“Thank god." He let out a shaky breath. "I didn't know if I should… But you weren't breathing and I couldn't carry you and no one came when I was shouting and then your lips went blue and-" I raised a hand in the direction of his voice and pushed it towards his mouth to stop the babbling, my hand bumping against his helmet and conveying my point.
My eyes felt heavy but I slowly opened them, squinting at the uninterrupted blue above me. I took another shuddering breath and raised my hand to my face. I pushed my long hair out of my eyes and felt it catch in the neck of the suit as I did so. My gaze slowly rested on Taylor in his full biohazard suit and I nearly stopped breathing again.
“Where's my helmet?" I gasped.
"I'm sorry, but - you were suffocating. I didn't know what else to do!”
“Did you radio back? Did they tell you it was okay?" I asked. My heart started beating so quickly that it was al
most painful.
Taylor's mouth fell open "I - I'm sorry I just didn't - you looked so - I forgot about the radio." His eyes locked with mine and I could see the terror there. I took another breath. My hands were shaking, I didn't know if it was fear or something else.
"Am I green?" I asked.
“What?"
"Am I green or purple or do I have tentacles where my hair used to be?"
"N-no," he replied, smiling faintly.
"Well I feel fine. I think. Chances are this place is fine, it's right by The Wall and they're looking at expanding out here so I'm probably going to be just fine," I said, reassuring myself as much as Taylor and ignoring the amount of times I'd said the word 'fine'.
"Great, so what should we do now?" he asked.
"Radio your dad. Tell him what's happened and why we're late. We can walk while you talk." I stood up and brushed myself off as Taylor rummaged about for the radio again. I glared at my hands until the shaking stopped and I tried to force my mind away from all of the terrifying possibilities that this could present.
Before The Wall went up, anyone who was exposed to the contamination became…monstrous. They lost all sense of the person they’d been before and turned into crazed, violent creatures who craved nothing other than death and destruction.
But that wasn’t happening to me. I refused to believe it could. I still felt exactly the same. And I was going to cling to that sense of self with both hands. Because all the time that I was sure of who I was, I could convince myself that everything was going to be okay. Even if a little voice in the back of my head was insisting that it wasn’t.
Artie was waiting for us when we got back to The Wall where the cable cars were moving smoothly around and around on their track. He had a grim look on his face and was alone.
His eyes flickered to me before darting away again quickly. A muscle tensed in his neck.
“I sent everyone else up. Come on, we need to get back," he said, steering us into a cable car. It turned around slowly and headed back up towards the city.
I stood at the glass wall, staring down at everything we were leaving behind. After several minutes, I realised the silence had grown tense and I looked back to see Artie frowning.
“What's wrong?" I asked. My mouth felt dry.
"I hope nothing," he began and my pulse rose. "They may need to quarantine you for a few days to be sure that you don't pose a threat to the population. Also…there might be disciplinary action against the two of you for breaking protocol." He wouldn't hold my eye and I knew he was trying to downplay what he thought would happen.
"But she was dying!" Taylor burst out.
"I know." The look on Artie's face showed how much that worried him. "But there's a reason friends shouldn't be paired together on these sorts of expeditions. It's easier to think clearly with someone you have no personal connection to outside of the job. I shouldn’t have allowed the two of you to work together. This is on me, too.”
“I don't think I would have let anyone die," Taylor said incredulously.
"No. But you may have remembered to radio back before acting so rashly," Artie snapped and I almost recoiled. Artie never lost his temper. "We have the whole population to think of and we can't risk any contamination getting inside The Wall." He glanced at me and I could see the fear in his eyes.
“I feel fine," I said, trying to reassure him and myself. "And I thought we were extending The Wall to cover that area soon, so it shouldn't be contaminated should it?" I asked, staring desperately between Taylor and Artie.
“Well, no. But we were doing those tests, taking those samples today and until they come back clear we have to follow contamination protocol. I'm sorry, but I think this is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better." He bit his lip and drummed his fingers against the glass in agitation.
The cable car glided to a halt and I staggered to regain my balance, bracing myself on Taylor's arm. As I let go, I glanced at my hands and realised they were shaking again. I took a deep breath as the doors slid open to try and calm myself.
Six armed Wardens and Professor Delo were waiting for us inside the air locked space as we stepped inside. They were all dressed in their own biohazard suits and were looking at me like they were afraid I might spontaneously combust at any moment. Delo's usual look of distracted indifference was replaced with a stern frown.