Escape (71 page)

And with that, her lips drifted to his, and her tongue flirted with his.

Kieran broke into an easy grin around the kiss and slid his arm around her waist, pressing her against him. A moment later, he pulled away, buying a few micenté-astroms to gaze into her eyes. And as he did so, he could almost imagine them as they'd once been: a brilliant, clear sky blue. “There's no misreading that, is there?”

Jilly smiled, her eyes bright and shining with desire. “No,” she whispered hoarsely. “There isn't.” And she kissed him again, desperately, her lips hungrily seeking his from every possible angle. She pushed him up against the wall with the force of her passion, and he responded, drawing her legs up around his waist. After a few minutes, they came up for air and gazed into each other's eyes, panting. Then the spell was broken, and they appeared to remember where they were. Kieran loosened his grip on her hips, and her legs fell from his waist.

They walked briskly down the corridor together, of one mind and purpose now, with barely enough self-control left to make it to their room. Jilly quickened her stride. It was an incredible effort to contain herself. For the past few weeks a quiet, desperate need had been growing within her, and so far nothing had satisfied it. At first it had felt like hunger, burning in the pit of her stomach. She'd eaten everything she could think of, stuffed herself to distraction, and still the need was there. Then she'd thought that perhaps it was a different type of hunger. No matter how many times she devoured Kieran with passion, she hadn't silenced it, but she had been able to distract herself. It wasn't the same mysteriously overpowering desire, but it was still there. Since discovering that, Kieran had become her only salve for a frightening force of nature which was an everpresent roar in the back of her mind. She'd spoken to Kieran about it, wondering if she were the only one, but he'd only added to her unease by saying that he had the same mysterious ache, tingling in every fiber of his being. He couldn't seem to silence it either, but sex had been a reasonable, if only palliative, substitute.

Ferrel had certainly noticed their constant need to be alone together,
but he'd kindly pretended ignorance. As they'd sublimated this strange new desire into lust, they'd become uncomfortable about discussing it with Ferrel, and so the topic had never been mentioned, but if he were also being torn apart from within by a mysterious need he could niether identify or satisfy, then he was keeping it to himself.

When Kieran and Jilly reached their room, she impatiently ran her hand across the door scanner. It promptly recognized her prints and opened the door with a
swish
. The lights came on automatically as they hurried inside, and Kieran waved his hand across the inner sensor, shutting the door behind them.

There wasn't a second's hesitation. Jilly crossed the space between them in two quick steps, and they began undressing one another in a frenzied rush.

Chapter 50

K
ieran lay back with a sigh, and Jilly nestled closer to him, her arm splayed across his chest, idly playing with his curly, blonde chest hairs. She stopped twining hairs around her fingers to look up at him. “Is it just me, or has it never been this good?”

Kieran dipped his chin to his chest to meet her gaze. “It's not just you, but
 
.
 
.
 
.
” he trailed off with a frown.

“The hunger's still there.”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think it is?”

Kieran shook his head. “I have no idea. You're the doctor, what do you think our bodies are trying to tell us?”

“That something essential is missing, and we are not getting it in our diet. It could be anything.”

“Hmmm.”

Jilly laid her head against Kieran's chest and let out a sigh. “Let's try not to think about it. I'll run some tests later, maybe I can discover something in the lab.”

“Okay.”

Silence ticked by in a lazy haze of bliss, and Jilly lay there listening to its absolute calm. There was nothing but the sound of quietly circulating air from the room's climate control system. But as the silence grew long, Jilly began to feel like something was missing. As though the quiet were too quiet, and there should have been more noise. She found herself listening for sounds to break the interminable tranquility, but the nagging sense that something was missing pesisted. It was as though the fabric of the universe as she knew it had somehow subtly changed, and she'd failed to notice.

With a cold, prickling fear, Jilly began to wonder if Kieran had noticed it, too. She focused on him for a moment, waiting for the dizzying rush of emotions, images, and half-formed sentences that typically made up his thoughts. But nothing came. Then she remembered: they couldn't read each other's thoughts anymore. And why was that? Despite her hasty reassurances to Kieran that their inability to read each other's thoughts was a natural progression of existing changes to their psyiology, she couldn't help but wonder. What if in the long journey to Acasia they'd become reinfected, and the virus had picked up where it left off?

Jilly's nerves tingled with a rush of anxiety. Something was wrong. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something was very, very wrong. With every passing second, something nagged at the back of her mind, like an itch just out of reach. What if
 
.
 
.
 
.

She sat up in a rush, tearing the thermal blanket off both her and Kieran in the process.

Kieran's eyes blinked open and he frowned up at her. “What's wrong?”

She shook her head, her eyes wide and unblinking as she stared at the door to their room. “We have to run some more blood tests.”

“What? Why?” Kieran sat up beside her.

“We can't read each other's minds anymore.”

“I thought you said
—
”

She shook her head. “I know. It's just
 
.
 
.
 
.
I have a bad feeling, that's all. We need to be sure.”

“Well
 
.
 
.
 
.
okay. Let's go.”

* * *

They stood before the holographic microscope, waiting for the computer to retrieve the samples from their prior tests, while Jilly prepared vials and syringes for fresh samples on a nearby countertop. The microscope chimed that it was ready to display the old samples, and Jilly turned to Kieran with a gleaming needle and a bottle of disinfectant. “Ready?” she asked.

Kieran smiled and rolled up his sleeve. He made a fist and presented his arm to her. She rubbed his arm with disinfectant and then plunged the needle in. Kieran's eyes winced shut, and he waited for it to be over.

The burning sensation went on and on, and he opened his eyes to see what was taking Jilly so long.

She was staring curiously at the syringe, her brow wrinkled with confusion.

“What?” Kieran asked.

Jilly shook her head. “There's something wrong. The syringe isn't working.” She withdrew the needle from his arm and went back to the countertop where she'd prepared the syringes. She returned with the syringe she'd prepared for herself, and without warning, plunged it into his arm. Kieran watched her struggle to extend the plunger and fill the vial with blood, but again, nothing happened.

“What? It's still not working?”

“I don't understand it.” She withdrew the needle from his arm again and tried to extend the plunger to fill the syringe with air.

It worked perfectly.

Kieran frowned. “That's odd.”

“It's not just odd; it's impossible. If the syringe isn't blocked, then
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

“Maybe you poked it into fat.”

Jilly snorted. “You mean I just miraculously discovered the only fatty deposit on your body, twice in a row?” She shook her head. “Let me try it again. But this time
 
.
 
.
 
.
” She turned around and walked over to a nearby cabinet. Rifling through the gleaming metal drawers for a moment, she returned with a stretchy red tourniquet and tied it tightly around his upper arm. His muscles bulged, but his vein didn't become any more prominent.

Jilly frowned and felt around with her fingers, searching for the best place to stick the needle. When she found it, she didn't even bother to disinfect his skin before plunging the needle in. He watched her try to extend the plunger once more and winced as she shifted to a two-handed grip for better leverage. She strained for a moment, and then there was a sharp
snap
as the plunger broke.

Jilly spent half a second staring dumbly at the broken syringe, then tore it from his arm and threw the pieces on the floor. The transpiranium vial shattered.

“This is unbelievable!”

Kieran regarded her with a frown. “It's okay, Jilly. Why don't you try to get a sample from yourself first?”

She whirled on him. “It's not okay, Kieran!”

He grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eye. “Hey, you're tired and in a hurry. I'm sure if you
—
”

“I know how to do my job, Kieran! I've stayed up 48 hours without sleep, performing open heart surgeries! I think I can take a simple blood sample! There's something
wrong
.”

Kieran frowned. “You keep saying that.”

Jilly's eyes flicked to his and she held his gaze for an unsettling moment. “Because it's true. Give me your hand,” she said.

“Okay
 
.
 
.
 
.
” Kieran held his hand out to her. She removed the tourniquet from his arm, then turned his hand over, palm facing up. He felt her squeezing his wrist tightly. “What are you doing?”

“Checking your pulse
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
” she trailed off uncertainly. He watched her shift to a two handed grip on his wrist, applying her fingers in a variety of different places. After about a minute she let go of his wrist, and looked up at him, her red eyes wide. “You don't have one.”

“What?”

* * *

Suddenly Jilly knew what was so very very wrong. She knew what had subtly changed that she had failed to notice. She knew why the silence had been too deep and too long while she'd been lying in bed with her head on Kieran's chest. His heart should have been interrupting that silence with a steady rythym of beats, yet there'd been nothing but an eery calm.

Kieran was staring at her with a look of dawning horror that mirrored the one in her own eyes.

“I don't understand,” he said. “If I have no pulse, shouldn't I be dead?”

Jilly turned and hurried back to the gleaming bank of cabinets. She had to be sure. As she rifled through one of the drawers, she replied to Kieran, “Yes, but with the changes the virus made to our bodies
 
.
 
.
 
.
who knows what's normal anymore.”

Finding what she was looking for, she turned to Kieran, stethoscope in hand. “Take off your shirt.”

Kieran hastily complied with her request, and she put the device's ear plugs in her ears, then she pressed the other end of the device to his chest and listened
.
 
.
 
.
 
.

Nothing.

She moved the stethoscope around, listening in different places just to be sure. Still, there was no sound but the steady rhythm of his breathing.

“Well?” Kieran asked.

Jilly shook her head and pulled the earplugs from her ears. “It's the same. Your heart isn't beating.”

Kieran gaped at her, absorbing the terrifying implications of that. “Then I must have become reinfected
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

“Maybe. Or maybe it's a side effect of changes that were already made to your body.”

“So that's why you couldn't get a blood sample.”

Jilly shook her head. “No, even if your heart isn't beating, I should still be able to draw blood. The fact that I can't means
 
.
 
.
 
.
” Jilly turned and started toward the holographic microscope.

“Means what?” Kieran called after her. When she didn't reply, he joined her at the microscope. Jilly was busy at the controls of the microscope. He watched her for a moment, then repeated his question: “Means what?”