Wings of the Walker - CoraLee June Page 0,351

body.

Once Maverick was lying down on the pallet, I made my way over to the glass door and started pacing. I kept glancing at the entrance to the clinic, waiting for Payne and Huxley to walk through. I knew that Huxley would get him here as quickly as possible.

“You hungry?” Cyler asked over the intercom. My stomach was in knots, and I wasn’t sure I could actually stomach anything, but knowing the guys would shove nourishment down my throat if I didn’t say yes made me nod my head anyway.

A protein bar was slipped under the compartment for me, and I opened the wrapper to eat. “Should we try to give Maverick something?” I asked before glancing over at his sleeping form.

“Probably not,” Kemper said while flipping through a tattered notebook. “Once we have the cure, we don’t want anything in his stomach that could counteract it. It says here to keep his sores clean to slow the spread of infection, which you’ve already done.”

“Does it say anything else?” I asked. This I could do.

“Just that he needs to be hydrated.”

Cyler slid a canteen full of water under the door, and I walked it over to Maverick. Using my hand, I propped his head up and tilted the edge of the drink into his mouth. He swallowed a few sips but started coughing, so I stopped.

After wiping his lips clean and checking his sores for puss, I went back to the glass door and paced again. “How is the cure going to work?” I asked Kemper. Knowledge made me feel empowered, and I wanted to soak up all the information.

Kemper set down the notebook and pointed at a machine in front of him. “This is supposed to extract the immunity from Payne’s blood. I put the sample in here, and it’ll pick out the sequence.” Kemper then walked across the room to a larger machine mounted on the wall. “This machine will develop fourteen different vaccines. There are apparently multiple formulas that will have various odds of success. Just because we have the cure in Payne’s blood, there’s still different variables. Maverick wrote down which ones would probably have more likelihood to work, so we’ll just have to...try them all.”

That sounded dangerous. “What if he has a bad reaction to one?” I asked.

“We don’t really have time for tests, Ash,” Cyler whispered. He already knew the dangers. Already knew that this could very well be a hopeless cause.

“We’ll go according to probability. Start with the one calculated to be the most accurate and work from there. It’s all we can do.”

I paced the floors more. Maybe knowledge wasn’t power.

Chapter Twenty

The door to the clinic slammed open, and Huxley rushed in while carrying a sleepy Payne. He was awake, but his eyes were drooped, and his body seemed lethargic. I pressed both my palms to the door, aching to be as close as possible to Payne. I gasped when Huxley laid him down on the table, and Kemper made quick work of extracting his blood.

"Is Payne okay?" I asked Huxley. I was standing so close that my breath was fogging up the glass, and I wiped it away with the sleeve of my ratty shirt in annoyance.

"He's a little weak, but I think that's normal," Huxley replied before walking over to me. He placed his hand against the glass before flipping his gaze to Maverick.

"How is he?" Huxley asked. I turned my gaze back to Maverick and took in his sleeping form. His breathing had increased rapidly.

Turning back to Huxley, I answered him. "He's not doing very well. You got here just in time," I said.

Kemper quickly drew blood from a sleepy Payne. He put the vial into the first machine and set the timer as Patrick picked up Payne and eased him over to a nearby couch to rest some more. "It'll take fifteen minutes," Kemper said before cursing.

Cyler was standing nearby and kept clenching and unclenching his fists. I watched Payne on the couch as he rolled over and folded in on himself in the fetal position. I wanted to go to the young boy and offer him support. It'd been so long since I'd seen him. Despite how pale he looked and the fact that he was much skinnier than the last time we saw one another, he was okay. You had to take the little victories when you could.

Jacob was standing near the second machine, arms crossed over his chest while Patrick tried to give Payne more