Page 26 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

I’d thought it would be tough to figure out what to write.

I wasn’t a writer. I wasn’t even really a reader.

I didn’t understand figurative language or flowery descriptions.

And I certainly wasn’t so arrogant as to think—despite everything—that I understood love.

Not the same way the intended recipient of the note did, anyway.

Still, when the pen hit the paper, I found I didn’t have to think too hard about it.

I handed Lemaya the envelope and all of its contents. “Where you leave it is up to you.”

“But will they be able to find it?”

I glanced down. “If the serum works, they will.”

“Oh.” Lemaya swallowed, catching on, her tawny, delicate hands turning ashy as they gripped the envelope. “But I—we won’t know if it’s still transmitting.”

“Assume it is.”

Finally, after a pause, I reached for the Smith & Wesson.

Removed the magazine, inspected it, reloaded it.

Removed the safety and chambered a round like some kind of tactical expert, as if I hadn’t been shown the same damn thing for the first time an hour or so ago.

Cleared it. And now it was Lemaya’s turn to hide her shaking hands as I placed the weapon in front of her.

“But what about you?”

I took a deep breath, having hoped not to be forced to explain that when I’d entered the lab, I’d known there was a good chance I wouldn’t be leaving. “What you have is more important.”

“But will you see Maeve?”

“That’s the plan.” Well, it was the plan if everything went perfectly. And in my life, when did anything go perfectly?

“You will see her,” she said. “So please tell her I’m sorry,” she said fiercely, and if there was a tear in her voice, there was nothing on her face. “And—and that I really do love her. And that I hope she can forgive me someday.”

Lemaya’s eyes shot to the window we’d left open for ventilation. Like a shot, she rushed to close it. But she paused. Craned her neck.

“Okay, so I don’t want to alarm you or anything, but?—”

“Ah, fuck. It’s them, isn’t it?”

I quickly closed the window and locked it. “I mean, I don’t know for sure if?—”

“It’s them.”

“I didn’t tell them where we were,” she said in a panicky voice. “You believe me, right?”

I closed my eyes briefly. “Of course I believe you. I knew they’d be here eventually. Look, do you know another way out of here? Other than the main door?”

She nodded. “Come with me. Take the serum. We can?—”

“No.” I shook my head. “They’re coming after me, not you. That’s why you need to escape alone, with that envelope, while I hold them off.”

“But how are you going to do that if—” She bit her lip as if she had an inkling.

If I’m dead, the job will be finished.

Of course she couldn’t go until the serum kicked in because my chip, if it came out, would be going with her. That made this tricky, to say the least.

Well. I snatched up the serum. It was oddly beautiful, thick and glistening like honey inside its beaker.

I pulled back a syringe needle and carefully measured out a dosage, though determining a safe amount didn’t seem to matter much.

The point was to see if it worked. Keeping myself alive was a secondary consideration at best. Not like I wasn’t likely to be dead shortly, anyway, even without the serum.

The lab had grown quieter without the hum of the massive computer, and Lemaya watched me, her eyes wide under the harsh fluorescent lights. I was calm until I realized that the syringe was full. Then, suddenly, a cold fear gripped my chest, as heavy as the reaction from earlier.

Breathe.

It might be the last time.

In terms of potential places to get comfortable, there weren’t many options.

I settled on a swivel desk chair and rolled it over.

There were two general areas where the chips got implanted—in the forearm or between the shoulder blades.

Many slaves didn’t know which one they’d been given.

But I had made a point, a few years ago—with the professor’s permission, even—to find out, suspecting it might come in handy someday.

Now I unfurled my forearm toward Lemaya, the veins snaking through my scarred tissue like rivers of blood through a bombed-out battlefield.

She, of course, didn’t even blink. She bore more than her share.

Trembling, I raised the plunger on the syringe.

I knew what needles felt like, of course.

Slave children had to get vaccinations just like everyone else.

The only difference was that when we didn’t cry, instead of a lollipop, our reward was one less caning that day.

Compared to that, a needle prick was nothing much at all.

Odd how that wasn’t very comforting.

“Oh, let me do it,” she said boldly when I hesitated again, grabbing another chair and pulling it up next to me at the steel table. “I’ll probably never be a vet tech now. But I’ve sure watched enough videos.”

I handed it over immediately. And to think I’d been furious when she’d walked in. The idea of trying to do this without her was unfathomable.

The harsh lab lights seemed to get hotter by the second, increasing the sweat on my face that I was no longer trying to swipe away, making my breathing shallower.

The way I jumped at every sound. She knew.

She knew what this was doing to me and what it might do to her.

But all she did was nod, her free hand closed around both of mine.

“Ready?”

Despite myself, I tightened my grip.

“We can wait, if?—”

“No. Do it now, or we won’t get to do it at all.” A noise like an electronic chime sounded from somewhere in the lab.

“Shit. Does that mean they’re inside?”

She bit her lip. “It might.”

“Do it.” I gasped. “Do it now. Don’t wait.”

She nodded and took a deep breath. “Don’t look at it,” she advised. “Okay? Keep your eyes on me.”

“Okay,” I managed to say. “But after you do it, just—just don’t let go. Until?—”

“I won’t,” she said. “I promise. I’m not going anywhere.”

I hadn’t been able to see Louisa’s face when she’d said those words, facing death another time. And I’d never thought I’d see that face again.

“You can pretend I’m her,” Lemaya said quietly. “If you want.”

I nodded. Blinked. Tried to swallow. Tried to settle my now-blurry gaze on something, anything.

A shard of light hit the one piece of jewelry she still wore—a silver crescent moon with some Arabic writing underneath.

I’d read that these—and crosses and stars and other shapes, too—were very popular generations ago, when God was more than just a storybook character.

“Do you know how to pray?” I rasped. “Did they teach you that?”

She nodded. “My first mistress did, a little bit. Everyone thought she was nuts. For believing anybody had souls, let alone slaves.”

Well. She was nuts. My mind hadn’t changed.

I didn’t think it had, anyway. I had tried asking “God”—whoever or whatever that was—for a favor, and it hadn’t done me any good.

Or maybe it had. I’d seen Louisa again, hadn’t I? Once.

And I was seeing her now. Gray eyes like the stormy North Sea, then a smile like the sun coming out after a twenty-year tempest. And grace. Yes, amazing grace. Things I didn’t deserve, but she’d offered me just the same. And what was a miracle, anyway?

“I prayed with Maeve.” Lemaya’s eyes—dark brown, almost black—stayed locked on mine.

“Will you?—”

“Of course.” She closed her eyes. Mumbled something that sounded like singing. Something I was so content to listen to that I didn’t realize the needle was already in. Something that surely was a blessing.

A blessing, too—as the acrid taste of chemicals thronged my sinuses and raced through my every capillary, as I lost my grip on Lemaya’s hand and fell away from the steel table, sending the chair spinning, and smashing the rack of test tubes behind me—that my hands, just for a second, had been warm in hers.

Because everything after that was very, very cold.