Page 70 of Glass Rose
Marcus’s fingers are twitching.
Not the random spasms of a body shutting down. His hand flexes, then flattens against the ground as if trying to lift himself up.
“Min-Ji.” Horror skitters up to my neck, raising the little hairs. “Something’s wrong.”
“Everything’s wrong,” she says.
“No, I mean—Look.”
Her eyes flick toward Marcus, then back to Alex. Then back to Marcus again. His head turns, cheek scraping against the rough gravel, neck bending ninety degrees, and his eyes snap open…
Milky white.
“He’s…” How is this possible? He didn’t get bitten. “…turning.”
The man who helped us, who tried to protect us, who shared meals and stories and flirted with Min-Ji over inventory lists, is gone.
“That’s not possible.” Alex’s face drains of color. “You said—The incubation period?—”
Marcus claws his way to his knees, movements stuttering and broken. Black blood weeps from his chest wounds, but pain means nothing for him. His head swivels toward us, nostrils flaring.
Only hunger remains. Raw, insatiable hunger.
“What the fuck.” Alex’s gun switches between us and the advancing infected. “What the actual fuck is happening?”
The virus doesn’t kill you to reproduce. It waits until you’re dead from any cause, then hijacks your nervous system. The ultimate parasite—patient enough to wait for its host to die naturally before taking control.
It doesn’t matter how you die.
Everyone turns.
The gunfire from the warehouse intensifies, shouts echoing across the concrete yard, and through it all, the low groan coming from Marcus’s throat as he hurls himself toward Alex.
They collide like wrecking balls, Alex’s gun skittering across the pavement, and his camera, his precious fucking camera, smashes against the ground, lens shattering with a satisfying crunch.
“Get off me!” He thrashes beneath Marcus’s weight, hands braced against the dead man’s shoulders, fighting to keep snapping teeth from his throat. “Help me! For fuck’s sake, help me!”
Black fluid drips onto his face from the bullet wounds in Marcus’ chest. My body refuses to move even as my brain screams at me to do something.
This is wrong?
The man who betrayed us is about to be torn apart by the man who protected us. There’s a fucked up symmetry to it that my scientist brain can’t help but appreciate as my human heart recoils.
“Sofia, please!” Alex’s eyes find mine, wide with desperation. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry!”
Min-Ji steps forward. The gun in her hand doesn’t waver as her fingers curl around the trigger. Her face is a mask, tears streaking her cheeks, but her expression is utterly devoid of emotion, as if some essential part of her shut down the moment Marcus’s heart stopped beating.
“Min-Ji, let?—”
The crack of her gun drowns out my words.
SIXTEEN
SOFIA
Marcus’s body collapses on top of Alex, the black blood pooling beneath them both. Dr. Cho doesn’t lower her weapon, keeping it trained on Alex as he shoves Marcus’s corpse aside, scrambling backward on his hands and feet like a crab.
“Don’t,” Min-Ji says. “Stay exactly where you are.”
