Chapter 6 - The Bio-Lock
I didn't swing the tire iron. I jammed it into the twisted doorframe of the passenger side and threw my weight into it.
The latch popped with a violent bang.
Toby was slumped sideways against the center console. I reached in, pressing two fingers hard against his carotid artery.
His pulse wasn't slow. It was hammering at impossible speed—a fluttering, frantic vibration under his burning skin like a trapped bird.
Beneath his pale collarbone, dark, purplish veins were spider-webbing outward toward his shoulders, pulsing in rhythm with the rapid beat.
"Toby! Toby, wake up!"
I unbuckled the belt and hauled him into my chest. He was burning up, so hot he felt like he had been pulled from a furnace.
On the floorboard between his sneakers lay the steel thermos my mother—or whoever she was—had mentioned. It wasn't an ordinary beverage container. It was a pressurized medical cryo-flask, sealed with a digital keypad and a small glass biometric thumb scanner.
"It won't open for you," the woman whispered from the dirt by the front tire.
I turned, fury blinding me, and kicked the tire iron against the limestone next to her head. "Unlock it! Unlock it right now or I swear to God I won't wait for Cross!"
"I can't," she spat, wiping blood from her synthetic jawline. "It requires Evelyn’s print. The real Evelyn."
"She’s dead! You killed her!"
"Then you’d better hurry to the county morgue before the tissue degrades," she laughed, coughing violently as red foam bubbled over her lips. "Because once that boy's core temp hits a hundred and six, the culture ruptures his spleen. You have about forty minutes, Mark."
Sirens shrieked in the distance, cutting through the gravel dust as three state trooper cruisers crested the rim of the quarry.
I didn't wait for them.
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I scooped Toby into one arm, grabbed the freezing steel cryo-flask with my other hand, and sprinted back toward the Subaru.
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