Page 53 of Blue Arrow Island (Blue Arrow Island #1)

It’s a sad day in our camp. An enhanced black bear attacked Dr. Kristen Lynn yesterday and she died from her injuries. This is the second attack by a bear since we arrived. We are sending out a team to euthanize all black bears on the island.

- Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Randall McClain

When I wake up the next morning, Marcus is already gone.

Our room is pitch black, but even in the darkness, I know he isn’t here because I can’t feel him.

His bed is so small that we can’t even fit in it unless he’s on his back and I’m on my side.

I always put my back to the wall and snuggle into his warm, solid body to fall asleep at night, my head tucked beneath his chin and my cheek on his chest.

He was quiet when he came in late last night. We didn’t exchange any words when he got into bed, both of us moving to get situated into our sleeping positions. Once his arm was around my back, his hand resting on my hip, he kissed the top of my head.

And that was it. Even though I was only wearing a tank top and underwear, he had no interest in anything sexual. I knew something was off with him, but now I’m even more certain.

I slide out of bed, my clothes already soaked through with sweat. With the power almost entirely offline, the air circulator doesn’t work. It’s nothing like air conditioning, but I didn’t realize how much it helped with the humidity until we no longer had it.

I showered before bed, so this morning I just brush my teeth, put on clean clothes, and put my hair back in a ponytail. It’s so stifling in the housing block that I’m relieved to step outside, where the air isn’t stagnant.

On my walk to the Hub, I see that the bodies of the men we killed yesterday are gone. A woman is riding one of the laundry bikes through camp and two men are pushing wheeled carts past the tower.

I glance up to find Stella in the enclosure at the top of the tower, monitoring the long view of the camp’s perimeter.

It’s business as usual here, but also ... not. There are no kids out here. No one standing out of the main traffic area, carrying on light conversations. Everyone wears a serious expression, the events of yesterday still fresh.

When I walk into the Hub and get in the breakfast line, Amira sees me from her place near the front, her face lighting up.

“Hey, how are you?” she asks as she comes to stand with me at the back of the line.

“I’m okay.”

“How’d you sleep?”

“Not great.”

I was tired, but I could tell from his breathing that Marcus wasn’t sleeping, so we both lay there alone with our thoughts.

We’ve spent days on end together, sharing intimacies both physical and emotional.

But the wall between us now only seems to be growing bigger.

It’s left me feeling adrift, like a boat that came untied from a dock and is now floating aimlessly in the ocean.

I speak softly, so only she can hear me when I ask, “Can I stay in your room? At night? I’ll sleep on the floor.”

Her brows drop in question, but she says, “Of course. I’ll see if I can find a cot.”

I nod my thanks, the savory scent of cooking meat making my stomach rumble with hunger.

“Did the kitchen get power back?”

Amira shakes her head. “Their ovens are wood-fired. I think we’re having bacon and eggs and pancakes.”

I groan, ravenous after not eating anything yesterday. “What’s the occasion? We usually have fruit and oatmeal.”

“I guess surviving the coup attempt? And everyone’s really hungry because we only had breakfast yesterday.”

“How are things with you?”

Amira and I catch up over dinner and often spend the rest of our evenings together after that, but we’ve both been gone from camp a lot, searching for the flowers.

“Not bad.” She sighs softly, looking away. “I went and saw Chance. Ellison had to amputate his left arm beneath the elbow. He lost a lot of blood, and when they dragged him out yesterday and tied him to the tower, I was afraid it would kill him.”

“Is he okay?”

She shrugs. “He’s eating and drinking. Sleeping a lot.”

“I can’t imagine. I’ll go see him soon.”

“He’s pretty down. He thinks his life is basically over because of the amputation.”

We’ve reached the front of the line, Vadim turning his bright smile on us. “Eggs?”

Amira gives him a grateful look. “Please. This looks and smells incredible.”

He tells us about his egg scrambling method—combine the eggs, but don’t make them frothy—and his recipe for cooking them in butter with salt and pepper, chives sprinkled in at the end.

We’ve both gotten eggs and bacon on our plates, and Amira is about to get a big pancake piled onto her plate by a kitchen server when a woman comes running into the kitchen.

“One of the prisoners came back!”

Chatter buzzes through the line of people waiting for breakfast. I step out of line, Amira following. Just in case shit’s about to get bad again, I shove a piece of bacon in my mouth so at least I get something to eat.

“Should we barricade the Hub entrance?” Amira asks, reaching for the bow at her back.

“Let’s see if we can get a look at what’s going on.”

We walk out of the Hub, our plates still in hand. I squint to see who’s gathered in a cluster by the front gates to camp, my chin dropping when I see him.

“It’s McClain,” I murmur, walking toward him.

Marcus and Niran are standing by him, Marcus glancing at me as I approach.

“You came back,” I say to McClain.

There’s a ghost of a smile on his lips. “I want to help.”

Marcus says to Niran, “Go help Nova get us back online so we can see if it’s fixed.” He glances at me then and says, “McClain says he fixed our solar panels.”

Relief floods through me. If it’s true, it’s the first good thing that’s happened here in a while.

“It’s not my specialty, but I think I did it right,” McClain says.

A sheen of sweat covers his skin, his gray hair hanging on both sides of his face in frizzy strings. He’s so fragile looking, his face too lean and his shoulders slighter than most anyone in our camp, including the women.

“Eat this.” I offer him a piece of bacon from my plate.

His smile grows slightly. “Thank you, but it’s okay.”

I push it closer to him. “Just eat it. You need it.”

He gives Marcus a questioning look and says, “I may be going back to my cell.”

Marcus shifts, scowling slightly. A few seconds of silence pass and then a voice sounds over the radio.

“Athena to Ares, we are up and running. Fully online.”

Nova’s happiness comes through in her rich, warm voice. Marcus sighs deeply, looking like a weight has been lifted.

“Thanks,” he says to McClain.

A thought occurs to me. I face McClain. “If you feel like it, can we talk? Maybe over breakfast?”

Marcus frowns, disapproval etched into his expression. “We need to get back out and search.”

I’m not letting him call all the shots anymore. He’s used to everyone doing what he says all the time, but this conversation with McClain is important to me, and I’m not letting him put me off.

“I’ll be ready within an hour,” I say, not even looking at Marcus.

He groans. “Fine. We’ll meet in the Sub.”

“I didn’t invite you.” I give him a sharp look.

His brows fly up to his hairline. “Are you fucking for real?”

“Do I sit in on every conversation you have?”

Amira backs away and the two gate guards suddenly need to check something out of earshot, leaving just me, Marcus and McClain.

Marcus is about to unload when McClain speaks up instead. “I think it should be all of us. I left Marcus in a bad position when I went to search for the flower and never returned. I understand his reluctance to let us speak alone.”

I shrug, my aggravation with Marcus flaring. He holds my gaze, his eyes narrowed. Then he gestures to one of the gate guards, who comes over.

“Take McClain to get some food. Then bring him to his old office.”

The two men leave, Marcus and I still locked in a stare-down. I’m not flinching this time. I cowered inside a hive of vines at his command and came to his rescue when he stupidly offered himself up to Ray yesterday. If he doesn’t see how capable I am, that’s his problem, not mine.

“I’m staying with Amira,” I say.

He scoffs, his gaze darkening. “The fuck you are.”

“Either I’m staying with Amira, or you can put me in a cell. Your choice.”

He rubs the scruff on his jaw, looking away. “Look, I know I’ve been a dick?—”

“You mean even more of a dick than usual. A massive dick instead of a regular one.”

Something flares in his gold-flecked eyes. “Yeah, fine. But we’re still ... it doesn’t change anything between us. You stay in our room. With me.”

“Are you going to tell me what’s been going on with you?” I fire the question at him like a bullet. “Why you’re so distant?”

“I’m getting there. Give me time.”

I shake my head, holding back angry tears. “Take all the time you want, but I’ll be staying with Amira while you do.”

I turn and leave, the tears spilling over. I let them trail all the way down my cheeks to my chin, because I’m not letting him see me raise my hand to wipe them away.

“It’s bare in here,” McClain says as he walks into the office where we talked to Olin yesterday.

“I burned most of your shit,” Marcus says tightly.

McClain doesn’t react. He just takes a seat in one of the chairs facing the desk, leaving the one behind it open for Marcus. When I sit down next to McClain instead of Marcus, I get a low-key scowl from the man who brought me to tears a few minutes ago.

I’m hoping to ignore him for the entirety of this conversation.

“Did you eat?” I ask McClain.

His eyes brighten a notch. “I did. It’s been ages since I had pancakes and bacon.”

“Thank you for fixing the solar panels. That was dangerous for you, but now we don’t have to worry about the shield going down.”

He nods. “It was the least I could do.”

“That’s a fucking fact,” Marcus mutters.

I shoot him a glare before saying, “Dr. McClain, we have to get back to searching, but there’s something I need to understand. Can you tell me more about the different strains of aromium?”

He uses his spindly arms to pick up his chair by the back, turning it so he’s facing me and then sitting back down. “What do you want to know?”

“I’m sure there’s a lot, and I’d love to know everything at some point when we aren’t on a tight schedule, but for now, I need to know more about how aromium is affecting me.” I shake my head. “I still can’t believe this, but somehow aromium has connected me to vines.”

A crease appears between his brows, his glasses perched low on his nose. “Vines? Can you tell me more?”

“At first, I didn’t even know I was doing it. When I felt strong emotions, like when someone was about to kill me, vines ... responded, I guess? They flew out of the jungle and wrapped themselves around the person trying to kill me, so she couldn’t do it. They saved me.”

Awareness dawns on his face. “You’re the first I know of to link with a plant. I wondered how that would work.”

I have so many questions; it seems impossible to narrow them down and keep this conversation succinct. “How many people have gotten the same strain I did? Marcus said he can call wolves and I can call vines because of the strains we were given.”

McClain looks at Marcus, whose expression is completely closed off.

“Well...” McClain shifts in his chair, frowning. “Are you sure you want to go into this right now, Briar? You may find it ... disturbing.”

“I want to know. I deserve to know.”

He nods, his eyes meeting mine. “Tell me your full name.”

“Briar Hollis. Juniper, if you need my middle name.”

His eyes widen, what little color his cheeks have draining away.

“Hollis?” It’s almost a whisper. “Are you Lucy Hollis’s daughter?”

My heart thunders in my chest, pounding so hard and fast I’m a little lightheaded. “Yes.”

McClain’s shock unsettles me. I can’t even wait a few seconds to let him process it.

“Did you know her?” My voice breaks.

He pushes his glasses up on his nose, his expression turning sympathetic. “Yes. Lucy was an expert in her field. No one knew more about plant biology and pathology.”

“How did you know her?”

It’s all I can do not to jump out of my chair and shake him—I want to make him tell me everything he knows about her, right now.

“Soren Whitman hired me to assemble a team of the world’s greatest minds to figure out how to engineer a compound that improved upon human DNA. Your mother was one of those people.”

I stare at him, not breathing. It’s not true. My mother was a good person. She never would have been part of the experiments on this island.

“No.” Tears fill my eyes.

“You have to understand,” McClain says softly, “that we didn’t know what aromium would become.

None of us had any idea. There were two teams, and I led the aromium one.

We were told our work was for the betterment of humanity.

We were in the dark, as was the other team.

Most of the scientists on the other team had no idea they were actually creating the virus that would wipe out billions of people. ”

My jaw drops, and I look at Marcus. His expression is stoic, unreadable. But his eyes swim with sympathy.

“The virus?” I can hardly even take a full breath. “You guys created it?”

“The other team did. But we all worked under the same roof. The team I assembled thought we were working for a billionaire who wanted to use his vast resources to genetically engineer cures for diseases.”

“But then ... how am I able to control vines just because my mother worked on the project?”

A second passes before he responds. “Because the team I assembled used their own DNA to create aromium. They, and their blood relatives, can do things no one else can with aromium.”

I have to put my feelings about this in an invisible box for now. I can’t break. After a deep breath, I steel myself.

“It’s started happening even when the aromium is off.”

He shakes his head. “That’s not possible.”

“It happens. Marcus has seen it.”

McClain looks at Marcus, who gives him a tight nod.

Rubbing his forehead, McClain slumps in his chair. “We unleashed hell on this island. A hell that can’t be undone.”