CHAPTER 6

Violet yelped loudly. The sound tore out of her throat before she could stop it.

It was high and embarrassing, and she slammed her laptop shut so hard it echoed across the empty lab. Her heart hammered against her ribs like it was trying to escape her chest.

For one terrifying second, she was back on that balcony, with cold hands closing around her and teeth waiting in the dark.

"Jude!" She spun around in her chair, one hand pressed to her chest. "Do you want me to have a heart attack?"

"No, not really," Jude straightened, his dark eyes sharp and amused. "I called your name twice but you were too busy staring at that screen."

"You could have coughed. Or made some noise. Normal people make noise when they walk."

"Well, I'm not the one jumping like I'm hiding a body." Jude shrugged and Violet was so close to losing her patience and her mind.

She opened her mouth to snap back, then closed it. Her pulse was still racing, and she forced herself to breathe slowly until the memory loosened its grip on her throat.

She glanced at the empty lab. The machines hummed and the lights were dim. Everyone had gone home hours ago.

"Sit down." She said quietly.

Jude raised a brow but pulled a stool beside her. "That sounds either very good or very bad."

"I bought a bunker."

There was silence for a few seconds before he finally spoke.

"A bunker?" He repeated flatly.

"In the mountains outside Halden City." Her voice dropped lower. "It belonged to a retired military officer. I've been selling everything I own. If the outbreak happens the way I remember, I can't be in the city. I need somewhere to hide."

She braced herself for laughter. After everything Alicia had spread around the building, a bunker was the perfect punchline.

But Jude only tilted his head. "Where is it?"

"I'm not sure I should say."

"Then show me."

"Jude…"

"Show me, Violet."

Her fingers tightened around the edge of the laptop. The bunker was hers. It was the one thing she had built completely on her own in this life. The one place Harrison couldn't walk into and take credit for.

And some stubborn, wounded part of her still flinched at the thought of letting someone else in.

"It's not ready for visitors." She said carefully.

"That isn't what I asked."

"It's about security."

"Security?" Jude pressed a hand dramatically over his chest. "Let me understand this. I've spent days in this lab with you, losing sleep and my patience, trying to reverse a virus no one else even believes in. I'm the only person in this entire building who believes you, and you won't let me hide with you?"

"That's not what I meant!"

"I'm deeply offended, Dr. Ackland."

"You are not offended." Violet scoffed, shaking her head.

"Wounded, even," He sighed like a man betrayed. "Rejected by my own research partner."

A laugh slipped out of Violet before she could stop it. She clapped a hand over her mouth, and for one brief moment, something warm flickered in Jude's eyes before he looked away.

But the laughter faded quickly, and guilt settled in its place.

He was right. He had stood in that stairwell and believed her without proof and hesitation, when her own husband had threatened to send her to a psychiatric ward. So what was she protecting? And who was she protecting it from?

Not Jude. Never Jude.

"Fine," Violet said at last, exhaling slowly. "We're a team. Fully."

"Fully?"

"Don't push it," She grabbed her bag and stood. "I'll take you after work."

Jude's mouth curved. "Tonight?"

"Do you have somewhere better to be?"

"Not anymore."

Work, however, was cruel. They spent six hours in the lab and every hour ended the same way. Violet ran new binding sequences while Jude rebuilt the trigger model from scratch.

The simulation glowed with hopeful blue lines, and then the virus ripped through them like paper.

"Again." Violet said through clenched teeth.

"That's the fourth time."

"Then we run it a fifth." She snapped.

"It will fail." Jude shot out and she could see the irritation building in his eyes.

"You don't know that!"

"I do," Jude said, dragging both hands down his face. "And so do you."

She did. That was what made it unbearable.

At 10:41 PM, the final simulation collapsed into red text, and Violet stared at it until the words blurred. Her hands were shaking again, not with fear this time but with helpless frustration.

"It's been hours of work and we have nothing." She was close to tears but she tried not to let it show.

"We have a list of things that don't work."

"That's not comforting, Jude."

"It wasn't meant to be." He stood, grabbing his jacket. "Come on. You promised me a bunker."

The drive to the mountains took an hour.

Violet's car climbed the narrow mountain road with Jude's black sedan following close behind, the headlights cutting through the dark.

When the road finally ended in a wall of rock and pine, she parked and stepped out into the freezing air.

"This is it?" Jude asked.

"Wait."

She led him behind a boulder and pushed aside a curtain of brush, revealing a heavy metal door set into the mountainside. It was scratched and ancient, with rust blooming across its hinges.

It took her whole shoulder to shove it open.

Inside, the air smelled of dust and cold stone. Violet found the switch, and a single bulb sputtered to life.

The main room was long and bare. Crates were stacked along one wall, and boxes of canned food sat half-opened beside a pile of water filters she had never managed to assemble.

A generator crouched in the corner still wrapped in plastic. A tangled nest of cables lay across the floor where she had given up halfway through the wiring.

Heat crept up her neck.

"I've only had a few days," Violet said quickly. "And I'm still working at the lab, and I can't exactly hire anyone. The filtration manual is a hundred and forty pages long, and…"

"Violet."

"…I know it looks terrible. The door doesn't even lock properly. I tried to fix the hinge and I think I made it worse. I can finish the rest, I just need more time…"

"Violet," Jude's voice was gentler than she had ever heard it. "Breathe."

She stopped, mortified. She had spent years being criticized for every unfinished thing, and her chest tightened as she waited for the same cold judgment she had gotten from Harrison.

It never came. Jude walked slowly through the room, running a hand along the stone walls and testing the ceiling with his knuckles. He crouched beside the generator, lifted one tangled cable, and set it down again.

"The structure is solid," He said finally. "It has a deep foundation. Whoever built this knew what he was doing."

"But?"

"But no one could finish this alone," He turned to face her, calm and completely serious. "We need lots of power, security, water and ventilation. That's a team's worth of work."

Her shoulders sagged. "I know. I don't have the money for a team. Or the time."

"You don't need either."

"Jude, I…"

"I'll take care of it."

Violet blinked. "What?"

"I’ll take care of all of it. Don't worry about it." He said it so casually that she thought it was some kind of joke.

"You can't just say that. It's too much."

"I just did," His dark eyes held hers. "I told you I'm in."

Violet looked around at the unfinished room. She had carried everything alone, and the relief of finally setting it down was so sudden that her throat burned.

"Thank you," She said softly. "I mean it."

"Good," He looked away, suddenly very interested in a crate. "Now don't make me regret it."

A small, tired smile touched her lips, then her thoughts drifted back to the failed simulations and the red text still burning behind her eyes. Her spine straightened, and the steel returned to her voice.

"If you handle the bunker," Violet said, "Then I'll focus on the strain. I'll find a way to get to it, even if I have to get past Harrison's authorization.”