“That still doesn’t explain your guy,” I pointed out when mulling over the implications just got too painful. “He didn’t go full-on raving lunatic from one second to the next over nothing.” At least I hoped that there had been a well-balanced trigger for that built in. “And how come he was infected in the first place? He didn’t bleed or look like he was running a fever.” Even a lighter case might have yielded the same end result, but there should have been some symptoms.
Exhaling slowly, Nate shrugged.
“He didn’t catch it in here, if that’s what you mean. He was a carrier for many years.”
Right when my mind was ready to leave crap-your-pants territory, he had to pull me right back to square one.
“Carrier? Are you fucking kidding me? There’s a dormant version of this shit out there, too?”
“Only the dormant version, as you call it,” he replied, a little too unperturbed to put me back at ease.
“How so?” And where did that little tidbit come from?
“It is what the virus was initially developed as, or at least the first and only useful application.”
“Excuse me?” I didn’t need to shout to convey just how insane that concept was. Nate had clearly anticipated that reaction, judging from the almost lazy way he tried to cross his arms over his chest, greatly hindered by the suit.
“In the dormant, inactivated form, the progression of the outbreak is much more controlled, and the symptoms less severe.”
“Define ‘less severe’?” I interrupted him.
“Only one in two dies, and those who survive don’t turn into raving monsters. There are even benefits.”
That anyone could willfully infect someone with anything like this was simply beyond me—but at the same time, my curiosity was piqued.
“What benefits?”
“To name only a few—increased stamina and strength, better healing, and an almost perfect immunity to most diseases and many poisons.”
“Because the immune system is active and on high alert, eliminating everything else that might intrude into the closed system,” I murmured, earning myself a sharp look from Nate. “Like worms and allergies. In those places in the third world were people still suffer from the usual parasites that our standards of hygiene have eradicated, people don’t have allergies. Their immune system is too busy to auto-activate.”
I just got a shrug in return. As he’d said, he wasn’t the scientist.
“But what about the physical perks?” I asked, unable to explain that.
“Light neural damage,” he provided. “You can drive yourself harder and ignore pain better when you don’t actually feel your muscles hurt. As for the healing capabilities, it’s probably a mix of both. You’re asking the wrong guy about the ‘hows’ here.”
I thought about that for a moment. “So your guy was infected with this, what, super soldier thing?” It was the logical conclusion, particularly considering what I figured had been his military background. Not that I liked that implication one bit.
Nate rightly guessed the lines my thoughts had followed.
“They called it a serum,” he provided succinctly, as if that made anything better.
“Did all of you guys get dosed with that?” My heart sped up painfully at the very idea, but he shook his head without hesitating for a second.
“No. I didn’t even know that Jones got it. And no, I have no fucking idea what triggered the change. For all I know, he could have been a ticking time bomb for years and McManus was one unlucky bastard to be standing right next to him at the wrong time.”
It wasn’t a satisfying answer, but at least one that was a lot more plausible than insta-rabies from sugar overload.
Silence fell, and after letting out a long breath, Nate glanced at the exit to this hidden chamber of morbidity, but looked back to me instead of leaving immediately.
“I thought you deserved to know, particularly as you’re one observant tough cookie. We didn’t include the last part of the vid in the transmission that we’re going to send out, and I didn’t want to show you upstairs because I’m generally not a fan of making everyone I need to rely on paranoid that they are going to get chomped on any moment now for whatever reason. Maybe once this is over and we get out of here alive and in one piece, you can help me track down the missing answers. But this here,” he gestured at the room around us, “is a dead end. We’ve secured what we could from the company servers, maybe we’ll find more answers there. Maybe what we caused here creates enough of a stir to make another whistle-blower come out of hiding, if only to let me continue to do their dirty work for them. But after seeing that video, after learning what you know now, can you honestly condemn me for my actions?
“We didn’t kill a single employee of this company, even if some might have had it coming. Your friend killed herself, likely because she was too petty to give me the satisfaction of finally knowing why my brother had to die. If you ask me, it’s likely that she was jealous of him, or some shit. She certainly didn’t pursue world domination after she killed him. I’m just a trained monkey with a gun who’s good at motivating people and getting shit done. I need someone on my team who can be the brain to my brawn. The conclusions you jumped to from what little I know by heart and could tell you were what I needed weeks to work out for myself, months even in some places. You were smart enough that they wanted you on board for their project, even if that might be a double-edged sword for you now. Be smart enough with me to uncover just how deep this goes. If for no other reason, then because you’ll have a target on your back the moment anyone finds out that you got wind of this project here.”
I hadn’t expected that rousing speech, but that last part slammed me right back onto the bottom of reality.
“Which is entirely your fault because you made me pretty much confirm that in front of that damn camera!” I accused.
He shrugged. “All’s fair in love and war. Might as well enjoy yourself while you follow up on the inevitable.” That came with such a sappy, completely out-of-place grin that it made me laugh in spite of myself.
“You’re such an ass!”
“No objections there,” Nate admitted, looking over to the exit again. “Why not discuss all my short-comings after we’re out of here? I have a lot of faith in my calculations, but I’d rather not spend any more time right next to a shit-ton of explosives in one of the most hostile environments man has ever built.”
I had a lot of objections, but that was not one of them.
“Lead the way,” I offered, already reaching for my air hose. With all the knowledge that was now weighing heavily on me, being blown up sounded almost rudimentary, but now that my mind had been reminded of this much less abstract danger, I already felt that underlying nausea return that had been riding shotgun the entire time in the hot lab. Nate agreed and preceded me back into the lab proper before he turned toward the central corridor.
Mostly to combat that rising sense of dread, I let my thoughts come freely as they ran to my head. “So this is not the first time you've done something like this?” I asked, nodding toward the stack of explosives as we passed the viral vault—which reminded me of something else, making my pulse spike for an entirely different reason that suddenly sent alarms of urgency to go off in my mind. Taking the next step as slowly and deliberately as the last one was a feat.
Nate sent me a bright smile that worked well even through the visor of his suit.
“I have both the academic and practical qualifications to blow stuff up, and have done it many times before. As for this lab in particular, we've built a similar setup using materials as closely resembling what we knew are in use here, and we blew that up twice for practice. Does that answer your question?”
“In more detail than I ever needed to know.”
He laughed, taking a last look around before he zeroed in on the door to the chemical showers.
“Then let's get out of here, unless you need another moment? Getting sentimental all of
a sudden?”
That last comment made me go still for a second when I felt like a deer caught in the headlights, but then I realized that he was joking. Shaking my head, I tried to mentally relax and keep my galloping heart in check before stepping up to the air lock doors.
“Nope, I can't wait to get into the shower with you. Those minutes have proven to be the highlight of my completely screwed-up day.”
He laughed again, and when I looked back, I saw that now he had a slight swagger in his gait. Relaxed, happy to have the worst of the work behind him, at ease to continue bantering with me. Perfect. I wished I could manage that.
“I bet they are.”
The air lock door swung open easily enough, and I paused just inside it.
“I guess there's not a chance in hell that you'll let me do this alone?”
“Nope. Wouldn't want to deprive you.” He shook his head, already moving toward the door as I stepped to the side to let him through.
The voice at the back of my mind screamed for me to stand down and let his plan unfold, trust in the one thing that he clearly was an expert in—planning. But with what he’d revealed to me in the hidden lab, I just couldn't. His plan was good, but not good enough.
For the past fifteen hours I had done nothing but be a passive, if somewhat elusive at times, victim. I'd run, I'd hidden, I'd only fought back as a last resort. I'd let myself be bullied and intimidated, and I was so sick of it that it made me physically ill. There was still some doubt remaining in me about his mission, but not in the knowledge he’d shared with me. I didn’t need to know every minute detail to know enough.
“Why didn't you just ask me?” I demanded, my voice hollow. For a moment I wondered if I'd said too much, but he took my question for exactly what it sounded like.
“To join us, help us, before we took over?” Nate guessed. I nodded. He caught my gaze and held it. “It might sound sentimental, but I figured that I owed it to my brother's last message to the world to leave you with the one saving grace that will let you walk out of this unscathed, if you can lie just a little bit about what exactly you found in his data. How you said it in the video might just be enough to throw them off your trail. Plausible deniability.”
His brows drew together when I just kept staring back at him. I didn't know how to reply. It was the last thing I'd expected, but knowing about him what I did now, it made perfect sense. It also underscored that the insane idea brewing inside my head that almost petrified me with fear had me on the right track.
“What, disappointed?” he jibed, then added a nasty chuckle. “Trust me, it will be the only thing I ever do to incidentally protect you if you choose not to side with me.”
“I guess I should be thanking you now?” I replied, then took two steps forward, bringing me to a stop between him and the door.
He snorted, but the sound held only a little derision and a lot of humor.
“No. Actually, don't, or that last remaining shred of decency deep down inside of me will make me feel an iota of guilt.”
“Well, then I won't.”
He smirked, which turned into a very typical male grin when I stepped even closer to him, my gaze holding his.
Then I punched both hands into his shoulders, making him lose his balance and stagger back, so I could whip around and launch myself through the still open air lock, back into the lab. My searching hand found the heavy steel door blindly and I wrenched hard on it, forcing the metal to move much faster than it had been intended to. His angry scream made static reverberate through the com, but I did my best to ignore it as I slammed the door shut just as he came after me.
The dull “thunk” when he hit the door made me take an involuntary step back, even though I knew I was safe—or as safe as one could be locked inside a corridor with explosive charges set every couple of yards. It was then that I felt something tug on my left glove. Looking down, I realized that I'd managed to snag it inside the frame of the air lock, just a bit at the tip of my third finger. Bringing it up to my face now, I saw the tiniest sliver of blue peeking through the thick, white outer glove.
Panic instantly clawed at the back of my throat, making breathing almost impossible, but I stomped down on it with the same conviction that had made me start this idiotic maneuver. Now there was no going back, and I would finish this, come what may.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Nate screamed at me, the effect kind of warped as I heard him all too clearly over the com system but could barely see his face through the reinforced window in the door.
“The chemical shower will automatically come on any second now. The cycle takes exactly eight minutes. That’s the earliest you can get out of that room. I'd advise against returning to the corridor afterward as I intend to be ready to exit the lab by the time the shower shuts off, and it would be just another wasted eight minutes to wait until you are back outside after I'm already finished.”
My voice was still sounding hollow but surprisingly firm, just me relaying facts. I tried to breathe evenly but that was impossible, same as I couldn't unclench my left hand. Objectively, I knew that the positive pressure of the suit would keep me safe, and it wasn't like I intended to dip my hand into anything that could kill me, but rationality wasn't my strong suit right now.
“I repeat, what the fuck are you doing? All the detonators are activated. I've told Dolores to remotely trigger them if anything goes wrong, right fucking now.”
Blinking through the layers of plastic and glass separating us, I still managed to catch his gaze.
“I don't give a shit about your detonators. You asked the wrong question, or answered the wrong one. When I asked you just now why you didn't ask me, I meant why you didn't ask me about the vault.”
He paused, but I could still hear his fast, angry breaths well enough.
“We checked your clearance. You are not authorized to go into the vault.”
I hoped that my answering smile was more serene, and not as insane as I felt right then.
“Your brother did a lot more than rant on that log. He already had all the papers I'd need to take over compiled. Did I mention that I was supposed to work as his assistant? Yes, you knew that already. Well, guess what? I might not be authorized to go into the vault, but I'm damn sure I know his access code.”
Just then the shower came on, obscuring him completely except for a blue blob inside the white tiled room.
“You could have told me that five minutes ago,” he grated out. There was still a lot of anger in his voice, but it had dimmed somewhat—or maybe that was just the background static caused by the drone of the chemicals pelting down on him.
“Yes, I could have.”
With that, I raised my right hand and pushed down at my hip until I found the off-switch of the com through the suit, and turned off my unit.
For several seconds my mind was just blank, fear hanging like a heavy cloud over me.
Closing my eyes, I counted down from five.
As the numbers kept echoing through my head, I admitted—at least to myself—why I was really doing this.
Nate had been right with every single accusation he'd thrown in my face, or only implied. He was right—I was the right woman for his mission, to sift through the data and maybe find the next rung in the ladder that might lead us to who was responsible for all this in the first place. But anyone with my knowledge could do that, anywhere in the world. But only I was here, right now, and I felt that it was my obligation to put things right.
Taking a last, deep breath, I turned around and started walking toward the vault.
Chapter 22
For the last two years, I'd always marveled at one thing—why was my access code for the hot lab the birth date of a dead man?
Of course I could have changed it at any time, but I kept it that way out of some strange kind of sentimentality. Maybe it was the remnants of my hero worship for Raleigh Miller. Maybe it was plain laziness to memorize one more ten-digit number. But it had never even occurr
ed to me that it was anything other than what he'd filled out in the application for my security profile. He should have been my supervisor—of course it had fallen to him to choose my code. And apparently, no one had realized that it was a date—the digits for the year split apart to accommodate those for month and day between them, and a 76 for his name at the beginning.
My right hand shook almost too hard to hit the numbers on the pad, but after the first two, it steadied.
This was just a wild guess, likely an idiotic one. But still. People were lazy. There was a chance that he’d simply used his code, intent on telling me to choose my own once I could change it myself. Only that he’d never survived that day.
The display flashed green, and the door lock disengaged.
Part of me wished that I'd been wrong. Part of me wanted to punch my fist in the air and do a victory dance.
What I actually did was exhale slowly before I opened the door and walked inside.
I'd been in the vault a few times to help Thecla remove stocks from the tanks. Access was restricted to five people—that I'd known of—and few things were as tightly controlled as the access logs. Because the system was so restrictive, I'd hoped that no one had bothered removing a dead man from the roster.
Time was ticking, and not just because of my torn glove. In less than six minutes the chemical shower would turn off, and I didn't doubt that if it took me much longer than that to get out of here, Nate would come after me, and that was something I wanted even less than being locked in here when the detonators went off. I was well aware that I was risking my life right now—but I didn’t want to risk his. Not like this.
My opinion of Thecla had been smudged over the course of the last day, but one of her quirks I still held in high regard—like few other people I'd known, she had been highly organized. Counting on that to also hold up where clandestine experiments were concerned, I walked over to the binder that held the protocol of the viral stocks. The sheets were all manually filled in and often updated, whenever someone removed or added something to the tanks, but virtually indecipherable for anyone not knowing what to look for.
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