Pandemic (The Extinction Files Book 1)

by A. G. Riddle

  “You going to have some?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “A promise I made.”

  “To whom?”

  “Myself.”

  She leaned against him, and they both stared at the fire and the water beyond. It was unseasonably warm for December, but there was still a chill in the air. Desmond wrapped the blanket around them, just in case she was cold.

  “You cheated,” Peyton said.

  “How?”

  “Ten dollars was the limit.”

  “Then I’m under.”

  She turned, looked at him.

  “The tree was free. So was the labor to carve it. The wine was $6.68. I figure three dollars in gas round trip is more than enough.”

  “You should have been an accountant.”

  The crowd thinned out, but the fire burned on. A few couples and stragglers remained, as well as the two park workers managing the event.

  The bottle was half empty, and Desmond could tell she was nursing it, wouldn’t finish it. She twisted around, kissed him on the mouth, a hungry, deep kiss that tasted of wine.

  He stood, pulled her up, and led her away, past the dunes and the tall grass where the sand ended, to a depression where the moonlight was dim. He spread the blanket out again and lowered her onto it.

  When he kissed her, she closed her eyes and let him lead.

  On the way home, she asked, “What did it mean?”

  “What?”

  “The fire. Each gift had to reveal something about its bearer.”

  The image of the heart, and her words—I love you—flashed in his mind.

  “The fire is how my family died. In Australia.”

  He told her how it had happened then, the words spilling like water over a broken levee. He told her about Charlotte, how he had come to America, about living with Orville, Agnes’s death, even Orville’s passing and what happened after, when Dale Epply showed up at the house.

  He never could have imagined the release it brought. Telling someone, telling the person he trusted most in the world, having no more secrets with her, it was like a weight was lifted, a weight he hadn’t even known he was carrying. He felt freer and safer than he ever had before.

  At her apartment, they made love again, slower this time.

  They lay in bed after that, staring at the ceiling, listening to an mp3 playlist on her laptop with songs by Green Day, Weezer, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, REM, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

  “I’m so sorry, Des. I had no idea.”

  “It got me here. That’s all that matters.”

  “Come with me tomorrow.”

  His first meeting with her family had been enough for a lifetime, but a part of him wanted to go.

  Despite that, he told her he couldn’t, that he wanted to be alone. It was a lie. He desperately wanted to be with her. He and Orville had never celebrated Christmas or birthdays.

  He tried to imagine himself at her mother’s house, sitting at the dinner table or by the fire, with her at his side. He couldn’t. It wasn’t just because he was nervous about the prospect; it was because of something else. A problem far larger than he imagined.

  He spent Christmas in the Airstream trailer, alone, a can of beans heating on the stove, an electric heater warming the tiny bedroom. He read library books and traded emails with Peyton. The tone in his replies never matched the warmth of her notes. That bothered him. He wrote and rewrote each message, like they were Egyptian hieroglyphics he couldn’t seem to arrange just right.

  Email wasn’t his only problem. Money was still tight. His meals consisted of beans and canned meat, just like the early days when he’d gone to live with Orville. He couldn’t help thinking about the grocer who had helped him ration his limited funds and made sure he had enough to eat. Knowing now that Orville had stashed a veritable mountain of cash in the safe inside the old truck out back actually brought a smile to Desmond’s face. The old roughneck was miserly and mean as a snake, but in the end, he’d had a sort of logic to him. Desmond actually missed the man. He also worried that he had squandered every bit of money Orville had so carefully saved all those years.

  After Christmas, four more of the companies he owned options in folded. They hadn’t wanted to ruin their employees’ holiday, but they also didn’t want to start the year wasting any more investor money.

  Each email was a punch in the gut. He felt the prospect of financial security slipping away. It focused him.

  He dug in, tried to figure out why some companies survived and others went up in smoke. It seemed almost arbitrary. He spent hours thinking about it, reading articles, studying books on business history.

  The week after Christmas, Peyton insisted that he stop eating canned meat and beans for every meal.

  “You’re going to get some weird digestive disease and die, Des. The obituary will say, ‘Desmond Hughes, talented programmer and lover of books, died of pork and beans in an RV park outside Palo Alto.’”

  He laughed and relented, letting her cook at least half his meals. They were a lot tastier. He also began staying at her place without exception; another one of her theories was that the electric heater was going to cut out in the night and he would freeze to death in the Airstream. Neither one of them really believed it, but in the days before New Year’s Eve in 1997, they spent every night together, and neither of them was cold.

  Chapter 68

  In the helicopter, Desmond watched the sun set over the mountains. Peyton was still asleep beside him, her head on his shoulder.

  There were so many things he wanted to ask her. Why they hadn’t ended up together—how they had lost what he had felt that night in Half Moon Bay. What had happened to them.

  When Peyton stirred, he leaned forward and caught her eye. She seemed to sense the change in him. “What did you remember?”

  “Us.”

  She looked away, down at Hannah, who lay still, her breathing shallow.

  Desmond gripped her arm. “I remember the Halloween party, and xTV, and that mermaid ornament and the glass heart and Half Moon Bay and that badly carved oil rig I gave you.” He smiled, but she didn’t return it. To his surprise, she looked away.

  Gently, he placed a hand on her chin, turned her to look into his eyes. “I remember us being happy. But not what came after. Tell me, please.”

  “No.”

  “What if it’s related to what’s happening right now?”

  “It’s not.”

  “Did I hurt you?”

  Peyton closed her eyes. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happened… hurt both of us.”

  What does that mean? He was about to ask when Avery glanced back from the pilot’s seat and pointed to the headset.

  To Desmond’s dismay, Peyton pulled her headset on quickly. He reluctantly followed suit.

  “Let’s talk about what happens when we land,” Avery said.

  Peyton methodically laid out her plan. Avery made a few suggestions. Demands, really, but they were all in agreement about the course of action.

  With that out of the way, Desmond focused on Avery, asking the first question among so many he wanted answered.

  “The people on the ship, in the hospital ward. What were they infected with?”

  “I don’t know. I was part of the IT group.” She glanced back at him, a curious, unreadable expression on her face.

  “What?”

  “It was… It was your experiment, Des.”

  “I did that to them?” Desmond felt sick at the idea.

  “It was part of the Rendition project.”

  “What is Rendition?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Peyton spoke up. “What do you know, Avery? Why did you rescue us?”

  “I wasn’t aware I needed a formal invitation to rescue you.”

  They started snapping at each other then, voices escalating. Desmond waited for an opening tha
t never came. With forced calm in his voice, he interrupted.

  “Let’s just… back up here. Okay?”

  A pause.

  “Look, if we keep fighting each other, we have no chance of stopping what’s happening.”

  He let another few seconds pass, hoping everyone’s nerves would settle. Then he suggested that each of them share what they knew and see if the pieces fit together somehow.

  Taking their silence as agreement, he went first.

  The two women sat quietly while Desmond recounted his story, beginning with how he had woken up in a hotel room in Berlin with a dead man on his floor—a security employee with Rapture Therapeutics. How he’d had no memories and no idea what had happened to him. How his only clue had been a cryptic code, a Caesar cipher that, when decoded, read, Warn Her and listed Peyton’s phone number.

  “Was the warning about the pandemic or warning me not to go to Kenya?”

  “I’ve thought about that. I think the warning was meant to keep you from going to Kenya. I think I knew they would abduct you, that you were personally connected to this somehow. On the ship, did they ask you personal questions—not related to the outbreak?”

  Peyton thought for a moment. “Conner asked me when was the last time I spoke with my father and brother.”

  “Why is that important?” Avery asked.

  “They’re both dead.”

  Avery glanced back at her, surprised.

  Desmond turned the information over in his mind. There was definitely a larger picture here, a connection he couldn’t quite make.

  “Conner also asked about my mother. She’s a genetics researcher at Stanford.” Peyton paused. “They wanted my CDC password. They drugged me. I think they got it.”

  Peyton recounted the rest of her time on the ship, being thorough, which Desmond appreciated. When she was done, he continued his story, describing how the police had appeared at his door just as he had called Peyton. How he had spent the next few days evading Berlin’s security forces while decrypting messages he believed he had left for himself. How the codes had led him to a reporter for Der Spiegel who had agreed to meet Desmond at a cafe on Unter den Linden.

  “The reporter said I was an informant. I had told him that I was going to provide proof that would expose a network of corporations and scientists working on the largest experiment since the Manhattan Project. He said the project was called the Looking Glass, and that I had told him it would change humanity forever.”

  “Makes sense,” Avery said.

  “How?”

  “You told me you were planning a major move to try to stop the completion of the Looking Glass.”

  Desmond studied her, wondering if she was telling him the truth. Was she really his ally and confidante?

  He was about to question her, but Peyton asked, “What happened to the reporter?”

  “Conner’s men took his fiancée hostage to get to me,” Desmond said. “It worked. They interrupted our meeting and captured me shortly after. I think it’s safe to assume the reporter’s out of play.”

  “What is the Looking Glass?” Peyton asked.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t either.” Desmond looked at Avery. “Do you know?”

  She glanced back at him. “No. I never found out.”

  Desmond sensed she was holding back. Was it because Peyton was there? Or was there another reason?

  “Did I know what it was?” Desmond asked.

  “Definitely,” Avery replied. “In fact, I believe your work was essential to completing the Looking Glass. Your piece was the last component they needed.”

  “Conner suggested as much, when he questioned me on the ship,” Desmond said. “Both he and the reporter told me that there were three components: Rook, Rendition, and Rapture. Conner said I had been in charge of Rendition, but I have no memory of it.” He paused. “I have seen all of those names, though: they’re companies my investment firm, Icarus Capital, funded.”

  “I think another one of your investments may be involved too,” Peyton said. “The first cases of the outbreak in Mandera were Americans—two men who had recently graduated from college. They were in Kenya to launch a nonprofit startup called CityForge. Icarus Capital funded them. In fact, the two young men had dinner with you. They said it was very eye-opening.”

  “How so?”

  “They were impressed, described you as larger than life.”

  Desmond saw a curious smile form on Avery’s face, but she said nothing.

  Peyton continued, unaware. “They said you were into some major next-generation projects and that you believed humanity was on the cusp of extinction.”

  “Why?”

  “The absence of space junk.”

  “Space junk? As in…”

  “Interstellar probes. Relics from alien civilizations before us, from around the universe. They said you told them the moon should be an interstellar junkyard, covered with crashed probes and satellites, yet we’ve found nothing.”

  “I don’t understand,” Desmond said.

  “They didn’t either. Neither do I.”

  Desmond leaned forward, silently asking Avery if she knew.

  “Hey, space junk isn’t really my department,” she said, eliciting a quiet laugh from Desmond and an annoyed expression from Peyton.

  “So what is your department, Avery?” Desmond asked. “How do we know each other?”

  Avery hesitated. Desmond got the impression she was asking him whether it was okay for her to answer in front of Peyton.

  “We’re laying all our cards on the table here,” he said.

  Avery nodded. “Okay.”

  Chapter 69

  Avery began her story with some background. She had been raised in North Carolina and attended college there, majoring in computer science and minoring in two foreign languages: German and Chinese. During her senior year, she was invited to interview with a new venture capital firm called Rubicon Ventures. It was located just off I-40, in an older low-rise building in Research Triangle Park. The office was small, the decorations spartan, most of the walls bare. Her first impression was of a boiler room operation set up overnight, not an established company. She pegged it as a fledgling venture destined to fold, and she had already decided to pass on the offer when the young woman at the reception desk showed her into a conference room.

  A middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair sat at the table, a closed folder in front of him. He introduced himself as David Ward, and said, “Don’t mind the digs, we put all of our money into our work.”

  To Avery’s surprise, he asked no questions. He seemed to already know everything about her. He told her that her unique combination of skills—languages and computer science—would be invaluable to their work. He added that her winning record on UNC’s tennis team was also a plus. That made her curious—just curious enough to ask what sort of work she’d be doing.

  “Due diligence,” he replied.

  She’d never heard the phrase, which he quickly defined. She’d be researching the startup companies Rubicon Ventures was considering investing in. He said they were high-tech companies with novel products, capable of changing the world.

  “You’d be traveling a lot. Meeting with founders and executives to hear their pitches and gather information.”

  It sounded utterly boring to her. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do after college, but she now knew it wasn’t “due diligence.”

  As if reading her mind, David said, “You wouldn’t be doing it because you like the work.”

  “Why would I be doing it?”

  “For the money.”

  That got her attention. Lately, she’d been doing a lot of things she didn’t want to do—for the money.

  He pushed a paper across the table. It was face down. She picked it up, read the job offer. A very strict non-disclosure. A non-compete. And a sum that raised her eyebrows.

  “If you decide this isn’t for you, Avery, you can quit at any time.”

  She
had grown up on a farm in North Carolina—a farm her family had lost to the bank three years before. Her father had always told her not to look a gift horse in the mouth. She was certain that the job offer she was staring at was exactly that: a gift horse. It was too much money—for work she wasn’t really qualified to do. Something was wrong here.

  Despite her father’s advice, she looked up, and with three words, she looked the gift horse in the mouth. “What’s the catch?”

  Her host broke into a smile. “Very good, Miss Price. You’ve just passed our job interview.”

  “How’s that?”

  “In a word, guts. You’ve got guts.” He focused on the pages in the folder. “You see, we do our due diligence too. We know you’re an only child. That your mother died in a car accident about four years ago, right after you went to college. We know that your father has late-stage Alzheimer’s, that his care is not cheap. That you’ve been paying for it, any way you can. You teach tennis. You work at a run-down ice cream parlor called,” he peeked at the open folder, “The Yogurt Pump on Franklin Street, and though you’re a straight-A student, you absolutely hate computer science. You chose the major for one reason only: money. You figure you can get a good job after college, earn enough to take care of your father, and one day, just maybe, live your life, which in your mind would involve a lot of traveling and doing something outside, something very exciting.”

  She stared at him, unsure what to say. Every word he’d said was true, but she couldn’t imagine how he knew.

  “One of the companies we’re interested in is called Rapture Therapeutics. They’ve developed what may just be a cure for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders.”

  He slipped another page across the desk: a research brief on Rapture’s latest breakthrough.

  “Does that interest you?”

  She read while he waited, only half-understanding the science.

  “So,” he said. “What’s your answer, Avery? I need to know right now. There’s one position. You’re the first in line, but not the last.”

  “You already know my answer,” she said.