Page 25 of Ruined Omega

“I can’t go to the Zone!” I cry.

“You have no choice,” Tal answers coldly. “Whoever your pursuers are, they clearly want you dead. And I’m sworn to keep you alive.”

The rain stings my face. My hair is completely soaked already and plastered to my cheeks and neck in sticky tendrils.

“I can hide,” I shout. “I’ve done it before.”

“And they found you, remember?”

“That was your fault!”

I immediately regret that accusation. Yes, Tal’s attack on Martin is what drew the attention of the bad people. But he also saved me from an attempted rape. And it was my own stupid idea of going on a date that set this chain of events in motion in the first place.

“I’m sorry,” I say just loud enough to make myself heard over the rain and wind. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Tal says nothing.

The oversized coat is soaked through at this point. So is my dress. So is my underwear beneath. My muscles are beginning to shiver from the cold. My lips are trembling. I find that I have instinctively nestled myself back into the concavity of Tal’s protective body. I know from my scientific research on Alphas that his metabolism is off the charts, but I’m still shocked by just how furnace-hot his body is despite the cold rain. I press into him hard, trying to absorb a bit of that body heat.

It’s little use, however. The wind greedily rips most of the heat away.

“Tal, please,” I beg. “Let’s go back. I can take refuge in the undercity. They’ll never find me down there.”

“The undercity?” Tal scoffs. “That’s even more dangerous. Our pursuers would be the least of your worries down there, Hines. The gangs of scavengers would sniff you out and eat you alive. No. We’re going to the Quarantine Zone, and that’s final.”

He swerves the bike around a deep pothole.

I slump forward and tuck my chin, trying my best to protect my face from the rain. It’s not the wetness I’m worried about. I’m already soaked to the bone. I’m just trying to avoid the sting of raindrops.

Obviously when Tal devised his little escape plan, he didn’t factor rain into the equation. Otherwise he would have selected a different vehicle.

And there’s one other detail he seems to be forgetting. A much bigger detail.

“Tal,” I yell. “If you take me into the Zone, I’ll be mutated by the contamination there.”

Even though the Cataclysm that created the Zone occurred over a century ago, the contamination is still strong, emanating outward from Ground Zero. It’s caused by invisible nanites that are emitted by a device that the Alphas call “the Source” and which is controlled by an unstable AI known as Seraph. The device and AI were created by SynerGen to be a population control mechanism, but something went wrong with Seraph, and the Cataclysm happened, creating the Quarantine Zone.

Outsiders can venture a little way into the Zone using protective suits. But without any protection at all, a person will be mutated in minutes. Some of them become Alphas like Tal. A few become omegas, like my acquaintances Lily and Sloane, but that mutation is rare.

The vast majority of people, however, get mutated into betas—mindless drooling zombies with dead eyes.

And there’s no way to know how the mutation will affect a person until they are exposed.

Yes, I have that bottle of pills tucked away inside the pocket of this trench coat. The supposed cure for the mutation. But I don’t know how long those pills will last.

I don’t even know if they will work at all.

And Tal doesn’t know what the pills are, so I decide to bluff him.

“What’s the point in fleeing the Zone if I’m just going to become a beta,” I call back to Tal.

“You won’t become a beta.”

“There’s no way you can know that, Tal.”

“I know.”

He states the answer in his usual terse, flat manner. Savior or not, this guy can be a bit impossible sometimes.