Chapter 128

“What the hell was that?” Scott asked as he and Jo turned from the sound the scream had come from and made eye contact with one another.
“It was Cass--but I don’t know why she’s screaming,” Jo said. She took another glance at Ryker and saw that he seemed to be recovering from the cuts in his arm and the pain from the Transformation serum. She started heading in the direction that the scream had come from as she asked both Cass and Zane, “What’s going on?” over the IAC.
Zane said, “We found a body.”
“What?” Bile began to rise in the back of her throat as Jo picked up the speed, not quite sure which tunnel to go down and not wanting to follow the wrong one and end up wasting valuable time.
What if the body they’d found was her mom?
“Cass is freaking out,” Zane said. “It’s a guy. Looks like he’s been here a while.”
The fact that Zane had told her it was a male made Jo feel a thousand times better, which didn’t make her proud of herself, but at least she knew it wasn’t her mom.
“Where are you?” she asked. Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned to see Christian had followed and almost cursed out loud. “They found a body,” she told him.
“Oh. Twenty-six,” he said with a nod, gesturing at the tunnel to their right.
Jo went that way, letting him get in front of her, and asked, “Wait--what? You knew there was a body in here, and you didn’t tell us?’
“There are a lot of bodies in here,” Christian said with a shrug. “It’s just that most of them decay a lot faster than his is decaying.”
“Why is that?” Jo had no idea why she was asking the question.
“I’m not sure, but I think it has something to do with the Blue Moon Portal.” Turning to look at her over his shoulder, he said, “If I ever die in here, you can prop me up and compare.”
“Like we’d ever be that lucky,” Jo muttered.
He stopped and turned around to look at her. “I brought you here, woman child. I’m pretty sure I can leave you behind, too. If you want out of this portal, you should be nice to me.”
“Sorry,” Jo said. “I was just being sarcastic.”
“No, you weren’t.” His intense stare was creepy. Jo stepped around him, headed to where she saw Zane and Cass standing a few dozen yards ahead of them.
Cass had her head on Zane’s shoulder, and he was attempting to comfort her while she cried. Jo didn’t think she’d seen Cass cry like that… ever. She’d cried a little when Aaron had died, and she’d cried when her sister disappeared. But this was different. This was… heart-wrenching.
Jo glanced down at the body. He looked like he’d been dead for a while. His face was pasty white, his mouth drawn down on one side, his head tipping onto his shoulder. He was sitting against the tunnel wall, one hand draped over his middle where blood stained his clothing. Jo had to look more closely at what he was wearing. She was no history expert, but it sure the hell looked like he was wearing some kind of uniform from a long time ago, like maybe the Revolutionary War.
“Who is he?” she asked Christian, keeping her voice down.
“Wow. You really are your mother’s daughter,” the Guardian said with a snarl. “I already told you that he came through the Blue Moon Portal, and since only three people, that we know of, have ever done that, you’d think you’d know.”
Jo admittedly didn’t know as much about the history of her people as she should. Even with that, she had no idea who the man was.
“It’s Alexander Hamilton,” Cass said, stepping back from Zane and wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “We were… friends.”
“Alexander Hamilton?” Jo repeated. “The guy from that musical?”
“No!” Christian shouted in disgust. “Thanks a lot, Disney.”
“He is the subject of the musical,” Cassidy said, “but he was a lot more than that. He was a Revolutionary War hero and the first secretary of the treasury.”
“For LIGHTS?” Jo was confused.
“For the United States,” Christian said, still apparently appalled at her stupidity. “And Cass had the hots for him.”
“No, I didn’t!” she said, glaring at him. “We were just friends.”
“Uh-huh,” Christian said, clearly not meaning it. “Doesn’t matter now. Obviously.”
“When did he die?” Zane asked. He wasn’t quite as confused as Jo was, she gathered by reading his expression, but he still looked a little perplexed.
“The first time any of us came into the portal,” Cassidy explained. The year before Jo, Cadon, and Scott were born.”
“That was one of my favorite times,” Christian muttered, folding his arms. “When Aaron was missing, and we didn’t think we’d ever find him again.”
“My favorite time was when I found out you’d lied to Aaron about the possibility of something bad happening with a blood moon during an Eidolon Festival, and then I ripped your ugly, fucking face off!”
“Yeah, well, as you can see, it grew back.”
Their conversation wasn’t making Jo any less confused. But then, it didn’t matter. “Listen, Cass, I’m really sorry that you had to find your friend like this. It is unfortunate that no one warned you not to come in here, but I think we need to move on. Ryker got hurt pretty badly and gave himself a shot of Transformation serum, so that’s a situation we kind of need to get a handle on before the monsters come back.”
“Wait--what?” Zane asked, his eyes boring into Jo like he couldn’t believe a word she’d just said. “Ryker gave himself a shot of Transformation serum?”
“Yeah, so--” Jo began, but he interrupted her.
“Where the hell did he get that?”
“It’s all over the black market,” Christian said, nonchalantly. “Kids have been trying to get it to turn them for years, trying to save their asses from the Vampires. But it doesn’t work out there in the real world.”
“But it works in here?” Cassidy asked, her face also showing that she was puzzled.
“It sure the hell seemed like it when he used, but I don’t know.” She knew that her dad had given himself a shot of something at one point in an attempt to make himself human again and not a Guardian anymore, and that had been a terrible idea. He’d almost died. Was it possible that Ryker’s symptoms were only a prelude to his death? When they got back to him and Scott, would he be dead?
“What kind of an idiot gives themselves a shot of Transformation serum?” Zane asked, folding his arms.
Christian began to laugh hysterically, and once again, Jo found herself on the wrong side of a conversation, not understanding what in the world could possibly be funny about any of this.
“Shut your fucking mouth, Henry!” Cassidy shouted. “I was right to do that.”
“You gave yourself a shot of Transformation serum?” Zane asked her.
“Hell yeah, I did, and I’d do it again, too. My sister didn’t want me to have a second shot, so I snuck one and did it anyway. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to throw Holland in here in the first place.”
“Because that turned out so well,” Christian said.
Cassidy took a few rushed steps toward him, but Jo put her arms between them. “Let’s not fight, okay? In fairness, I may have taken an extra shot of Transformation serum myself… a few times. But--in my defense--Scott was there so if something bad happened--”
“He could watch you die?” Christian asked.
Jo turned and glared at him, trying to remember her own words about not fighting. “Let’s go,” she said, still giving him the stink eye.
By the time they walked out of the tunnel and back into the large, round area, Ryker was up, and Scott was standing next to them. Ryker looked fine, like he’d never been wounded, except for the blood on his clothes and arm, and like the Transformation serum hadn’t hurt so badly he’d wanted to claw his own skin off.
It really wasn’t fair….
Still, Jo was happy he wasn’t dead. And now, she supposed there was no reason to throw him out. He was just as vulnerable to death and maiming as the rest of them, but not nearly as susceptible as he had been before.
“Did you brief him on his new abilities?” Jo asked Scott, trying to be professional and not scream at Ryker for doing something risky, irresponsible, and stupid. Again.
“As best I could,” Scott said with a nod.
“All right, then. We should get going again. Christian, which way do you think we need to go?”
“I don’t think, Jo. I know.” He headed off, and the rest of them followed, but he’d told her not long ago that he wasn’t exactly sure where the right passage was, so she wasn’t sure she trusted that he knew anything.