“Brace yourself,” said the voice on the intercom.
The TV screen came to life, showing a young man in street clothes strapped to a gurney, similar to how I was currently restrained. He was writhing as if in extreme pain, his skin pale with nasty bruising on his neck, eyes cloudy. The movements of his limbs were jerky and uncoordinated; clearly he was losing control of his body. It looked as if he’d pissed himself as well.
“Who’s that?” I asked. The voice didn’t respond right away, so I kept watching. The man was shouting for something or someone. I didn’t know what he was saying because the sound was off, and I was sort of glad for it because the video was unsettling enough as it was. The man was definitely Rabid completely out of his mind. And then the camera zoomed in.
“Fuck, is that… me?” I asked, my breath going shallow as my heart started racing. I tugged at the restraints on my wrists as my fight-or-flight instinct took hold.
“Yes, Cipher, that was you five days ago, at intake.”
I could hardly believe it. On the screen, my jaw was slack with spit drooling over my lips, so much that it dripped onto my already wet shirt. My teeth were bared like an animal’s, mouth gaping as though trying to bite at the air. The bite on my neck–I could see it plain as day now–was an angry red and covered in yellowish slime. The veins around it were weirdly visible through my pale skin. I tried to reach up to feel it for myself, but the restraints prevented it. They must have bandaged my neck, which was for the best. I didn’t want to see it.
But the worst thing to witness was the crazed look in my eyes–desperate, wild, unrecognizable. Completely, utterly Rabid.
“What am I saying?” I asked the voice.
“You’re saying,hungry,” she said.
Then it hit me, the not-so-distant memory of a hunger so all-consuming that it erased all rational thought or reason. No body, no mind, no sense of anything other than that insatiable, savage hunger.
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said. My stomach turned, and I worried I might be sick. I believed her that I’d been Rabid, still was, I guessed, but how did I end up this way? The nurse–or orderly, I wasn’t sure–clicked off the television and left the room in a soft swish of medical scrubs. I sat there in silence, replaying the video in my mind, trying to piece together the events that led to…that.
“I know it’s a lot to process, Cipher. You’ve experienced a lot of trauma in the past few days, mentally and physically. It’s important that you not concern yourself too much with thethings that might upset you, but instead, try to rest and allow your body to heal.”
She stopped talking. I didn’t get the sense that she’d left, but that she was waiting for me to respond. I lay there in the hospital bed in a cold sweat, disoriented and alone. I couldn’t conjure the faces of my friends–Joshua Perrin-Rogers and Hudson Clarence Holt? Hopefully they were friends and not slavers. They wouldn’t betray me, would they?
“Will I get my memories back?” I asked the voice. I’d rather know what I was up against than be hit with a surprise later.
“Hard to say for certain. The virus affects every patient differently. The good news is, your friends brought you here as soon as the infection had taken over. That gives us reason to believe you’ll make a full recovery.”
“So, I’m going to live?”
“Your chances of survival at present are quite high.” She sounded proud, as if my continued existence was a personal achievement for her, which I supposed it was.
Drawing in a shaky breath, I tried to focus on the positives. I was no longer…that, and I was probably going to live. Good news, right?
Now, if only I could figure out who the fuck I was.
FOURTEEN
KITTEN
Cipher was awake nowand asking questions, still contagious though and very weak. Crenshaw couldn’t predict exactly when we’d be able to see him but she said his doctor was feeling optimistic about his recovery.
“So, he’s going to be okay?” I asked, looking for a definitive answer, but she only repeated what she’d told me before.
“His prognosis at present is good.”
In the meantime, Macon was anxious to get back to our compound, to Artemis and the rest of our family. We didn’t want them worrying about us, and there was no easy way to send a message from base–even Channel 4 was too far out of range. The Humvee was impounded until further notice, so it was decided that Crenshaw and her squad would escort Macon home. Macon told me he’d said as little as possible during his interrogation with Crenshaw and claimed to be ignorant to everything that had happened. And I told him it didn’t matter because I’d confessed almost immediately. I was never any good at lying, something Cipher had always known about me. Cipher would be disappointed, but he’d have to be alive to lecture me about it, and I’d welcome that in a heartbeat.
On the day of his departure, Macon gave me a hearty hug and told me to hang in there. “If I don’t see you back at the compound in a couple weeks, we’ll come looking for you,” he promised.
“Thank you for everything. I couldn’t have gotten through this without you.”
“Stay strong, short stack, and keep up with the lifting. Don’t let my good work go to waste.”
I waved him goodbye and watched the two military Jeeps pull away in a cloud of dust. Then I turned back toward the sprawling compound that lay before me, thinking of Cipher, praying what Crenshaw had told me was true, and that he was really okay and getting better. Macon and I had developed a routine at StarChem, one I’d have to alter now that he was gone, since I wouldn’t have my spotting partner. Instead of going back to the barracks, I walked around outside. While strolling through the vegetable plots, I decided that if I didn’t have an official job, I could at least make myself useful, so I took to weeding the plants in the garden.
Down there on my hands and knees with the sun overhead, I dug my fingers into the earth, picked aphids off the tomato plants, and culled the seedlings that were growing too close to one another. I told the plants all that had happened in the past week, my fears, my regrets, my hopes for the future. Plants were good listeners.
