“Just Mathew?” I ask. “What about the rest of the people?”
“Kayla, go find Mathew and talk to him,” she says. “Then you will understand.”
I want to question her more, however I know better than to do so. She’s pretty much been correct with everything that she has told me previously, so after I drop her off at the building, with the woman teaching the children, I hurry off down the street to find Mathew. I make it past the fifth building on the street when I run into Nichelle. There’s a small group of people with her, wearing all black, and they all are armed with a knives, sticks, spears and even a few swords. They look like average people dressed up in fighting gear only creating the illusion that they can fight. I know it’s not real because beneath their armor I can hear their hearts racing with fear.
We’re doomed.
They’re doomed.
When does they’re become a we?
“Mathew said that we were supposed to find you,” Nichelle tells me. Her hair is pulled up in a bun and she has boots on that go up to her knees. There’s this strange black band around her neck with a small metal pouch hooked to it. “Poison,” she says.
I’m confused. “What?”
She points at her neck at the collar and the pouch. “I saw you looking at it and I can tell you’re wondering what it is.” She lifts up a hook on the pouch and beneath it is a pin-size button. “If I get bit, I push this and it injects my veins with poison that will kill me before the virus takes over my body.”
“So you’d rather die than change?” I’ve heard Sylas say this, but it’s surprising to hear humans are the same way, too; that we both feel the same way.
She nods. “Wouldn’t you?”
I nod. “I would.”
There’s a pause where we realize we’re not so different. Then Nichelle clears her throat.
“Anyway, Mathew said you’d show us where each of us needs to be so we can protect the town,” she says with an eye roll. “He thinks you’re going to save the town somehow—that you’re a better fighter than me—but he’s wrong.”
She’d think differently if she ever saw me in action.
“You know the town better than me.” I glance around at the unfamiliar structures and alleys around me; I don’t even know where any of them lead to. “You should be in charge of getting everyone into position.”
She nods, satisfied, and then starts to walk away when I snag her by the jacket sleeve and pull her back to me. “Sylas will be coming back sometime... please make sure that people are aware of this. Make sure that nobody attacks him or the people with him.”
“Sylas?” she questions, her brows dipping together. “Who the heck is that?”
“That guy I showed up with earlier,” I answer. “Aiden’s brother.”
“Oh.” She seems hesitant, but then gives in and nods. “All right, I’ll see what I can do… but what are you going to do?”
“I need to find Mathew.” I let go of her sleeve and fetch my knife out of my pocket as vampire cries grow louder around the colony. “Do you know where he is?”
“He went back to his lab.” She points to the left, towards where the street slopes down to a cluster of buildings around a sandy hill.
“Thanks.” I spin around and jog back down the street, hoping that Mathew will be in his lab when I get there. Hoping that I can find out why Maci wants me to talk to him; protect him. Why it has to be me.
When I reach the small square building, I notice there are no longer guards posted in front of the doorway. Everyone in town has been put on high alert and many of them have stepped up to the wall around the colony that was built out of cars. In fact, the wall of broken-down vehicles looks more like a wall of people as they line the top. I wonder how long they’ll have to wait there. How long it’ll be until the abominations will show up. Maybe we’ll end up getting lucky and they won’t show up at all. I doubt it, though, and I know that thinking that way can be dangerous.
It’s eerily quiet when I open the door and step inside the building where I make my way down the dusty hallway with my knife poised out in front of me; always ready, always on guard, focusing one step ahead, focusing on fighting. I have to be. I don’t know when anything’s going to show up.
I hear some movement and rustling towards the back of the hallway, and as I get closer, I see Mathew through the doorway to his lab. He’s wearing a white coat and is holding some vials filled with various colors of liquid, carefully measuring as he pours each one into a large, silver flask.
He glances up from the flask as I enter and startles back with a concerned look on his face. At the same time that he ends up spilling a drop or two of the liquid onto the silver table in front of him.
“Is everything okay?” he asks, setting the empty vials down, his fingers trembling. “Have the Highers’ army arrived already?”
“Not yet.” I cross the room and glace at the jars on the counter filled with an array of liquids. I wonder what is in them. “Sylas went to get the other Day Takers to help us.” I wonder if I should tell him about Maci and her gift. “And Nichelle’s setting up around town, but honestly it could be days before the Highers’ army shows up. Or even weeks, depending on how hard it is for the Highers to reach a decision.”
He sets the flask down onto the table beside the vials. “Well, at least we’ll be ready for them when they get here. And Nichelle is a very good fighter... I’d trust her completely with my life, but she isn’t you, Kayla. I’d feel better if you were the one in charge of the others.”
“That isn’t what I’m supposed to do be doing.” It sort of slips out of me and there’s no taking it back.
“What do you mean by that?” he wonders, resting his weight against the table, his skin dripping with sweat.
I dither, deciding if I should tell him about Maci. He seems trustworthy, yet at the same time, a lot of people do. Then again, Maci said I should talk to him. “Maci told me that I’m supposed to protect you and that I need to talk to you about why I do.”
“Why would Maci tell you that?” he asks.
“Because…” I sit up on the countertop, letting my legs hang over the edge of the corner, and put my knife in my lap. “She can see things before they happen… she told me that I was going to save the world.”
Mathew crosses his arms and his pale eyes flood with curiosity. “I wonder if that was from the experiments.”
“She wasn’t just born that way?”
He shakes his head. “Humans weren’t born with extraordinary gifts, which are why the Highers were so determined to create them.”
I’m not sure if I believe him or not, though, considering he used to be one of the doctors and the cause for all this messing around with humanity. Maybe it was that thought process—that humans had no gifts—that helped their strive to perfection escalate.
He scratches his head. “Did Maci by chance tell you how to save the world? Or how to find the cure even?” he asks, hopeful. It makes me have less hope that he’ll be able to find a cure.
His expression sinks as I shake my head. “She didn’t tell me how to save it… she never gives instructions, just tidbits of information that will lead me to do the right thing. And she told me that I needed to protect you,” I tell him.
He sighs and turns back to the vials on the table. “Yeah, I guess things can’t ever be that easy.”
“No, they really can’t,” I agree, reflecting on my difficult past and everything I’ve gone through to get to this exact point. “But what about you?” I ask. “Did you figure out anything at all yet?”
His pales eyes light up as he picks up a glass vial and holds it up to the light. There is a purple liquid inside the vial that reflects through the glass. “Not yet.” He lowers the vial. “But in the papers Aiden left behind, Monarch made several references to how you seemed not to be immune to the original virus in the beginning… that your body reacted to the virus just like everyone else, which means that somewhere along the lines, that changed; you became immune.” He places the vial back down on the counter. “So I think the answers might start with you.”