𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐋𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐔𝐬

CHAPTER 16: FLEETING AWAY

WARNING, ONLY PLAY THE MUSIC WHEN YOU GET TO THE MID-SEASON PROMO

"So, let me get this straight," said Heidi. "There's a third Cell Synthesizer, most important: a secret Cell Synthesizer on Pittsburg that absolutely no one knew about, and we're driving directly to it?"

"Yeah, that's basically it," I answered. "I can't stress enough how mad I am for not discovering this earlier, but I'm also mad that it took me one week to find out Pandora was bad and you've lived with her for thirty fucking years!"

We were hiding inside a gas station while Harch and Hazel were refilling the car. We drove for two hours until we decided we were far enough from Ohio and could take a break. Nate was patching the hole in my ear, where Pandora shot me earlier. I didn't know if she let me live or just missed, but if I knew something, it was that she had fucked up.

"Your father didn't leave it easy to us to trust him. He had an insane amount of secrets, even from us, and he literally raised us in this world, so you could say he was kind of our father too. And he just refused to let anyone barge into his personal life,"

"Well, I get it but you never suspected anything? As far as we know half of that base could be Roaches. trust isn't something you give to everyone without hesitation," I said. "it took me like three weeks or more to trust Nate and we were fighting together 24/7. You barely see that woman by the way I see it and you decided it was okay to believe everything she said?"

"We either trusted her or we died!" he started being more intense. "She got us and your father in when we needed. And I'm sure we wouldn't be here today if she wasn't there,"

I sighed. I haven't slept in almost three days and I was starting to feel the weight of my eyelids. Nate finished making his patch on my ear and I sat up on the truck. His lap was comfortable, but I felt that things were still weird between us. We needed to talk.

"Heidi, can I talk to Nate alone for a second?" I asked.

He looked at us, nodded, and then left.

"If this is about the eavesdropping, nevermind about-"

"I don't want you coming with me," I said.

The silence was absurd. It was blinding, suffocating, and every other bad word that can exist about it.

"What?"

"I want you to take Maya and the others to Atlantic City and stay there. Raise her or something, because if I make it to Long Island, I'm definitely not coming back," I said.

"What do you mean?!" he started to get concerned.

"I never told you what I was doing there, did I?" I continued. "When I get to the CSIII, I'll make a perfect cure. Not one that stops the infection, but reverses it. If we want to purge the Gluttons from this world, we have to end them the same way they ended us. I'll get the perfect cure and go to Long Island, where the first Glutton was born. The primal point, the beginning of the end of the world,"

"And then what?"

"I'm going to put the cure inside it. The bacteria will grow and destroy the prions. It will die and the flesh will be exposed attracting more Gluttons. They eat the flesh, leave the place, die, attract more Gluttons, and then it goes on," I said.

"Bu- but why won't you come out alive?"

"You know why," I said and lifted my paw, showing all five fingers. "Your parents told you, and so did mine,"

He looked at me, shaking his head.

"The first Glutton is the Stage Five, the Flesh King, or, as your town would call it, The Butcher,"