"Come in," I beckoned. Once he accepted, I peeked my head out the door to see if anyone had noticed the theatrics. There was no one around. That should have made me feel better, but it felt rather ominous. The men with guns had been walking circles past Ren's home since the previous afternoon. I guess they thought I was untrustworthy.
Having hopped out of bed right after me, Ren finished dressing quickly. His arms were folded across his chest, waiting to pass judgment on whatever excuse Graham could muster for barging in.
Graham ordered, "She has to get out of here." I stared at the tip of his finger as it pointed right at me.
My words hiccupped before I asked, "To where?"
"Out of the village. Literally anywhere else but here."
Ren weighed his friend's words, along with his disheveled demeanor, and realized we were in trouble. He patted Graham on the shoulder. "Thanks for coming. What's happening?" The aggravation fled his tone completely.
"The men-" he began to say.
"The men with guns?" I asked.
He nodded. Speaking swiftly, he said, "They brought in two doctors last night. It was dark when they arrived. They locked themselves in one of the hospital rooms with suitcases full of equipment."
Ren took a deep breath. I could tell how much he didn't want to know the answer to what he was about to ask, but he asked anyway. "What were they doing?"
"Comparing blood samples." Graham's brows furrowed as he turned his attention to me. "Your blood." Steadfast, he repeated, "You need to leave right now."
"Why?" Ren asked, subconsciously twisting our fingers together in a death grip.
"Dr. Lowel wants her out. I didn't wait to ask questions."
"I need to talk to her," I surmised.
"What?" Ren gasped. "We need to do as she says. You're in danger."
"Your only doctor might be in danger, too. I won't leave without speaking to her."
Ren hated that I was right. It would do no good to run until we identified what I was running from.
Graham waved us to the door. "The men went for breakfast right before I left. They'll be gone for a little while. I can sneak you in a back window, away from any guards."
"Let's go." I followed Graham, and Ren hesitantly followed me.
Just as Graham hypothesized, we were able to sleuth around the edge of the village, waiting in some bushes behind the hospital. Once Graham strolled inside, it only took a few minutes to see a window pop open. We ran across the small yard and Ren vaulted me through the window before pulling himself inside.
"You've got to stop doing that," I warned him, checking his wound for any signs of tearing. Thankfully, he hadn't damaged anything.
He kissed me quickly. "If only the sun would stop shining, too."
"That would be a horrible thing," I surmised, a bit confused.
"Exactly." He stole another swift kiss.
"In here," Graham motioned.
We followed him into an inconspicuous room at the end of one of the halls. Dr. Lowel was inside, rooting through stacks of paperwork. She practically screamed as we burst through the door.
"I send for you to leave and you come to the very place you shouldn't be?"
Ren silently condemned my action, so I repeated his sentiment, "If only the sun would stop shining, too."
Dr. Lowel seized my hands in hers. "There isn't much time. A protein in your blood matched something in their work. I've been sifting through these papers every time they leave." Dropping my hands, she swept a few of the documents up. "There are traces of a protein caused by a reaction."
"A reaction?" I echoed.
"Your body can only create this type of protein, this antibody, if you've been vaccinated for the virus or bacteria the protein was engineered to fight."
"Engineered?" I sounded as lost as I felt.
"From what is the real question," she pondered.
I wanted to answer her but my voice stalled. Ren stepped forward, speaking in my place. "The sickness. It doesn't affect her."
Dr. Lowel's shoulders strained as her lips moved tightly, a wild look of satisfaction threatening to overwhelm her features. "In a time when everyone on earth has been left defenseless, someone has built a wall for you between life and death. Between you and us."
Ren distinguished, "Us being the rest of humanity? I don't want to hear another word about my wall," he tried to joke, though it lacked heart. He was nervous. That was evident in the way he tried to control his breathing.
"Ren isn't completely wrong." Dr. Lowel pushed her hair behind her ears. "He isn't exactly right, either. According to these papers, there are others like you. The 'why' or 'how,' I have no answers."
"There are more?"
"Yes," she replied ardently. "They -you- have a shared marking in common."
Ren asked, "What kind of marking?"
"I'm not quite sure. I haven't been able to find the rest of the account I was reading. All I was able to assess is that it's some type of UV reactant, likely an inking."
Releasing a long breath, Ren grinned. "It's not Jolee." Turning his attention to me, he said, "You have scars but they don't create any distinctive markings or symbols."
Dr. Lowel added, "If it is a UV marking, it would only be visible under ultraviolet light." She picked up a flashlight with a dark bulb. "I believe this is what we need. It was with the unpacked equipment."
The doctor approached me before hesitating. She searched my eyes for consent.
"Do it," I ordered.
Stretching my arms out, I stood completely still, waiting for her inspection.
Under her breath, Dr. Lowel said, "It would likely be in a place that would fare well to stretching. This would have been done when you were a small child. When did you leave your parents?"
"By five-I-think." I avoided eye contact with Ren.
"I believe they left her," Ren stressed, his misplaced anger simmering below the surface.
Dr. Lowel nodded. "Of course." Beginning with my fingertips, she spoke softly. "Hands would be an unlikely location. Too much sloughing of the skin cells. Your inner arms would be perfect, however." The light darted across my forearms, inner and outer. Nothing. The doctor looked disappointed. Ren nodded, as if she were proving him right.
Following the length of my arms to my face, she asked me to close my eyes. I could see the discoloration of the light shining through my eyelids. It was still bright.
"Nothing along your face." Again, disappointment. "Lift your hair."
I did as she asked, twisting and holding it on the top of my head. But I kept my eyes closed.
After casting the light over my neck, she gasped.
My eyelids flew open. "What?"
Dr. Lowel was stunned into silence.
I turned to Ren. "What?"
He and Graham couldn't take their eyes off my neck. A sick grimace laced Ren's tired face.
Snatching the light out of Dr. Lowel's hand, I sprinted to the mirror on the far wall and brushed my hair out of the way. There it was! The mark. Straightaway, I was engulfed by a memory of confusion and rage. I was sitting on a wooden bench, screaming as large adult hands drove a needle into my neck. It felt like hot pokers until the pain morphed into a stinging, throbbing tornado under my skin.
Every time I shifted the flashlight in a different direction over my neck, the pattern would disappear. When I pointed the bright beam of light at the skin just under my left ear, it would suddenly return. Four thick, red lines hovered around one another, creating one cohesive design as wide as my wrist.
Graham muttered, "Holy shit," the same time Ren pleaded, "No," under his breath, wishing it away.
"What is it?" Graham asked.
I licked my lips. "The Korean symbol for longevity." Brushing over it with my fingers, I admitted, "My mother had this inked between her shoulder blades. I remember standing behind her while she worked, tracing it around her tank top with my finger. It's one of my earliest memories."
"This has to be the mark thes
e papers documented," Dr. Lowel pressed.
"Why would someone mark her?" Ren asked, feeling helpless. "Her own parents, no less."
She raised an eyebrow, trying to control her delight. "I would bet my life and yours that every 'marked' individual has been vaccinated. Do you know what this means? We can duplicate the vaccine and stop the sickness."
"I don't ever remember being vaccinated." My mind was bombarded with questions screaming to escape my mouth.
Dr. Lowel agreed, "You would have been very young. Probably around the same time you received this UV inking."
Ren turned to me with a racked expression. "You were vaccinated as a child for a virus that didn't exist until ten years ago."
Graham filled the void of silence. "What does that mean? How is that possible?"
The doctor spoke out loud, though it was clear she was the only one in the conversation. "The end of the world was manufactured. Like everything else it, too, has an expiration date. Maybe all of this," she said, waving the papers in her hand toward my neck, "is a failsafe. You, along with whoever else may be unaffected, are the bridge between human extinction and good intentions."
Ren rubbed his chin. "You're saying someone knew a super sickness was coming and planted the means to survive it right under our noses?"
"Or someone who helped create it," she painfully acknowledged. Meeting my gaze, she dared utter, "Your mother, perhaps."
Someone clapped heatedly. The sound was biting to our ears. Reeling on our heels, we met a dull man dressed from feather to fluff in tan. It complimented the dusk pigment of his skin.
"Dr. Lowel, I wish we could give you accolades for being spot on, but you have rather likely caused yourself a premature end. That's no reason to celebrate, I'm afraid." He shared the drawled accent of the Southern clanships.
"Dr. Turnig?" she addressed, flustered.
He ventured further into the room. "You shouldn't have snooped." He tisked his finger at her. "But good doctors always go that extra step. They always want answers." A hardy chuckle tore through the air. "No matter the risk. Damn occupational hazard." His laughter died as he scoffed, "What do you believe we should do about this?"
Taking his question seriously, Dr. Lowel said, "We need to find out who exactly is manufacturing the sickness. There is no place for monsters like these in this world."
"Those monsters built this world, right in the likeness of their little ole images." His tone was low and cold. "A lot of money has been made on the backs of the dead. A lot of money left for the taking, for those who know when to grab opportunity by the horns." His glare pierced Dr. Lowel's confidence.
I tossed the flashlight onto a metal table, allowing the noise to reverberate through the room before I addressed Dr. Turnig. "Money doesn't have a place in the new world. Try another lie."
His short hair sat unaffected as he shook his head. "Do you think every government on this planet would have set trillions of dollars ablaze? Poof! Is the good of the planet worth that much?" Taking a moment to let it sink in, he shrugged. His words dripped with antipathy. "How much is the future of humanity worth?"
"One hundred years of darkness," I answered, though his question may have been rhetorical. "Five hundred years." I crossed my arms, squeezing my fists together until I felt the ends of my fingernails pressing into the center of my palms. "One thousand years, if that's what it takes. Humanity is worth every bit of that."
"Why?" His voice was loud and exact. "Humans live in greed. They trade in destruction. There is nothing they haven't squandered."
Dr. Lowel could no longer hold her tongue. "You talk as if you aren't one of us, but you are obviously here out of greed, with the intention of destruction. Will our deaths fill one pocket or both?"
Graham was startled. "Who's dying here?"
"Don't let him fool you," she spat. "Letting us go would cost this fiend too much."
"Who are you?" I asked.
"The hand of God," he answered calmly.
Ren laughed. He laughed so hard, it startled all of us. "Now I've heard it all."
Graham was much less amused when he muttered, "An apocalypse couldn't swallow all the evil in the world. You've started a one-man crusade to apocalypse the apocalypse."
Dr. Turnig snickered. "One man overcomes. Men of equal discipline, together, conquer. You should align yourself with that in mind, young man."
"You're not here to make money, and you aren't alone," I accused, ignoring my sweaty palms and that little voice screaming in my head to shut up. "You're here to kill me."
Out of nowhere, Dr. Turnig confessed, "I worked with your mother. She was a progressive immunologist with an excellent hand for vaccine research. What a waste. She could never see past the inane promises of a clean world after the New Beginning. And here you are, god damn proof of her sainthood."
"Proof you want to cover up," I finished.
"With six feet of dirt," Graham reminded all of us.
"Well, now," Dr. Turnig contemplated, "I rather like the sound of that. That would take a mighty long time, though. Maybe I could just burn you up instead. It sure smells like a week-old rotting pig, but it's the only way to erase the sickness. In your case, the cure."
Hearing him confess to the charred remains I had witnessed so long ago in Bea's clanship caused my skin to flush with heat. Shock. And while I had demonized the men with guns from Ren's village, the true monsters were skulking through the darkness, burning anything in their path.
Ren's hands flinched, ready to hit something. Or Somebody. He wanted vengeance for his friend, Graham's brother.
I stepped towards Dr. Turnig. Calmly, I pointed out, "You'll still have tons of research left behind. Enough for someone to find one day. Even if you kill us, someone will stop you."
"No." He shook his head. "The written word is so easy to extinguish." Looking around from one of us to the next, he clasped his hands together. "Thank you for making this so easy." As if he were listening for a cue, he paused.
A noise rattled outside one of the windows. We turned our heads in that direction. Ren and Graham peaked outside, almost coming face to face with Dr. Turnig's men.
"What are they doing?" Dr. Lowel asked.
Dr. Turnig was gone. The door slammed behind him and we were left inside the room, confused. Two men outside broke the window panes with glass jars. The moment the jars shattered, the amber-tinted liquid contents flooded the floor, shoving glass shards in every direction. A pungent smell ripped through our nostrils.
"Kerosene!" Ren yelled.
I ran to the door, but it was locked. When I looked down, I could see the liquid flooding in from the small space between the door and the tile floor.
Ren grabbed my elbow and pulled me backward, taking little notice of my limp. "Get away. It's flammable." There was a peculiar undertone in his voice, reminiscent of when I had left him alone in the dark that first night.
Ren was scared.
Before any of us could stop it, a lit torch spiraled through a broken window and landed with a bounce across the wet tile. It only took that first touch for the flame to eat greedily at the kerosene. Spreading across the entire back wall, blocking us from escaping, the flames grew in size as they began burning every fibrous material between us and freedom.
"Oh my God," Dr. Lowel chanted repeatedly.
I turned back to the door, but someone had lit it on fire. The flames lapped at the liquid as it glided further into the room. So close.
Chapter Twelve
Dr. Lowel shook herself free from her near mental collapse and picked up a carafe of water on one of the tables.
Without hesitation, Graham tried to grab it out of her hand but failed. "Water will spread an oil fire!"
Shooing him out of the way, she promptly dumped it over a tidy pile of gauze and wrung them out with her hands. "Here," she said, passing clumps of damp gauze to each of us. "Hold it against your nose. Do not inhale the smoke." Her attention lingered on Ren.
We did as she
told us, trying not to ruminate on Ren's asthma. I backed into him. He grabbed my hand in his.
"And you thought you were going to die from a fireball in a treehouse?"
His attempted humor was appreciated, though it did little to actually soothe my fear. The heat of the flames was growing more intense. Every bit of exposed flesh started to roast. I could feel the sting on my cheeks. When I shielded my face in the crook of my arm, it bit at the back of my exposed neck.
As the flames danced, I realized I didn't fear my own death, I feared that moment would be the end of the new world. To squash any trace of a future, to erase what could be, was abominable. Unforgivable.
Simultaneously, Dr. Lowel and I began grabbing at the paperwork marked for obliteration by Dr. Turnig. She clung to a large stack while I shoved as much as I could into the waistband of my pants. I also pocketed the special flashlight.
Dr. Lowel choked. The smoke swirled through the air, leaving little room for clean oxygen. It would soon be too dark to see clearly.
"Crouch to the ground," Graham ordered in a muffled voice. "There's less smoke there."
We followed his example, dropping to the floor, except for Ren, who ran to the end of the room and upended everything he came in contact with.
"What are you doing?" Dr. Lowel demanded through her gauze filter.
"Isn't there a fire extinguisher?"
She nodded, pointing past Ren. "Beside the cabinet."
He pounced on a red cylinder. Pulling the pin, he aimed the nozzle and squeezed the handle.
Nothing happened.
Ren shook the cylinder. "Damn it!" he yelled. "It's empty." He slammed it to the floor. Without hesitation, he ordered us to move. In one sweeping motion, he shoved the metal table and all of its contents to the side. A large portion of the carpet below was clear. "Get ready," he said. Picking the edge of the carpet up, he upended the entire thing right into the flames. "Now!"
The carpet temporarily suffocated the flames in front of the broken middle window.
We ran to the hollowed frame, taking turns hopping out. Ren helped each of us before he followed. I dropped to the ground, my throat spasming. Graham rolled onto all fours beside me, retching. Dr. Lowel coughed uncontrollably, simultaneously managing to pat Ren's back as he choked.
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