I smiled. “You’re almost forgiven.”
I carefully measured out the ammonium sulfate solution and added the freezing-cold liquid to the beaker. Lemaya prepared the grainy precipitates and handed them over so we could immerse them in the solution. As I combined them over the burner, the mixture began to bubble and hiss, the heat of the reaction spreading through the beaker. A thick, gooey slurry formed, coated in a yellow hue whose smoke stained my fingers as I tried to stir it with a glass rod.
As the reaction continued, the air grew thicker and heavier, pressing down on my chest and throat, making it more and more difficult to choke out words. Of course, under normal circumstances, we would have been using goggles, masks, maybe even full-on protective suits. These were not normal circumstances.
I tried to breathe through it, I kept working, but it was no use. Each inhale felt like trying to pull air through a faulty oxygen mask. Next to me, I noticed with alarm, Lemaya’s face was already turning purple. She gasped, her chest heaving as she tried to breathe.
“How do we ventilate this place?” I demanded. My own lungs felt weighted with lead, a slow, wheezing asphyxiation.
She rushed to a control panel, slamming one random button after another. “I-I don’t know. There are supposed to be fans. Why aren’t they working?”
“I don’t know. I might have disabled that somehow when I disabled the codes.”
She punched the wall in frustration, then turned. “Turn off the heat.” She gasped. “It’s the only?—”
“No,” I bit back, dashing to the window and throwing two of them open, knowing I’d regret it, but that I’d regret stopping the reaction that much more.
With a final burst, the reaction was complete. I switched off the heat with relief as the fumes dispersed on the slight breeze, watching as the mixture settled into a cool, opaque texture and a calm, clear golden hue.
Lemaya and I looked at each other. For a few seconds, our grateful breaths were the only sounds. The gratitude soon morphed into dread. The dread I’d been trying to shake off since I’d arrived in the lab.
Because the serum needed to be tested. And there were only two possible guinea pigs. But really, there was only one. And I’d known that from the second I’d jumped off that helicopter.
It was why, when describing the plan to Max, I hadn’t mentioned myself.
“You said I was almost forgiven,” Lemaya was saying, God bless her, steeling her delicate mouth into a line. “Well, I want to be completely forgiven.”
I shook my head. “Not this way.” I’d been angry at her. I may have thought I hated her. But still, she was a slave, overwhelmed, like me, by a slave’s desperate dreams and impossible choices, and nothing she’d done came close to warranting death.
As for me? Well, I’d done a lot wrong—recently, and just altogether. I didn’t know aboutdeserve. But the point was that nobody knew better than me how to take pain. And the worst pain wasworsethan death. If I had to choose between the two, logic told me to choose death.
Hell of a choice to make, but that was my life.
Robotically, I went to the computer. It only took a second to print out the formula. I went to a drawer and removed a neodymium magnet, a matte metal disc shaped like a roll of tape, and handed it to Lemaya. Then I walked purposefully over to the fire extinguisher and opened the glass case. I gripped themetal handle tightly, and with a quick twist, removed the silvery canister with its long nozzle and valve.
“Stand back.” With one thrust, over the screaming of my aching shoulder muscles, I heaved the extinguisher at the computer and its holographic display, shattering it into a million luminescent smithereens.
“Just to be safe,” I explained. “Here.” I reached for the suit jacket I’d draped over a chair and dug into the silken inner pocket for what I’d carefully stashed there before meeting Max up on the helipad.
First, the cash I’d removed from my safe: three weeks’ pay plus a “signing bonus,” as Max had phrased it. Lemaya’s eyes widened at the sight of the bills as I counted some out into a separate pile.
“This is yours,” I said, glancing up. “For your new life.”
“I can’t?—”
“Yes, you can.” I left her share on the table and shoved the rest in a flimsy manila envelope. I added one of three flash drives I’d hidden, containing the files from Corey’s tablet. And on top of that, the printout of the complete formula. “I won’t need these, either,” I said after a pause, slipping off my gold watch and rings and handing her those, too.
Then I paused, staring down at the envelope. Lemaya silently handed me some blank paper and a pen.
“Thanks.”
I’d thought it would be tough to figure out what to write. Iwasn’ta writer. I wasn’t even really a reader. I didn’t understand figurative language or flowery descriptions. And I certainly wasn’t so arrogant as to think—despite everything—that I understood love. Not the same way the intended recipient of the note did, anyway.
Still, when the pen hit the paper, I found I didn’t have to think too hard about it.
I handed Lemaya the envelope and all of its contents. “Where you leave it is up to you.”
“But will they be able to find it?”
