All Chapters of I Remember the Wedding That Killed Me: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

We move at midnight, because waiting for dawn feels like a luxury none of us can afford anymore.The grain silo foundation sits at the edge of an overgrown lot half a mile from the Ashford campus, weeds grown thick through cracked concrete, no sign anyone's thought about this place in decades. Celeste's family friend, a stooped, careful man named Pete who insisted on coming despite Celeste's protests, leads us to a rusted hatch half-buried under fallen leaves."Hasn't been opened in thirty years, if I had to guess," he says, crouching to examine the mechanism. "But I helped pour some of this foundation myself, back when I was young and strong enough for that kind of work. There's a service ladder on the other side, assuming it hasn't rusted through entirely.""Assuming," Damian repeats, unimpressed."Best I can offer you, son." Pete manages a tired, grim smile. "Some fights you walk into with better odds than others."The hatch gives with a groan that seems too loud in the quiet night

"Nobody move," Damian says into the darkness, low and controlled, though I can hear the tension coiled tight underneath his voice. "Backs to the storage units. Now."I feel Celeste's hand find mine in the dark, gripping hard, and somewhere ahead of us I hear Marcus's footsteps, unhurried even now, the particular confidence of a man who planned for this exact contingency long before we ever found our way into his tunnel."There's no need for theatrics," Marcus says, his voice carrying easily through the darkness. "The door locks automatically when the backup generator engages. It will reopen once emergency power stabilizes, in approximately six minutes. I simply wanted a few uninterrupted moments to explain what happens next.""You're not explaining anything," Julian says, and I can hear the fury in his voice, rawer than I've heard from him all week. "You're going to prison, Dad. For all of it.""Am I." Something almost amused moves through Marcus's tone. "Julian. Think carefully about

"Car. Now." Damian's voice cuts through the rising noise, and we run, all five of us, across the overgrown lot toward where he parked two streets over, the screaming growing louder behind us with every step.We make it inside just as the first shapes stumble out of the tree line at the lot's edge, gray-yellow and wrong in the way I remember from a hospital corridor eight days ago, except there are more of them now, six, eight, moving with the same jerking, unnatural speed that tore a restraint rail apart like paper."Go, go, go," Julian says, and Damian doesn't need telling twice, tires screeching as we pull away, one of the shapes slamming into the car's rear panel hard enough that Celeste screams and I grip the door handle so tight my knuckles ache."My parents," I say, the second we clear the lot, phone already in my hand. "The hospital. We need to get to the hospital.""It's not safe there either," Damian says grimly, eyes on the road. "If this is citywide, every hospital's about

"Julian." I keep my voice as steady as I can manage, though my heart is hammering hard enough that I'm sure everyone in the car can hear it. "Your arm. Let me see it again.""It's fine, Ivy, it's just a scratch—""Let me see it."He turns it toward the dashboard light, and in the better angle, the gray I thought I saw resolves into something less terrifying but still unsettling — bruising, deep and spreading, the particular mottled color of an impact rather than infection, though my pulse doesn't fully settle until Reyna, once we reach the bunker twenty minutes later, confirms it with her own careful examination."It's a contusion," she says, kneeling in front of him with a penlight, checking his pupils, his pulse, every vital sign she can manage without proper equipment. "Deep bruising from hitting that door frame hard, nothing more. No puncture, no exposure to anything. You got lucky."The relief that moves through the small, crowded bunker is almost physical, a collective breath re

"We need a different strategy," I say, pacing the small cleared space in the center of the bunker, my mind racing faster than my feet. "He's winning the public narrative because he's the only one with something tangible to offer right now. A truck full of antiviral doses beats a statement from an estranged son every single time.""Then we need something tangible too," Damian says. "Proof that doesn't rely on anyone believing our word over his.""The samples," I say slowly. "We left them behind, but the facility still exists. If we could get back in, document everything properly this time, photographs, video, not just our own testimony—""He'll have doubled security after tonight," Julian says. "Maybe tripled it. Walking back into that tunnel again would be suicide.""Then we don't walk in the same way twice." I stop pacing, an idea forming with the particular cold clarity that's carried me through every impossible decision since I first woke up gasping in my old bedroom. "What if we d