine, and looked out across Villedor. The city's building sank into early morning mists, its streets positively flooded with the milky crap. Above the wall, a wide ribbon of ashen pink peeked over the mountains.
So. Anyway. Circling back to his recently aired-out brain…
He'd made a plan. Hooray. Granted, the plan stood on rickety legs (made from yesterday's intel) and carried maybe a little too much weight with all the shit he was trying to get done at once, but it was a plan and that was a start, right?
Except there was that one (1) detail he didn't know what to do with.
The news that Fi had delivered last night as they'd huddled away from the UV light like two teenagers stealing away from a party for a bit of— ya know.
Except there hadn't been any ya know.
Just a lot of that aforementioned huddling, a bit of small talk about Volatile nests, zombie detergent, and, oh, yeah. That bit about Aiden being more than a hardheaded Pilgrim who Spike had taken a shine to.
About how Waltz had turned him into—
The shed door opened. Kyle glanced over his shoulder.
—a pale, ruffled kid with a neck made of bruises and one pant leg hiked up over his ankle.
"Zofia said to fetch you." Aiden's voice came up scratchy after a (presumably) rough night's sleep. "We were going over the loot from the lab and she thought you'd like to be there." Then, after a moment of standing just outside the door looking lost, Aiden finally concluded with a rather quiet: "And I really need to take a leak. Do you know where... uh…"
Kyle stuck his functioning arm out into the general direction of please do your business here, as Hakon had so politely informed him yesterday. "Can't miss it."
After a curt nod, Aiden padded into the indicated direction, looking nothing like an evil scientist's plaything and everything like twenty-or-so worn out years stuffed into a borrowed shirt.
Either way, Kyle's curiosity was having a parade in his head. "How's the bite?"
Aiden froze. His mouth twisted.
"That bad, huh? And the neck?"
For a second, Kyle thought the kid'd walk on, but, instead, Aiden shrugged. He also lifted a hand as if to touch the bruised skin where the rope had dug in deep, but stopped an inch from his fingers landing. They curled uselessly at empty air.
"Honestly?" Aiden said. "I've had worse. But what gets me is the part where I wake up and remember that, yeah— yeah, I'm infected now. This time it wasn't a nightmare." He took a deep breath and finally raised his eyes to meet Kyle's.
"You get those often?"
"Nightmares in which a Biter takes a chunk out of me?" Aiden nodded. "Yeah. And then I'd freak out because I thought it was real, you know? I'd check myself over. Arms. Legs. Whatever. But then the panic settles and I figure out it was just a bad dream, so I laugh it off, feel stupid, and go in with my life. Except for today. Today I'm not laughing and it's definitely not a dream."
Aiden lifted the arm with his brand new wristband. All the diodes on it were green.
"You'll figure it out," Kyle said, which prompted Aiden's brow to furrow. "Just try not to have any seizures while you're taking a shit."
Aiden's furrowed brows crinkled.
"Trust me," Kyle added. Gravely.
And just like that, Aiden snorted, cracked a wide smile, shook his head, and wandered off.
Kyle left the door to Hakon's shed open.
It needed a bit of airing out, too, especially after it'd had four people cooped up in here overnight.
"Alright then," Kyle started and got all up into Fi's personal space. She kneeled on a tilted chair, its backrest propped against the table. "We set for life or what?"
Fi didn't look up. She'd draped herself over the chair's back and was putting down the last few sealed biomarkers in a neat row. One had been unwrapped and sat off to the side. Another had found its way onto her wrist. It showed a full row of green diodes.
"Hakon mentioned the markers alone should buy us passage." She wiggled a finger at said markers.
Which was great, really. Fantastic, even. But you know what else was fantastic? The way Fi's back shifted on the chair. And how that perky ass of hers stuck out in the air all… perky.
"If I'm lucky," said Hakon as he wandered to stand at the length of the table, his arms folded, "it'll be enough for all four of us. Wouldn't want to send you off without your guide."
"Uh-huh," Kyle hummed, his eyes still— "Ow. Remind me why I never put those tennis balls on your elbows?"
But alright. Business. He could do business. Dutiful, Kyle's eyes snapped forward.
"The Antizin is still good. We tried that last night." She poked one of the inhalers. It wobbled. "And if those inhibitors work, then— well, I suppose then I'll consider formally apologising."
She finally looked at him and Kyle did absolutely nothing to stop himself from grinning. "Oh yeah? Great thinking, Kyle? You're a genius, Kyle?"
"Don't push it." She picked up the lone unwrapped marker and handed it to him. "There were three GRE crates in the lab, all needing a key. I touched only one of them and even then I couldn't take all the inhibitors with me. So I say we go back another night. Once your arm is up for it, anyway. We clear out the Biters, plug up the nest, and maybe we can make the place save enough for daytime looting."
"What about biomarkers? Were there any more of those?" Hakon asked. "And Antizin? Most people won't touch an inhibitor unless they really have no other choice, but they'll sell you their best goat for some Antizin."
"Yeah," came the answer from behind them. Aiden had wandered back in; still ruffled, still pale, but with his pant leg fixed. "Two cabinets of markers, a fridge full of these inhalers, and way more meds than I've ever seen in one place."
Ah. Yes. The drugs. His spelunkers had brought back a pile of small cardboard boxes and plastic bottles. Pain blockers. Solid antibiotics. Antivirals, etc. All the good stuff, really. Expired good stuff, but those tiny date stamps meant about as much as the Don't walk on the grass sign which'd once stood between Kyle and the backdoor to his college dorm.
(Which was to say it meant nothing. Kyle had trotted a lovely trail up to that mat.)
"Great." Kyle palmed the biomarker Fi had given him and stared at Hakon from across the table. It was one of his scowly stares, which he'd honed to perfection since the world had turned its tits to the skies. "I'd prefer if we keep this between us. No one hears about the lab, how we got in, or that we have a key."
Hakon nodded. "My lips are sealed."
"Sweet."
"And now?" Aiden asked. "What's next?" He'd sidled up on Fi's other side, a detail which did not escape Kyle and one that greatly amused him. Especially when Fi regarded the kid with a sideways glance that told Kyle she'd have liked to grow into a spiky, puffy hedgehog.
A hedgefi, if you will.
"The Bazaar," Kyle declared, ready to commit to his rickety plan.
Aiden stiffened. "The— the place where they tried to hang me?"
"Yep, that's the one."
"What, you want to give them another try at it?"
Kyle leaned his head to the side and regarded Aiden with a raised brow. "If there's anyone they have a bone to pick with then that's me. I'm the ass who shot up their pretty ceiling."
"So why go back? Why not go straight to the Peacekeepers?" Aiden argued.
"Because there's no guarantee they'll let us into central Villedor, markers or not. And even if they do, what's to say it won't be a one-way trip? We'd lose access to the lab, for one, which is the only advantage we currently have. That, and Hakon. There's a good chance they won't let him through with us."
"That'd be tragic," Hakon interjected. "I'm marvellous to have around."
Fi scoffed.
"We go to the Bazaar," Kyle repeated. "Based on everything Hakon told me, that place is Old Villedor's main hold. Which means trade. Food. Gossip. You name it. We go there—"
"—try not to get hanged," Fi cut in.
"—try not to get hanged, yes, of course. Gee. And after we're done not hanging, we see about trading us some food, water, and, you know, information about your sister."
Aiden's brow pulled down.
"I didn't forget," Kyle said as he finally snapped the biomarker he'd been messing with around his wrist. "Our man here—Ouch. That stings. What the hell." Irritated, Kyle lifted his right write to about nose-level and glared at it. "Our man Hakon here said he hasn't heard of a Mia. Which he says is a failing on his part, since he's doing his very best to get to know every woman in Villedor."
The stares both Fi and Aiden levelled at Hakon were priceless; and so was the sudden look of amused alarm on the man's face.
An amusement which died a quick and nasty death the moment Kyle's biomarker had a fit. Because whyever would anything go smoothly for him, huh? It sounded a bit like he'd just strapped on an old digital alarm clock, the kind that burped up a tirade of pitched breep-breep-breeps in the most grating way imaginable.
Oh, and he only had one green light left.
Whoops.
Now that was gone, too.
"Seriously?" Kyle said with a tired mutter, the low energy of which stood in contrast to the sudden movement of Aiden and Hakon taking a sliding step back. Hakon more than Aiden, but that was beside the point. They both kinda looked ready to chase him out the door. With a pointy stick.
Man— he whined in the private confines of his head while the breep-breep-breep tried to shake all of his marbles loose.
Fi remained where she was, one arm poised in a Please don't murder him gesture (or that was what Kyle hoped it meant) and the other groping for an inhibitor.
"What'd you say back at the farmhouse?" she asked. "I'm fine?"
"I am."
"Sure you are. Shirt. Let's see if this works, hm?"
Kyle faced her and used his busted arm to tuck his shirt out of his jeans and then raised it just enough for Fi to land a hard jab on his stomach. No counting to three. No Close your eyes. No Are you ready? Just. Jab.
Business as usual.
He hardly felt any of it anymore anyway. The injection. The way the drug snaked through his veins like a— ah— snake? Or how his head felt light, only to grow unbelievably heavy a second after that, while his blood couldn't quite decide if it was supposed to be cold or hot or just an awful, lukewarm sludge.
Oh, the things a man could get used to in this fucked up world?
The marker stopped beeping. Its lights turned green. And by his side, Fi remarked a bemused "I like it," as she wagged the spent inhibitor at the traitorous wristband. "Now how you gonna fib?"
Kyle grunted, let his shirt fall right where it was without bothering to tuck it back in, and traded both Aiden and Hakon a disarming smile.
"So. Where were we?"
