The Cure for Sleeping

Chapter Seventeen

I take Noah to my room when we get back to the base. I don't want to leave him alone. Irene yells at us when we enter the girls' dorm, but we walk past her. A plump lady threatening to put you on dish-duty doesn't feel like much of a threat anymore.

Thea, Hazel and Josh are waiting for us when we open the door. The two girls are sitting together on my bunk, Josh opposite them. It feels like a battleground.

"Why the long faces, you two?" Josh is in his troop uniform, more a solider than a prisoner in grey pyjamas. "Trouble in paradise?"

Noah just stares at him, hand tightening around mine. I squeeze back when it starts to hurt.

"Have you told him what you found out?" I ask Hazel. She shakes her head, tentative.

"We thought that it would be best to wait for you."

Josh leans back, taking up all of the space on Caroline's bed. Noah and I squish in next to the girls. "So, what's the big reveal? You two gonna elope?" He gives me a white-collared grin, "don't tell me you're pregnant, Avery."

I want to snarl, but take a deep breath, "My older sister was a part of the team that made Insomniacs. We have reason to believe that the people at Haven are trying to mutate the virus further."

Josh's face is blank.

I keep my report short and concise, giving him the basics with Hazel occasionally offering further detail. I'm not in the mood to cushion the blow in the slightest.

Josh doesn't take it as well as we did.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" He's on his feet, ninety-kilos of muscle looming over us. "Haven took us in. We were stuck in a church for weeks, doing nothing and waiting to get unlucky, for the Insomniacs to catch us, and they took us in. This is this best thing that's happened to us since the outbreak, and you want to accuse them of experimenting on the virus?"

Josh laughs, harsh and cruel. "How the hell do you plan on reporting them to, anyway? Think the Insomniacs will slap them with a fine? A jail sentence?" His face twists when he looks at me. "Your family started this. You're the traitor, not Haven."

Josh takes a step closer, and Hazel cringes back next to me. Thea is on her feet in an instant.

"Back the fuck off, Josh."

He moves closer, towering over Thea like a prize fighter. "And what, pray tell, are you going to do if I don't?"

"This." Thea's fist connects with his cheek with a crack. Josh stumbles back, and Thea presses her bloody knuckles to her lips, hissing at the pain.

Josh stares at her for a moment, a look of hurt on his face. Thea stares right back. The space feels too small with all of us standing. "You will not threaten us. You will not blame Avery for what her sisters did. If you're so besotted with Haven, get out of here. If I see you near one of us again, I'll make that black eye look like a paper cut."

Josh opens his mouth to speak, but Thea hisses at him. "Get out now or I swear I'll tear you to pieces."

"Every one of you deserve what you get." Josh slams the door behind him with enough force to shake the wall. It echoes long after he's gone.

Thea takes a deep breath. "Noah, Hazel, I love you both, but could you please leave for a moment?"

Noah glances at me, a question, and I nod slightly. Go. He leaves without a word.

Hazel drops to the ground and stops beside Thea. "You know that you had to do it." She follows Noah out, closing the door quietly behind her.

Thea stands for a moment, perfectly still aside from her hands, wringing her shirt into wrinkles. Then, she starts shaking, and tears leak out from eyes scrunched shut.