Chapter Text
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There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.
---
Ava Silva is born into a world already collapsing.
It’s something she doesn’t have in common with the heroes in the storybooks she reads. Most of them emerge from the woodwork as society teeters on the edge of something irreversible and claw it back over to safety at the last second. But Ava? She’s falling from the cliff with the rest of them before she even takes her first breath.
There’s another thing that’s different about them, too, those storybook heroes. Usually, they choose their fate – maybe not at first, but after some dramatic revelation they tend to step up to the plate with boundless philanthropy and a self-sacrificing resolve that cannot be shaken. Ava, on the other hand, is pretty sure she’d go running given half the chance - after all, she’s not the one who fucked everything up, so how is it fair that she’s expected to fix it?
She’s getting ahead of herself, though. That part comes later.
It all starts, properly, when she wakes up in an empty room, floor covered in dust and a meagre square of cardboard where she lays. The window is boarded shut, so her only source of light is a dim, exposed bulb swinging from the ceiling, and the crack of white that slips through the gap at the edge of the boards.
She’s tied up, which is the first thing she notices. Chains around her wrists and ankles with enough slack for her to stand but not quite enough to reach the door. Besides, she has a sinking suspicion that it’d be locked even if she could get to it – call her pessimistic, but the barred windows and the metal links wrapped around her don’t exactly give the impression that escape would be that easy.
There’s graffiti on the wall, too. In this life or the next, the red paint reads, dripping garishly over concrete and taunting Ava. She recognises the phrase from her lessons in schools, recognises it as the call sign of the infamous OCS. It’s pretty clear, then, that Vincent was the one to leave her here, chained up like she’s some sort of animal.
Ava decides that it’s probably the last thing she’ll ever see, given the circumstances. That room and those walls, chain on her wrists and ankles and blood under her nails. In this life or the next, and she’s sure that’s it for her, a miserable end to a mediocre existence.
She’s alive for nineteen years before she ever really starts living. And then a girl around her age walks into the room, pistol tucked into her belt and notebook in her hand.
“Ava? I’m Beatrice. How are you feeling?”
And it’s the start of everything.
---
Ava learns about the virus in school. Cordyceps, they call it – spores that tunnel into the bloodstream and devour any humanity they find there. There are pictures of them in textbooks, the infected: bodies ravaged by tumorous sprouts of orange and green and white, wiry lengths reaching out of their mouths hung open in never-ending screams –
There’s a reason she doesn’t enjoy her lessons. Many, in fact, but the pictures are perhaps the worst of them all. It’s easier, instead, to focus on the words bordering them, history lessons heard so often she could recite them in her sleep: a flour factory in Jakarta with a few infected workers, then it’s in the bread and the cakes and the damn pancake mix, and the world falls to pieces. Apparently, it takes twelve days to get into every continent. Twelve days to infect every major city and then the bombs start dropping in the name of containment, and that’s it. No way back.
Twelve days to crumble, one year of apocalypse, and Ava is born. A world already collapsing is maybe an understatement – Ava is born into a world already destroyed. Father non-existent, mother lost in childbirth: a family already destroyed, too.
It’s not ideal, to say the least.
The school is a pretty lonely place to grow up, for a long time. She’s been there as long as she can remember, dropped into a FEDRA academy with every other orphan and forgotten just as quickly. The whole place is a joke, anyway - FEDRA, the Federal Disaster Response Agency. Ava remarks privately that they’re nothing but corruption with a fancy title – but that’s an attitude best kept quiet. FEDRA was a dream – disaster response – like the disaster wasn’t already too far gone before they ever took charge.
The point is, it’s lonely for a long time. It’s a tired story, Ava’s - one that is not unique in the Boston Quarantine Zone, let alone the rest of the world. Left to go about the motions of training and education and brainwashing until she’s old enough and numb enough to join FEDRAs ranks. Except on her seventh birthday, a new boy turns up at the academy – Diego, he says his name is – and she is finally not alone.
Diego is disobedience personified. Parents lost to the infection like so many others, he arrives at the academy full of more grief and anger than any child should hold, and it leaks out of him at every given moment. Starting fights and punching through walls, breaking every rule in the book like they were a list of challenges, not limits –
Ava thinks he’s brilliant.
They form a friendship, fast, and for the first time in her life, Ava is not alone. Growing together in the academy, raising hell for every FEDRA soldier charged with their care until Ava decides, finally, that family is not something she has lost. It is something she has found.
She’s nine when she first hears about the OCS. Rebels, she’s told in school - nothing but criminals and vagabonds flying a banner of false freedom. A religious sect, the Order of the Cruciform Sword, hiding in plain sights on the streets and fighting FEDRA with every piece of them. They blow up buildings and gun down soldiers and tag walls with motivational graffiti that is always, always, gone by the morning.
She’s nine when she first hears about the OCS, but she’s nineteen by the time she really meets them. When she and Diego sneak out of their dorm in the middle of the night and –
Whatever. She’s nineteen when she meets them. That’s the important thing.
It isn’t long, then, before everything falls apart. A week, maybe two – the details are a little hazy – that’s all that passes before Ava’s life shifts completely. She meets the OCS, meets Father Vincent, their leader, and everything changes.
The air is sticky when her and Diego sneak out of their dorm, that last night. Heavy with moisture and an impending storm. Suffocating. Ava sweats as she trails her best friend through dark alleys, dodging the FEDRA soldiers that line the streets to enforce the curfew. It’s not the first time they’ve snuck out at night – being the little shit-stirrers that they are, they’ve made a habit of climbing onto rooftops or into abandoned buildings to drink stolen alcohol and waste the nights laughing deliriously. It is, though, the first time they go to the mall – Diego says he found the place some time before, wants to show Ava before he leaves for good.
They root through the old stores, ride the dusty carousel, race each other down the escalators. But then they hear it, the inhuman growl, when that thing barrels towards them at full speed –
The rest is too painful to think about.
After, she drags herself back out of the mall and holds herself together long enough to stumble back along their path, through shadowed streets she knows instinctively, now. She holds herself together just long enough to stumble right past the academy, past her open dormitory window, and on to the place she’d met the OCS days before. She holds herself together just long enough to pound on Vincent’s door and beg for his help and then –
And then he knocks her out with the butt of his gun, and she remembers nothing else.
---
Beatrice has freckles, which maybe isn’t the most practical thing for Ava to pay attention to. She’s never really been a logical person – which maybe could explain how she ended up in this mess, but whatever – so she draws her knees up to her chest, wrapping her hands protectively around her ankles, and says the first thing that comes to mind.
“What the fuck?”
Beatrice takes another step into the room, shutting the door behind her so she can back against it. And it’s at that moment, watching the stranger keep strategic distance between them, that Ava notices something else about her. Beyond freckles (constellations, Ava muses, like the ones she and Diego used to trace from the rooftops) and dark clothes and the twisted knot of hair at the base of her skull.
She’s scared.
It shows in the tips of her fingers, white where they grip the notebook tightly. It shows in the weapon at her hip, just within reach should she need it. It shows in her tight, serious expression, iron in the line of her mouth, eyes flicking reflexively over the chains holding Ava down.
“How are you feeling?” Beatrice repeats, and Ava has the sudden urge to laugh. A woman of steel staring her down like she’s a monster, and Ava knows (wishes she didn’t, knows anyway) that she poses about as much danger then as the QZ’s street rats.
“Pretty cagey,” she says instead, wiggling her eyebrows as she shakes her chained wrists in the air. But the other girl doesn’t even crack a smile, flexing her fingers around the pen in her hand.
“Count slowly and clearly from one to ten,” Beatrice says, looking down at her notebook.
And Ava really has nothing to lose at this point, right? So –
“What’s the magic word?” She grins. Cracking Beatrice’s frozen cast is, apparently, the challenge she’s chosen. And God does Ava need a win right now.
Again though, Beatrice doesn’t laugh, which Ava thinks is pretty rude. She’s chained to a radiator and still cracking jokes, and really, it’s the least this girl could do, considering. But she doesn’t laugh, just scratches something onto the pages and clears her throat.
“Count slowly and clearly from one to ten,” Beatrice says again, like she’s glued to a script.
As she and Diego have proved, Ava is not one for discipline. But without him next to her, she loses a little of her resolve. Plus, she’s getting bored of the conversation, and Beatrice doesn’t seem like she’s going to budge. So she pushes herself to her feet, ignoring the other girl’s flinch at her movements, and does as she is told.
“Onetwothreefour – “
“Slowly.” Beatrice interrupts. “And clearly.” She refuses to meet Ava’s eye, still, and something about the inhumanity of it all bites at the frayed edges of her temper.
So Ava drags out the syllables, rolling her eyes. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Fuck. You.”
Beatrice, unphased, ticks something off in her notebook. She is left-handed, Ava notes, which again feels like a fairly irrelevant detail given the circumstances. “Now hold out your hand, steadily.”
Left-handed and bossy as fuck, but Ava does, tugging the chain up with her wrist as she goes. “Where’s Vincent – “
“And state your name,” Beatrice says, ticking again in her notebook.
Again, rude, but Ava really doesn’t have a leg to stand on, so she answers. “Ava Silva.”
And that’s it, apparently. Because then Beatrice is opening the door, turning away and walking out before Ava even registers that it’s happening. She’s calling out, but Beatrice isn’t stopping. Insisting that she’s not supposed to be here (not supposed to be alive, not supposed to leave Diego alone in that mall - ) but the iron woman is leaving her alone again in the room with the boarded-up windows and the graffiti and the little cardboard square.
Except just before the door swings shut, Ava catches something small (monumental yet barely there) – something she isn’t even sure if she sees or imagines. Beatrice, turning to look back, meeting her eye for the first time since introducing herself. Something unguarded and molten in her stare like curiosity or pity or fear.
Something that almost looks like an apology.
---
Ava isn’t sure how long passes – an hour? Five? But eventually the sun sets somewhere beyond the boarded-up window, and the door opens again.
“Ava. How are you feeling?”
It’s a kick in the teeth, really. Beatrice asks the same question as before, face still blank and unfeeling as she stares down at the notebook. Her shirt has changed since the last time Ava saw her – the short sleeves swapped for a loose tank. It’s not a big deal in itself, other than the fact that Ava can clearly see now that she would definitely not stand a chance in a fight with Beatrice: cords of muscle leave shadows on her arms in the dim light of the room, and brute force (like, punching the shit out of Beatrice’s freckles) is definitely no longer an option.
And Ava knows it isn’t wise, but the simple fact that Beatrice is free enough to change her clothes without chains weighing on her limbs sends her right over the edge, and she snaps.
“A little peckish, actually,” she practically spits. “Almost hungry enough to bite – “
At last Beatrice looks up, makes eye contact, and Ava revels a little at the panic she sees there. Guarded pinch of her brows and the twitch of her fingers at her belt – but it fades after half a second. Beatrice recognises the mischievous glint reflecting back at her, and she shakes her head disapprovingly.
“Count slowly and clearly from – “
“I’m not doing this again,” Ava insists, pushing herself up from the floor, chains clinking as she moves. A ringing reminder of her position as metal digs painfully into the raw skin of her wrists. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Beatrice presses her back into the door, calculating now. Ava sees battle strategy swirl behind her irises as her heels bite into the wood and it’s a bizarre contradiction. Fight and flight all at once.
“We have to complete the tests so – “
“So what?” Ava yells, surprising even herself with the volume. “So you can leave again? I deserve some fucking answers – “
“And you will get them,” Beatrice reassures, voice even. It’s there again, the apology, pinned under the ballpoint of her pen, laced between the lines of the script she reads off. “With time.”
“How much time?” Ava demands, shoulders slumping in defeat.
Beatrice, perfect picture of piety, nods sagely. “Have patience, Ava. We just have to make sure that you’re not going to – “
“To turn?” Ava finishes. She laughs savagely. Patience is a virtue, she knows, but holiness is the OCS’s thing, not hers. She will stick firmly to her vice and frustration as long as their chains hold her down. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Making sure I don’t go completely batshit on you all?”
Ava doesn’t expect it, but after a second of hesitation, Beatrice nods. “Yes,” she says simply. “Now please. Count slowly and clearly from one to ten.”
And maybe it’s the honesty that shocks her, but she shouldn’t be surprised really. Lying is a sin, she knows that even with her very limited understanding of religion. It’s that in combination with the resigned grip Beatrice has on her notebook that does it, the tight fist that says she’s almost as unhappy about this whole arrangement as Ava is. A common ground of frustration (something Ava can understand much better than virtue and vice) and she complies, folding herself back onto the floor with a resigned huff.
“One, two, three, four…”
---
Three days pass, which she knows only from the fading and growing light behind the boarded-up window, and the routine appearances of Beatrice.
Three days, she stays there – three days where her only human interaction is Beatrice and her notebook, always with the same questions. Count to ten. Hold out your hand. State your name. Three days and Ava starts to lose some of her earlier conviction that this entrapment is temporary. No further glimpse of upset from Beatrice, and the baseless trust Ava has placed on her support (neutrality, lack of outright hostility) starts to feel a little naïve. Beatrice no longer twitches towards her pistol whenever Ava moves, but they don’t make much more progress. In fact, she’s starting to wonder whether her survival is more of a punishment than a mercy, and then finally, finally, the door opens. And it’s not Beatrice this time.
“Ava.”
“Vincent,” she says, scrambling upright. “What the fuck – “
He throws something across the floor to her, and she recognises the backpack she was wearing the day she’d turned up at his door. She has about five seconds to root through the bag and find her pocket-knife, flicking it open, before he sits opposite her, well within reach.
“You’re not scared,” she realises aloud.
He shakes his head. It almost makes her miss the questions and the notebook and the white knuckles that line it.
“Then unlock me,” Ava starts, suddenly furious. Three days of being treated like a rabid dog, only for Vincent to waltz in and –
“How about we start with ‘thank you’,” he says instead, deathly calm.
It’s a step too far. Thank you for knocking me out, thank you for kidnapping me and chaining me up, thank you for convincing Diego -
“For what?” Ava spits, because that train of thought will lead her nowhere good.
“For saving your life,” Vincent frowns. “I am the one who told them not to shoot you, if you recall.”
It’s infuriating, his superiority. But Ava knows somewhere deep down that he’s telling the truth, that he’s the reason she’s in chains and not a coffin (a fire, more like), so she flicks the pocketknife shut with an exaggerated movement and rolls her eyes.
“Why did you stop them?” she hushes, looking down at her lap. Ava is not scared of death but she’s suddenly afraid he might change his mind. “I mean, I show up with an actual zombie bite and you – “
“I knocked you out,” Vincent finishes. “Because I had faith.”
“Faith?” The word tastes foreign.
“That you wouldn’t turn,” he clarifies. “And evidently, I was right. Three days, and your functions are all still intact. Clearly, the virus didn’t take.”
Ava shakes her head, looking back up to meet his eye. Faith is a thinly veiled excuse, she knows. Faith is a word that belongs in a world not ravaged by infection, a time when infected did not scratch at the walls of the city each night, when the city didn’t need walls at all. “But why?” she presses.
Nothing about it makes sense. Everyone’s seen the posters - on the streets, in her dorm room, splayed across the pages of her textbooks: infection times. 24 hours for a bite to the leg, 6 for one on the arm, only 15 minutes on the neck – point being, she should be long gone by now. Yet there are teeth marks on her wrist and three full days behind her, and despite her anger, she isn’t thinking about tearing Vincent’s throat out.
Yet.
So really, it doesn’t make sense. But Vincent shakes his head, ignoring her question, and goes on like the miracle of it all is unimportant.
“I need you to listen to me carefully,” he starts. “You have done something nobody else has in twenty years, Ava. You are immune, and we have no idea why, but – “
And suddenly, Ava understands. Faith, meaning pipe dream, meaning Ava’s life is about to get a whole lot more complicated. “But you think I’m the cure.”
“It’s possible,” Vincent acquiesces. “I don’t know why you survived, nobody does, but if we can figure it out then – “ he cuts himself off, shaking his head. Too much faith, it appears, is dangerous – even to a man of God. “We have scientists, out west in the Massachusetts state house,” Vincent continues, voice picking up with something almost akin to excitement. “If we can get you there – “
“And if I say no?” Ava presses, fingers tensing around her pocketknife.
Vincent sits back, frowning. “And go where – back to the FEDRA academy? You and I both know that they’ll kill you as soon as they see your arm.” He tracks his eyes over her sleeve, picturing what is underneath. “Don’t waste what Diego started – “
“Okay,” Ava cuts him off, throat tight. She can’t talk about him, about what happened – it is too fresh. Too painful. Besides, despite Vincent’s callousness, he is right – she really doesn’t have anywhere else to go. “So how do we get there?”
“We don’t,” he corrects, exhaling. “I must stay here, lead the charge – but I have put together a team I trust to escort you.”
“A team?” Ava questions. “How many people are we talking? Because really, entertaining that big of a crowd might be a bit of an ask even for – “
“Four,” Vincent cuts her off. “So I need to know, Ava, before I unlock you, that you understand the severity of this situation.” He fixes her with a gaze so intense Ava has the sudden urge to look away, but the stubborn child in her holds straight. No chain stomps the embers of a girl enraged.
“I need to know that you are going to take this seriously, that you are going to do everything you can to save us.”
And really, no part of it is fair, but Ava knows she has no other real options. The FEDRA school will never take her back, not like this, and with nowhere else to go, she is on track to become another faceless beggar on the streets of the Boston QZ. Besides, without Diego -
The point is, she has no other option. So she steels her face into the most serious expression she can muster, setting her jaw in her best impression of all those storybook heroes. Cape and spandex tights and the whole fucking lot of it, nothing but a cheap party store costume.
“I will,” she says.
And as Vincent unlocks her chains, she knows deep down that she is no hero.
Ava Silva is born into a world already collapsing. And she has absolutely no interest in saving it.