The Immune

30. Turning Tables

No one in the crowd moves. Instead, they hold their breaths and stare at the platform behind me. A guard steps forward, throwing their gun down at their feet. I can't look up. I'm frozen in a mixture of fear and shock. Six masks hit the ground before me, and I twitch.

"People of Compound 4!" Wait. I know that voice. "You've been lied to. The girl chained before you saved your lives. Hartley is a liar, and we can prove it."

I finally look up. An enraged Ollie stands over me, pointing at a screen that's lowering itself from the building. I rattle my cuffs at her as the knot rises in my throat.

They came for me.

They didn't abandon me.

Hands drop onto my shoulders, and I recoil away from them. Within a second, a face appears— My mother.

"Calm down," she whispers into my ear. "We'll get you out soon. They have to decide to do it, or we become the enemy. Be patient."

As she stands again, I jerk my body around to face the others. Stephen is there, gun still in his hand, surveying the crowd. Clare stands beside him, but she sways back and forth on her legs. The gunshot wound must've healed well enough. She looks down at me, winks, then gives me a sad half-smile. Her chin jerks towards the screen before she looks away.

It's a surveillance video. The grainy quality and yellow time stamp in the corner tell me that. It shows the fourth floor of the Research Facility, but now, it's empty. There's no guards, no Hartley, not even me and Isaac.

"I'll just fast forward," she mumbles, fiddling with the remote in her hand. The screen blurs as time rushes forward. When it stops, the location has changed to show a room I don't recognize right away. Screens line one wall, but when I saw them they were all black. Now, the computers of Room 406 show two dozen different shots of the compound— all different.

The room isn't empty, either. Hartley and my father sit in a set of twin office chairs, their backs towards the camera. Ollie cranks up the volume and clutches the remote against her chest.

"She's on her way back, Price," Hartley growls. A hand shoves itself through his hair. "You said she wasn't an issue. That she wouldn't come back."

My father shakes his head. "I didn't think she would. What did you do at the scavenger camp?"

"Let's leave it at this— there's nothing left of that trash pit."

Dad tugs at the collar of his jacket and looks up at the computer screens. "She's still not a threat, sir."

"We've underestimated her long enough. You never thought she would actually try to run, but she did. I didn't expect her to crawl out of the rubble of her camp, but she did. Whether you like it or not, we have to take care of her once and for all. Set a trap for her or something."

They stare at each other for a minute.

"What are her weaknesses?" Hartley asks. Dad scratches his scruff, looking around the room, twisting his mouth. Is he stalling? Hartley takes a dangerous step toward him. "You have to tell me, old man, or I'll ruin you."

Dad still hesitates. His lips pull taut. "She's impulsive," he finally admits. "Acts before she thinks things through properly."

Hartley nods. "Then that makes setting a trap easy! She's coming to destroy the second strand, but she doesn't even know what it looks like. What I say we do is make her think the cure is the second strand. We make it so easy to destroy that she'll have no other choice."

"But, sir, she'll actually be destroying the cure. That's all we have."

"Good," Hartley spits. "You weren't supposed to make a cure in the first place. If she doesn't destroy it, I will. We don't need it." He walks away from the doctor, kicking the chair away from him. "The point of the Decontamination was to cleanse the United States of its filth. A cure was never discussed when we designed the three stages. Even you and I aren't meant to survive this."