This Vicious Cure

by Emily Suvada

  “Yeah, that was my fault,” I mutter, walking to the boxes of files. Lachlan always had a thing for keeping his notes on paper. He said it was the only medium that people couldn’t hack. These boxes look like they’re filled with paper files, and there’s a chance they’re Lachlan’s too, but I can’t open them. I look back at Cole. “These boxes aren’t mine—can you see what’s inside them?”

  Anna strides across the floor to join me but freezes in the center of the room, staring down at the space beneath the lab bench. “Holy shit,” she whispers.

  I follow her eyes. A glass box is lying on the floor below the counter. It’s shaped like a coffin, with gleaming glass sides and a control panel set into the top. It’s full of a bubbling, glittering blue liquid that casts rainbows on the floor around it. There’s a body locked inside it. A girl with pale skin and a bald head, wearing a silver pressure suit.

  “Cole,” Anna breathes, reaching for his arm. “It’s Ziana.”

  CHAPTER 23 JUN BEI

  LEOBEN STARES AT ME, HIS eyes wide and unblinking, the strap from the surgical chair cutting into his forehead. The lab’s fluorescent lights gleam on his skin, the tendons in his neck tight. “You can’t be serious, Jun Bei.”

  “I’m not going to kill you permanently,” I say, walking to the door to check if Mato is nearby. The hallway is empty, the sounds of Novak’s people stacking weapons into trucks echoing faintly from the loading bay. I swing the door closed, turning back to Leoben. “I just have to see your full cellular response while the instinct plays out. I’ll infect you, stop your heart, and then, when I have the data I need, I’ll revive you. It shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.”

  “You’re going to revive me?” he spits. “With your magical code? The code that isn’t working?”

  “It isn’t working because I need to run this test on you, but that’s not the point. I can bring you back, Lee.”

  He yanks at the straps around his wrists. They hold firm. A rush of guilt rises through me, but I push it down. It’s not easy for me to strap Leoben into an operating chair like the one in the Zarathustra lab. It’s not easy for me to ignore the sweat on his skin or the pounding of his heart. It won’t be easy to run the test I have to run, but this is what I need to do to finish the Panacea. The code won’t just help me—it’ll help billions, and it’ll stop this war.

  I have to fold my feelings away. Lock them down inside a box in my chest until this is finished.

  “Come on, Jun Bei,” he begs. “This is ridiculous, even for you.”

  I avoid his eyes, picking up the genkit cable from the cart beside the operating chair. “I don’t have a choice.”

  Footsteps echo in the hallway, and the lab door swings open. Mato slips inside, his hair loose and falling around his face. His mask is bright again, glowing with a line of pale green glyphs. He gives me an excited smile. “The others are being taken care of. Are you ready to finish the code?”

  I nod, unable to stop myself from smiling back. I wasn’t sure if I wanted Mato’s help to finish the Panacea when he offered before, but now I can feel his enthusiasm for what it truly is. He knows how important the code will be to the world, and he wants to witness its creation. He isn’t trying to take it away from me. He’s trying to help me perfect it. He’s here because he believes in me.

  I’m starting to understand why the six months we spent together left such a vivid mark on me.

  “I’m ready,” I say. “You don’t need to be here for the whole thing. The room will be contaminated with Hydra—”

  “I don’t care,” he says. “If it’s dangerous, I’m not going to watch you do it alone.”

  “This is madness, Mato,” Leoben says. “Surely you can see it—my DNA is the key to the goddamn vaccine. How can you risk killing me?”

  “I’m sorry, Lee,” I say, opening the glass cover over the lab’s airlock controls, hitting the switch to lock the room. The door hisses shut, a fan in the ceiling starting up. “If there were another way, I would have done it. I’ve already lost people just getting you here. This is the last piece of research I need to save countless lives.”

  And I’ll save his, too. He’ll only be dead for a few seconds. The resuscitation rates at that length of time are good. Doubt prickles in my stomach as I scan the room and see the fear in his eyes, but I force it down. I can’t let myself be weak right now. He’s going to hurt, and I can’t let his pain affect me. I need to finish the Panacea. Then this will all be over.

  “Airlock’s sealed,” Mato says. He flips open the medkit in the corner and pulls out an orange glass box filled with gauze and cables. A sticker on its side says that it’s a resuscitation kit, but it’s pre-gentech, like everything else here, and I haven’t seen one like it before. I roll the cart of glittering surgical instruments to the front of the chair, and Leoben stiffens.

  “What the hell are the scalpels for?” he spits. “You said you weren’t going to hurt me more than you had to.”

  “I won’t,” I say. “I’m going to use the scythe. It should be painless. Those are just here in case we need them to revive you.”

  He closes his eyes. His skin is beading with sweat, his hands clenched into fists. I look away from him and open a metal box. The lid hisses up with a puff of cold air, revealing a single red syringe marked with a biohazard glyph. A Hydra sample.

  This was the one thing I wasn’t sure Novak would be able to get for me, but she did. The syringe holds lab-created viral particles suspended in a gel to stop them from becoming airborne, and they’re not easy to make. It isn’t hard to come by infected samples—people spent the outbreak eating infected flesh and trading it at markets—but organic samples aren’t always useful in experiments like this. I need to be able to carefully watch how Leoben’s system reacts to the virus, and I can’t do that if it’s also reacting to a mix of human DNA and the billions of microorganisms that come with every sample taken from a person. The human body is messy, chaotic, and swarming with viruses and bacteria. This strain is sterile and genetically pure, and the solution is coded to destroy it if we send a decontamination pulse through the room.

  I tug a pair of surgical gloves from a box on the cart and pull them on, then lift the syringe and slide the cap off the needle. “This is just a sample of the virus,” I say, pressing the tip of the syringe to Leoben’s arm.

  He shakes his head. “You sound so much like him sometimes. I should have known we’d end up like this one day. It’s funny—the old man had to brainwash Cat to turn her into his daughter, but you’ve acted like you’re his from the start.”

  My hand trembles on the needle. I know better than most how strongly a parent’s DNA can shape their child—how hopeless it is to deny the traits that form your entire genetic foundation. It’s not surprising that Leoben would see traces of Lachlan in me. He isn’t just my father; he raised me. And I’ve never felt more like him than I do now.

  I look up at the warped reflection of myself in the room’s tiled walls. I’m standing over Leoben, a syringe in my hand, with an unwilling subject before me. Catarina might have been crafted to look like Lachlan’s daughter, but this is the real resemblance. There’s no denying it. I’ve inherited his coldness, his drive, and his cruelty. I’m going to need them all to get through this.

  I drive the needle into Leoben’s arm, sending the red liquid into his bicep. He barely flinches, his eyes clenched shut. The virus will swarm through Leoben’s cells, but his immunity will protect him from infection. Mato is waiting beside me with an ammonia-scented towelette and a biohazard bin. I draw the needle out and wipe the injection site until the skin is clear. Mato opens the bin for the syringe and wipe, then snaps it shut, an internal airlock clicking into place.

  “What now?” he asks.

  “I need to watch the cellular response,” I say, hooking Leoben’s panel up to the genkit. It’s already running a scan on his DNA, telling me that he’s infected and that his genome is unusual. Most genkits don’t know how to hand
le treating someone with chromosomes that have never been seen before, like the others and I have. I tweak the scan until it runs smoothly, and the results flash in my vision.

  “Okay, I have a baseline reading,” I say. The scan tells me that Leoben is afraid—that’s the overriding instinct controlling his body right now, and it’s affecting the way his cells are defending themselves against the virus. That response would change if he were happy, hungry, sleepy, or experiencing any other instinctive states.

  Including dying.

  “I’m ready to run the scythe,” I say, blinking the results away. “I’m going to bring you back, Lee.”

  “There’s no coming back from this for us,” he says. “This isn’t one of our games, and you don’t have my consent.”

  Something inside me lurches hard against the cage I’ve wrapped around my heart. I pause, gripping the genkit cable. I’ve always loved Leoben, and I’m losing him now. He’s my brother, and I’m hurting him. The look in his eyes feels like a blade sliding into my chest, but it’s the price that has to be paid. To move humanity forward, I have to sacrifice my own.

  I let out a deep breath, rolling my shoulders back. “I have the scythe ready.”

  “Wait,” Leoben says, his eyes blinking open, locking on mine. “If you can’t bring me back, tell Dax—”

  “I won’t need to tell him anything,” I say, cutting him off.

  He shakes his head. “Tell him not to kill you. Tell him he’s better than that. He doesn’t have to be a monster like you and Lachlan are.”

  I hold his eyes, forcing down a wave of pressure in my chest.

  “I’ll tell him,” I say, then trigger the scythe and send it into his panel.

  Leoben’s eyes flare as the code hits his system. It only takes a heartbeat for it to race through his body, for his limbs to fall slack, his heart to stop. The vital signs streaming from the genkit spike and drop away sharply, an automated alert blinking in my vision. He isn’t dead yet, though—not completely. He’s in the unknown space between life and whatever lies after it. His breathing has stopped and his heart and nerves are shutting down, but there’s still a storm of electrical energy in his brain. A hurricane of neurochemicals is surging through his system.

  This is what I’ve been waiting for.

  “Is it working?” Mato asks.

  I nod, my eyes glazed, feeding the results from the genkit directly into the Panacea. Leoben’s cells are still fighting the virus, still maintaining his immunity against the Hydra particles filtering through his system, but they aren’t doing it in the same way they were a moment ago. They’ve changed.

  “I have it,” I whisper, blinking the scan away. “Mato, it’s done—I have the results I need.”

  “I knew you would.”

  My eyes drop to Leoben’s body on the chair. His skin is paling, his eyes open and unseeing. He’s dead—not just dying, but gone. I look up at Mato, forcing myself to stay calm. “Now we need to save him.”

  Mato pulls on a pair of gloves while I log back in to the genkit, jolting Leoben’s system, running a standard set of shocks and adrenaline pulses to bring him back to life. His body shudders and his heart starts back up, but it only beats for a moment before flatlining again.

  “Didn’t work,” I say, my voice tight. “Let’s try a jump shot.”

  Mato flips open the resuscitation box and pulls out a syringe. The jump shot will ravage Leoben’s system and leave him weak for days, but it’s the closest thing to a cure for death that gentech’s ever created. Mato rips open the neck of Leoben’s tank top, revealing the tattooed scars covering his chest, and slams the needle into his heart.

  Leoben’s body jolts, the chair’s straps cutting into his wrists. I wait for a blip of life on the readings in my vision—a heartbeat, a breath, a flare of activity in his brain. Nothing. I stand frozen as he falls still again, my mind going completely blank.

  “It’s not working,” I say. “I’m going to try it through the genkit.”

  “That won’t work,” Mato says, “but this might.” He unfurls a pair of cables from the orange box and jacks them into the genkit, rubbing the needle-tipped ends together until a spark jumps between them. “These are flash lines—pre-gentech resuscitation cables. They force an electrical signal through the heart and keep it beating, but they don’t self-insert.”

  “Then how are you…,” I start, but trail off as Mato grabs a scalpel in one hand, cuts a line across Leoben’s chest, and forces the cables into it.

  Blood spurts from the wound. The incision went right through the mountain lion tattooed over his heart—my tattoo. Mato grunts, forcing the cables between Leoben’s ribs, blood staining his hands. “That should do it,” he says.

  I just stare at him. Leoben’s vitals are still flat, and I’m starting to feel like I’m standing outside my body, watching him. The room smells of blood and plague and nanites, and I want to close my eyes, to gather my thoughts and stop the pounding in my chest, but there’s no time. I can’t let myself be afraid right now. I have to bring him back.

  The cables hum, jolting Leoben’s chest, forcing his heart to beat. It thumps once, then beats again, but I can’t tell if it’s the cables or his own system coming back online. He’s still pale and lifeless, his eyes blank. I hold my breath, watching his vitals spike wildly across my vision.

  And then a blip of electrical activity in his brain turns into a storm.

  The breath rushes from my lungs, and the cage around my heart swings open. Leoben’s body shakes, his nerves firing wildly, his heart spasming. Mato wrenches the cables from his chest and shoves a pad of gauze onto the wound, holding Leoben down as he convulses.

  “More healing tech,” he says.

  “Okay,” I say, trying to reach for the medkit, but the room is spinning, and my vision is going black. The emotions I’ve been crushing down inside me are rising up in a hurricane, and I’m losing myself in it.

  “Jun Bei?” Mato’s voice rises.

  “I—I’m okay,” I breathe, trying to blink my vision clear. My hands and knees hit something cold. The floor. I’m going down.

  “It’s okay,” Mato says. “It’s okay, Jun Bei. I have it. He’s stabilizing.”

  I draw in a choking breath, kneeling on the tiles. The blackness in my vision is fading, but I can barely see through the tears in my eyes. Leoben’s face is swimming in my mind, along with Cole’s and Catarina’s. I’ve hurt them all. I might have lost them all. I keep telling myself that it’s okay, that I don’t really care, and that I’m strong enough without them. But I don’t feel strong right now.

  “He’s going to make it,” Mato says, kneeling next to me. “You did it.” He takes my hands, helping me stand. Leoben’s face is still pale, and his chest is smeared with blood, but I can see it rising and falling. Every breath tugs at me. I look back at my warped reflection in the tiles on the wall. Leoben is my brother, and I just killed him. What have I let myself become?

  “I didn’t do anything,” I say, my voice shaking. “I failed—you were the one who got his heart started again.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Mato says. “You got the results you need, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, my head spinning. I don’t even care about the Panacea right now. The results are sitting in my panel’s memory, though. The final piece of the puzzle. I have what I need to finish the code. Maybe once I’m done, it’ll feel like it was worth it.

  There’s a knock on the door behind us. Novak is at the glass with three people in surgical scrubs. If they saw me collapse, there’s no sign of it on their faces.

  “They can take him from here,” Mato says. “He’s going to be in bad shape until the jump clears his system. I’ll kill the Hydra sample.”

  “Okay,” I say. I go to push the hair from my face, but holding Mato’s hands has left mine streaked with Leoben’s blood. “I—I’ll check the results and see how much work it’s going to take to integrate them.”

  Mato walks
to the airlock controls beside the door, hitting a button to send a pulse through the room and kill the synthetic viral particles. They’re not airborne, but they’re everywhere—in the blood on our hands, on Leoben’s skin. The pulse echoes through the room—a hum that presses against my ears. But I barely notice. My focus is in my panel—in the code I’ve been working on for weeks. I’m merging the results from Leoben’s test into the Panacea. It’s seamless.

  I run a check for errors, trying to understand what I’m seeing, but they come back clean.

  “I—I don’t believe it,” I say, frowning. There’s no way that the code should be fixed already. I’ve been planning for days of work, outsourcing research to Novak’s team, sending the results into a supercomputer to run the final calculations. But they’re there, in front of me, flashing green.

  The puzzle piece I’ve been searching for has clicked neatly into place.

  “What don’t you believe?” Mato asks. The door to the lab swings open. Novak steps aside as her team runs in, unstrapping Leoben. One of them slides an oxygen mask over his face, and another hooks an IV into his arm. They hoist him onto a stretcher.

  “Where are they taking him?” I ask.

  “To a medical bay,” Novak says. The team lifts the stretcher, carrying Leoben from the room. “Don’t worry—he’s in good hands. We know how important he is. There’s a whole team ready to stabilize him there. He won’t be alone for a second.”

  “Jun Bei, what don’t you believe?” Mato asks again, taking my arm. There’s a fire in his eyes. “What happened with the code?”

  I watch Leoben disappear into the hallway, then swallow. “I thought the problem would be bigger. For the code to have glitched so badly, I thought it would be more… broken.…”

  “But?” Novak snaps. “It’s not? What are you saying? Did you get what you needed from him—can we start working?”

  “No,” I say. “I mean, yes. I got exactly what I needed. But we don’t need to get to work. The Panacea is done.”