Chapter 5 Wrong Date

Aurora's POV

Bishop's samples came that night, just as he said. For three nights I worked alone in the small lab downstairs and slept four hours in all. The virus in them looked like the one I remembered. That should have made me feel better, and it did not, because in every sample I found one thing I did not remember. It was a small, neat marker, the same each time, as if someone had put it there on purpose.

I sent him my first notes the next morning. Only half of them. I told myself that a silver pin could be a company badge, and that I had no proof of anything.

On the fourth night I did what I had been putting off. I asked my family to dinner.

My father sat at the head of the table with Ivy on his knee. My mother was cutting bread. And Gloria sat across from me, watching my face. She had a way of looking at me as if she was reading a sign far down the road.

I waited until we had finished the soup.

“I need you to listen,” I said. “Something bad is coming  in a few months. And a lot of people will die. I want you to buy enough food and water now, and I want you out of the city by spring.”

Nobody said anything.

Then my father laughed. It was a kind laugh, and that hurt more than a loud one. “Aurora. You have been working too hard. When I was your age, I thought the world was ending twice.”

“I’m not tired Dad. I’m telling you what I know.”

“What do you know?” my mother asked softly. She put her hand on my forehead, as if I were five years old. “You are so thin, sweetheart. Look at you.”

My mother looked at my father. It was quick, and I almost missed it.

“Mom, I don’t have a fever.”

“No one said you did.”

“Dad, please.” I grabbed his hand across the table. “I need you to trust me, just once, without asking why.”

He squeezed my fingers. “I’ll buy some extra rice, if it helps you sleep.”

He did not believe me. None of them did.

“Where is Damian?” Gloria asked.

I let go of my father’s hand. “Working.”

“Again?” She put down her spoon. “He has not been at any family dinner in months. Now you are talking about the end of the world, and you won’t say where your husband is. Is he leaving you?”

“It isn’t that.”

“Then what is it?” Her eyes did not move from mine. “You are doing the thing with your mouth. You did it when you broke Mom's vase and said the cat did it. You are lying to us, Aurora. You have always kept things from us.”

My face burned, because she was half right. I was lying. I just could not tell her which part.

“Gloria,” my mother said.

“No, Mom. She wants us to pack up and run, and she cannot even tell us why.” Gloria folded her arms. “If you can’t be honest with us, don’t ask us to believe you.”

I opened my mouth to talk, but I did not have an answer that would not sound like madness. I had thought the hardest part would be knowing the future. It was harder to be the only one who did.

Ivy slid off my father’s lap and looked between us with big, worried eyes. “Why is everybody being mean to Mom?”

“No one is being mean, sweetheart,” my father said, but the room had gone quiet and heavy.

Then my phone rang.

It was a number I knew. Nina Park was a nurse at the city hospital, and I had gone to school with her. The day after I woke up, I had asked her to call me if she ever saw anything strange. A patient whose eyes changed color, I had said, and she had laughed.

She was not laughing now. I could hear shouting behind her.

“Aurora.” Her voice was thin and fast. “I have a man in bed six. His fever is a hundred and six, and he should be dead. His eyes are gold. Gold, Aurora. He just bent the bed rail with one hand, and security can’t hold him down.”

I gripped the phone. “Nina, listen to me. Get everyone away from him. Lock the door. Do not go in alone.”

“What is happening to him?”

He should have died in a day. Instead he was getting stronger. That was not the virus I knew.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

I hung up. Everyone at the table was staring at me.

“Who was that?” Gloria asked.

“I have to go.” I was already standing. “Dad, keep Ivy here. Don’t let her out of your sight. Don’t go to the hospital, any of you.”

I knelt and kissed Ivy's forehead. “Stay with Grandpa. I’ll be back before you wake.” She nodded. Her small hand patted my cheek, the way it always did. I wondered if she would still do that if she saw what I could turn into.

I wanted that to be a promise I could keep.

“Aurora,” my mother said. “Wait.”

“Whatever this is,” Gloria said, “I am going to find out.”

I did not wait. I got to the door, and then I stopped with my hand on the frame.

The paper I had written four nights ago was still folded in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at the number in the box at the top.

One hundred and eighty-two days.

In my first life, the first gold eyes I ever saw were on a man in the street, weeks after the city shut down. That was more than six months away. I had counted, and boxed it.

Now it was here, and the box was wrong.

Someone had moved the end closer. Maybe it was Bishop, when I asked for samples. Maybe it was the people Damian was meeting. Maybe it was me, because I had asked too many questions.

For one second, I wished Caden was here with me. I had come back to stop the end of the world.

I was starting to think I had made it come sooner.