“I thought it was gonna go sideways, no lie. Glad it didn’t. That’s a whole lot of woman. I would’ve hated having to show her my combat skills.” Wyatt chuckles and walks over to a messy desk near the door. He puts the needle on a record, the sound starting up with a slight crackle. Nina Simone.
“I could’ve taken her.” Evie shadow boxes a little.
“Major Liz Briggs?” Wyatt squawks. “No way in hell. That woman is a tank. A Marine. She fought two Tantuns with nothing but a pair of silver blades and a whip and lived to tell the tale. She’s a fucking legend.”
“You seem to know a lot about her.” Evie raises a brow. “In fact, you seemed starstruck even though it really looked like she was about to kick my ass.”
He shrugs. “I mean, look, I would’ve defended you. Given her the old razzle dazzle. But let’s be honest here: she’s a hot alpha who’s taller than me and could get me in a chokehold I’d never tap out of.”
I laugh, the mental image too much for me. Wyatt always managed to break the tension, no matter what situation we were in. It warms me to know he still has that quality despite everything that’s happened.
“You’ve got no shot. You know that, right?” Evie peeks out the door at the stragglers who followed us here.
“What?” Wyatt works on doing a one-handed man bun.
“She’s got to be into women.”
“You don’t know that.” Wyatt looks offended. “Besides, I’m majorly in touch with my feminine side. It’s all a spectrum, Evie. Don’t go shattering my hopes and dreams.”
“You’re right.” She closes the door. “My bad. Never say never.”
“Damn right.” Wyatt gives her a hard nod.
Once the throng outside has dispersed, I look around the lab. It’s basic. Something similar to the setup I was using when I was still working at UT. But it has a few more bells and whistles including a small containment lab. Two large refrigeration units along the back wall look promising for materials. “Not too bad.”
“We call it home.” Evie puts her hands together and gives a slight nod to something against the wall to my right.
“What—” It hits me like a sucker punch.
Gretchen. Her photo, the one that had been on her CDC badge. It’s in the center of a little shrine with a few pieces of fruit—oranges, her favorite, and some knickknacks that she would’ve loved: a fidget spinner, a pen with a fluffy neon topper, a small ceramic cat. Next to that is Aang’s photo, an arch look on his face, his dark hair going every which way. There’s a particularly filthy MM manga on his little table and an assortment of anime figures, some of them scratched and beaten up. He would’ve prized them above everything else.
I close my eyes, willing the tears to retreat.
Evie takes my hand. “Don’t be sad. These are happy reminders, that’s all. A little way to keep them in our hearts. They’re here with us. They never left.”
Emotion clogs my throat as I look at them, at the familiar faces I’d forgotten for so long. Now I remember. I remember everything.
Wyatt finally gets his hair tied up into a messy bun. “We talked about making one for you. Glad we held off. Woulda been pretty awkward right about now.”
“When did you find out I was alive?” I tear my attention away from the memorials and inspect the lab equipment, most of it somewhat dated but useful, nonetheless. It should get the job done for our purposes.
“Umm.” Wyatt looks up. “We didn’t know anything for a long time.”
“Yeah, either way. We just didn’t know. We hoped and we prayed, but we never heard anything about you after DC. It was like you’d disappeared. But then again, a lot of people never made it out. The entire city was destroyed, the vampires turning our weapons against us. They knew exactly where to strike, what to do.” Evie doesn’t meet my eyes. “They had people on the inside, people really high up.”
Juno. She doesn’t say the name, but I hear it loud and clear.
“Anyway, about two days ago, maybe three, Gage came to us and said he’d located you, that you were alive, and that he was working to get you out.”
“Two days ago, huh.” I bristle at that. Gage had known where I was for months, yet he didn’t tell my friends.
“It was the first good news in a long, long time.” Evie flips a switch on the electron microscope, booting it up. It gives off the scent of ozone, the deep whirr of it familiar and welcome. “He’d been on us right after we arrived, asking us about your poison. Grilling us for anything we could remember about your research in those last days.”
“That we had no idea about.” Wyatt gives me a dirty look. “You made progress,hugeprogress, and didn’t say a word.”
“I know.”
“Why’d you hide it?” Wyatt asks. “Didn’t you trust us?”
