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“For what?”

For the forced meals. The baths. Fending off spiders and infection. “For keeping me alive when I didn’t want it.”

His chin settled on my head. “Hunger of heart is the greatest sickness. I don’t know how to heal that.” Pain tinged his voice. “I failed to guard your heart and your mind.”

He felt right in my arms. “You guard my body. Even from myself.”

“Until the day I die.”

His words moved something inside me. I strengthened my hug around him and buried my smile in his chest. “Till you die?”

“Not a day sooner.”

My smile grew so big, it exploded across my face. My cheeks strained to hold it, hurting even, but I didn’t want to let it go.

The tightness of the robe was suffocating. So was the air of impatience wafting off the Drone as he circled me. In his daily visits, he hadn’t once mentioned Roark’s escape nor had he found Michio alone to confront him.

“I want progress.” The Drone paused, glaring.

“And you’ll have it,” Michio said with a bored tone.

“It’s been four days. My doubt in your success is surpassed only by my frustration with the two months you’ve wasted with her.”

Which meant it was April. Two years since the outbreak. Annie would’ve moved on from ribbons and dolls to earrings and boy bands. Aaron would’ve climbed the ranks in Karate, perhaps knotting a brown belt with a glowing smile dimpling his cheeks. My chest squeezed.

The Drone bent his head, his mouth a scant inch from mine. “Three more days,” he breathed in my face. He smiled and the flash a sizable white tooth stole the air from my lungs. Behind him, the muscles in Michio’s throat strained and his eyes smoldered.

All at once, the Drone’s face contorted, his hand pawing at the lid of his pill bottle. Then he blustered out in a rustle of papers, shocking my lungs back into action.

I rubbed my neck where his bite had healed. “I think he has fangs.”

Michio remained rooted beside my bed, his body taut. “We need to leave. Now.”

“I bet he wears that theatrical cape because he’s hiding wings.”

He didn’t move. His arms hung at his sides, but his chin seemed to lower. His body grew stiffer.

“What’s wrong with you?”

He shook himself. “I used to be better at hiding it.” Two long strides and he towered over me, hand around my nape. “I have never wanted him near you. He’s getting too close. We need to leave.”

“We’re not ready.”

“Did you hear him? Three days.”

“I heard. Three days and it’s back to the dungeon.” I squared my shoulders. “Believe me. I know what the brothers have planned for me there.”

“The way Aiman pops his pills around you, I’m not so sure—”

“His pills? For his kidney?”

He stared at me for a beat that trickled into five. “There’s nothing wrong with his kidney. He’s feigning symptoms in attempt to draw his attention from the real problem.”

“His metamorphosis?”

“His repulsion of women. Of you.”

I burst into laughter, choking my words. “Why would he do that?”

“The lie is more comforting than the truth.”

“The truth that he’s a fucking psycho?” My laughter reached hysterics.

He talked over me. “We don’t know how far his repulsion will take him. We’re leaving now.”

I sobered. “We’re not ready.”

We’d practiced my communication with the aphids every day. As long as I kept physical contact with him and quashed my arousal, they followed my command. My communication even reached to the ground floor, but I could only juggle three under my control at one time.

His grip on my neck tightened. “We are.”

“We’re not.” The Jabara brothers prayed five times a day. During their prayer time, Michio walked the quadrangle to draw out Jesse. “We agreed to give Jesse one more day to contact us.” Then we’d leave the fortress, with or without his help. If I could control every aphid we encountered, we’d escape under the Drone’s radar. But outside the fortress, we’d have to find Jesse and his boat.

My hand went to my forearm. “I don’t even have my weapons anymore.”

“You don’t need them.” At my glare, he grabbed my hand and led me to his laptop and scattered notebooks on the couch. “I want to show you something.”

He tapped the screen. “This is premature, until I can prove it…”

Always a disclaimer. “Spit it out.”

“It’s just…look at this.”

A 3-D image of DNA rotated in a kaleidoscope of colors.

“That mine?”

His head inclined. “Your make-up is dynamic. It resists everything I throw at it. According to my tests, your blood’s not only poisonous to the aphids but exponentially more potent.”

My pulse fired in my throat. “You said I was human.”

He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “You are. But as a human with these traits, you can likely withstand an aphid bite. And if that’s the case…Evie, you carry the cure.”

I stepped back. “The cure to reverse the aphid mutation?”