Chapter 20

CHAPTER

TWENTY

JESSICA

Five days later, and I still don’t feel like I’ve found solid ground again.

I’m not sure I ever will.

Trench and I have dug back into our work, the way we probably should have done from the start.

Any time I bring it up, he kisses me and tells me we’ll talk about it later.

Each night when we finally go to bed, we make love in one of the ways we can, and I fall asleep in his arms.

He still holds my hand as we drive to Drift and Kimba’s. He still helps me from the car and releases me right before he opens the door.

I do not know how it is possible that a few small words could change everything and nothing all at once.

I take a deep breath as I step into the warm and loud space, hoping no one notices the change within me.

My skin feels like a low electric current pulses beneath it, and I have to force myself not to rub at my arms.

We were late. Everyone’s already here, and I’m grateful when Trench tells Drift he wants to get things started.

The sooner we say what we need to say, the sooner I can get out of here.

“So, I’ve figured some things out—”

Arc snorts and interrupts me. “Have you come to your senses and want to move house?”

From where I stand beside Trench, I know Arc isn’t the only one who sees the hard glare I give him.

I’m grateful no one laughs. Gladder still that Arc actually looks uncomfortable by the silence.

“I’ve figured some things out about the cavrinskh since we were last here.”

They aren’t going to stop Arc’s bad behavior, I’m not going to give them any courtesy when it comes to learning ugly information.

Their wives however… I look at the three women sitting close to each other, and to Kimba. “I’m sorry for the graphic nature of the images I’m about to pull up.”

“As long as it’s not Trench’s cock.” Arc snickers from his side of the sofa.

I don’t know what comes over me, but I point at the door. “Get the fuck out.”

This time, it’s a different silence.

“If the only thing you want to add to this meeting is asinine jabs at your brother, you don’t need to be here. So get the fuck out.”

He glances at Drift, who doesn’t say anything one way or another, and then, he does as he’s told.

I wait for the door to close behind him, and then I carry on as if he was never here in the first place.

I take a deep breath and look at Laurel and Andrea, specifically. Trench told me about Kimba’s past, and Cindy’s a nurse, so I’m not too worried about them. “If you want to step out for this part, I will understand. The subjects can be gruesome.”

“I can always close my eyes,” Andrea says.

Laurel shakes her head. “As one of the two of us who’s seen a live one, I am perfectly happy to see them dead.”

“There are three of us now.”

The raucous response to that admission is surprising, and I quiet them down, holding up my hands. “I promise you, we will get to that, it’s the first thing we’re going to talk about.”

“It had better be.” Laurel turns to glare at Trench. “You’re supposed to protect her.”

“And he did, which is why it didn’t get close to me. Now, let’s move on.”

I wait to make sure no one else is going to interrupt before I start.

“Five days ago, Trench went out into the Zone when a boundary marker was tripped. He found a cavrinskh that exhibited abnormal behavior.”

“What kind of abnormal behavior?” Hazard has leaned forward, elbows on knees, and he looks at Trench for the answer, so I let him.

“It was trying to get away. There was a cable from an old sensor that hadn’t been cleared away when it was replaced, and the thing’s leg was caught in it. I decided to free it, to see what it would do.”

Several curses echo across the couch when he says that, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“But before I could manage it, the thing lashed out and my training kicked in. I think it was self defense, not a normal attack instinct.”

Hazard doesn’t look happy.

“The reason this is important is that when Trench brought the cavrinskh back to the outpost, its skull was intact.”

Risk is the one who scoots forward this time, but he doesn’t ask a question.

It’s Core who does. “We finally have a complete anatomical diagram?”

“No.”

They all deflate.

“Before we could get it into the lab, a second cavrinskh showed up.”

“In your garage?” Richter asks, holding onto Laurel like he expects her to lunge for Trench.

Trench grimaces and glances at me as if he wants to apologize for it. “In my excitement over the intact skull, I forgot to close the ramp to the caldera.”

“I don’t think the cavrinskh would have attacked us.”

That pulls everyone’s attention back to me.

“We checked the cameras. It observed us for nearly a minute before it made a noise to announce its presence. It could have attacked us immediately, and one or both of us might not be here to talk about it.” I continue on so that Laurel doesn’t have a chance to say what I imagine she’s thinking. “It was after the intact cavrinskh. Once we were inside, out of the way—thanks to Trench—it went after the dead one.

“I thought it was eating the other one at first, but that is not the case as you’ll see.”

Turning my back to them, I look up at the screen as two heads fill the screen.

“The one on the left is the cavrinskh that was initially intact. The one on the right is the one that destroyed its head.”

“You managed to kill it?”

“No.” Trench shakes his head, but doesn’t elaborate.

I swipe the screen and the right head turns to profile. “Look at its mouth. Do you see how it’s cracked and pocked?”

“It looks like acid erosion,” Cindy says, her eyes narrowed, head tipped to the side.

“Exactly.”

I pull up a full grid of dead cavrinskh heads, and I hear Andrea let out a disgusted little sound.

“Because Trench has been trying to figure these things out for so long, we have a lot of visual data I can pull from, which has confirmed a pattern. No matter how the monster was killed, this part of their skull always caved in, destroying the part of the brain beneath it.”

I don’t bother to point at the missing part of the head. No one could miss it.

“After swabbing and doing chemical testing, I now feel confident in saying that there’s something—something inorganic —placed there that detonates when they’re killed, causing an implosion meant to specifically damage that part of the brain.”

“Gross,” Laurel chimes in, and others agree.

I pull up the drawing I made of the dark spot none of them have been able to capture before.

“While dissecting what was left of this one’s brain, I found fragments of something that seems to be made out of a compound similar to graphene. We think it’s an implant of some kind that holds an acidic substance that acts like a cyanide pill.”

“Why?” Kimba asks.

“I’m starting to think someone—or something—is controlling them.”

The whole room goes silent again.

“We all know there are people on both planets who don’t want us here…” Laurel says, carefully.

Kimba shakes her head. “But the monsters are the reason we’re here. It’s not like they showed up after.”

“So it’s not us, but them?” Laurel looks from me to the Richter. “Someone’s trying to make the Sian race go extinct?”

“Who would want that?” I glance around the room, but no one has an answer.

I leave the images up on the display, but step out of the center of the room. The conversations shift to the others grilling each other for hypotheses and options.

Laurel sneaks over to me, taking my hand. “You are okay, right?”

“Yeah. But you’re going to have to tell me what happened with you. I don’t like how much you haven’t told me.”

“I will, I promise.”

But Laurel leaves me, going back to Richter, no doubt so she doesn’t have to tell me now.

I just want to go back to Trench. So I do. I don’t care what any of them think right now.

And when I sit, I sit a little too close for two people who are just friends.

He says something to Strike over my head and the other man looks down at me. “May I touch your shoulder?”

I glance at Andrea and she nods.

“Sure.” I don’t know what he’s planning, but if Trench asked him to do it, and Andrea’s okay—

As soon as his hand lands on my shoulder, I slump against Trench. ”Oh.”

“You were tenser than you looked. Maybe you two need to take a little break from the research and find something fun to do.”

“Well, she’s coming to Margot’s with us.”

I blink at Andrea, still feeling like I have no bones. “I am?”

“Yes.” She says it with a smile that brooks no argument. “You should really join the group chat.”

TRENCH

It takes longer than usual to get out of Drift’s outpost. Everyone has questions for Jess, and I don’t blame them.

But when we are back in the car, headed home, I finally say, “Thank you.”

Her head drops to the side. “For what?”

“For not putting up with Arc.”

“Honestly, I should have chewed out the rest of them for letting him get away with it for so long.” She shakes her head and gives me a little glare. “I’m mad at you for putting up with it too.”

When we get into the garage, I don’t open the car until the door is firmly shut behind us. And even then, I wait a few more moments.

Jess doesn’t try to get out either.

“It’s going to take a little while to actually feel safe out here, isn’t it?” She asks as she takes a deep breath.

“Yeah.” I don’t know if I’m ever going to feel like it’s safe out here for her.

When I do pop the car open, she waits for me to get out before she does, and she stays close, even as we get inside, her hand slipping back into mine as soon as I’ve unlocked the door.

Strike might have eased her tension for a little while, but he’s not here to use his woo woo abilities now, and she looks stressed.

“Are you okay?” I brush the pad of my thumb beneath her eye.

She catches my hand and squeezes it. “I’m tired. Being around that many people for that long is exhausting. Especially when I’m the main focus.”

“You should go to bed.” I let go of her hand. “I’ll be up in a little bit.”

She looks disappointed, but she goes.

I listen to her as she makes her way up to our room and I hear fabric move across her skin as she undresses.

She snuggles down into our bed as I pull the two oldest carcasses from cold storage and take them to the lava pit to throw them in during the next flow.

I dump them as the molten liquid creeps in and I turn to go, but something catches my eye. Something sharp and shiny and…

I stare at the claw. It’s too far down for me to reach and as I try to think of some way to get to it before the lava does, it is consumed by that fiery substance, flaring as it burns up the evidence of something that shouldn’t be there.

When I leave, I make sure the door is bolted tight. The closest screen in the lab flickers to life at my first prompting. I pull up the map of the pressure release tunnels. They spider web across the Zone. And if a cavrinskh was to get in through one of the pits after the lava had cooled, but before the next flow, it’s a straight shot out of the caldera.

I call Drift immediately. “I think I’ve found another problem.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s possible the cavrinskh are getting out of the Zone through the flow tunnels.”

His eyes narrow. “I had not considered that.”

“None of us did.”

“What caused this suspicion?”

I tell him, laying out anything relevant I can think of.

“The flow just hit, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll set the vent station cameras to a higher sensitivity and we’ll head over to check it out tomorrow when the women are at Margot’s.”

“Perfect.”

Jessica starts to move upstairs as I end the call. She shuffles around, a little frantic, but not panicked, just in a rush.

I don’t have time to go up to her, she’s already hit the stairs by the time I think about moving, and when she rounds the corner, she’s only half dressed.

Jessica scurries into the lab, still pulling on her shirt and almost knocks her stool over as she sits down.

“What’s wrong?”

She looks up like she’s surprised to see me there and pushes her glasses further up on her nose. “I asked a chemist friend for some advice and she just got back to me. It gave me an idea!”

I watch her work for another twenty minutes, checking chemical formulas and changing mixes, until she holds up a flask, swirling the clear liquid inside.

“I think I’ve done it.”

“You’ve invented water?” I ask, unable to keep myself from teasing her.

“No, silly.” She rolls her eyes at me and points at one of the cold storage cabinets. “Pull that one out for me?”

I go to the drawer. It’s the next one in line for a trip to the lava pit and I imagine she picked it because of that.

“The thing in their head we can’t get our hands on is like an acid party popper. And we know that the chemical in said party popper melts their tissues.”

“Yes.”

She waggles the beaker at me again as she goes to stand in front of the creature. “I made a dupe.”

“Dupe?” I look at the way the liquid clings to the side of the glass for the barest moment.

“Earth slang for duplicate. Sorry.”

She doesn’t need to apologize. “Now I know.”

“It’s fast acting, fatal if it eats through the right part of them, but you will have to have enough to get the job done. Honestly, I’m imagining you guys out there with super soakers instead of guns.”

I don’t know what that is, but I can guess.

“Ready to test it out?” She asks, her excitement making her jittery.

I pull out two face shields and hand her one as I slip the other on. “Just in case.”

“Thank you.”

Jess holds the flask steady, a few inches over the dead cavrinskh’s forearm and pours out a short stream.

The fur and flesh immediately start to eat away, burning without heat or smoke.

Jess shivers, looking a little disgusted with herself. “I’d hoped it would work, but also…” She grimaces and sets the flask aside.

“Hey, you are amazing.” I shove the creature back into storage, take my face shield off and draw her to me before I take hers off too. “None of us like it. But you might have just saved one or more of our lives with that.”

“Oh? And what kind of reward do I get for my little achievement?” Her lips quirk in a wicked smile. “What do you think I deserve?”

I kiss her, even though I shouldn’t—not here.

She chuckles against my lips. “Are you ready to come to bed with me this time?”

Nodding, I pick her up, and turn to go.

“Oh, I need to put that away.”

She’s right.

I set her down and we both reach for the flask at the same time.

Knocked by our fingers, it tips and falls, hitting my arm before it hits the ground and shatters.

“Shoot.” Jess runs for the cleaning supplies and I stare at my arm as my mind catches up with what I’m seeing. The dark stain of liquid on my sleeve, the heat…

“Don’t touch it.”

But Jess is already on her knees, hands and towels soaking up the acid. She jerks her hands back, and I haul her to her feet, dragging her to the skink and shoving her fingers under the water as I grab a scalpel and cut the bottom of my sleeve off.

The burn there is ugly and searing.

“Oh my god.” Jess says, grabbing my wrist to pull it under the stream.

Her fingers are perfectly fine.

JESSICA

The burn on Trench’s arm is a bright slash when the blood is washed away.

“Is it working?” I ask, hating that I did this to him.

“Yes.”

“Thank God.” I slump a little against the side of the sink and look at my fingertips.

There isn’t a mark on them, and I definitely touched the stuff.

“I guess that answers that question, doesn’t it?” I keep the water on as he removes his arm and tests to see if the serum is done eating away at him.

When he nods, I turn it off.

“Can that fancy machine downstairs fix you up?”

“It should be able to.” He grimaces, studying the wound, and I hate what I’m about to ask.

“Can you hang on a minute while I take photos?”

“Yes. And once we deal with the burn, we should notate as much as we can.”

His memory is perfect. He doesn’t think it’s done.

I take the picture quickly and leave the camera on the counter as I go with him down to the medfac.

He punches in all the commands with his other hand, holding his arm away from himself.

When he turns back, going to the machine and sitting on the diagnostic table, he says, “You don’t have to be here for this.”

“I know.” But I’m responsible for his pain. If he needs anything while the machine fixes him, I’ll be here to get it.

His muscles tense and his hand trembles under what looks like a laser as it creates some kind of mesh over the wound.

At the five-minute mark, I get up and go to his side, slipping my hand into his. He tries to smile, but his lips won’t quite make the curve.

“What can I do?”

“Just be here with me.” He rests his forehead on my shoulder, and I hold his hand tight.

The whole process takes fifteen minutes and I soothe him the best I can before the machine lets out a too-happy chirp and then retracts from his arm.

The matrix of white strands is definitely not regenerated flesh, but when Trench flexes his hand, the mesh moves like it’s a part of him.

“One more thing and then we can be done.” He kisses my forehead before he releases me, going to the cabinet of supplies and rifling through them, pulling out something that looks like vet wrap, but thicker.

He wraps his arm, brow ridges creased. “I want you to make more and bottle it.”

“But—”

“I know it’s dangerous and I know how much it sucks to get hit with it. This shirt is the same material as our suits. There’s no way we can use it out in the Zone, but, if you have it and one of them comes for you—”

He takes a deep breath and turns to me. “I need you to do this for me.”

“And if you get burned again?”

“I’ve dealt with more painful wounds and I’ve spent longer in the machine. I’ll do it again. What I won’t do is lose you when you’ve found a way to protect yourself from the cavrinskh.”

I don’t tell him he’s paranoid. He’s not.

I don’t tell him the idea of accidentally hitting him with the spray—no matter what he says—terrifies me.

I just nod. “Okay.”