The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (50 page)

“
Guess that settles it,”
said Bastian. He left Haven alone at the top of the dune and went
after Marius.

She sat there for a moment, sputtering
to form a sentence that would bring them all back. Eventually she
could only mumble, “A plan would have been nice,” and ran quickly
after the others.

There were no guards on top of the
building, and no alarms were raised as they approached the dirt
road. Roku picked a large boulder some yards away and moved toward
it with surprising speed. He crouched low behind it and gestured
for the others to follow.

The section of wall closest to them
was not quite as busy as the rest of the perimeter, but there were
still a fair amount of trucks entering and leaving the doors
nearby. The two armed guards at each entrance checked the trucks
before they drove into the building.

“
Well?!” said Bastian,
turning to Roku. “What’s your big plan, genius?”

Roku did not answer. The group sat
waiting, still as stones, as truck after truck passed by on the
other side of the boulder. Haven saw one coming that carried six
large, square plastic containers on the back bed. The bright lights
from the building on the other side of the opaque containers would
have silhouetted their contents, but the containers were empty. The
driver was alone in the cab.

“
That one,” she said in a
whisper, pointing at the truck.

Roku nodded. When the truck slowly
drove past the boulder, he stepped right up to the driver’s door,
shielded from the warehouse guards’ view by the truck itself. He
quickly opened the door as the truck lurched to a stop and put his
hand over the driver’s throat before he could call for
help.

“
You know what I am,” said
Roku.

The driver nodded, fighting for breath
as Roku squeezed harder on his throat. He wore a beige jacket and a
small green hat that lay tilted haphazardly from his struggle
against Roku’s grip. The driver’s eyes blackened.

“
Then you know what I can
do. You will help us, or you will die.”

The driver did not need to be
convinced. He nodded vigorously and when Roku released him, he
choked out the words, “The tanks. Get into the tanks.”

“
They will check them,”
said Marius, who stood next to Roku.

“
Only the manifest,” said
the driver, pointing to a book on his dashboard. “No physical
inspections of unused containers.”

Each container was shaped like a
squat, square jar with a single screw cap on top. Bastian and
Marius went to the first three behind the driver’s side and
carefully turned them over so the screw caps faced outward. Haven
stood close to Roku, watching the guards next to the building. The
two standing by the nearest door were shouting with one of the
drivers about the contents of his truck and had yet to notice the
stalled vehicle out by the big boulder.

“
What about you?” asked
the driver.

Roku smiled at him. “I ride with you,”
he said. “Give me your hat.”

The driver pulled off his small green
cap and handed it over.

“
Your jacket,
too.”

Roku forced the driver to stand
outside while he crawled into the cab. The whole ordeal would have
been a lot easier if he could have walked around to the other side
of the truck and use the passenger door, but that side was fully
exposed to the warehouse guards.

Roku grunted as he scooted over the
center console and sat low in the passenger’s seat. The driver
plopped down next to him, sweating profusely.

“
It will never work,” he
said. “There are too many guards.”

“
It’s working so far,”
said Haven. She smiled at Roku, hoping it would give him courage,
if he needed any. She closed the driver’s door and walked to the
back of the truck. Marius was wiggling through the hole of one of
the containers, his thick legs kicking wildly as he struggled to
pull himself all the way in.

“
He’s stuck on his belly,”
said Bastian, not bothering to hide his amusement.

Marius’s protruding stomach had in
fact proven to be something of a stopper as he entered the
container. He spoke violent Russian from within the tank and
sounded like he was inside a fishbowl. Haven guessed he was cursing
Bastian for the slap on the rear he had just given Marius as he
squirmed.

“
Grab a leg,” said
Bastian. He took hold of Marius’s right leg and Haven grabbed the
left. They did a silent count of three and then pushed as hard as
they could. With a hollow
phonk
, Marius popped into the tank
and landed on the bottom. He groaned and rolled over onto his
back.

Bastian picked up the screw cap lid
and twisted it into place. “Have to hurry,” he said. “Our air won’t
last long.”

He laced his fingers together and
boosted Haven up into the next container. She slid in far more
gracefully than Marius, easily clearing the sides of the hole.
Bastian’s face appeared at the opening.

“
All set?” he asked. Haven
nodded and he threaded the cap and gave it a light slap to let her
know he was done.

The empty tank next to hers shifted
slightly, and she heard Bastian drop down inside. Somehow he had
managed to keep one hand out of the tank and hold on to the lid,
because a second later she heard it spinning into place.

The truck lurched into gear and they
were moving.

The only thing Haven could see was the
occasional passing light. It was like looking at the sun through a
thick white blanket. She kept waiting for the truck to stop but it
didn’t. They had been driving for too long, far too long, when it
suddenly halted and she slid to the front of the container and
bumped lightly against the plastic wall. She lay as flat as
possible, knowing that if any bright lights were shone directly
onto her tank, anyone standing on the other side would easily see
her silhouette.

Men were talking. One was the driver,
speaking quickly in clipped sentences. Haven thought he sounded too
nervous and for a moment she was afraid it would be enough to tip
off the guards. Maybe that was just the way he spoke, though, when
he didn’t have a hand on his throat. Another man asked him
questions. His voice was muffled and Haven couldn’t make out the
words.

Suddenly there was a knock on her tank
and she almost screamed. She saw a dark blur walk past her
container and hit the next one down the line.

The driver spoke calmly, pleadingly,
and his tone suggested he just wanted to finish his shift so he
could go home and relax. The dark blur came back to stand in front
of Haven’s container and slapped it roughly three more times. The
driver asked if everything was okay and Haven held her breath,
waiting for a reply. When it finally came, she heard the guard very
clearly: “Someone’s in here.”

23

D
ormer picked up the papers from the rickety wooden table in
the center of the room and rolled them together. He slipped the
roll into an inside coat pocket and smiled at Colton.

“
Hungry?” he
asked.

Colton’s stomach growled at the
prospect of a hot meal. It felt like he hadn’t eaten in days, yet
food had been the last thing on his mind at that moment. All he
could think about was Adsen’s unceremonious departure and the door
clanging shut behind him.

“
There’s nothing to be
done at the moment,” said Dormer. “So we might as well keep our
strength up.”

“
You still have your
ability,” said Colton suddenly.

“
That’s right, and I’d
like to keep it a secret. For now.”

“
Does Adsen still have
his?”

“
Why should
he?”

“
Because he’s your
brother.”

“
Even if he was not
infected with Fade, he wouldn’t be able to do much, if anything.
They completely fried him at the medical facility. I doubt Adsen
could harm anyone at this point.” He opened the door.
“Coming?”

Colton didn’t move. He was
dumbfounded. “Why don’t you fight back? You’re probably the only
one here who still has his ability.” His voice was rising but he
couldn’t stop it. “Why is everyone suffering if you
could—”

“
Colton,” said Dormer,
interrupting his growing hysteria. “The soldiers are never gathered
together at the same time, and neither are we. I could take out a
few, or even most, but the rest would have plenty of chances to
react and start shooting. And then there’s Kamiko. In a straight-up
fight, she would kill me.”

“
You don’t know that for
sure.”

“
I do. I feel it. I’m more
sure of that fact than anything else in the world. Which is why we
need to wait a little while longer for the perfect moment to
strike.”

“
You’re
afraid?”

“
I’m clever. If it made
sense to throw my life away for the rest of you, the choice would
be easy. But it serves no purpose in our current
situation.”

“
When do we strike?” asked
Colton.

“
We’ll recognize the
opportunity when we see it.” He gestured to the door and Colton
reluctantly stepped out into the hallway.

The kitchen was just down the hall.
Colton’s stomach growled again as he approached the doorway.
Delicious aromas wafted out into the hallway: spiced meat and
vegetables, and something sweet in the mix. Cake? Was someone
making cake? The very idea of baked pastries in a hostage situation
struck Colton as strange.

Micah was standing on his tiptoes in
front of the stove across the room when Colton entered, stirring
the contents of a large pot with a wooden spoon. The boy wore an
apron that was much too large for his small frame. The bottom of it
lay piled over his sneakers like a dropped tablecloth, and the top
half hung so low around his neck that it only protected his pants.
His shirt was covered with splotches of food. He turned and smiled
at Colton.

On a long countertop immediately to
the doorway’s right, Noah stood with a big kitchen knife in hand,
sloppily chopping up a giant head of lettuce. He smiled, too, when
he looked up and saw Colton and Dormer.

“
Hi,” he said
brightly.

“
Hello,” said Colton. Noah
seemed to think it was a great reply and went back to
chopping.

A timer beeped off to his left and
Colton turned as a slender black woman opened an oven door, only to
be greeted by a billowing cloud of smoke. It roiled out and
engulfed her faster than she could get a hand up to waft it away.
She coughed and reached into the oven with a mitted hand and
retrieved a large, circular tray atop which sat something that
Colton assumed was supposed to be cake.

He hurried over and closed the oven
door as she turned away to set down the tray.

“
Oh, thank you!” she said,
still waving away the cloud of smoke. Her voice was laced with a
very faint French accent. “I guess I set the timer too
long.”

“
It’s calibrated wrong,”
said Colton. “Best to set it ten minutes under and check it
manually until it’s done.”

The woman set down the tray and pulled
the oven mitt off her hand. She stood with one hand on her hip and
blew a strand of loose hair away from her eyes. “Wish I would have
known that before making dessert,” she said without a hint of
frustration. She was perhaps thirty-five, although her time spent
at the medical facility had apparently added a few years to her
dark, pretty features. Her brown, curly hair was pulled back in a
tight ponytail and she reached up to tuck an errant strand back in
place, then offered Colton her hand.

“
I’m June,” she
said.

They shook hands. “I’m Colton. We met
when you first arrived from the medical facility.”

Her good humor faded slightly. She
dropped his hand and picked up the cake tray. “I don’t remember
much about those days, I’m afraid. To tell you the truth, I’m just
now starting to figure out where I am. When I first got here, was
I—” She paused, searching for the words. “Was I in bad
shape?”

“
About the same as the
others,” said Colton. “A little more awake, I think.”

“
You’ve probably told me
this before, but how many of us were there?”

“
Twenty-eight originally.
Most of them left when they recovered enough to remember who they
were and where they came from.” He looked over at Dormer, who had
joined Micah at the stove and was talking the boy into letting him
sample what was in the pot. “Now there’s just you and a few
others.”

She walked the cake tray over to the
island in the middle of the room and set it down next to a
container of homemade icing.

“
I imagine one of them
told Alistair where to find this place.”

“
I think that’s what
happened, too.”

She unscrewed the lid of the container
and stuck a butter knife into the icing, then glopped some out onto
the slab of cake.

“
Shouldn’t you wait until
that cools?” asked Colton.

She spread the icing
around. “It burns me up that you nice folks did what you did and
one of the survivors went and tattled.” She was spreading the icing
too roughly and small chunks of the cake broke off and crumbled.
“It burns me right up, and I can’t do a thing about it.” June
suddenly dropped the knife next to the cake and turned away with
her wrist to her nose, stifling a cry. Colton noticed faint black
veins covering her forearms. “It was just out of the frying pan and
into the fryer for me and the other survivors, wasn’t it?” She
wiped her nose and stared at the wall. “I was a chef—well, I
am
a chef, I guess.
Owned my own place on Bourbon Street. That’s all gone now. They set
fire to it when they took me.” She shook her head, remembering.
“The other ones who came with me from the medical facility, they
just want to stay in their rooms and keep their heads down. They
think it will all blow over.” June wiped some of the tears from her
cheek and looked at her hands, then down at the cake. “I just felt
like being normal again, is all. I haven’t cooked since before I
was taken.”