Don't Let Go (22 page)

“What if someone shows up here?” Noa asked weakly. “You said there might be a maid.”

“Yeah, there might be. So we stay quiet, and try to keep everything looking the way it did when we came in. If she shows up, we hide.”

“Hide?” Noa cocked an eyebrow.

“Sure,” he said, trying to sound convincing. “As far as she knows, no one has been here for months. I bet she doesn’t even come upstairs anymore.”

“That sounds risky,” Noa said dubiously.

“No riskier than strolling into an internet café when our faces are front-page news,” Peter argued. He put his hands on the arms of her chair. “Look. You’re not doing so hot, and I feel like I just got hit by a truck. We need to rest up, and while we’re doing that, we can try to get something off these drives that we can use. Something to end this.”

“But what if there’s nothing there?” Noa said weakly.

“If that’s true, we’ll deal with it. But I think there is,” he argued. Noa had a look in her eyes that he’d never seen before—like she was giving up. That was almost scarier than what had just happened. “There’s something in those files that Pike doesn’t want anyone to see. And we’re going to find it.”

Noa leaned back in the chair. Her skin was pale, and a fine sheen of sweat covered her forehead. Swiping it away with a shaky hand, she said, “So what do we do if we find something?”

“We use it to make Pike release a cure.”

“What, we blackmail him?” She laughed weakly. “And you’re always down on
my
ideas. That’s a terrible plan.”

“He’ll do it,” Peter said firmly, wishing he felt as certain as he sounded. “He’ll save you both. Or I’ll ruin him.”

“And then what?” Noa demanded. “We just let him get away with everything?”

“To save all those kids out there who are dying of PEMA? Yeah, definitely. I mean, it sucks,” he added, seeing the expression on her face. “But we’ll probably have to let him off.”

“I hate that,” Noa said bluntly. “I mean, we don’t even know how many people he’s killed. What about Cody, and Roy, and Monica? And Zeke?”

Peter shook his head, suddenly exhausted. Everything they’d seen, everything they’d been through flashed through his mind. The photos of kids laid out on tables like dead butterflies. The coolers filled with body parts. Could he really just let Pike walk away after all that?

He had to. It was Amanda’s only chance, and Noa’s, too. “I hate it, too,” he said. “But it’s the only choice we have.”

“And if he needs me for the cure?” she said, so softly he almost didn’t hear it.

“We’ll make sure it’s in his best interest that you survive. Otherwise, we’ll expose him.”

“You mean, you will,” Noa said with a crooked smile. “Because I’ll be gone.”

“It won’t come to that,” Peter said fiercely. “I won’t let it.”

They sat there for a long time. Noa’s breathing was still labored as she said, “You really think this will work?”

“Sure,” he said weakly, suddenly completely drained. “What could go wrong?”

Noa choked out a laugh in response. She reached out, and he took her hand. They sat in silence for a minute, lost in their own thoughts. Finally, Noa said, “I guess I’ll keep looking through the files. Gotta make sure whatever we have on him is airtight, right?”

“Right.” Peter ran a hand over his head again, the spiky hairs tickling his palm. “I’m going to see if there’s a laptop around here somewhere.”

Noa turned back to the stack of drives. Without meeting his eyes, she said, “Oh, and Peter?”

“Yeah?” He turned back at the threshold.

“I like your hair this way.” She threw him a wicked grin. “Makes you look tougher.”

He held up a finger warningly and said, “Careful. I might try to kiss you again.”

Noa rolled her eyes. “Give it your best shot, navy boy.”

Teo lay on the bed, curled around Daisy. Weak daylight streamed through the windows, but she was still fast asleep. He, on the other hand, had lain awake since they were brought to this room. Pike had acted like they were guests; there were even minisoaps in the bathroom, for God’s sake. And bandages and antiseptic, thankfully, which he’d used to clean and patch up the knife wound on his arm. It still throbbed, but he could handle that. He kept waiting for the door to pop open, and guys with guns to come streaming in. Mason, maybe, ready to finish the job.

But they’d been left alone.

Daisy lay on top of the comforter, still fully dressed. Her eyes were closed, lips slightly parted. He was tempted to kiss her, but didn’t want to risk waking her. Not after the night they’d had.

He rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling, hands crossed behind his head. Things had taken a turn for the surreal, that was for certain. After showing them his dying daughter, Pike had offered them some food. When they’d turned that down, he told his men to make sure they were comfortable for the night.

He and Daisy had spent ten minutes casing the room: The windows opened, but they were on the top floor of the house, easily a fifty-foot drop to the ground. Every few minutes, a guy walked past on patrol down below. There was no other way out that they could find.

So after conferring in low voices about their options, they’d decided to try and sleep, and see what happened in the morning.

Easier said than done
, Teo thought grimly. He was completely wiped out. They’d spent the past few days crashing on busses and in squalid alleys. Living on candy bars, chips, and sodas. And then they’d fought those street punks, had the showdown with Mason, and met with Pike. Busy week. He should have dropped off immediately.

But these might be the final hours he ever got to spend with Daisy, and he didn’t want to waste them. When she was dreaming, she did this thing that he found absolutely adorable, where her mouth tweaked up in a faint smile. He definitely didn’t want to miss seeing that one last time.

Daisy’s eyes moved back and forth beneath the lids, then it happened: Her lips curved up, ever so slightly. Teo was glad that even in the middle of all this, she was able to escape into a good dream. He leaned in and lightly brushed his lips across her forehead. Her mouth tweaked again, and she made a small noise in the back of her throat. Carefully, he eased an arm around her. In her sleep, she nuzzled into him, settling against his shoulder. Teo tucked his cheek against her hair, inhaling her scent. He finally drifted off to the sound of rain pattering against the rooftop.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

N
oa blinked her eyes, trying to get them to focus. Her head was throbbing, and her throat was dry. At least the chest pain had dissipated, although there was an uncomfortable tightness in her rib cage, like the extra thymus inside her was straining to break free.

She took another sip of water and attached the tenth server drive to the computer. The decryption key was working perfectly. But every single drive contained an insane amount of information, and none of it was organized. It reminded her of when she first hacked into the Project Persephone files; only those had contained a mere fraction of what she faced now.

Most of the files were both familiar and discomfiting. On the surface, it was all bland post-op reports, emails, and other forms and abstracts written in incomprehensible jargon. She hated the way the researchers used science-speak to gloss over the atrocities they were committing against kids. Last time, at least, she’d had a medical student to help her wade through them. Peter had recommended that they search the files by keywords: “Charles Pike,” “cure,” and “Noa Torson.”

Typing her own name into a search engine was really unsettling. Noa wasn’t sure whether or not to be happy about the fact that so far, it hadn’t yielded any results.

Unfortunately, neither had any of the other terms; and searching for “cure” returned too many to count. In dozens of reports, the researchers had written stuff like, “With any luck, we’re fast approaching a cure.” None of them actually claimed to have discovered it, and their tone struck her as defeat thinly cloaked in false optimism. These doctors didn’t seem to be on the brink of solving anything; most just sounded like they were desperately trying to keep their jobs.

Bastards
, she reminded herself as she swapped in another server drive. They were more concerned about saving themselves than helping kids.

Peter was holed up in his friend Rick’s bedroom; he’d found an ancient HP laptop in a closet, and carted half the salvageable drives in there. Hopefully he was having better luck.

“Anything?” she called out.

He grunted in reply, which she took as a no.

Even though she’d slept nearly twelve hours last night, Noa was wiped out. The thought of lying down for a nap was unbelievably tempting. She tried to rationalize it; all they could do right now was sift through the drives and rest up. She’d logged four hours so far; why not take a break?

But if she lay down again, she might not wake up for another twelve hours, or longer. It was a strange sensation, like her body was slipping away from her. She’d always been healthy, almost abnormally so; even when a particular nasty virus tore through one of her foster homes, she rarely caught it. And since the surgery, she hadn’t gotten so much as a head cold. Maybe that was a by-product of whatever made her heal so quickly.

But now . . . she lifted her arm and examined it. The cuts she’d gotten while running through the woods in Arkansas were still there. A normal person would have healed by now; and she should barely have been able to see them by the next day. Yet they looked as raw and angry as they had a week ago.

Which probably wasn’t a good sign. Noa rubbed her eyes: Even though she had drawn the blinds to block out the daylight, the bright monitor was making them ache. She keyed it down a few more notches and typed in the search parameters again.

Skimming the list of results, her heart leapt into her throat: For the first time, the word “Pike” had returned an item. Quickly, she clicked on the file and started to skim it. It was an email exchange, between Pike and a Dr. Johnson:

            
Mr. Pike—

            
As promised, here are the results of our latest tests on the blood samples from Subject #050207. As I mentioned before, with renewed access to the subject, we should be able to isolate specific markers and hopefully synthesize a vaccine. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but given the results so far, I believe it’s entirely possible that we’ll be able to slow down the progression of the disease, or even eradicate it entirely.

            
Of course, all of this is contingent on whether or not we are given direct access to the subject. Do you have a clearer sense of when that will be possible?

The email was dated April 18; a little over a month ago. Dread blossomed in the pit of Noa’s stomach. With trembling fingers, she initiated a search for subject #050207.

Nothing.

She tried the next drive, then another. On the fourth, a result finally came up. Noa drew a deep breath and clicked on the file.

It was a jpg. Opening it, she immediately recognized the photo. It was taken in one of Charles Pike’s ad hoc operating rooms, shot from above. A girl lay on top of a metal table in a hospital gown, with a sheet pulled up to her waist. Her eyes were closed, dark hair reflecting the overhead surgical light.

It was her.

Noa sat back and closed her eyes. Even though Peter still had the original Project Persephone files stored on backup servers somewhere, she’d never looked at them again. Once she’d discovered the broad strokes of what had been done to her, all she’d wanted was to exact revenge.

Seeing herself laid out like this, unconscious and vulnerable, hurt just as much as it had the first time. And in spite of everything she’d done to try and spare other kids from the same fate, Pike had continued the experiments anyway.

The absolute worst part was that it seemed to have worked; he was close to a cure for PEMA. Even if they found incontrovertible evidence of his involvement, they’d have to keep their mouths shut. Pike would end up hailed as a hero.

The thought made her stomach curdle. Her chest began throbbing more persistently. Noa gripped the edge of the desk, battling against the pain. She was sitting there, drawing deep breaths, when there was sudden whoop from the other room.

“I got it!” Peter cried out. “Yes!”

“Got what?” Noa managed to say.

The sound of feet padding down the hall, then Peter appeared in the doorway. His brow immediately furrowed with concern. “Is it bad again?”

“Not as bad,” she gasped, although that was a lie. It was agony, a hundred times worse than anything she’d felt so far. Her chest seized up, and she fell to the floor. Noa tried to move, but discovered to her alarm that she couldn’t; her entire body was shaking uncontrollably.

“Oh, crap,” Peter said, rushing to her side. “Noa!”

He placed his hands on her shoulders, but the shaking continued. From far away, Noa heard her teeth chattering. She lost all sense of time and place, retreating to somewhere else, somewhere dark and quiet.

When she opened her eyes, Peter was looking down at her, panic contorting his features.

“It’s okay,” she said, alarmed to hear the words slur. “I’m fine.”

She tried to sit up, but his hands tightened on her shoulders. “Just chill for a sec, all right? Christ, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

She tried to respond, but her mouth was incredibly dry. “Water,” she croaked.

“Yeah, okay.” Peter scrambled to his feet.

A foot from the door, he stopped short and cocked his head to the side.

Noa was about to ask what was wrong when she heard it, too: the sound of a car turning up the gravel driveway.

Teo wouldn’t stop pacing, and it was driving her nuts. “Just sit for a minute,” Daisy said. “Please.”

“I can’t,” he muttered, his hands opening and closing in fists at his sides. “We need to come up with a way out.”

“There isn’t one.” Daisy tried to sound patient, even though she felt like she was crawling out of her skin, too. “We can’t go out the window, we’re too high up. The door is locked and guarded. Unless you’ve got some sort of teleporting trick you haven’t told me about, we’re stuck.”