She wasn’t going to end up in some lab again. No matter what it cost to keep her out of it.
But thankfully, he knocked the door shut again with less than a glance, the shelf Kyan had replaced to hide her clearly working.
The female soldier checked her watch before moving over to take a look at our test results, carefully photographing them like she had our passports before typing away on the iPad in her hand.
"So, what's the result?" I asked her when she failed to tell us and she glanced around at me through her visor.
"I assumed you already knew?" she asked, confusing me, but of course Saint didn't skip a beat.
"It would be rather hard to forget the weeks the four of us spent battling through the hell of the Hades Virus," he said in a dry tone. "So I assume we have antibodies now that we've survived, but a confirmation would put our minds at ease about the idea of us contracting it again."
"The four of you all survived?" Sergeant Jeffers asked in surprise. "None of your group died?"
"Thankfully not," Saint clipped. "But it was a closely fought battle."
"Not the kind of thing you forget easily," Kyan added. "I doubt I'll ever be able to cough again without being reminded of the feeling of my lungs shredding apart inside my own body. But apparently, we're a bunch of tough bastards so we made it through."
Sergeant Jeffers nodded like he'd seen enough stories like ours to buy into it, though I could tell the female soldier was surprised to find that we had all survived it without losing anyone in our group. It seemed simpler to stick to that story than it would have been to invent someone for us to be grieving though so I didn’t add anything.
"So we have to relocate to somewhere where you’re housing other survivors?" Saint asked. "How long do we have to get ourselves there?"
"No need to worry about that, lad," Sergeant Jeffers said patronisingly and if looks could kill, Saint would likely have made his head explode on the spot for that little endearment. "You can grab some basic supplies now and we'll be on our way. There are vehicles ready to transport you to your new location."
"We can get there ourselves," Kyan said, folding his arms. "Just give us an address and-"
"Refusal to cooperate can and will result in arrest under martial law in defence of our country and our citizens," Sergeant Jeffers replied, his hand falling to the gun at his hip in a less than subtle gesture. "Are you going to make this more difficult than it needs to be?"
The four of us exchanged heavy looks, but we'd already figured out that this was coming, so we just had to accept it and trust our girl to get herself out of here. She'd wait for Kyan's uncle and we'd get ourselves away from their camp before the day was out then reunite with her. It was the best hope we had of all of us making it out of here in one piece and no matter how much I detested the idea of parting from her, I wasn’t going to risk her life just to keep her within my line of sight.
"Alright," I said, lifting my hands in a placating gesture as I got to my feet. "We'll grab some of our shit and come quietly."
"One bag," Sergeant Jeffers replied. "We don't have room to carry too much crap."
"We don't have much here anyway," Blake replied in the smartass tone he always liked to use on me when I was teaching him and I could tell that pissed our new soldier friend off a bit. He should try teaching a bunch of preppy, entitled little shits day in day out. He might have been used to bossing soldiers around, but elitist little assholes were a whole other kind of beast.
I tossed a few spare clothes and my toothbrush into a bag, focusing on keeping my face blank of emotions as we followed the soldiers out of the abandoned movie theatre and left our girl behind.
I swear it went against every single fibre of my being to do it and I wasn't even sure I could. But as Saint clapped a hand on my shoulder, encouraging me to follow the soldiers out, I made my feet keep moving. One in front of the other. Step after step leading me further and further from Tatum. But I just had to