“So sorry, madam,” Alicia reiterated. She cleared her throat. “Let me start from the beginning.” Alicia looked behind her to ensure the door was closed, then took a deep breath. “You may have noticed that no children have been born in Paragon.”
Isaac shrugged. “I figured people were just scared,” he lied.
“Well, they’d be right to be,” Alicia sighed, leaning her tall, thin frame wearily against the wall and depositing the tablet on the counter beside her with care. She swiped one of her elegant, ebony-colored fingers across the screen to lock it. “There have been babies born, several of them. They just haven’t survived.”
Isaac did his best to look as if this were news to him. “What do you mean?”
“It’s the virus,” Alicia explained. “They’ve all contracted it within hours of birth, and expired before we could find anything that would help them.”
Isaac gulped back his horror, remembering the terrible, agonizing death the virus had bequeathed his parents. “All of them?” he asked, already knowing the appalling answer.
“Every single one,” Alicia verified. And it was apparent from her expression that every single one had taken its toll on her.
“What can we do?” Isaac asked, hoping Alicia may have devised a solution.
“Of course,” she continued, “if we had a vaccine available, our first course of action would be to inoculate the babies. But we don’t.”
Isaac nodded, knowing this wasn’t strictly true – but at the same time, he could assume that the vaccine was the first thing the Engineers would have tried as well. He could only conclude that it must not work. He remembered Alessa saying once that, back before the outbreak, they would have to go to a special clinic to get her brother an inactivated form of the flu vaccine because his immune system didn’t react well to the live-but-weakened form of the pathogen in the normal version. Maybe the existing vaccine for the virus had the same problem – maybe it was just too strong for a young immune system to handle.
“Do you have any idea if Paragon has tried to address this?” he inquired, wondering if maybe the rebels had acquired some knowledge through covert means.
Alicia shook her head. “All we know is that they’ve had births too, and none of them have survived. And they, like us, have been keeping quiet about it – ironically, this is the one thing we seem to agree on, that if people learn the human race is doomed, we’re going to have mass hysteria on our hands.”
“Understandable,” Isaac reasoned.
“Anyway. I don’t have the proper equipment to test this theory, but from what we’ve seen with the infants, it doesn’t appear that the supposed ‘quarantine’ of Paragon has actually worked. Even despite years without any outside contact, every single baby born within the compound’s walls got sick within hours of birth.” She paused and collected herself. “So, we’re starting to think that maybe it’s not that we survivors escaped the virus… but that we might all be somehow naturally immune.”
Before he could respond, the door glided open once more to reveal Martha beyond it. Her countenance lit with a smile when her eyes landed on Isaac.
“Isaac, dear! I didn’t know you’d be here.”
A warm affection filled his chest for this woman who had become like a mother to him. “Just checking in with Regina,” he explained, returning her smile.
“And Alicia was filling him in on some classified intel,” Regina added.
Martha looked curiously between the three of them.
“I spilled the beans about the babies,” Alicia elucidated, sheepish. “I got a little excited about the ebola.”
Maybe it was just Isaac, but that seemed an odd thing to get excited about.
“Oh,” Martha replied. A quick warning look passed between her and Isaac, but she maintained her composure – she must have known Isaac would never betray that he had already been informed by her and Al of the survival crisis.
“I was just about to tell Isaac how even though we don’t have a vaccine available, there’s still the possibility of passive immunity to consider,” Alicia explained.
“Yes,” Martha agreed, “that’s what we were discussing when Alicia came over here to update Regina.”
“Martha remembered something, and I was able to find it in one of the old medical journal databases that are downloaded to Raptor’s internal servers,” Alicia pronounced enthusiastically.
Clarifying, Martha said, “If we survivors are indeed somehow immune, the hope is that that immunity would be acquired by any children conceived by us while they’re still in the womb. But it appears that any maternal antibodies which might exist in our bodies unfortunately don’t seem to pass through the placenta.”
Isaac didn’t know much about how vaccines worked – or gestating a baby, for that matter – but he surmised that maybe whatever form of immunity was endowed by the vaccine wasn’t, for some reason, able to be passed on.
“The second line of defense,” Martha continued, “would be passive immunity from the mother’s breastmilk. But unfortunately what we’ve found in practice is that the babies have all succumbed to the disease too quickly for whatever antibodies exist in the mother’s colostrum to take effect – if any exist there at all. It might be that, like the placenta, they aren’t able to pass into the breastmilk for whatever reason.”
“So,” Alicia picked up animatedly, “that leaves artificially acquired passive immunity as the only remaining option.”
“What does that mean?” Isaac asked.
“It’s a short-term immunization that’s induced by the transfer of antibodies, typically in the form of human or animal blood plasma. An antiserum,” Alicia replied matter-of-factly.
Isaac raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”
Martha smiled. “Alicia, I’m not sure if Isaac had even completed high school biology by the time of the outbreak.”
“Oh, of course,” Alicia mumbled. “Sorry. Let me think how to explain this.” She paused for a moment, pensive. “So, the way the immune system works is that there are cells in our blood – defender cells – that are able to recognize and attack foreign invaders. But sometimes, a disease is sneaky and able to evade those defenders, if they haven’t been trained to recognize them. So a vaccine does this training by exposing the body to a weakened or dead form of a pathogen. An antiserum is kind of like a helper cell that assists the defender cells in identifying those invaders that, before, it missed – the antiserum basically attaches to the antigens, the foreign invaders, and flags them so that the immune system knows to attack. That way, even without being ‘trained’ by a vaccine, the body can still defend itself with the help of the antiserum.”
“Okay, like a tagging system. That makes sense.”
“Exactly,” Martha validated. “So if a person’s immune system – for example the babies’ – isn’t already equipped to fight a particular infection with active immunity that was either naturally acquired from having successfully fought off a disease before or artificially acquired from a vaccine, and if they also have not received passive immunity acquired from their mother, which would be the next best option, an antiserum is an alternative form of passive immunity which might confer the same benefits. Albeit, they tend to be less effective than a true vaccine, not to mention difficult to produce en masse, which is why you don’t hear about them very often.”
“Why are they difficult to produce?” Isaac wondered.
“Well,” Alicia explained, “antiserum is derived by processing the blood of a person whose immune system by pure chance discovered a counteragent to the pathogen – what we call a ‘lucky survivor.’ And that was exactly what they did with the ebola.”
Isaac still wasn’t quite sure he understood, but he was intrigued – could this be the solution they’d been searching for?
Martha continued. “In medical school we learned about a terrible outbreak of the ebola virus back in the late 1900s. Ebola is a dangerous disease, very similar symptom-wise to our virus actually, whi
ch resisted any current form of treatment, and was extremely lethal – killing over 80% of the people who became infected.”
“But what they discovered,” Alicia intoned, her dark eyes flashing brightly, “is that antisera purified from the blood of a small handful of survivors was successful in treating the disease in other patients. Not 100%, of course, but it reduced the fatality rate significantly. Look here.” She picked up the tablet and swiped to unlock, showing Isaac and Regina the promising charts she’d been reading off when she walked in.
“So what you’re saying,” Isaac began cautiously, “is if you could confirm that at least one person was immune, you might be able to produce enough of this antiserum stuff to protect the babies when they’re born?”
“Potentially,” Martha deliberated. “But the problem is that antisera have a short shelf life, and to create one requires a decent amount of blood to distill down into a serum. Remember that an antiserum only provides temporary immunity – any person who’s not naturally immune would require another dose every time the disease was contracted, and if the virus is actually everywhere as we suspect… well, in this case, it would need to be administered pretty much continuously to keep a baby alive.”
That was exactly what Isaac was afraid of. If they were all actually ‘lucky survivors,’ then quantity wouldn’t be a problem – but Isaac knew there was actually only one true lucky survivor: Jo. And that seemed like a lot to ask of a little girl. He didn’t want Jo getting turned into a blood farm.
But at the same time, he couldn’t imagine allowing a helpless baby to suffer. And he obviously also didn’t want the human race to go extinct.
He wondered if an antiserum could be produced from the blood of people who’d acquired immunity from the vaccine. If so, that would get Jo off the hook. If they only needed enough serum to keep a baby alive for 6 months or a year before the infant was strong enough to tolerate the real vaccine, that might just do it. If that were the case, Isaac would gladly be a donor, for his own baby or anyone else’s.
His own baby. Wow. Isaac had always imagined he would be a father, someday, but ever since coming to Paragon, he hadn’t given much thought to those dreams. And now that he was, he found he needed to shake off a moment of panic. He could only imagine how horrific it would be expecting a child right now, given the state of things – so horrific, in fact, that he didn’t even want to think about it.
With any luck, he reassured himself, by the time he and Alessa were ready for parenthood, someone will have found a solution. Maybe it would be Alicia with this antiserum thing.
“And how can we find out if an antiserum might be effective against this particular strain of virus?” he wondered aloud.
He figured the first thing Alicia would do would be to try to distill plasma from one of the adults, not realizing they’d been vaccinated as opposed to being naturally immune. If it worked, then the whole question of how everyone’s immunity was acquired to begin with would be moot.
Alicia looked at Regina for confirmation. “I’m thinking we might want to consider quietly sending a mission to scout out a biomedical lab and bring back the supplies we’d need. And hopefully some lab manuals detailing the manufacturing process – it’s too bad we can’t access the web anymore, I’m sure instructions would have been readily available online.”
Regina had listened, rapt, through the conversation and finally, she spoke. “Now that you’re in on things, Isaac, you might be the perfect person to lead the mission. But please, use your discretion. It’s imperative you don’t mention a word of this to anyone until we have definitive information to share.”
“I understand,” Isaac promised.
“Alicia, why don’t you join Carlos’s mission tomorrow. Isaac is on the assignment and can assist you with locating a lab once the main objective has been completed. I’ll give Carlos a heads up that you two will be taking a detour on the way back to base.”
Just then the door swooshed open once again, and Sato poked her head in. “There you are,” she said, eyeing Alicia with a warmth Isaac noticed she reserved exclusively for her partner. “Ready for dinner?”
Alicia looked back at Regina, Martha, and Isaac as she took Sato’s hand. “I think we’re all set here?”
“Dismissed,” Regina said with a genial wave.
Alicia’s fluffy halo of natural hair followed Sato’s sleek black mane out into the hall, a skip in her step. Watching them made Isaac eager to get back to Alessa.
Martha turned to him. “Are you heading up now?”
“I was going to meet Alessa and then look for you and Al and Jo.” He smiled. “Let’s go – hopefully Janie grabbed Less already.”
And Isaac followed Martha up to the mess hall feeling lighter than he had in months.
Hopefully, pretty soon, he wouldn’t have to worry about Jo. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to worry about anything.
The weapons, the immunity, the rebels’ plans for Paragon – everything was finally clicking into place.
9. REPAST
Isaac followed Martha up to B1 and around the corner toward the mess hall, the swelling din of mealtime at Raptor echoing louder and louder through the level the closer they got.
Reaching ground zero, Martha and Isaac swung into the cacophonous chamber and scanned the dozens of long tables looking for their loved ones. A flash of bright teal sneakers caught Isaac’s eye against all the muted clothing and Raptor Defense’s signature gray tile – Jo. He’d helped her paint the shoes himself.
He pointed her out to Martha. “There.”
Jo was precariously balancing a large tray of food and headed across the cafeteria.
“That can’t all be for her,” Martha wondered aloud. She motioned to Isaac to follow and they set off, following Jo’s weaving trail between the tables to the far corner of the room.
Arriving a few steps behind Jo, Isaac understood what the massive tray was all about – Alessa was slumped at the table, her head buried in her arms. Jo must have offered to grab a few plates for her.
“Hey there,” Isaac called.
Turning at the sound of his voice, Jo unceremoniously clattered the tray onto the table in front of Alessa, who tossed her head up with a start, as Josephine threw her arms around Isaac and buried her face in his stomach. She looked up at him with her brown puppy dog eyes, beaming, and shrieked, “You’re here!”
“Yes, and so is your mother!” Martha called from beside him, feigning insult but smiling nevertheless.
Sometimes Isaac wondered if his relationship with Jo gave Martha some small window into what life would have been like had their son, Josephine’s real older brother, not died before Jo was born, fighting in the wars that eventually lead to the outbreak. Isaac knew what it meant to him to have Martha and Al as surrogate parents; he hoped that his presence and his relationship with Josephine could likewise help in some small way to ease the pain they’d suffered in losing their son.
“Hi, Mom,” Jo smiled up, never releasing her grasp on Isaac’s waist.
Martha wrapped them both in a tight embrace, and Isaac’s heart brimmed with affection for his newfound family. The dramas had proven good for this one thing, at least.
Albert approached the table, Janie trailing quickly behind. “There you are!” he exclaimed. “Aunt Janie and I have been looking all over for you!”
Jo squeezed her face from in between Isaac and Martha’s waists and stuck her tongue out at her father. “I’m nearly ten years old, I don’t need a chaperone, Dad.” Her last syllable had attitude to spare.
Al turned to Janie and rubbed his face in his hand. “I thought I had years until she was a teenager.”
Janie laughed. “Kids grow up fast these days?”
Everyone chuckled and took their seats at the table, Isaac sliding in beside Alessa, who had put her face back down on the cold, smooth surface in the interim.
“You’re looking a little… green,” he soothed, stroking her hair. “You sure you’re okay?”
She eagerly grabbed a plate of mac and cheese and began wolfing it down.
Martha looked across the table at her with concern, clearly assessing her condition from a medical standpoint.
Janie, meanwhile, was focused on her sister’s ravenous appetite, her eyes like saucers. “When’s the last time you ate?”
Through a mouthful of food, Alessa mumbled, “I haven’t today really. I was feeling too nauseous until now.”
The food seemed to be bringing the life back to her. Isaac was just glad to see her looking spirited again. “Good as your mom’s?” he asked. He knew Alessa missed her mother’s cooking – her mac and cheese in particular.
“Not usually,” Alessa replied, pausing for a gulp of water. “But today, it’s doing the trick.” And she resumed shoveling food into her mouth.
Josephine grinned. “Well, I’m on kitchen duty tomorrow,” she announced. “So I’ll give your compliments to the chef!”
“Kitchen duty, huh?” Albert replied. “Wanna trade? I’ve got a janitorial shift.”
Everyone wrinkled their noses simultaneously, and Jo said what they were all thinking. “No, thank you.”
“Alessa and I are heading out for a training mission with Carlos,” Isaac offered. “And we’re testing out the new guns Sato finally unlocked.”
“No fair!” Jo cried.
“Oh hush, you’re not allowed to use the guns anyway,” Martha scolded.
“Well, I should be,” the little girl puffed.
Isaac chuckled to himself – he had seen the guns in question, and they were literally almost the same size as Josephine. “Maybe in a few years,” he consoled her.
“If things go as planned,” Albert reminded them all, “in just a few weeks there shouldn’t be a need for guns anymore, let alone a few years.”
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