He was alive. Shot, bleeding, possibly dying on the floor of that grid room, but alive enough to drag himself to theenvironmental system access panel and swap the Purifier in the ventilation reserves with the cure I’d given him.
Play your part. Whatever changes, whatever goes sideways.
The memory surfaced whole. Three days ago, in the supply tent after the others had gone to sleep. Wyatt sitting across from me, the vial catching firelight between us.
“This is a cure?” He’d turned it in his fingers, studying the amber liquid with cautious respect.
“Developed from two sets of research.” I’d kept my voice low. The tent walls weren’t walls. “My mother’s journal documented the Purifier’s neural targeting mechanism. Diera’s notes from the first expedition documented the original neural architecture before corruption.”
“Two mothers,” Wyatt said.
“From opposite sides of the same war. Both dead. Both leaving behind research that nobody thought to combine.” I’d pressed my palms flat on the crate between us. “Sienna mapped the destruction. Diera mapped the blueprint. Put them together and you get a reversal agent. The cure doesn’t fight the Purifier. It rebuilds what the Purifier erased.”
He’d stared at me. “Why are you telling me this? Why not the whole team?”
“Because this is our weapon. The one nobody can prepare for because nobody knows it exists.” I’d held his gaze. “The plan is to destroy the Purifier stores. But plans go wrong. If Thiago hasa backup delivery system, a failsafe we can’t physically reach and destroy, the cure needs to already be inside it.”
“You want me to swap the Purifier in the ventilation reserves with this?”
“During one of my compound rotations. You have maintenance access. You know the systems.”
“If Thiago catches me tampering with his backup...”
“Then he kills you. Yes.” I hadn’t looked away. “I would do it myself but I can’t access the environmental panel without triggering a log that goes directly to his desk. Your maintenance clearance doesn’t flag. It’s the only way.”
Wyatt had been quiet for a long time. The fire crackled. The camp shifted in its sleep.
“You could have kept this to yourself,” he said.
“I need someone to carry the role. Someone who’ll follow through even if everything else falls apart.”
He’d pocketed the vial.
“I’ll play my part,” he said.
And he had. Shot in the abdomen, bleeding on a server room floor, he’d dragged himself to the panel and done exactly what I’d asked.
The present crashed back.
Lucian’s hand on Thiago’s throat. Solomon flanking right, Percy left. The smoke clearing in wisps, revealing the sublevel in full scope, and in the cells around us, a sound that made my breath stop.
Whimpering. Not the feral snarls of purified wolves. Whimpering. Human. Confused. The sound of people waking up from a nightmare they hadn’t chosen.
Thiago heard it too. His head turned toward the cells, eyes widening as the vacant stares behind the glass began to change. Blinks. Recognition. Hands pressing flat against the walls with awareness instead of instinct.
The cure was working. Flowing through every vent on the sublevel, reaching every cell, every containment unit. Thiago’s backup weapon was healing the prisoners it was designed to destroy.
“No,” Thiago whispered. “No, that’s not possible.”
Lucian’s grip tightened. “It’s over, Thiago.”
Thiago’s hand moved. Fast. The gun was on the floor but his other hand dove into his vest and the weapon he pulled wasn’t aimed at Lucian.
It was aimed at me.
The trigger pulled. Percy was faster.
His arms wrapped around me and we hit the concrete together, the round passing through the space my head had occupied a half-second ago. Pain shot through my shoulder where it struckthe floor, but Percy’s body was curled over mine, shielding the belly.
