The river swallowed Winter, tore her blade and bag from her, and turned her blood to ice. She slammed against the bottom. Rocks scraped at every inch of exposed skin.
She resisted the urge to break the surface for as long as she could. Then, she realized she might not make it to the surface. She’d expected currents to whisk her down the river. She hadn’t expected them to turn her upside down so quickly.
So, this was hell. Dark and frozen. No sense of direction, no air to breathe, no light to guide her.
It was hard to think about anything other than the cold. Winter instinctively pulled in her arms and legs, trying to bundle herself up as much as possible. But that left her drifting with no control.
She kicked her legs out. They struck something solid. The ground was gone an instant after she found it, but at least she knew which way to go now. She forced her arms out and fought against the water.
She broke the surface long enough to suck in a breath of air. Then the current was taking her back under. Her arms waved around desperation, trying to aim her up while also moving toward the shore. She found the surface again.
The shoreline was barely visible in the dark, but Winter could tell it was far away on both sides. She pushed herself in the direction of the city, slipping in and out of the water. It was getting harder to move. At least the pain of the freezing water distracted her from the string of the knife wound in her stomach.
A shadow loomed over the river up ahead. A fallen tree, stretched out over the water. Winter watched it grow closer every time she managed to break the surface.
She slammed into the trunk hard, and what little air she had left escaped her lungs. The current threatened to drag her under the tree. She reached out blindly and grabbed onto nearby branches, unfazed by the smaller ones that jabbed into her as the water knocked her against them.
It took all of her strength to hold on. She sucked in air again and again and still couldn’t quite seem to catch her breath.
It took five minutes and over a dozen failed attempts to pull herself on top of the trunk. She collapsed face down onto the wet bark. Cold water sprayed her face and she felt nothing.
Winter propped herself up and leaned back against a branch. Her eyes drifted shut, and she forced them open. Again. And again. She couldn’t bring herself to move any more, but she’d be damned if she let the darkness take her.
The sky turned from black to gray. The sun was coming, she told herself. She swore to herself that she’d feel the light again. She wasn’t done yet.
The first rays of morning spilled over the mountains and into Devil’s Pass. Night faded, revealing the sword caught in the branches beneath Winter, and the bag bobbing up and down a few feet away.
Pain returned to her stomach. Winter unbuttoned her coat and lifted her shirt enough to assess the wound. As if the gash weren’t enough, she’d been underwater, and God knew what kind of filth in the river could have gotten in. She needed disinfectant and bandages.
She used to carry more medical supplies in the bag, but most of those had been replaced by notebooks and bottles over the past week. But there was a place nearby that had plenty of supplies Winter could use.
If she could make it that far.
She moved slowly, testing the muscles in her arm before fully extending it toward the nearest branch. Her body refused to let her forget that she was freezing and soaking and aching all at once. That added to the challenge of navigating the branches, but Winter eventually made it to the bag. She almost fell into the water trying to get the sword, but she managed to keep a tight grip on the branch over her head while she grabbed the handle. With the outer shell of the staff gone, she’d have to find something else to keep the blade in.
Winter secured the bag over her shoulder and scrambled to the top of the fallen tree. Keeping her body low, she awkwardly and painstakingly made her way to shore, taking her time to move around branches carefully, throwing frequent glances at the river racing below.
She followed the shoreline to Marcus’s boat. Her pace slowed when she remembered the guards that had shown up last time, but there was no sign of life, and the forest was as quiet as it could be. Apprehension fading, she approached the boat.
Seeing as it took both hands and all her remaining strength to get her body up the ladder, Winter was forced to leave the bag and sword sitting on the dock. She barely made it onto the deck before collapsing in a heap of heavy clothes and numb limbs.
You have to get inside, she told herself. You have to get warm or you’re going to die.
Winter pushed herself off the wet wood of the deck and staggered into the cabin. The boat’s lab held a far different scene from when she’d last been there. A horrifying one.
Every last rat was dead. Their bodies had been moved to trays on the counter. A few bloody scalpels littered the space between them. Winter found herself fighting back nausea on top of the pain she was already battling.
A bloodstained letter also sat on the counter. Winter gingerly picked it up, not wanting to touch the blood even with her gloves on. It was another letter from the mayor, shorter than the last and hastily scrawled.
Still on for the meeting tonight at seven. Everyone will get their medicine and we’ll arrange for it to be made available to selected workers. By Friday afternoon we will be ready to release your weapon.
Weapon. Marcus had called the plagues weapons. Winter was shaking from more than just cold, now. What did Atherton mean by “release?” How many people could they possibly infect at once? If they were planning to treat every worker they needed alive, then they were anticipating widespread exposure.
Winter grabbed the counter to steady herself. She was still bleeding, she reminded herself. But before she could deal with anything else, she needed to get out of her wet clothes and get warm. Then she could handle the knife wound.
She pulled off her coat and tossed it onto the counter. As she peeled off more layers, she dug through cupboards. Scattered among the lab equipment and medical supplies were a few more lanterns and some blankets. She lit all of the lanterns, arranged them in a circle, and plopped herself down in the middle. The blanket she’d wrapped herself in was a bit scratchy, but it was thick and warm. Good enough.
Once some feeling had returned to her fingers, Winter rose to her feet and went back to searching, this time for bandages and disinfectant.
She tried a few cupboards she thought she recalled seeing first aid items in. One of them turned out to be a mini freezer containing a rack filled with vials that, judging by the red stains, had been filled with blood not long ago.
Winter grabbed one and squinted at the label. Then another. Each blood sample had been infected with a different plague. Comprehension dawned on her, making her stomach churn. The rats had been kept alive as vessels to store the various plagues until Marcus was ready. And now he’d used them to make God-knew-how-much of a serum that could kill within a day.
Bleeding. You’re bleeding. Winter moved onto a set of drawers and found a bandage roll. The drawer beneath that one contained a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. She popped open the cap, adjusted the blanket to expose her bleeding stomach, and poured. The ensuing pain made Winter’s eyes sting. She bit back a cry of distress and kept going.
Once she was satisfied the wound was clean, she wrapped the length of bandage around her abdomen until it seemed it would be enough to stop the bleeding, and then she went around a few more times.
Winter continued her search and found painkillers, which she swallowed eagerly. She took the bottle with her. Sleep would be nice, too, but that wasn’t something she could afford right now. And she certainly couldn’t risk it on Marcus’s boat.
Another cupboard, one Winter hadn’t touched yet, held several large bottles. The dark liquid inside definitely wasn’t medicine. Winter leaned forward and squinted at the small text scrawled on the label. Her jaw clenched. This was it. A combination of all six plagues. As if the horrific white plague Marcus had created wasn’t enough.
She grabbed one of the bottles.
Winter also grabbed a towel when she found where the clean ones were stored. The best she could do for now was wrap the sword in something that would allow her to keep it hidden, hopefully without causing damage to either the blade or anything else in the bag.
One last thing. The copy of the cure recipe she’d made had undoubtedly been ruined by the bag’s dip in the river. Winter picked up one of the notebooks littering the counters, tore out a page, and sifted through journals until she found the written procedure for making cure. She copied it down.
Her clothes were still damp. A little warmer now from their time laid out by the lanterns, but that would change when they met the outside air again. Winter reluctantly pulled them back on. Once dressed, she gathered up everything that would be coming with her and left the boat. She loaded up the bag on the dock, including the now towel-wrapped sword.
She turned and scanned the river before setting off. It looked surprisingly calm on the surface, considering the violent currents she knew lay underneath. Something about the sight of all that water moving so quickly gave her pause. There was a thought, an idea, just out of reach. Like the surface of the river when she was tumbling across the bottom.
Oh. God. The river. The canal. It was a guaranteed path to every person in the city.
And that explained all of the bottled water in Forrest’s basement.
But the boat couldn’t be the dispersal point; it was downstream of the canals. And what about the water filtration system? Marcus had noted that the bacteria that caused the plagues were resilient, but did he really believe they could make it all the way through the water supply to people’s homes?
Well, if he believed it, Winter wasn’t exactly one to argue.
She crossed the dock to the shoreline. She couldn’t keep pushing herself, the aches in her body warned. And if she spent any longer in these clothes that were practically frozen again already, she was going to lose her mind, and quite possibly a few extremities.
The sky was beginning to lighten in the east, advertising the sun’s imminent arrival. Hopefully, by the time Winter made it back into the city, at least a few shops would be open.
The Saint’s coat was too recognizable, so she shoved that in the bag when she reached the paved streets. Minutes later, she was hurrying into an open clothing store. The wad of emergency cash in her pocket was damp, but usable. And there were enough bills to pay for her new outfit—completely black, similar to the clothes she already had on.
“You fall in the river or something?” the girl ringing her up asked.
“Something like that.” Winter grabbed the pile of clothes. “Mind if I change in the dressing room?”
“Go ahead.”
Her purchase included a thick, hooded coat. Winter pulled the hood up as she stepped outside. It looked like it was going to be a clear day. Maybe the wind would stay away, too.
There was a building opposite the hospital—next to the restaurant Winter changed in before work—that housed a few shops on the first floor and a diner on the second. Winter requested a seat by the diner’s window and strategically divided what remained of her cash to spend throughout the day so that the waiters wouldn’t kick her out. With a steady stream of coffees and the occasional pastry coming her way, she took stock.
The notebook and papers that had been in the bag during her trip down the river were completely ruined. A few of the smaller vials of cure ingredients had broken and spilled, adding to the mess, but everything else was salvageable. Winter laid out the uniform and her other clothes on the bench across from her in hopes they would finish drying.
She copied down the cure recipe about a dozen times. She also dozed off a dozen times, and no amount of reprimanding herself stopped it. As much as she wanted to sleep, she was running out of time. The assembly meeting was tonight, Marcus would be releasing the white plague soon, and she had no idea what to do about it.
There had to be something. She could go up the river to where the city’s canal began and come up with a way to prevent Marcus from dumping his death serum in the river. She could kill anyone who showed up. No, that wouldn’t work. How would she make them drink poison?
Well, she could always kill them some other way. She did still have the revolver, although she wasn’t confident in her ability to use it, nor was she entirely sure it would work after being waterlogged.
Maybe she’d finally have to use the sword for its intended purpose.
Winter laid her head down in her arms. She was so goddamn tired. She didn’t want to do this. She turned to stare out the window at the hospital bathed in afternoon sunlight. She watched the front doors, her mind empty, for maybe an hour or so. People came and went, and she didn’t care until Marcus emerged, Phoebe at his side.
She straightened up, her surprise gifting her a surge of energy. Phoebe was walking. Good. Marcus must have done everything in his power to save her. He really did care about her, despite his willingness to let so many others die.
The two turned at the sidewalk and walked in the opposite direction of the trolley stop. Winter frowned. Where were they going?
The church. Of course. But why was Phoebe going with Marcus? Because she worked as a church maiden? Did she know what was going to happen tonight? Did any of the maidens?
Winter glanced at the diner’s clock. The meeting wouldn’t start for over an hour, if that last letter she’d seen from the mayor was still accurate. That would give her some time to investigate the canal for any signs that Marcus did plan to dump serum there.
Winter swallowed four more painkillers and set out.