Free Web NovelChapter 279: Chapter 278 - My Sister
"Cena..."
The sound barely left Iyisha’s mouth.
The thing holding her stared.
Its torn jaw shifted. Blood ran from the side of its mouth and down its neck. Its fingers tightened around her ribs again, and Iyisha’s breath caught as its face lowered closer. Its mouth opened wider.
It was going to eat her.
Iyisha saw it in the black pull of its eyes, in the hunger moving through a body that no longer knew what to do with her name. She grabbed its wrist with both hands and pushed the pressure in her head again, harder than before.
"Cena!"
Pain split behind her eyes.
Warmth ran from her nose.
The world tilted, but she kept looking at the tattoo. Two doves. One under the wing of the other. One protecting it.
"Cena, stop!"
The hand around her locked.
Then it stopped closing.
The tank stared at her. Its breath came hot and broken against her face. Its eyes twitched, dragging over her hair, her face, her mouth, then back to her eyes as if something inside it had heard her and could not reach the answer.
A gun clicked somewhere below.
Malcolm’s voice cut through the yard. "Iyisha, lean back."
She looked down.
Malcolm had his pistol raised. Blood marked his mouth. His arm shook once before he forced it steady. The barrel aimed for Cena’s head.
"No!" Iyisha screamed.
Malcolm’s finger stayed on the trigger.
"Don’t shoot!" She twisted in Cena’s grip, fighting the pain in her ribs. "It’s Cena!"
The words came out raw and loud enough to tear her throat.
"It’s Cena!" she shouted again, crying now, shaking so hard her hands slipped on the wet skin around Cena’s wrist. "She’s my sister!"
Malcolm did not lower the gun.
His eyes moved from Iyisha’s face to the hand crushing around her body. He looked ready to fire even if it broke him after. Marybeth’s voice came from somewhere near the truck, sharp and disbelieving. Aljun shouted something Iyisha could not catch. Lance coughed hard and called her name.
Cena only stared.
Its free hand lifted.
Iyisha froze. freewebnøvel.com
The hand came toward her head, huge and bloodstained, fingers bent wrong from wounds already closing. She thought it would crush her skull. She thought the word had failed. She thought whatever was left of Cena had sunk too deep under hunger and muscle and the lab’s cruelty.
The fingers touched her hair.
Iyisha stopped breathing.
Cena’s hand dragged clumsily through the strands near her temple, rough enough to pull, gentle enough to miss hurting her. It pushed her hair back from her face in an awkward ruffle, the same way Cena used to do when Iyisha cried too hard and refused to admit it.
Iyisha broke.
A sound came out of her chest, loud and helpless. Her hands loosened around Cena’s wrist. Memories hit too fast to hold. Cena stealing the last sweet bread and pretending she had not. Cena laughing in the mirror after the tattoo. Cena pushing Iyisha’s hair back and calling her ugly when she cried, then hugging her before Iyisha could hit her.
"Cena," Iyisha sobbed. "Cena, it’s me."
Cena’s mouth moved.
The torn jaw worked wrong. Muscle shifted under split skin. Its throat made a low, damaged sound, close to a growl and too broken to become a word.
Iyisha heard it anyway.
Her name was trapped somewhere inside that ruined mouth.
Another shot cracked from above.
The bullet struck Cena’s shoulder.
Cena roared.
The sound slammed through Iyisha’s bones. Cena lowered her fast, almost dropping her, then set her feet on the ground with a roughness that made her knees buckle. Malcolm reached her before she fell. His arm locked around her waist and pulled her back against him.
Iyisha kept reaching for Cena.
"Wait. Don’t hurt her."
Malcolm dragged her behind him as another burst of gunfire hit the yard. "Stay behind me."
Cena turned toward the upper wall.
The guard who had fired tried to step back.
Cena bent, grabbed a broken slab of stone from the ground, and threw it.
The slab smashed into the upper ledge. Stone burst outward. A guard screamed and vanished behind the dust. Another fell hard against the stairs, his rifle clattering down after him.
Cena moved.
The soldiers near the wall scattered.
One ran too late.
Cena caught him by the leg, swung him into another guard, then dropped low over the body. Iyisha turned her face into Malcolm’s chest, but she still heard the wet tear, the scream ending too fast, the gunfire starting again.
Marybeth reached them first, limping hard with one arm around Lance. Aljun came on Lance’s other side, pale and breathing fast. Lance looked at Iyisha, then at the huge shape tearing through the soldiers.
"That’s..." His voice failed. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
Iyisha nodded against Malcolm’s hold.
Tears kept falling. She could not stop them.
The words left Iyisha’s mouth, and something in her snapped after them.
She turned from Cena and looked for the nearest white coat.
The young doctor stood near the elevator, rifle hanging loose in one hand, face pale as he stared at the huge body tearing through soldiers in the yard. Iyisha moved before Malcolm could stop her. Her legs almost folded, but anger carried her the last few steps. She grabbed the front of the doctor’s coat and shoved him back against the elevator frame.
Her hand found his throat.
"What did you do to her?"
The young doctor choked and grabbed her wrist. His eyes went wide. "I—"
"What did you do to her?" Iyisha screamed.
Marybeth reached her first and caught her around the waist from behind. "Iyisha, let go."
Iyisha fought her. "No. No, look at her."
Malcolm stepped in. He did not pull Iyisha away first. He raised his pistol and pressed the barrel under the young doctor’s jaw, forcing his head up against the metal.
The doctor went still.
"Answer her," Malcolm said.
The young doctor swallowed against Iyisha’s fingers. His voice came out broken. "She was already like that when we found her."
Iyisha’s grip tightened. "Liar."
"I’m not lying."
"You turned her into this monster."
The young doctor shook his head, coughing when Marybeth finally pried Iyisha’s hand from his throat. "No. She was already changing. When the recovery team found her, both arms were gone, but they had started growing back."
Iyisha stopped fighting.
The yard tilted again.
Cena roared across the fort, and Iyisha turned toward her. Cena had a soldier in one hand. Another fired from the ground too close to her feet. Cena threw the first man at him and sent both of them crashing through a crate near the wall.
The young doctor’s voice shook behind Iyisha. "Dr. Stein said the trigger was trauma to her hands. Severe damage. Amputation. Infection stress. Her body answered wrong. Or right. I don’t know. It kept rebuilding. It built too much."
Iyisha’s chest hurt.
Her sister’s hands.
Cena’s hands.
She remembered small fingers pulling her hair when they were children. Remembered Cena grabbing her wrist to drag her across streets, across rooftops, across every bad idea she ever had. Remembered shooting the tank in Long Island. Again and again. Remembered the bullets hitting its body while it hunted them through the dark.
She had shot her.
She had run from her.
She had called her a thing.
Iyisha’s knees hit the ground.
Malcolm caught her under the arms, but she sank anyway, staring at Cena through the smoke. "No."
The young doctor took one breath, then another. "They couldn’t keep her in the lab. She broke restraints. She kept feeding. The more damage she took, the faster she healed. They moved her to Long Island."
Iyisha covered her mouth with one shaking hand.
Cena turned toward another burst of gunfire. Her torn jaw opened in a roar. The wounds in her shoulder closed slowly under the blood while she moved.
Marybeth crouched beside Iyisha, one hand gripping her arm. "Iyisha."
Iyisha could not look away. "I looked for her."
"I know."
"She was there."
Marybeth’s face tightened.
"She was there the whole time," Iyisha whispered.
A helicopter beat sounded above the yard.
Then another.
The sound grew fast, heavy over the fort walls. Guards on the upper levels shouted. Searchlights cut through the smoke. Cena turned her head toward the noise, shoulders rising, body ready to attack whatever came next.
Aljun’s voice cut through from near the patrol truck. "We need to go!"
Lance was upright now, one hand pressed to his side while Marybeth’s arm steadied him. He looked at Cena, then at Iyisha, and his face went pale in a different way.
"Reinforcements," Arnulf shouted. "Move now!"
Iyisha pushed away from Malcolm and forced herself to stand. Her legs shook, but she stayed up. Cena was still in the center of the fort, surrounded by bodies, smoke, and gunfire. She looked too huge to be Cena and too familiar to be anything else.
"Cena!" Iyisha shouted.
Cena’s head turned.
The helicopters drew closer. The walls shook under more gunfire. Soldiers pulled back toward the stairs, shouting into radios as the searchlights swept over the yard.
Iyisha took one step toward her sister.
Malcolm caught her waist. "Iyisha."
She did not stop looking at Cena. Tears blurred everything. "We need to go."
Cena stared at her through the smoke.
Iyisha lifted one trembling hand toward her. "Cena, please. We need to go."
