The unstated was obvious. We couldn’t cut off his head. He huffed and fell silent, squinting his eyes against the light from the window as if it bothered him. That was one of my mother’s first symptoms. Was the virus already taking hold?
My vision blurred with tears as I stared at his wound, helpless and overwhelmed. I tried to clean it. I needed to take care of him. I reached for a tube of expired Neosporin and slathered the ointment over the infected bite with a Q-tip. I’d dose him with antibiotics as well. A few of the deeper cuts could probably use stitches, but I didn’t want to seal it up until it was clean and germ-free. How could I possibly reverse the damage?
“Is he okay?”
I hadn’t heard Santiago’s approach. My brother hovered in the doorway, useless as always. What could he possibly want now?
“No, he’s not okay. He got bit by a Rabid because you left him in the street. Big surprise.” I was pissed–at Cipher, at Santiago, at the dead Rabid who bit my boyfriend. I felt like a cornered dragon, spewing fire in all directions. My brother deserved it though. This was his fault.
“Kitten, we were ambushed,” Cipher said.
“And heleftyou,” I snapped, then glared at my brother. “You could have gone back and helped him, but you saved your own ass instead, like always.”
“I’m sorry, Joshua. It all happened so fast.”
Fucking excuses.
“Get out,” I said, not in the mood to make him feel better. When he didn’t move, I stood and strode over to him, shoved him out the doorway, then kicked the door shut, slamming it in his face. I hoped he’d get the message.
“Kitten, it wasn’t his fault,” Cipher said again.
“Whatever, I’ll deal with him later. We’re making a plan here.” I stared at Cipher, the plan-maker, but he was unnervingly silent. His plan had been to kill himself, but we’d shut down that plan already, so I supposed it was up to me now. “You’re going to take the medicine I give you, and lie here as still as you can and rest. I’m going to get a hold of Captain Crenshaw and see about some medicine for you. We’re going to fix this, Cipher.”
“Okay but, babe, what if we can’t?”
What if we couldn’t? What if there was no medicine and Cipher turned Rabid? I couldn’t watch him suffer like that, strapped to a bed and out of his mind. We couldn’t risk him endangering the others.
“If it comes to it, I need you to do it,” he said, reading the thoughts behind my eyes. “Just like we talked about, put me out of my misery, okay? Like I did for your mother. Humane. You have to promise me, Kitten.”
I blinked and began to cry. What else could I do? A cure would be a miracle. Most likely, this would end in death. His death.
“I promise, I won’t let you suffer,” I said, hiccuping through my sobs. I collapsed into the chair and cried like a baby. I couldn’t even hold it together for him. Cipher was stoic, gazing at me with sympathy. I wanted to crawl into bed with him, but I couldn’t. I might never be able to hug him again.
“Kitten, please breathe. Inhale, exhale. Just remember… I love you.” His dark eyes steadied me, an ocean of black. My sobs subsided and my breathing calmed as I stared back at him. Even facing down his own death, he was offering me comfort.
“I love you too. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to fix this,” I said.
He nodded encouragingly, going along with it even though I had no idea how to fix this, and we both knew it.
I satwith the other Assholes around the dining room table while the B-holes hovered nearby, listening in. There weren’t enough chairs to accommodate them yet, and they didn’t have voting rights anyway, but our decision would affect them too. All of them, even my brother, were respectfully silent. I’d situated myself so I wouldn’t have to look at Santiago. I needed to avoid him until the urge to punch him in the face had passed.
Teresa was the first among us to speak. “Maybe he won’t catch it,” she said, trying to be optimistic. We all loved Cipher in our own way. For Teresa, he was a protective older brother, always reminding her to brush her teeth and take her vitamins, bringing her back gifts of candy and toys, encouraging her to have the childhood she’d been denied in her former life.
Artemis shot me a questioning look, since I was the closest thing we had to a medical professional. “That’s the best-case scenario,” I said, “but we should make a plan assuming that he’s already infected.” The wound on his neck was unlike anything I’d seen before. Unnatural.
We sat in gloomy silence as they took in that information. I was glad I’d gotten my tears out earlier; we needed to have this discussion without me falling apart.
“We’ve been trying to reach Captain Crenshaw on the radio, but unfortunately, we haven’t heard anything back yet,” Wylie said.
“Keep trying. She said they were working on treatments there, maybe even a cure.”
“Even if they had a cure, it’s not like they’re going to just hand it over,” Santiago said, unhelpful as always.
“Why not?” I asked, turning to glare at him.
“They’re going to have conditions. They’re going to want payment or a trade. And they’re going to want to monitor him to see if it works, run all sorts of tests, study him under a microscope. They’ll make him their lab rat, and I don’t know Cipher all that well, but it seems like he’d hate that.”
As much as I hated to admit it, my brother was right. Cipher would hate being locked up like that, but it’d be better than him being dead… wouldn’t it?
