Origins (The Becoming Book 6)

by Jessica Meigs

  Brandt spat the toothpaste out and rinsed, then looked at his arm. He smoothed a wrinkle out of the medical tape holding the heparin lock in place on the inside of his elbow. Not for the first time, he wondered if he was doing the right thing. It felt like the right thing. The idea of helping others, even at the potential sacrifice of his health, was a noble one. At least he hoped it was. It was something he’d done every day during active duty, so he didn’t see what was so different about this. Though after what had happened with Alicia, he was fighting off doubts over his course of action.

  He liked to think Olivia would be proud of his efforts to do something with his life, to help other people, even though he wasn’t able to tell her what he was doing.

  Brandt was shaving his face when the sound of a loud bang echoed down the hall outside his quarters. Startled, he nicked his jaw with the disposable razor blade. A scream and the distinctive chatter of gunfire followed the sound. Brandt straightened, drying his face. His instincts shrieked at him, but he forced them to be quiet as another burst of gunfire broke out in the hall. Booted footsteps running past the door accompanied the noise.

  “What the hell?” Brandt said. He wiped at the blood on his jaw and dabbed at the water dripping onto his bare chest. He pushed away from the sink, tucking his watch into the pocket of his white scrub pants. He approached the door that led to the hallway, his eyes flicking to the narrow window set into the door. Several dark figures darted by, their footsteps sounding in time with the shadows. Brandt instinctively ducked to stand beside the door, pressed against the wall so he wouldn’t be seen from the hallway. His mind spun as he tried to figure out what was going on.

  Brandt contemplated going into the hall to find out, but he didn’t want to do it without a weapon in his hand. He scanned the room, knowing the search would be useless; the CDC’s doctors had already repeatedly combed through all the rooms, removing anything that could be used to injure the subjects themselves or others, just in case their medical regimen caused suicidal or homicidal tendencies. These searches had been stepped up after the events of three nights before, when Alicia had gone mad and attacked him.

  Brandt spotted a ballpoint pen on the desk, possibly forgotten by Derek the evening before. He snatched it up, gripping his shitty weapon tightly in his fist and resuming his study of the door. Sporadic gunfire from the other side was the only sound to punctuate the flashing light in the room.

  Brandt was hardly prepared when the door flew open, but he still stepped forward. He raised the pen defensively, ready to strike out at the danger coming through the door.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Michael! Stop!” a voice shouted. A hand closed around Brandt’s wrist, stopping his arm’s forward momentum. Brandt stumbled and yanked his arm away from the figure entering the room.

  “Fuck, Doc, you trying to get yourself killed?” Brandt asked. He lowered his arm and glared.

  Derek slammed the door and locked it behind him. Before Brandt could voice the question on the tip of his tongue—“What the hell is going on out there?”—Derek shoved him away from the door and across the room, dumping an armload of clothing into his hands.

  “No time for questions,” Derek said. He added a pair of combat boots to the pile. “Get dressed. Fast. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  “What’s going on?” Brandt persisted. He set the clothes on the desk and found the shirt in the pile, hurriedly getting dressed.

  “The pathogen. The one we’ve been testing on all of you,” Derek said. He pulled a pair of scissors from his lab coat pocket and snagged Brandt’s wrist, snipping the medical bracelet he’d been wearing for the past month from it. “It’s gotten out, Michael. And it’s bad.”

  Brandt was instantly alert. “How bad?”

  “All over the city bad,” Derek said. “It’s mutated. It’s spreading like mad and making people go insane. People are killing people everywhere. It started three days ago.”

  “My sister?” Brandt asked. “Where is Olivia? Is she okay?”

  “I don’t…I don’t think so,” Derek said sadly. “Emory is gone. It was sealed off by the military two days ago in an attempt to contain the spread. Everyone on campus…they’re gone.”

  “Jesus.” Brandt sank down onto the bed, feeling like the wind had been knocked from his lungs. Olivia, gone? He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He stared emptily at the wall for a long moment, then drew in a breath and asked, “So what does this have to do with me?” He put the boots on. They fit well, he noticed as he laced them up. He wiggled his feet inside and discovered the boots were perfectly snug and comfortable.

  “It’s got everything to do with you,” Derek said. “The government has ordered a stop to the testing. They want it shut down.”

  “Okay, so shut it down,” Brandt said.

  “We can’t just ‘shut it down,’ Michael. You don’t understand.” Derek closed his eyes. “It’s not that easy. All of you pose a significant danger to everyone else out there. You have potentially unstable versions of the pathogen in your systems. No one knows what will happen if you’re exposed to the mutated version out there. You’re not supposed to be allowed to leave. ‘Shutting the program down’ is a euphemism. They’re killing them all. They’re killing us all.”

  Brandt’s head jerked up. He looked at the doctor, who stood before him with his shoulders slumped in defeat. “All of us?” he repeated. “Even…”

  “Doctors, nurses, scientists, lab techs, everyone who has been potentially exposed to the original pathogens,” Derek said. He grabbed Brandt’s arm again and removed the heparin lock from the inside of his elbow with a smoothness borne of many years of practice. A speck of blood dotted Brandt’s forearm, and Derek wiped it away with the edge of his lab coat. “We’re not going to let them take everyone. We have to get you out of here.”

  “Why me?” Brandt asked. “Why not the others too?”

  “Because by the time we finish in here, they’ll all likely be dead,” Derek said. “What a waste.” He dipped his hand into his pocket again and pulled out a Beretta M9, handing it and a sheathed KA-BAR knife to Brandt. “Take these. You’ll need them. First opportunity you get, you grab whatever additional weapons you can find. Now get out of here.”

  “What about you?” Brandt persisted.

  “I’ll be fine. Go.” Derek shoved Brandt toward the door and moved to unlock it. “Oh, and Michael? Don’t get killed, okay? You might be needed one day.”

  Brandt didn’t get a chance to ask what in the world that meant before Derek was shoving him out the door and into the hall. The scent of smoke and blood was strong. He shook his head and started down the hall at a pace brisk enough to get him clear quickly but not so fast that he would draw unnecessary attention to himself.

  He cut around the corner of a random hallway, having no idea where the exit was. He’d only been through it once, heading in the opposite direction, when he’d first gotten to the CDC’s facilities, and that had been roughly a month ago. He stopped in the middle of the hallway, trying to figure out where he was, and discovered he stood in the hall cutting through the women’s quarters. There was a white door at the far end of the hallway, and he started toward it, hoping it would lead to an exit.

  Brandt paused in his journey down the hall when he came in sight of Alicia’s room, and he stared at the door, trying to decide if it was worth trying to get her out with him. However, one look in through the inset window was enough to make him change his mind.

  Everything was still in disarray, the sparse furnishings in the room overturned and scattered all over the room. The body of a soldier lay on the floor, stripped nearly naked, and blood pooled underneath him, oozing out across the tiles. A smear of blood ran from near the body to the bathroom, large enough that he thought maybe someone had dragged another body into the bathroom. He hesitated for a moment more, watching the room for any sign of movement and remembering how Alicia had looked and behaved last time he’d seen her. He backed away from the door
, glancing around him one more time before heading toward the presumed exit. If she was still anywhere near the condition she’d been in three days before, it wasn’t worth the risk trying to track her down and take her with him. She would probably get him killed if he tried.

  Brandt stopped at the white door at the end of the hall, straining his ears for any sound on the other side of the door. When he didn’t hear anything, he tried the doorknob and discovered it was locked. He twisted the knob harder, like that would make the door magically unlock itself just because he applied a little extra force.

  Somewhere in the distance behind him, perhaps in the direction of the rec room, was the sound of rifle fire. The muscles in his shoulders and back tensed, instinctively expecting a blow, and he returned his focus to the door, studying it and trying to figure out how to open it. He thought about shooting out the lock or kicking it in, but both of those options would cause too much noise and potentially draw too much attention to him. He was about to give up and start searching for an alternative exit through a preferably unlocked door when he heard something on the other side of the door. He froze, pulling the Beretta Derek had given him free from its holster and aiming it at the door, widening his stance out of reflex and old habit. The click of the lock disengaging met his ears, and then the door swung open.

  Brandt nearly squeezed the trigger, barely checking himself when he saw it wasn’t a uniformed soldier on the other side of the door but Jenna, the RN that had been helping Derek with his health care.

  “Fuck, I almost shot you,” he said, blowing out a breath of relief as he lowered the pistol.

  “I’m glad you didn’t, because I’m supposed to show you how to get out of here,” Jenna said. She held out her hand, glancing past him down the hall. “Come on, before someone sees us,” she urged. He took her hand without hesitation and let her pull him through the white door.

  There was some sort of laboratory on the other side of the door. Large black-topped tables that reminded him of a high school biology lab were lined up in rows across the room, holding what was likely thousands of dollars’ worth of glassware and priceless research. Jenna spared it all only a passing glance as she led him through the lab, straight toward a fire escape door.

  “Aren’t you worried the alarm will go off?” Brandt asked, eyeing the placard warning of that very thing if the door was opened.

  “Nope, not worried at all,” Jenna said. She pulled a key from her pocket and held it up. “I come prepared.” She inserted the key into the lock on the box attached to the door and turned it, then pushed the bar on the door. Brandt tensed, expecting the alarm to blare out, and when it didn’t, he let out a relieved sigh. “This leads out into the employee parking lot,” she said, holding the door open only a few inches. “I don’t know what things look like out there. I haven’t had the chance to look. Once you step outside the door, go right. If you stick close to the building, it’ll help keep you in shadow, because this early in the morning, the sun’s on the other side. Keep following along it till you reach the corner of the building. The visitors’ parking lot should be on that side, and your truck will be out in it.” She handed him a plastic bag with all of his personal effects inside it. “Here’s your stuff. Don’t ask how hard it was for me to get my hands on that without getting shot. There are no words.”

  “You aren’t coming with me?” Brandt asked.

  “I can’t,” Jenna said, her tone apologetic but not regretful. “I have to go help try to save some of our research and maybe a few of the researchers.”

  Brandt stared at her for a moment, and she stared back at him steadily. He couldn’t help but marvel at the courage and bravery in the younger woman’s eyes, the determination to help her colleagues at the potential loss of her own life. It was more than what he might have done under the same circumstances, even being the trained military man that he was. Unable to do anything else, and knowing that he wouldn’t be able to change her mind, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug.

  “Be careful, okay?” he said, and she nodded, returning his hug as tightly as he gave it. He let go reluctantly, taking a step back from her, and tore open the plastic bag, pulling out the few items inside and tucking them into pockets. Then he nodded solemnly and ducked out the door into the chilly January air, following her directions to the appropriate parking lot. As he moved along the outside wall of the CDC building, he started making plans.

  He was going to get out of there, and then he was going to Emory University to track his sister down. He would find out if she was dead or alive no matter what it took, because his sister was more important to him than anything else.

  Chapter 12

  It was far colder outside than Brandt had expected. Shivering, he cut right as Jenna had instructed and slunk through the shadows towards the visitors’ parking lot. He wished Derek had gotten him a jacket to go with the camouflage pants, t-shirt, and boots, but beggars couldn’t be choosy. He was sure the doctor had risked enough to get him the clothes he had gotten him. Besides, he was ninety-nine percent sure that he had a jacket somewhere in his truck.

  At the building’s corner, Brandt contemplated the part of the lot that he could see from where he stood. His truck wasn’t anywhere in that particular strip of parking lot. That meant he was going to have to actually go out in the open. However, he didn’t have a choice in the matter, not if he was going to get to Emory and try to save his sister.

  He peered around the corner cautiously, checking to see if everything was clear. There were several soldiers standing near a cargo truck close to the CDC’s visitors’ entrance that he vaguely remembered going through over a month before. They were all armed, and they were all fully outfitted in MOPP4 suits. He frowned, his forehead scrunched. “What the hell?”

  Derek had told him the pathogen had gotten out. Was it contagious? Was that why Derek had been so freaked out when Brandt had been in the same room as Alicia?

  The thought took him down dark alleys. The city of Atlanta had nearly half a million people in it, and the nine-county metropolitan area it served had over six million people living in it. His mind conjured up the image of six million versions of Alicia, raving and bloody and aggressive, running around the city, and he felt like he was going to puke. He shook it off and pushed the thought aside, focusing on more important tasks at hand than freaking out over horrible thoughts.

  The soldiers didn’t notice him as he scurried from the corner of the building to the first row of vehicles. He knelt between a white sedan and a gray SUV, waiting, counting silently to thirty in his head, trying to judge if he’d been spotted. When he was satisfied that he hadn’t been seen, he edged to the tail end of the vehicles, took a deep breath, and darted for the second row of cars. This time, he concealed himself between two black SUVs that looked like they belonged in a government fleet. He started another thirty-second count, gripping his pistol tighter in both his hands. No alarm. No sounds from the soldiers.

  Two more rows of cars to get through before he reached the one that his truck was parked in, and then he still had to move further down the row, closer to the soldiers, to get to the truck itself.

  “Not impossible, just difficult,” Brandt whispered. He took several deep, fortifying breaths and blew them out, then started forward in his crouched run again, hurrying across the wide gap between rows to get to the next line of neatly parked vehicles.

  He was halfway to the cars, right in the middle of the aisle and out in the open, when the first shout of alarm rang out across the parking lot. It was followed by the pop of a rifle firing, and he’d just taken another step when a bullet impacted with the pavement at his feet. He cursed and veered to the left, trying to put more distance between him and the soldiers, mentally swearing as the same move took him further from his truck.

  More gunfire and shouting erupted from the direction of the building, and Brandt dove between the cars in the next row, scrambling between them and then turning right to backtrack
the way he’d originally been headed. Keeping low, he jogged along the cars, trying to avoid the bullets pinging off the vehicles and desperately hoping he wouldn’t have to kill any of his fellow soldiers. He ducked behind a van, panting and trying to see how many soldiers were coming his way. More than what he was willing to take on, that was for sure.

  There were three of them coming straight across the parking lot, weaving between the cars in a reasonably direct line toward him. Two more were coming in from the left, slinking down the row of cars, and it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that there were more closing in from his right. All of them were silent. There were no more shouts, no more yelled orders, just a silent advance, step by step, toward his position behind the van.

  “Well, shit.” He contemplated raising his weapon and firing at them, but something told him that that wasn’t a good idea; they would for certain open fire the moment they saw him lift his sidearm.

  Brandt took his only real option available: he turned on his heel and ran. One of the soldiers started yelling again, telling him to halt, shouting orders at his subordinates, but Brandt barely heard any of his words. He was too focused on running, on bolting into the next row of cars and getting to the other side of them, and then on racing down the length of the row until he reached his truck. His keys were in his hand without him realizing he’d taken them out of his pocket, and he shoved the key into the lock, flung the door open, and dove inside. A single bullet blasted through the windshield and exited out the back window, sending a sprinkle of glass onto Brandt. He scowled, annoyed that his truck had been damaged, and jammed the key into the ignition, giving it a sharp turn to start the truck. The engine roared to life, and he threw it into gear and slammed his foot on the gas pedal. The truck lurched forward, sideswiping the car beside it and nearly running over one of the soldiers. Brandt sat up just enough to see where he was going, gripping the wheel tightly in both hands and racing toward the gates leading out of the CDC’s parking lot. There were military trucks parked near the entrance, positioned to block most of the gates, which were closed, but there was just enough of a gap between the two trucks that he could get his own vehicle through it.