Breaking Point (Article 5 #2)(89)
Without further discussion, we left.
*
REFORMATION Parkway was only nine blocks west from where we’d left the others. The hospital was easy enough to find; it was right beside the FBR Recruit Barracks, where Chase and Tucker had lived during basic training.
I’d known our stakeout would be there before I saw it. I’d known because Truck, Jack, and the Chicago medic had told Sean and me about it in sick bay. This abandoned building, just across the street from the hospital and rehab center, was where Mags had been when she’d sniped off her own man.
We entered through a weakly boarded door in the back and climbed to the seventh floor, where we could spy on the five-story facility below without anyone catching a lateral glimpse of us across the street. As the hours passed we kept watch on that building, as if Rebecca might appear in any window, hip cocked, arms crossed, wondering what was taking so long.
Tucker sketched a layout of the building on one of the walls with a jagged piece of glass, identifying all exits and stairways. We split our meager rations. We slept in shifts. Chase woke me every half hour to check my pupils; it was like when we’d first joined the resistance, when he’d been healing from a concussion, only now our positions had been reversed. The disruptions didn’t matter; after a couple hours I couldn’t fall back asleep anyway. No one could. When Sean got too restless, Tucker agreed to relocate with him to the bottom floor to watch the rehab’s entrance, leaving Chase and me alone.
*
“YOU’LL be fine. Tucker can’t do anything to you once you’re inside, not with all those soldiers standing around. He was right; he’s got nowhere else to go if he screws this up.”
Chase was already in uniform, methodically taking apart the gun Jack had given us, and cleaning it with the ripped remains of his T-shirt. I turned back to face the window, because it wouldn’t do much good to mention he’d already cleaned it twice, or that we’d reviewed tomorrow’s plan double that. I let him talk because he needed to, and I needed it, too. It eased the pounding in my head.
It was well after curfew, but the power across the street remained on at the hospital and rehabilitation center, as it did at the massive base behind it to the west. The triangle was completed by the prison across town. Three twinkling lights in the darkness. Their glow filtered in enough light to throw long, condemning shadows across the room.
I gazed down at the stone entranceway of the facility, wondering what lurked inside. I found myself imagining the strangest things—if the floor was tiled or linoleum, what color the walls were painted—grasping for something.
Did my mother know, walking into that jail cell, that she would never again come out? It seemed impossible that she couldn’t have felt mortality breathing down her neck, as I did now. I wondered if she’d felt brave. I wondered if tomorrow I would be.
A chill took me despite the warm temperature in the room.
Before I realized what I was doing, I’d begun a list. An inventory of all the things I wanted to do before I died. There were trivial things, of course. Take a hot shower. Eat ice cream, like in the days before standardized power. But there were more important things, too. Find Billy, and if I could, get him to the safe house. Put up a memorial for my mother.
Be with Chase.
Hold his hand without keeping the other on a weapon. Have long talks about nothing important, but everything essential, like we used to. Not just fight, but live. We had to live fast these days, because we died fast, too.
I slid the uniform scarf over my head and let it fall to the floor, then opened the top buttons of my blouse, finding it suddenly too tight around my neck. I took a deep breath, then another.
Chase trailed off, and for an instant I thought he might be preoccupied by the weapon, but then I heard the click of the metal atop the table and the rustle of clothing when he stood.
He approached slowly, like a stalking wolf, or maybe it was the nerves burning low in my belly that seemed to exaggerate each second. Before he reached me he stopped, close enough that I could feel his warmth. Feel his eyes traveling over my reflection in the window, more intimate than any touch.
He shook his head and glanced back at the table, as if he’d forgotten how he’d arrived here. Then he swallowed. Raked a hand through his hair. Tried to conceal an embarrassed smile behind a serious mask.
“Are you paying attention? Or just trying to distract me?”
“Trying to distract you,” I said. “Obviously.”
His amusement swelled, then faded, leaving me anxiously awaiting his next move. It came slowly: his tentative fingertips found the back of my jaw and trailed down the nape of my neck, stopping right before my collarbone. Making me aware of nothing but the feel of him.
“I remember you used to like to be kissed here,” he said, voice thick. “Do you still?”
I had to concentrate in order to respond.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “No one has since you.”
In the reflection I saw his lips part slightly. My heart beat so loudly in my chest I wondered if he could hear it. If he knew it beat that way for him, and no one else.
He leaned down, the tip of his nose skimming my earlobe and lowering, until his lips found that spot, his spot, that made my knees weak and my whole body tremble.
He turned me slowly, fingers weaving through my hair. He came closer, until we shared the same breath. His lips were warm and soft and full of restraint, but as the seconds melted together his arms pulled me tighter, and his mouth became more urgent, hot breath and grazing teeth, and the firm, soft feel of his lower lip between mine. He felt it, as I did. The moments counting down, pulling us apart, and if we didn’t hold on to each other fate would beat us, separate us, and we would be lost to each other forever.