Guilt (A Zero Spin-Off)

Twenty-One - Ella

I couldn't believe it.

I could not believe it.

The thought had entered my head. I hadn't been one hundred percent certain that H-26 would be there. But to have my worst fears come to fruition wasn't something I had prepared myself for. Not even close.

But my dad was an intelligent man. Evil or not, he wouldn't have left something to chance. He wouldn't have given away everything, no matter the reward he may have expected. Which meant there was a copy of H-26 somewhere, or, at a minimum there are journals that would help us to recreate it. There had to be.

But they weren't necessarily here. There were a handful to safe-keeping spots I could look around the labs, but I had a feeling they weren't in the labs.

I should have been more embarrassed over my outburst in front of Kyle, but after all was said and done, I was too drained of all emotion to give any thought to worrying over how crazy he thought I was.

Embarrassed or not, I didn't have the energy to talk. So I sat in silence, avoiding his watchful gaze as he reapplied the bandages to my arms. I stared at my arms as he silently worked, applying fresh gauze and securely wrapping the stretchy bandage. They looked every bit as awful as they felt. Worse maybe. I looked mangled, like a victim from horror movies I used to watch but never though could come true. I knew the barbs had ripped into the muscles of my forearm and wondered if they would heal normally or if I would have muscle damage or pain that was more permanent. Seeing them now, I was thankful that I hadn't been able to get a good look at then when I was tied up. I'm not sure I would have made it if I realized how mangled I was.

I was also thankful that Hunter had been far enough from me that I couldn't see how bad his own wounds were. I could only see that he was covered in blood and knew I was as well.

Part of me felt that I should go check on him. At a minimum, I needed to find antibiotics - something I knew with certainty I could find in this building - and made sure he took them to stave off infection. I wondered when the last time he had a tetanus shot was. In school, they required we got one, so I knew I was current, but if this were the old world we'd probably both be pumped full of booster shots and antibiotics just in case. I may not have been able to help much with the booster shots, but I could make sure we both got antibiotics.

I finally looked at Kyle. His lips thinned and eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he carefully, but tightly wrapped my arm. A part of me wanted to reach out and smooth the wrinkled skin between his eyebrows. I was sure he knew I was staring at him, I thought I saw his lips twitch, but he didn't call me out.

When he was done, I cleaned up the mess I'd made of the lab. Sweeping up all the glass shards and picking up things I had pushed off of tables, I worked to get the lab back into the same condition it was when we'd arrived. At some point Kyle told me he was leaving, going to get us food. I stopped long enough to tell him where the antibiotics would be and to make sure Hunter got a proper dosing and then got back to work.

He wasn't gone for long - I think he was worried to leave me alone for more than a few moments - and when we returned he had bags of chips and power bars. A meal fit for champions.

"Ella, baby, what's going through your head?"

I liked when he called me baby, I decided. It rolled off his tongue like he'd said it a thousand times before. Like he didn't realize he was even doing it - a habit. Like it was this comfortable, natural thing between us and not a word that distracted me from all my real life problems and made me think too much about a boy.

I was a little surprised it took so long for him to demand we speak about my little outburst, a full day had easily passed before he gently urged the conversation. He was watching me as though I might flee the room or start to cry. I didn't blame him though, I wasn't acting as though I was the most stable person in the building. I'd had a couple major flip-outs in as many days. It didn't help that Hunter, who had gone through the same thing, was doing just dandy. Completely unaffected. Well, I didn't know that for sure, but I felt that I had a good enough handle on who he was to know that he wasn't the emotional wreck I had been.