Our footsteps echoed on the marble floor as we stepped inside, the back of my neck prickling uncomfortably. Modern-looking chaise lounges in the shape of half-moons were spaced evenly around the room on a fleecy white rug. In the middle was an artificial-looking green space with a live bonsai tree planted in the very center of the sphere. I followed the sound of trickling water around the room until I reached a marble fountain that rose up through the floor, forming a large circle. Water rushed up the wrong direction into the wall.
“Reverse osmosis,” called a voice.
I jumped, looking around for its source.
“Isn’t it fascinating?”
I turned my head. A diminutive man was standing across the room near a door I hadn’t noticed. His short hair and goatee were so gray they were nearly white, and he was wearing white cropped pants and a velour turtleneck. He was startlingly tan.
“Ah! Mariah,” he said, stretching out his arms and padding barefoot across the rug. “So good to see you again.”
As he reached us, I could see that his tanned, aged skin was much too taut and smooth, as though it had been buffed.
“I’m so sorry. I’m being rude.” He beamed, revealing immensely white teeth. “Mariah is my greatest work of art.”
“You cured her,” I said.
“Well, yes!” he exclaimed, positively delighted.
“I’ve brought you two new subjects,” said Mariah. “One recently infected, and one who is perfectly healthy despite prolonged exposure to different strains of the virus. Perhaps you can see —”
“Can you cure her?” I asked, throwing caution to the wind and stepping up beside Mariah.
Aryus laughed musically, as if I had told a wonderful joke. “If only it were that simple. If I cured everyone, that would rather defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it?”
I stared.
“Humanity needed a reset, Haven.”
“How did you —”
He waved his hand. “I know a lot of things. For instance, I know you defected immediately after your friend Greyson was arrested. Now you represent a flaw in the system. You should have become infected or been caught. Darwinism may have favored the selfish survivalist, but we live in the modern age. We are . . . refining the perfection of nature. We are culling the human race.”
“I know World Corp released the virus intentionally.”
“Very good,” he said with a smile. “So clever. Well, we didn’t have a choice, I’m afraid. Think of all the major outbreaks of the last millennium: the bubonic plague, Spanish influenza, HIV . . . We haven’t had a deadly outbreak on this scale in more than fifty years! Humans have gotten too smart. We have . . . outfoxed mother nature. That’s why we had to be just a little bit smarter.”
“The virus has killed millions of people!”
“Yes, exactly! Haven’t you been paying attention? This planet cannot support its current load — not the way we farm or transport ourselves. We were destroying it anyway. We wouldn’t have lasted another hundred years, the way we were going.”
I stared at him, aghast.
“Do you know why we ordered the mandatory migration? Do you know how we selected those we would save on our own little ark?”
I didn’t answer.
“People who respect the law. People who can function in a progressive society.”
“Progressive?” spat Logan. “You’ve wiped out a quarter of the population.”
“Only in the United States. It was . . . a risky choice for a test group; I’ll give you that. Nowhere are people more defiant than in America.”
Logan lurched forward, but Mariah held her back. “You won’t get away with this.”
“Look around you. We already have. The American people are resilient. They have rebuilt here — expanded the empire. Your children’s children will be reading about the acquisition of the New Northern Territory in their history books. It’s our Louisiana Purchase.”
“You took it by force.”
He smiled. “It’s the American way. We will find a way to live peacefully with the displaced Canadians eventually. It’s all part of the colonization process.”
“What about the rest of the country?” I asked. “What will you do once all the remaining illegals are infected?”
“We will humanely euthanize the ones that remain, and then we will rebuild. We have accomplished astounding feats in genetically engineered agriculture. We have oranges that can grow all year round in Minnesota now. We truly can feed the world.”
“And what about the people here now?”
“They are already changing. The way they work, the way they live, the way they consume . . . We aim to cultivate a society where every person serves a purpose, and every person is working for the greater good of the populace.”
“That’s already been tried.”
“Ahh, yes. But the key here is that they had a choice.”
“They didn’t have a choice!” shrieked Logan.
“Sure they did. You had a choice. You chose wrong. But at least now we know. Now we know you can’t be allowed back into the fold. The defectors are the ones who cause trouble, because the defectors have been to the other side and declared the grass is not greener. The ‘free’ are not freer; the first worlders are not more prosperous. The defectors are the people who bring societies down.”
“So what now, then?” I asked. “Why did you tell us all that? Are you just going to have us killed?”
Aryus smiled in a tight line, all pleasantness gone. “Oh, no. I am a merciful man not in the habit of taunting my prey. Don’t worry. You will serve a greater purpose.”
He walked over to the wall and pressed against one of the panels. A drawer opened automatically, and he withdrew a large, flat case. He opened it and pulled out a syringe filled with clear liquid. As he walked toward Logan, I had a flash of panic. It had to be poison or a sedative.
“Give me your arm.”
Logan jerked away, but Mariah still held her in a clawlike grip. “What is that?”
“It’s what you came here for.”
“Liar,” hissed Logan from behind her disheveled curtain of hair.
“I assure you. It will work,” chuckled Aryus. The sound made my skin crawl.
“Has it been tested?” I asked.
“She would be the first. The formula I used on Mariah was much more aggressive. It had to be. But it came with a number of . . . adverse side effects. This was a new form of the virus.” He turned to me. “Funny how nature works, isn’t it?”
Logan glared at him, unmoving. But Aryus would not be deterred. Obediently, Mariah cut away Logan’s zip ties, and, with surprising strength for a man of his size, Aryus grabbed Logan by the arm and twisted it around to eye level.
I wanted to scream — to stop him from injecting Logan — but couldn’t bring myself to speak. That formula could be deadly, but one way or another, we were not meant to walk out of here alive. And without the cure, Logan would certainly die.
I watched the liquid disappear into her veins and did not immediately notice Aryus’s eyes on me.
“You may be of use to me, as well.”
I snapped my head to him, my hands curling into fists automatically.
“You are somewhat unusual. You have had prolonged exposure to the virus but have never become infected, even after being bitten.” He gestured to the scarred bite on my neck.
“I’ve never had blood-to-blood contact with a carrier. That’s how it spreads, right?”
Aryus’s eyes danced. “You are clever.”
“Sometimes people get bitten, but they don’t become infected,” I continued, wanting to keep talking as long as I could. I just needed more time to form a plan. “It’s the carriers that are further along . . . the ones with the sores on their mouths. Those are the infectious bites.”
“Very good.”
“But how did you introduce the virus in the first place? How did you get it into people’s bloodstreams?”
Aryus was watc
hing me with a look of morbid fascination. “You haven’t worked that out yet?”
I thought of Mariah and my mother — the only two people I knew who had become infected without being bitten. It couldn’t have been from a blood bank. My mom didn’t donate blood and had never received a transfusion. The last time she had been to the doctor was —
“The flu shots!” I said. “That’s how you did it. That’s why there were so many older people who became infected the first time.”
“Yes, yes. Very good!” Aryus clapped his hands together once. “But you’re forgetting something. There were two outbreaks.”
I considered Mariah — remembered her wheezing in the old storage cabin. “Did you infect the supply of allergy shots, too?”
“You’re very smart, Haven.”
“Allergy shots?” snapped Mariah, stepping in front of me and looking at Aryus in disbelief. “But I was vaccinated. If it was a controlled outbreak —”
“We made a slight error in judgment on the second release. We had run out of the original strain, so we pulled the virus from a few living carriers. By then the virus had mutated, and we were unknowingly advancing an outbreak we couldn’t control.”
Aryus smiled. “You were my first positive case.” His voice was quivering with excitement. “You had survived with the virus for such a long time . . . you were the first to fight it.” He turned to me, as if letting me in on a very funny joke. “It’s fascinating.”
“That’s despicable,” I breathed. “Those people were all innocent. You’ll spend the rest of your life in prison for this.”
“What prison?” he laughed. “One of my prisons? The prisons with the PMC Xs on them? The prisons bought and paid for by World Corp International?”
“You’ll never get away with this . . . this . . . scale of killing.”
“My dear, people have been getting away with it for millennia.”
“No,” said Mariah in a low and deadly voice. “I don’t believe it was an accident. You introduced that strain knowing it could beat your vaccine!”
I felt a swell of satisfaction. Mariah had betrayed us, and she had thrown in her luck with the wrong person.
Aryus gave a sad smile. “Too many vaccinated people were defecting. They were out of control.”
“So how do you want to use me?” I interrupted. I was sick of listening to the psychotic ramblings of a mad scientist.
“I want to see if you have built up any immunity with your prolonged exposure to the virus.”
“You’re going to infect me.”
“Then I will cure you. You have my word.”
“And then what?”
“And then . . . we will find a way for you to be of use.”
A chill shot down the back of my neck. I was going to be one of his experiments. He was going to lock me up like Amory, probably for the rest of my life. “Please. Please just kill me . . . when you’re done with the test.”
Aryus looked at me for a long moment, and his tight face drooped ever so slightly. “What a waste that would be.”
I looked at Logan, trying to gauge how the cure was taking hold. She looked nauseated, but whether that was the virus or a side effect of the cure, I could not tell.
“How long will it be until she is recovered?” I asked. “Will you let her go then?”
“Patience, my dear. We need to run some more tests. For now, why don’t you make yourselves comfortable while Mariah and I chat?”
Aryus touched a small white button on the wall and spoke into an intercom I could not see. “Security.”
“W-what about Jared?” stammered Mariah. “He’s my brother.”
But Jared was staring at her with a mixture of shock and loathing.
“My boy!” said Aryus. “Can I recruit you for my military company?”
“Go to hell,” breathed Jared, his face contorted with rage.
Mariah looked stricken.
The door to Aryus’s office slid open, and three PMC officers stood crowded in the narrow hallway.
“What are you going to do with him?” Mariah asked, her voice shaking.
The guards filed in, pushing her aside. She looked the way she had when the rebels had marched her into the snow the night of the riots.
“Sir? The spare?” asked an older guard with a shaved head.
But Aryus was already pacing around his bonsai tree in the center of the room, holding a tiny pair of sheers to one of the branches. “Kill him.”
I felt strong arms grip me under my shoulders and yank me out of the room. I twisted to look at my guard, but he would not make eye contact. He was much taller with sallow skin and a thick neck like a football player.
“Logan!”
I tried to slow down so we would not be separated from Logan and her guard, but mine was too strong.
Then the man holding Logan turned his head, and I recognized him. He looked beefier, but his buzz cut was exactly the same — as was his stony, aggressive expression.
It was Roman.
The officers frog-marched us in single file down the rounded corridor to the elevator. We crowded in the tiny space, and I stood shoulder to shoulder with Roman. He still wasn’t looking at me, but the vein in the side of his neck was pulsing quickly. If he had an ounce of sympathy left for us, we might be able to take our guards.
Logan was too busy struggling against Roman to notice who he was. Her face was ashen and sweaty. Maybe I imagined it, but she looked worse than before. Glancing over my guard’s broad shoulder, I tried to make eye contact with Jared. His eyes flitted to mine and then back to the front of the elevator. That was as good of a signal as I could hope for.
We still weren’t quite evenly matched, considering Logan’s weakened state, but with Roman and the element of surprise, we would have one chance.
My immediate fear was for Jared. He did not have much time left, and we were being taken to different places. Too soon, the elevator slowed to a stop, the circle above the door illuminating.
Lobby, said the robotic woman’s voice.
The doors flew open, and we were standing once again in the enormous lobby with the round desk in the middle. The woman was still swiping away on her tablet, blissfully unaware of what was about to happen.
As we shuffled out of the elevator, I took tiny steps and focused on my breathing to fortify my nerves.
When I was ready, I didn’t yell. I didn’t think. I twisted abruptly in my restraints. My guard, taken by surprise, was holding me with a relaxed grip. I jutted out my right elbow and swung it into his gut with as much force as I could muster. He made a grab for me, but my movement had alerted Jared and Logan.
Jared knocked his head back against his guard’s face, and I heard the sickening crunch of a nose breaking. He squirmed free and brought his boot up to connect with the man’s groin. I tried to copy him, but my guard wasn’t badly hurt. He gripped me around the neck and spun me around into a chokehold, and I saw Logan trying to escape Roman’s grip.
Roman was much bigger, and he was more alert than the other two guards. He had known I would try something.
I threw all my weight downward, trying to wriggle out of my guard’s stranglehold, but his arm was crushing my windpipe. It was no use.
In the second it took for my guard to get me back under his control, I saw Roman lock eyes with Logan. Her face was a mixture of shock and agony. He wasn’t prepared for her appearance: pale and withered from the virus already, a shadow of her former self. I watched his hands release her, and she flew out of his grip and staggered toward the door.
Jared’s guard fumbled for the gun at his side, his nose gushing blood all over his spotless white uniform. He aimed it at Logan, who was closest, but Roman’s gun flew into his hand so quickly I hadn’t been prepared for it.
He turned to his right and shot the guard.
The woman at the circular desk screamed, and Roman aimed a shot at her head. Her scream was cut off, echoing around the room before she dropped to the floor.
As my guard fumbled for his gun, I tried to twist out of his grip again, but he was too strong. He and Roman had their guns pointed at each other’s heads as Roman backed quickly toward the door after Jared.
Logan turned, watching me struggle.
“Run!” I yelled, but she stopped to come back for me. “Go!” I screamed.
Roman took one look at me and grabbed Logan around the waist. She struggled, but Roman dragged her bodily toward the front door. My guard shifted his aim to Jared, who was passing through the first set of doors.
A shot rang out, but it was Roman’s gun.
My guard yelled, and I felt a spatter of warm blood on my face. Roman had hit his hand. The gun skittered across the marble floor as a stream of officers stormed in through a side door.
I wriggled free of the guard’s grip and shot toward the front of the lobby, but a second later, I saw a blur of white in my peripheral vision and I was on the ground. My head smacked the marble floor, and I saw stars. Struggling to get to my feet, I could hear shouts echoing off the atrium walls.
“Haven!”
I looked up. Roman and Logan were gone, but Jared was running in my direction. Then another shot rang out, and he yelled, hitting the floor several yards away. Red was spreading from his abdomen over the front of his white uniform. I looked at him, and all I could see was Mariah’s face. But it didn’t quite look like her. There was sorrow and regret and compassion in his eyes.
I heard another gunshot. Then there was nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Far off in the distance, I could discern a faint beeping sound. I was in line at the grocery store, and the cashier was scanning my items one by one.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Why was I at the grocery store? I didn’t feel well at all. I had no business grocery shopping. I was burning up, my head was pounding, and my mouth was so dry I couldn’t even speak.
Was I sick? I didn’t remember getting sick.
Peeling my eyelids apart, all I could see was the ugly square upholstered pattern on a white curtain in front of me. It was wrapped all around my bed, and the overhead fluorescent lights were much too bright. I turned my head and felt my range of motion obstructed by something on my face — tubes.
Enemy Inside (Defectors Trilogy) Page 28