Chapter Text
FOUR YEARS AGO
The overhead lights buzzed fluorescent and white. Lace moved about the operating theatre plugging in the various contraptions and turning on the emergency generator in preparation for the surgical team to arrive. Behind the glass window, her dad was spinning idly on his stool and reviewing the notes in front of him.
Less than an hour ago a patrol had radioed in with reports of a man and a red-haired girl washing up on the shore of the flooded underpass. The man was inconsequential. A smuggler hired to bring the hope for a cure to their doorstep. Hope which existed in a 13 year old girl with red hair and a bite mark on her arm.
Lace couldn’t believe what she was hearing when her best friend, the daughter of the Salt Lake Hospital outpost and the surgeon whose room she was prepping for, had informed her of the girl’s immunity. A group of fireflies had landed on their doorstep a few months ago, headed by a woman who called herself Marlene and claimed to be the leader of the Boston quarantine zone Firefly outpost. A girl in the city had been attacked by infected and survived despite the bite mark festering on her arm. The girl in question was not with Marlene’s group, a black woman with arms Lace found herself staring at, who consisted of five dirt and blood crusted individuals. They had left Boston twenty strong.
No, Marlene, in her hurry to get the girl to the Salt Lake outpost, where their leader Doctor Andersen had made major headway on creating a cure, had handed the girl off to two smugglers and had not heard from them since. Until now.
The pair had been brought in on stretchers, unconscious and soaked to the skin. Lace had not seen either. She’d been tucked away in her dad’s office helping him tinker with some tech she had yet to understand.
Her father, Matthew Lovelace, claimed to have been a ‘certified computer genius’ before outbreak day twenty years ago. He was a bald, heavyset man with a scraggly beard that would be ginger if he could have grown anymore. Matthew was as lucky as they came. Asthmatic and gym-averse, he counted his stars that he was with his friends on outbreak day. They’d carried him when his knees gave out, shielded him when he caught his breath and taught him to adapt and survive in this new world without computers. When the fireflies adopted them into their ranks with the goal of restoring humanity, his skills with a machine were invaluable.
Matthew’s friends were all dead, twenty years into the apocalypse, and he was the last man standing. There were benefits to working a desk job when the world went to shit. It was at his desk that he had met Lace’s mother, a nurse who had been at the Salt Lake Hospital on outbreak day who’d barricaded herself in a room with a group of nurses she shared a boxing class with on weekends. Between them, they’d held out until the fireflies had cleared the place out for their work and recruited them.
Lace knew her mother had been brave. She’d been the strongest person Lace had known and the biggest woman on the compound. If her expertise hadn’t lain in nursing she might have been a soldier. In the end, she died fighting a soldier who’d become infected on patrol.
Lace, like her parents, was heavyset despite having the same ration count as the other kids her age. At sixteen she'd graduated to adult rations and received countless comments about how she ‘didn’t need it’; that, at her weight, she was practically ‘stealing from everyone else.’ But Lace was born fat. She carried it on her hips like her dad and found herself pinching her stomach the way he did when he thought no one was watching. She’d never thought she was that much bigger than the boys, especially the soldiers in training, but they’d happily tell her otherwise.
She wasn’t a fighter. She would go to her dad and watch him work until, eventually, he started teaching her to build computers and mend generators or put up emergency lights and recharge batteries.
The Lovelaces kept the hospital lights on and they took pride in that. After all, the fireflies’ motto was: When you’re lost in the darkness, look for the light.
“Think we’re all set, Ruby,” Matthew called through the window. Her parents were the only people to call her that, preferring to call her by the name they gave when she was born. She didn’t mind too terribly.
She was crouched by a tangle of cables in the corner, trying to figure out which wire went where when the door opened. Her dad filled the doorway and nodded over his shoulder.
“C’mon, you. Out.”
“Just need to get these wires sorted,” Lace told him, loosening a knot only to find another tangle just below it. “Who let them get like this?” She murmured, blowing a strand of red hair away from her face. She was lifted to her feet. Two large hands grasping her under the arms and hoisting her into the air. “What are you doing?” She squealed and kicked her feet until she was set on the ground.
Matthew stood in front of the tangle and shooed her towards the door.
“Nevermind that, go get your dinner.”
“But-”
“Ruby.” His brown eyes were warm, it was impossible for him to seem anything other than soft to her. “You’ve been helping all day, go eat. I’ll come get you when everything’s over.” He tapped her under the chin and she huffed and begrudgingly left the room.
In the cafeteria, she found her friends already sitting around a table full with empty plates. She slid her tray along the food station, accepting only her rations of noodles and mixed vegetables, walking away before they could dollop the meat and sauce concoction stewing in a large pot. The chef called after her but she only picked up a metal cup from the water station and slid on the bench next to Manny.
He jostled her with his elbow, causing the water in her cup to slosh over the edges. She murmured an insult into her cup as she drank, a Spanish one he’d taught her a few years back.
“Where have you been?” He asked, his voice casual as ever. Manny was the oldest of their group, he still remembered a time before the cordyceps took control. He loved to regale them with stories of his childhood in Mexico, although Lace was certain they were exaggerated, he couldn’t have been older than six years old on outbreak day.
“Helping Dad set up,” Lace told him, picking apart her bread roll.
“How long will the operation take?” Manny asked, looking down the table at a group with far more information than Lace was likely to have.
“Not sure,” Mel shrugged, a medic who’d been training with doctor Andersen, “anywhere between two hours and a day would be my guess.”
“I just can’t believe how close we are,” at the end of the table, Owen knocked his cup in excitement, splashing Nora’s tray. “I mean, we could have a cure tomorrow. Things are about to change.” His blue eyes were sparkling with that childlike glee he was prone to when it came to the fireflies’ cause. As long as Owen lived, so did everything the fireflies fought for.
“It doesn’t take a day to develop a cure, dumbass,” Manny piped in, tossing a scrap of bread from Lace’s tray down the table. The boys started tossing words and food at each other, causing a raucous that was only encouraged by the others.
Sitting in the middle of all the noise was Abby. She was staring absently at her full plate, twirling the noodles on her fork and letting them slide off when she lifted it.
Lace climbed over the back of the bench and approached the girl, tugging lightly on her blonde braid. Abby looked around before landing on Lace beside her.
“Talk?” Lace nodded to an empty table near the corner of the room. There was an abandoned walkie talkie on the bench.
“What’s up?” Abby didn’t sit, only crossed her arms and looked down at Lace, who was perched on the table with her feet on the seat. The boys were getting rowdier. Jordan, the youngest of their friends, was taking it too far as he always did. Lace raised an eyebrow at Abby. A look that said do I really need to ask? One that Abby could only sigh at and take a seat on the bench by Lace’s feet. She picked up the walkie and started fiddling with it. “It’s just.. I have a bad feeling.”
Lace put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, her thumb pressing into the spot at the base of her neck that was always tense. “About the procedure? Your dad’s the best surgeon I know. If anyone can make the cure, it’s him.” Her thumb pressed deeper in small circles when she felt Abby leaning into it. “Owen’s certain of it at least.”
Abby scoffed, looking at the table where her boyfriend was picking noodles off his clothes and eating them. Food was not to be wasted.
“No, it’s not that. I just- I heard him and Marlene talking about the smuggler. She wanted to tell him about the procedure and I…” She sighed, her shoulders dropping and her head falling back to look up at Lace. “You trust Marlene’s judgement right?”
For a moment, as it always did when she looked into Abby’s eyes, Lace’s breath caught in her throat. She swallowed and nodded. She was going to say I think so, when the walkie on the bench crackled to life. At the same time the overhead lights shut off and the emergency alarm started blaring. The light spun, on and off, red and black, the sound was deafening. They’d never used it in a drill.
The cafeteria erupted into chaos when the first yells finally stuttered through the radios at people’s hips. Lace and Abby both froze. They watched the season soldiers hoist their weapons and sprint from the room, swiftly followed by Owen, Manny, Jordan and Nora. Lace could feel her heart picking up when the walkie in Abby’s hands screamed, it’s the smuggler! He killed Harvey! Oh god, oh please, no! No! NO! The channel stuttered out with the pattering of gunfire.
“Abby,” Lace whispered, fear choking her. She had a pistol at her hip that she never practiced with. Her best friend placed the walkie down with trembling hands. “Abby!” She gave the girl a shake and started to stand. “Abby, our dads-” there was nothing more to say because Abby was grabbing her hand and yanking her from the room. Behind them Mel and Leah called after Lace, who wasn’t a soldier and definitely should not be running towards the gunfire.
But Lace was thinking of her dad, who was overseeing the operating theatre. Of Doctor Andersen in his scrubs and the future of humanity at his fingertips. She wasn’t thinking of the smuggler and what he might do if they came across his path.
When the gunfire settled, they could only hope it was because their side had won. What was one man against fifty trained soldiers?