Page 4 of Glass Rose (Where Roses Rot #1)

THREE

SOFIA

This is it. This is how I die.

Karma’s a bitch.

Dr. Brown’s bloody fingers almost touch me before he’s blindsided by a force I can’t even identify.

His body crumples against the centrifuge with a wet thud, and standing in his place is a tall, lean figure in a tattered hospital gown.

Subject 7. The man I’ve participated in torturing for fourteen months straight.

He clutches Dr. Brown by the hair, ripping his head back before slamming his skull against the metal edge of the lab bench with sickening force. Brain matter and blood spray across the lab equipment, droplets splattering the glass refrigerator door and… me.

Dr. Brown twitches once, twice, then goes still.

“I’ve been planning to kill him for months.” Subject 7 releases Brown’s lifeless body, and it slides to the floor in a boneless heap, leaving a dark crimson smear down the cabinet. “And you just gave me another reason.”

He talks? Has the virus already evolved?

His blue eyes lock onto mine, unnervingly clear amid the carnage. His breathing is steady, controlled—nothing like the ragged gasps scraping through my chest.

I’m next. I’m going to die.

I grip the metal tray harder and swing it, connecting with his bicep. The impact reverberates through my body, but he barely flinches. Just tilts his head, studying me like I’m a particularly interesting lab specimen.

Which, fair. That’s exactly what I did to him.

I scramble, lab coat catching on a drawer handle, knocking me off balance. I hit the floor hard, elbow cracking against the tile, pain shooting up my arm. Shit. I crab-walk backward until I bump into the wall, with nowhere left to go. Again.

“Dr. Cruz.”

I stare up at him. H-He knows my name?

His hospital gown hangs off his broad shoulders, revealing the full extent of what we’ve done to him.

Surgical scars crisscross his torso. Track marks line his arms where we injected the virus variants, over and over.

His hair hangs long and dark around a face that might once have been friendly before we tortured him.

“You’re not…” Not infected? Not dead? Not going to kill me? “I?—”

He’s across the room in three silent strides, hand clamping over my mouth. My back hits the wall harder, his body looming over mine, all lean muscle and radiating heat.

“Quiet.” His voice is a rough whisper, lips brushing my ear. “Unless you want to join your colleague.”

Movement flickers in my peripheral vision. Through the round window in the lab door, a figure shambles past—one of the infected, jaw hanging slack, dark fluid dripping from its mouth.

How did he know?

Subject 7’s grip tightens, forcing my gaze back to his face.

His eyes are impossibly blue, clear. Present.

Nothing like the vacant stares of the infected.

He had survived injections that killed other test subjects within hours.

His cellular structure had shown anomalous regenerative properties.

But the reports never mentioned immunity.

Just ‘inconclusive results’ and ‘further testing required.’

“Nod if you understand,” he murmurs.

I nod, pulse hammering so hard I swear he must hear it.

He slowly removes his hand but doesn’t step back. “You’re not screaming. Good start.”

“You’re—” My voice cracks. “You’re lucid. How? The virus?—”

A ghost of a smile touches his lips. “Thanks to you and your colleagues’ dedicated efforts.”

I deserve his hatred. I’ve earned it with every injection I administered, every observation I recorded while he suffered. “I’m sorry.” What defense could possibly matter now?

“Nice to finally meet you, Dr. Cruz,” he says with a formality that’s absurd given our surroundings. “Though I imagined better circumstances.”

The PA system crackles to life overhead, making me jump. “Ten minutes until complete evacuation. All personnel must clear the facility. Decontamination protocols will commence in T-minus five minutes.”

“We need to move.” He stands, extending his hand. “Now. They’re coming this way.”

I stare at his outstretched palm, this one, covered in Dr. Brown’s blood and crisscrossed with scars from where restraints bit into his skin during procedures. I can’t make my body respond.

“Dr. Cruz.” His voice sharpens. “Sofia.”

My name on his lips jolts me. He knows my first name, too? I never told him that. He must have overheard it and stored it away during those endless months of captivity.

“Why help me at all? After what we did to you?— ”

“If I wanted to kill you, I would have let him do the job.” He nods toward Dr. Brown’s body.

That’s reassuring. “But—Don’t you hate me?”

“We can discuss your guilt complex outside, not now.”

“I deserve?—”

“To live?” He bends down and throws me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I shriek, the world tilting sickeningly as blood rushes to my head. “Maybe. Maybe not. Not my call to make right now.”

“Put me down!” I beat my fists against his back, but it’s like hitting concrete. “You can’t just?—”

“Shut up.” His grip tightens around my thighs. “Unless you want to attract more of them.”

I swallow my protests, catching shuffling sounds from the corridor outside. He navigates through the maze of corridors with the confidence of someone who’s studied the layout. Which makes no sense—he’s been locked up.

“How do you know where you’re going?” I ask, voice muffled against his back.

“I looked at the evacuation map.”

How is that—Is he superhuman now?

He turns a corner and suddenly stops. I crane my neck to see why, and my stomach lurches. A security guard lies face-down in a pool of congealing blood, the back of his head a ruined mess. But no Infected in sight. Subject 7 sets me down abruptly, and I catch myself against the wall.

“Turn around.” He kneels beside the corpse.

“What are you?—”

“Turn. Around.” Each word clipped, brooking no argument.

“Okay.” Behind me, I hear the wet sounds of fabric being peeled from cooling flesh. The rustle of clothing being donned.

“You can look now,” he says after a moment .

I turn back to find him dressed in the guard’s tactical uniform, the shirt stretching a little tight across his broad shoulders, the rest fitting surprisingly well.

He grabs the guard’s access card, clipping it to his belt, then bends to retrieve the sidearm that had fallen nearby and tucks it into his waistband.

“You know how to use that?” I ask.

His mouth quirks in what might be amusement. “Yes, Dr. Cruz. I do.” He extends his hand again. “Shall we?”

This time, I take it. I learned not to refuse what he offers.

“Eight minutes to evacuation,” the PA system announces.

We sprint through the corridor, his grip on my wrist tight enough to bruise, and somehow that’s the only thing I welcome right now.

The emergency lights paint everything in red pulses, turning the white walls into something from a nightmare.

Ahead, two figures brace themselves against a metal cabinet, its legs screeching across the tiles as Infected slam against the door behind it. One of them is familiar.

“Alex!” He’s alive.

He whips around, camera around his neck. “Sofia? Holy shit, you’re alive?”

The second figure turns. Dr. Cho from biochem, her lab coat spattered with blood, glasses askew. She flinches when she sees my companion, eyes widening at his bloodied security uniform.

“Who the fuck is that?” Alex demands, backing away slightly.

“Gavin,” Sub—Gavin says.

“Security,” I say. “He found me after you disappeared.”

Alex has the decency to look ashamed, but only for a second. “I lost you out of my sight, and suddenly you were gone.”

I was gone? “I?— ”

The door buckles inward, gnarled fingers clawing through the gap.

“A little help here.” Dr. Cho throws her weight against the cabinet. “I can’t hold it!”

Gavin draws his weapon. “Move.”

Alex and Dr. Cho scramble away, and the cabinet topples. The Infected pour through the opening, but Gavin fires three times in rapid succession, dropping them one by one.

“Let’s go.” He checks the magazine on his weapon.

“Who put you in charge?” Alex straightens to his full height—still several, several… inches shorter than Gavin.

“I put myself in charge when I decided not to let you all die.” He grabs my hand. “Unless you have a better plan?”

Alex’s jaw works, but no comeback emerges.

“Six minutes to evacuation,” the PA system chirps, too cheerful for the bloody hellscape surrounding us.

“This way.” Gavin tugs me after him. “The main exits will be overrun. We’re taking maintenance tunnels.”

He leads us to a service entrance I didn’t even know existed, punching in a code and swiping the dead guard’s access card.

The maintenance tunnel stretches before us like a gaping throat, lit by sporadic emergency lights that cast everything in hellish red.

My lungs burn from running, sweat sliding down my spine beneath my lab coat.

“Four minutes to evacuation,” the PA system announces.

“Move faster.” Gavin drags me forward with a grip that’ll leave fingerprints on my wrist. Not that I’ll live long enough to complain about it.

“We’re not going to make it,” Dr. Cho pants behind us. “The tunnels extend for half a mile.”

“We’ll make it.” Gavin doesn’t slow. Doesn’t even sound winded.

“You people are fucking monsters.” Alex’s camera bounces on his chest .

I can’t argue with that. We are. I am.

“Two minutes to evacuation.”

The tunnel slopes downward, concrete giving way to packed earth and exposed pipes. Water drips somewhere ahead, the sound echoing. Gavin slows, raising a hand for silence.

I collide with his back. “What?”

He tilts his head, listening. “Something’s ahead.”

“Infected?” Alex asks.

“No.” Gavin’s shoulders relax slightly. “Different sound. Stay here.”

He moves forward alone, silent despite his size, disappearing around a bend. My heart hammers in my throat, counting seconds.

“One minute to evacuation.”

Gavin reappears. “Found the exit. Move. Now.”

We sprint the final stretch, the tunnel opening onto a maintenance yard behind the facility. Fresh air hits my face as we burst outside, gulping it like drowning victims. Metal shutters slam down over the tunnel entrance with a deafening clang behind us.

“Thirty seconds to evacuation.”

Gavin stops at the chain-link fence. “Climb.”

“I can’t?—”

“You can.” He boosts me up, hands firm on my waist. “Or die. Your choice.”

I tumble over, dropping ungracefully on the other side. Dr. Cho follows, then Alex. Gavin vaults the fence in one fluid motion that shouldn’t be physically possible.

The ground beneath us trembles. A muffled whoosh followed by a high-pitched scream of air being superheated.

Silence.

We stand in a scrubby field behind the facility, watching as nothing visibly changes. The building is intact, peaceful as if hundreds aren’t dying inside its walls.

“That’s it?” Alex asks, camera already up, filming the building.

“That’s it,” I say, throat tight. “Everyone inside is dead now.”

Except us. We made it out.

Gavin stands apart from us, scanning the horizon.

We made it out because of him.

The man I helped torture for fourteen months just saved my life.

“Thank y?—”

The building erupts again, and the sharp crack of gunfire and screams cut through the darkness. Spotlights sweep the perimeter, illuminating a stream of bodies pouring from the main exit. Some move wrong, lurching and stumbling.

Infected or still human and just panicking?