by Teri Terry
“Wait a minute. I don’t understand about this SAR. What sort of special alternatives? Why were they set up in the first place?” Elena asks.
“From what I understand, to come up with alternative ways to handle terrorist threats,” Alex says. “Like developing weapons that might not be sanctioned if they went through the usual channels.”
“Weapons, like, say, an epidemic?” Spike says.
“It’s being investigated still, but it looks that way: that SAR was behind the experiments on Shetland.”
“And they could just do this without the government knowing?” I say.
“Ah, the government knew they existed, but the whole point of their existence was to operate outside of observation and control.”
I snort. “That hasn’t made it into the news.”
“And it’s not likely to.”
“But I still don’t understand. Shouldn’t everyone in SAR be under arrest or something now that it is known what they did? And why was SAR trying to kill me, and where are they now? What are they up to?”
“What do you mean?” Alex says.
“Are they still out there, hunting for me, for us? When Vigil attacked the air force facility, they were wearing what looked to me to be army biohazard suits, and they had some serious weapons. Where did they get them? And more to the point, how did they find us?”
Alex’s eyes open wider, then defocus. He’s thinking back to that day and place.
“Their suits looked the same as army issue,” he finally says. “And they can’t be easy to source without government involvement; you’re right about that. I’ll see if I can find out anything more.”
“Do you think SAR supplied Vigil and put them up to attacking us?” Spike says to me.
“I don’t know what to think,” I answer. “Maybe. And if Vigil is backed by SAR, can they find us here now? If they know Alex is with us, then checking this house would be a logical step.”
“Even if so, I can’t see Vigil coming this far into the quarantine zones, not with the spread of the epidemic down south,” Alex says. “Where we are has been written off—it would make no sense to follow us here. But SAR may be another matter: perhaps they’re misguided and trying to eliminate survivors to end the threat they created? I’ll see if there is anything more I can find out about them.”
Alex’s face gives nothing away. He’s detached, thinking. How much does he really know?
I shield my thoughts.
Kai and I went to Shetland because of Callie—Alex’s daughter. His other daughter. She’d been one of the subjects at Shetland—infected with it. She was a survivor, like all of us. They burned her in a fire, and she became what she is now—dark and silent to everyone but me.
I look around at Elena, Beatriz, and Spike. They are all intent, looking to Alex, wanting to understand, to work things out and fix them.
Is it wrong to withhold Callie’s story from them? Especially from Alex? She was his daughter.
Alex starts to explain more of what is known about the cause of the epidemic: about the particle accelerator in Shetland. He looks around at each of us in turn. When his eyes rest on me, there is something there, some flicker of recognition in him that there is more that I know; things I’m not saying.
When he finally asks, will I tell him?
Maybe. But for now I’ll keep Callie to myself.
Afterward, Alex suggests we go through all the information he has gathered about the epidemic and its spread, focusing on whatever interests each of us the most. He encourages us to try to think about the issues and mysteries we discover creatively from our own perspectives to see what we come up with. Then we’ll come back together and share what we have learned.
What do I most want to know?
How antimatter makes people sick: what does it do inside them? Maybe this will help me understand how things went differently with us. I read fast and faster, everything I can find on the subject, online and in Alex’s library.
Soon I am convinced of two things:
How people die makes sense.
How we survived? It makes no sense. None at all.
Again and again I’m drawn back to the very, very large and the very, very small—I’m sure the answer lies somewhere there, beyond the limits of normal perception.
After all, we’re not normal.
CHAPTER 9
WHEN WE ARE ALL TOGETHER AGAIN, I’m almost bursting to talk. “Can I go first?” I ask.
Alex nods.
“I’ve been thinking about what happens when people get sick from the epidemic. Matter and antimatter can’t coexist, so when someone is infected with antimatter and it spreads through their system, every time a particle of antimatter touches a particle of matter, they go boom, until there is no more antimatter left. By then the person has died.
“So there are two things that don’t make sense. If the antimatter is destroyed when somebody dies, why is there an epidemic at all? It should end when the antimatter is used up. And how do survivors like us get through this—why didn’t we die?
“I’ll look at the survivor question first.
“For example, say we’ve injected a load of antimatter into…Spike. He becomes ill, very ill. There is excruciating pain. But somehow instead of dying like most people, he starts to get better. Not only does he recover, he’s also got boosted brain function and other abilities he never had before. Somehow, the antimatter that infected him has changed him.
“But how?
“Then I thought of another antimatter mystery. According to the big bang theory, there was a huge explosion that created exactly equal amounts of matter and antimatter. With amounts of the two the same, they should have blown each other up until nothing was left. This didn’t happen, and somehow we’ve ended up with our matter-based universe. Why? Is there some reason why matter is favored over antimatter, both then and now?”
“Are you likening the human body infected with antimatter to universal evolutionary processes?” Alex says. “This is fascinating.”
I shrug. “With the epidemic, we are talking about a physical thing—antimatter. Why not go back to the big bang, another time when matter and antimatter got mixed together?
“Anyway, back to the first question: why is there an epidemic at all? It should be self-limiting. Once antimatter plus matter goes boom, there is no more antimatter left, right?
“But if you scan a survivor for antimatter—bingo! It’s still there. But it can’t be found, can’t be localized. It’s like it’s there, but invisible.
“Is that why we are contagious? But why doesn’t it all just go boom inside us until it is gone? Why do non-survivors who are ill spread it around as if there is an inexhaustible supply of antimatter instead of the stuff going boom until it is used up? This epidemic should be self-limiting. Why isn’t it?”
I sit down.
“Aren’t you going to tell us the answer?” Spike winks.
“I haven’t got a clue.”
“So, basically, antimatter should kill us, it doesn’t; and it is still there, but invisible,” Spike says.
“Yes,” I answer. “And this all makes about as much sense as why the universe didn’t blow itself up before it began.”
“Isn’t this fascinating?” Alex says. He is like a child in a candy store, unable to pick his treats. “And this is why the clever doctors and scientists decided that survivors must be contagious: they’ve got the stuff still inside them that makes people sick, haven’t they? Plus, there has been some anecdotal evidence—following travels of specific survivors and linking them with the spread of the disease. But what if they’re wrong—what if it isn’t quite as straightforward as that?”
“Specific survivors? How many did they track?” Elena asks.
“One that I know of.” Alex glances at me; he must know my story from the air force file
s. “There may have been more,” he says, and shrugs.
“What? You’re kidding me,” Elena says. “They incarcerated us based on that amount of evidence? A scan says antimatter; one survivor seems to be followed by the disease—that’s it?”
“It’s not very rigorous,” Alex says.
“We can do something about that right now,” Elena says. “Here we are, five survivors. Everyone, tell me exactly where you were when you became ill and exactly where you were from that point until we…er…got together at the air force facility—day by day, and hour by hour if you can, when you changed location. Let’s compare this data with the timed spread of the disease in the same areas.”
“There is quite a lot of information on the others in the facility files,” Alex says. “You can check them in a rough way and include their data as well.”
“All right, we’re up to twenty-three”—Elena glances at Alex—“twenty-four, that is, survivors.”
We all input the information into a table for Elena. Some hem and haw a little, trying to remember, but for me the places and dates are all engraved stark in my memory—the moment I realized I must be a carrier, because death followed everywhere I went hours later.
It’s late, but Elena wants to make a start. Alex stays to help her with the facility files, and the rest of us shuffle off to bed.
* * *
I can’t switch off. I can’t stop thinking.
Matter and antimatter: annihilation should follow. Why doesn’t it?
My mind is spinning around and around, but I can’t settle on just what it is about it all that is bugging me.
But the answer must be within all of us: within me. It has to be. Whatever it is wouldn’t show on their scans, not in a way they could interpret anyhow—it’s too small.
I reach inside, zooming in and in again, but I don’t meddle with my hair or any other distractions. This time I go swiftly from blood to brain.
Deeper and stiller and smaller: there is something there. Something I think I sensed once before—when I was healing my ear—something dark. Something I can’t see or touch or feel. There’s a barrier, or a cushion—something wrapped around inside me—something that I can’t penetrate.
It is part of me and alien, both at the same time.
CHAPTER 10
ELENA SUMMONS US FROM OUR SLEEP. Come now, this can’t wait, she broadcasts, and we all stumble downstairs, bleary-eyed.
She’s twitching with excitement—nerves—something. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not quite dawn,” she says. “But I’d have exploded if I’d had to keep this to myself until a more reasonable hour.”
“What is it?” Spike says.
“Look. Look.” She’s pulling tables and graphs up on the large wall screen, and we crowd in around her.
“Here we are on the map,” she says. “I’ve entered our locations and dates; each of us is represented by a different color. The spread of the epidemic is in black. Now watch.”
She does one of us at a time, beginning with herself. She’s in a center of the epidemic when she becomes ill, but then when she leaves, it doesn’t follow her.
Next, Spike.
And now I learn he’s from Lincoln: it’s strange how we know so much about each other and so little at the same time. The epidemic doesn’t follow him either.
“I don’t understand!” I say. My head is hurting, my new skin feels itchy and wrong, and I don’t want to listen anymore.
As if he knows, Spike’s hand is there on my shoulder.
Beatriz is the same as the others; Alex too: the epidemic didn’t follow either of them.
Everyone is talking at once. What does this mean?
How could they have gotten things so wrong?
“We’re not carriers,” Alex says. “That’s what it means.” There is no surprise in him as he says it. I’m shocked when I realize that he already knew—or suspected—as much.
I study his aura. I feel that Alex is speaking the truth, as he believes it. I look around to each of the others—they believe him too—and of all of them, only Spike’s aura is laced with empathy. He understands. He knows what I gave up.
But just because they believe it doesn’t make it true.
I shake my head. No, it can’t be, it can’t…
They’re wrong. With an effort of will, I control my breathing, calm my pulse.
“What about Shay?” Alex asks. “Did you input her information?”
“Yes.” Elena hesitates, then calls the next group of data points to the screen. From Killin to Aviemore to Inverness to Elgin, my movements match perfectly with the subsequent spread of the epidemic, everywhere I went.
“How can this be?” I say. “How can I be the only one who is a carrier?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Spike says. “There are other places you haven’t been that carriers must have been involved, due to the fast spread of the epidemic. Like Newcastle. And more recently, Glasgow. London.”
“Where did you go from Elgin?” Elena asks.
“Shetland. I went to Shetland. I turned myself in to the air force there, as I’d worked out what you’ve just shown—that I was a carrier. And I told them so.”
“And they believed you. And so all survivors were hunted by the authorities—and groups like Vigil—from that point on,” Alex says. And they’re all looking at me, and it is in their auras—the realization. All those who’ve died—is it my fault? Not just the ones who died from the epidemic that caught it from me. But survivors who have been persecuted and murdered too? SAR was hunting survivors before then, like when they tried to kill me in Killin. But once I turned myself in to the air force, from that point on it had the official sanction of the government.
I wrap my arms around myself, not wanting to think it through, not wanting to understand. How could it be just me who is a carrier?
“And then it was confirmed on Shetland with the outbreak at the air force,” Alex says.
“What?” I say.
“There was an outbreak at the air force base after you left. Other than a few immune, everyone died.”
“No. No way. I was suited before I got anywhere near anybody, and the whole time I was at the air force base I was in isolation or suited. It couldn’t have been me that infected them. It must have been somebody else that brought it in.”
“There hadn’t been any arrivals in the days before the outbreak besides you.”
“What could be different about Shay that makes her a carrier? We must work this out,” Elena says.
The others feel relief—they aren’t carriers.
Pity.
Confusion.
“This really doesn’t make sense to me,” Spike says. “We all had the illness; we all survived. There weren’t any differences in our scans, were there?”
“No. I’ve been through them all,” Elena answers.
“So why would one of us be a carrier and the others not?” Spike says.
I frown and run the animation Elena did of me again. It is clear that the illness followed our movements until we got to Shetland.
And then it spread to the air force base.
If they didn’t get it from me, then how?
Alex said no one else had arrived on the island. Well, except for us—Kai and me. And Kai is immune; they’ve proved the immune aren’t carriers.
The only other one with us was…Callie.
Shields up, eyes closed, I go through it all. Everywhere Callie went. The flu started in Shetland, then moved on to Aberdeen—like Callie did. Then she traveled by train through Edinburgh to Newcastle—again, the flu followed her. I met Kai in Edinburgh—I assume she was with him—and soon after that I was ill. They went to Killin to look for me: Killin was later quarantined, and nearly everyone died. For the whole path of our travels after that she was there. And she would have gone looki
ng for me when I left her with Kai on Shetland—everywhere, including the air force base.
It all fits. But this is madness.
If Callie was the carrier all along, instead of me—no. Then I left Kai for nothing.
The air has been kicked out of me—or the will to breathe. Everything stops.
Beatriz’s small hand slips into mine, and I open my eyes. “Are you all right, Shay? Your colors don’t look so good.”
Elena and Spike’s concern washes against me.
I’m breathing again now, but more like hyperventilating; too fast, in, out, in, out, and things are spinning. It can’t be, it can’t…
“None of this is your fault, Shay. You didn’t know. How could you?” Spike says. But he thinks I’m upset about being a carrier; not about not being one.
* * *
Later I’m pacing in my room.
Everything is tumbling around in my head as if the answers I want are almost there, but I can’t quite line them up in the right order.
But there is one thing I am certain of: I can’t keep Callie to myself, not any longer.
Callie was Alex’s daughter. I have to tell him first.
CHAPTER 11
I FIND ALEX, STILL AWAKE, DOWNSTAIRS. He looks up and smiles, like he isn’t surprised to see me.
“Alex, do you know where Kai is, where he has been? You were hiding something when I asked you before. Tell me what you know.”
“I couldn’t answer you at the facility; it was all being recorded. I was trying to trace him for my ex-wife, his mother. There is evidence he traveled to Glasgow under another name. More recently he may have been seen in London, but nothing since. I don’t know where he is now.”
“Glasgow—London. Two supposedly safe places the epidemic has spread to recently.” And assuming Callie was with Kai—and I know she’d never leave him, so she must have been—she was there, on the spot, again.