FIFTY-SEVEN

MOMENTS PASSED. THE cardioverter defibrillator never activated. As Sara feared, it had been fried by the torture King had endured. Without knowing it, the major general had arranged King’s death the first time he held that stun gun to his chest and blasted him with eight hundred thousand volts.

Sara wept for King quietly, containing her sobs for fear of being discovered. Her body arched as she convulsed with tears. She had seen people die before, but never someone she knew well. Her last surviving grandmother had died when she was ten. But she’d hardly known her. Granted, she had only recently met King, but she now knew that it wasn’t absence that made the heart grow fonder, it was suffering. And they’d endured a lifetime in the past few days.

Kneeling over King’s lifeless form on the first stair down toward the fish pool, looking into his blank stare, Sara could no longer hold herself up. She fell forward, gripping King’s wet shirt with one hand and his leg with the other as she continued to sob, each exhalation pushing out her will to fight on, each inhalation sucking in anxiety and hopelessness.

How could she escape without King? How could she evade Weston and Lucy? Or the hordes of other hybrids, for that matter. Even if she could escape she still had to survive in the jungle. And for how long? Days? Months? She had no idea which direction to go. She might walk right into a hybrid lair or into the hands of the Death Volunteers. Enemies surrounded her. She was thousands of miles from home. Hidden in an ancient city buried beneath a mountain, surrounded by enemies, and holding the one thing that could save the human race from extinction within her body.

“Damnit!” Sara screamed it, not caring who might hear. And she punched King’s limp leg. A sharp pain shot through her hand as she struck something hard. Turning to the offending pant leg, and about to let out another curse, a question struck home in Sara’s consciousness. What did King have in his cargo pant pocket that Weston or his goons would overlook? Certainly not a gun. Perhaps a radio? Maybe she could contact help?

A tingle of hope took root as she fished into the pocket. She pulled out a small device. Her hopes came crashing down. It wasn’t a radio. Then she recognized the device. A solid black body featuring a single button and two metal prongs. The stun gun!

Sara gasped and sat up straight. Would it work? She shook the device next to her ear and didn’t hear any water inside. It had to work! Gasping and grunting in desperation, Sara yanked King’s shirt open, found the stitched-up incision where the cardioverter defibrillator had been implanted, and placed the stun gun against his bare skin.

She pushed the button, sending eight hundred thousand volts into King’s body. Much of the charge filtered out across his skin, through his organs and muscles, but the proximity of the charge and the severe voltage of it caused King’s heart to beat.

Once.

Sara growled loudly and pushed the button again, pushing the prongs down hard against his skin.

The second shock had the same effect. The heart, responding to the pulse of electricity, beat.

And then beat again.

And again.

King’s eyes shifted and blinked.

Sara dropped the stun gun and covered her mouth as she cried. King was alive! The device that had sealed his fate had saved him from it. She wanted to throw herself on top of him, to squeeze him, hug him, thank him for coming back. But she just sat there crying, afraid to touch him for fear that his life would shrink away.

But King’s heart was healthy. His whole body hale. And he lived once again.

King looked up into Sara’s terrified yet relieved wet eyes. He’d been dead. And she had saved him. He looked to the side, for the object she had dropped when he came to. He found it. The stun gun. She’d shocked him back to life. But the cardio . . . King remembered the last time he’d felt the sting of the stun gun and realized the same thing Sara had. His cardioverter defibrillator no longer worked.

“Thanks,” he said, and then smiled. “Rook was full of shit. . . .”

Sara wrinkled her forehead. What?

“This is way worse than heartburn.”

Sara smiled, laughed, and then caught her breath. King’s eyes went wide and he grabbed her wrist, staring at the outbreak meter’s red glow. “No,” he whispered, and then closed his eyes and lay still again. Panic began clawing at her insides. She lunged out a hand and checked for a pulse on his neck. The beat was regular and strong.

But he was unconscious, and helpless.