by L. B. Carter
“Yeah, let’s go back to the ‘might’ part.” Reed lifted a finger. “Did he say if he knew how deadly it is?” Life and death was Reed’s area of concern.
Rena shook her head. “He didn’t. But there is no might.” Tears welled on her eyelids. “It’s deadly,” she said, her voice warbling.
Val inhaled hard, her hand balling in a fist in front of her mouth.
Reed didn’t understand the reaction. “How do you know if he didn’t say?”
“It’s already killed.” Nor spoke up when Rena couldn’t. “Tilly’s mom…” He cleared his throat. “She’s the one who received the package. Opened it up. It only took a few days to… And her brother, Liam… Remember him?”
Reed didn’t want to think about that Podunk town and its backwater residents ever again, but those two were hard to forget. He hadn’t met their mom though. “I remember them both. The angry redhead who chewed you out about Rena.” Reed grinned, then the smile faded. “Is he alive?”
“Yeah, but he’s sick.”
Reed repeated Val’s swear. His arms flung into the air. “So what? What are we supposed to do about it? We don’t work on disaster management.” He intentionally didn’t look at Valerie. Nevertheless, he felt her stiffen next to him. “And we’re not a medical team.” He looked to Nor. “We can’t find a …a cure, can we? I thought you did like plant shit?”
“We don’t do drug development here,” Nor agreed. “Even if we did, it would be impossible in only a few days.”
“So, it’s not our problem.”
There was a collective inhale.
Reed’s hand lifted between the group. He blew out a breath. “I didn’t mean that,” he apologized to Rena. “I more meant that we can’t directly help your friend. We can give them advice, money for the hospital.”
“Well,” Nor said, drawing the word out. “The thing is. We are helping. We’ve been hired.”
“Hired?” Reed blinked. “Hired to do what?”
“There’s a preliminary vaccine already made. It’s not approved or tested on humans, but it’s better than nothing.”
Reed groaned.
“Meddling in unsafe medical treatments?” Val agreed, her brows rising high.
“And it’s in Greenland.” Nor gave Reed a pleading shrug.
“You are kidding me,” Reed deadpanned. “No. We are not going to Greenland to steal some random drug that might murder as soon as heal. No. You know better than to even consider taking on such a high-risk mission. I can’t even calculate how low the success rate is, let alone extrapolate all the potential repercussions to the business if we did succeed. No. Turn the job down. We can find them someone else to take the contract. Can’t she just reach out the researcher again?”
“There was only a return address. She’s mailed a letter, but…” He didn’t need to say that would take too long.
“What guy sends a gift without giving his number?” Reed sputtered drolly in place of yelling. “We can’t just leave dad here alone again. We’re just getting the compound back up and running. We don’t have the manpower to cover the whole place.” That’s why they hadn’t been taking on any contracts and he’d had time to work with Val. If they took the job, they’d leave the compound vulnerable. “And Val’s not allowed to leave the premises.”
Nor held up both palms. “We don’t all need to go. There needs to be a ground team here anyway. You can stay here with Tilly.”
“You gave her our address?” Reed’s jaw clicked as the rest of Nor’s idea sunk in. “No. Oh no. I know what you’re not saying. You think you should be the field team? No. No way.”
“And Rena,” Nor added.
“No. You’re not ready to run a job on your own. Especially across an ocean. Rena’s not part of our team. Not trained for this.”
“Hey,” Rena objected.
“Greenland’s not that far,” Nor reasoned. “And it has to be me.”
“No.”
“Unless you don’t want to be here with Val while an infected patient joins us. We don’t know how readily it transmits.”
Reed’s eyes narrowed. “You—”
Nor gave a sad smile. “I learned from the best.”
Reed dropped his head back and let out a long, loud exhale. “Dammit. You’ve backed me into a corner.”
“It’ll be quick. We pick it up and get out. We keep everything quiet, handle things here. No one knows what we’ve done. What could’ve been.”
“And the international fugitive? I’m not even thinking about harboring him here, which is another thing.” Refocusing on his brother, Reed addressed the important parts that mattered the most in keeping his family from breaking further. “What makes you think there won’t be a manhunt, a chase? What if he’s being watched for this very thing? Think of Rena. Most places keep an eye on their proprietary assets. You’ll be chased.”
Without blinking, Nor said, “No scientist. We’re not going for him.”
“What if the vaccine doesn’t work? Won’t you need him to fix it?”
“There won’t be time for him to. He’s not part of Tilly’s request. And I quote, ‘That sicko should’ve squashed that bug when I told him to. I hope he got the virus first.’”
Well that was something at least. Someone was being reasonable. “I’m leading the mission. No questions.” He was not going to permit any vulnerabilities when his brother’s life was on the line. And Rena’s.
Nor nodded. “We’ll just get the vaccine and the samples and be out.”
“More samples?” Reed’s eyes bugged.
Nor’s gaze slid away. “You need to have the virus to make the vaccine for it. He only sent one to Tilly as a safety net, a back-up.”
Reed turned and dropped his forehead on Val’s shoulder. She was being surprisingly quiet. He wasn’t sure if that meant she agreed with Nor or was just wishing he had popcorn while enjoying the show. She was probably wallowing in his anxiety. “Everything you’re saying makes me want to say no even more and give you an ankle bracelet,” Reed mumbled into Val’s sports bra strap. She didn’t push him off. “What about a robot? Or drone? Can we ask Henley to send one in? We don’t need manpower.”
“We don’t have time.”
“Reed,” Rena interjected. “They’re my friends. Please.”
Reed twisted his head to the side to see Rena’s heart-shaped pale face, frosty lips, mermaid hair, and weird irises. She was built for underwater camouflage, not sneaking into a federal lab in a foreign country. But she was right.
Like Reed, she’d lost a lot already. He was protective of those remaining, of Nor. He could understand why she would be doing all she could to protect her friends.
Val patted Reed on the top of the head, sensing his wavering stance. She was encouraging him to say yes, too. She’d go for it. Of course she would. She was all about saving the Earth and screw the risks. Hell, she’d sent her brother into a dangerous scientific institution with no guilt whatsoever to save Earth.
That was the purpose of Green Solutions, why his parents had founded the damn place, what Mother died for. It was supposed to be Reed’s goal too.
“Fine,” he surrendered, wrapping his arms around Val for comfort. It was a sign of how dangerous this decision was that her arms slipped around his waist, giving a reassuring squeeze in return. “Yield.”
Chapter Three
They moved to the central control room to discuss logistics and loop in Father—after a quick shower for Reed and Val, which sadly occurred separately.
Usually, Nor wouldn’t be part of these meetings; the bodyguard half of Green Solutions was kept isolated from the scientific research half. Before, it had been Father and Mother spearheading each of the branches. Now, it was a bit lopsided.
Father held his throne, albeit veering into a more figurehead role. He refused to rescind all control, though he’d really taken a step back since breaking into BSTU with his remaining crew and trying to rescue Sirena—who had already been rescued by his
sons.
It had been a bit of a failure—with Nor and Reed actually bailing him out of trouble with both the university and the government, who’d also arrived in time for the shitshow. Father hadn’t reacted well to that after losing his wife and many of his team. He’d receded into himself, started making more mistakes. Reed was quietly running ops without appearing to usurp Father, which made the meeting an annoying dance around fucking feelings—something Father had never prepared Reed to do. Nor stepped in for the final question.
“So, we’re accepting the contract?” Nor enquired officially, while unprofessionally rubbing Rena’s shoulders as she bit a lip nervously, chin dipped toward her toes.
Father stared at a screen over the shoulder of Smith, their best IT guy and one of the few remaining members of Father’s original team. He was reading a digital scan of the letter that Tilly had texted to Rena’s phone. He made a noise of thought. “Your friend is agreeing to cover our retainer and expenses?”
Nor’s fingers froze, and Reed cringed, speaking up for his brother.
“I was thinking this should be pro bono, seeing as it’s coming from a bunch of teens and a nebulous researcher who may or may not exist somewhere in Greenland and has no knowledge of any contract.”
Father twisted his neck to stare at Reed. “You’re suggesting we should go off record to meddle in something that should probably be addressed through official networks with the Greenland authorities?”
Father didn’t appreciate tiptoeing or lies. It was best to be upfront with him. So Reed replied quickly and succinctly with a, “Yes, sir.”
That had been his other reason for suggesting they modify the contract.
“In return for waiving our fees, I propose that they would not hold us contractually obligated to acquiring and returning with a complete and viable vaccine.”
Reed was careful with the legal jargon. If he left it at ‘acquiring,’ they’d be liable if there was trouble getting it back and they lost it. If he didn’t add the ‘complete and viable’ part, they could be held liable to providing a vaccine even if it was never right in the first place or it got damaged on transport.
Medicine, like many of the scientific products they handled in their business was unpredictable and finicky. In their experience, extenuating circumstances could expose a specimen to conditions that were destructive to the product—it could die, mutate, get mixed with something else.
Frankly, transporting scientific discoveries and designs was more stressful than moving a bomb. Not only was it possible to accidentally create a biological, chemical or physical weapon, but it was also possible to accidentally become a scientist in the process, creating something totally unknown from the original object. That aspect was already delineated quite carefully in their basic contract to absolve them of fault if anything went wrong unintentionally during extraction.
But this time he added ‘viable,’ because lives were directly on the line.
That wasn’t abnormal for them either; if a scientist was willing to call them in, it often meant lives were on the line—theirs for one. Additionally, if the research was important enough to require their attention, it likely had some kind of implication for human impact. More often than not, that was more of a ‘it has potential’ aspiration. In this instance, it was a direct ‘it might cure Rena’s friends from a deadly and mysterious disease’ directive.
Father stared at Reed for another moment. He didn’t need to hear all of his son’s reasonings behind the motive and the adjustments to their contract; Reed had learned everything from him.
Much like Val and Nor were Reed’s self-defense progeny, Reed was Father’s, which actually made him sort of a middle-man. However, he hoped he hadn’t inherited Father’s style of teaching. He wasn’t as pliable as Nor, but Mother had managed to infiltrate just a touch of her EQ, and being responsible for Nor had also given him a slightly more nurturing essence.
When they’d been trapped in the arid wasteland that was the middle of the country, Reed had been forced to care for an elderly couple, and though both had passed, that had been out of his control; he’d done what he could to extend their lives, which was more than he could say for Val.
She cared for her people as a collective. However, she was not a touchy-feely kinda woman. More hands off, clinical—a lot of bodily functions grossed her out, which, in retrospect, should have tipped him off from the get-go that she wasn’t Jennifer Tate, the biologist who’d helped grow Rena from cells in a Petri dish to the woman dating Nor.
Father pushed out of the desk chair and turned to Nor.
Reed itched to step between them. He made a fist instead. That kind of move would do the opposite of protecting Nor and damage Nor’s confidence. So, he stood still and watched, ready to intercede if his brother needed.
He shouldn’t have worried. Like a trial of studies that improved upon a design with each iteration, Nor was the best of the ‘Stanleys’ as they had named themselves for privacy.
“You agree with your brother, Norton?”
Nor kept his focus steady on Father and outwardly serene. “Yes, sir. I do. We don’t have the resources to promise more than that right now, not considering the request itself. It would be a chance to get back in the game without pressure to go farther if we choose to back out or something goes wrong.”
Reed smiled when Father nodded.
But then Nor carried on. “Because this particular ask of course adds layers of concern about—”
“Concern,” Father echoed.
Nor’s fingers flexed, and Reed knew he was holding back from running a hand through his hair. “Yes, sir. I’m sure I don’t need to list out for you the risks that this includes, such as—”
“No. You don’t.”
Reed tensed, watchful.
Father merely stood still as a goddamn statue for another moment. The Earth probably warmed another full degree by the time Father’s head dipped to Sirena’s, several inches below Nor. Reed’s lungs burned from the held breath and he took a miniscule step closer as Father considered her.
Father noticed, turning steely eyes on his eldest.
Reed’s breath remained locked in, and he braced himself.
The tension didn’t evaporate when Father turned away, stalking back to the monitor, his back to them. Reed didn’t dare breathe yet.
“Fine. But I don’t want anything to do with this.” Father laid out his stipulations. “If we’re going pro bono, it’s on you. Any extraneous expenses will be paid by you. Any obstacles, you will sort out without any detriment to the business.”
Reed noticed he didn’t say the people involved.
“I don’t want to be disturbed.”
Would Father ever consider actually retiring or if he’d cling to his post and fade into the walls?
“You may ask Smith to provide guidance outside of his regular duties; you will not detract from his work.”
Did Smith get a say in that? It didn’t matter. Since they had no other contracts, that was little more than downloading updates and ordering new supplies as they reconstructed their home.
“Agreed?”
Reed let out this breath slowly through his nose so no one would hear him release it. Val must have been paying close attention, though, because her fingers slipped into his.
“Agreed,” both Nor and Reed said, and Smith gave a thumbs up from the desk.
“Fine.” Without any other word, Father walked out of the room and the problem.
Yield, Reed translated with equal parts relief and daunting terror.
Chapter Four
“You’re in my way.”
Reed sighed and tempered his urge to strangle or at least toss Val over his shoulder and slam her to the ground. There was no mat to cushion her landing, and he didn’t want to really harm her.
“I think you forget how artificially inflated your ego is. It’s impossible to see around.”
Much. Maybe it would be worth the grudge… and revenge she’d undoub
tedly enact.
With a dramatic bow and gesture of his hand, he stepped aside half an inch so that Val too could stare at the screen with the blinking green dot. It was more exciting than watching Nor transfer chemicals from a beaker to a test tube with a pipette, but not much.
“Have you received the transmission I have diverted to your IP address?” asked a deep monotone over the overhead speaker. There was the sound of clicking keys. “You should be viewing a satellite image overlayed by the GPS tracking signal you provided me.”
“Got it,” Smith relayed, tweaking some settings. “Syncing both up now. Man, you should work in here with me,” he told Val over his shoulder, awe etched across his features. “Having government access to live data has been my lifelong dream.”
No one but Reed saw the spasm of jealousy twitch her lips. Probably because that’s where he was staring at that moment.
“Yeah, it’s a dream.”
Ace must have heard his sister. “Mom says to say hi.”
“Hi,” Val droned back.
“Ace! I think I got it. I need you to stab this knife into my hand. It should— Oh. Who are you talking to?”
Val snickered. “Hi, Henley.”
“Val?”
“And Reed and some guy named Smith.”
“Yo.” Smith tossed up a peace sign that couldn’t be seen.
“What are you doing?” Typical Henley, demanding more information. She wasn’t nosey, just curious to the point of losing a bit of social situation awareness. She and Ace were well suited, both more tuned to the programmable and digital than the living.
The question was probably intended for her fiancé, but Val answered. “He’s helping us with an issue.”
“An issue? Is Rena okay?”