Navy shook his head and interrupted, “I always get this up to this point. What confuses me is how they get smart. Aren’t they just single cells?”
Rory grinned. “Yes, it’s true, they are. And saying they’re smart is really just microbiologists giving them personalities they don’t actually have. They aren’t smart, they just replicate so fast that mutations that took millennia to happen for humans take only a couple weeks for them. We can’t keep up with them. And viruses, well—they’re even faster. They hijack our cells and use them to make copies of themselves. In all that copying, they change constantly. Which is why viruses have caused fewer deaths than other pathogens, generally.”
“Lost me again. Right there at the end. I thought viruses were pretty gnarly.”
“They can start that way. And certainly a few have stayed that way, because we managed to isolate their spread. But a virus that kills its host is generally at a disadvantage, evolutionarily speaking. A sick but living person spreads more germs than a dead one. It’s far better to live with your host, let it sort of incorporate you, and coexist, than to wage war on it. In fact, there’s evidence that our own DNA is chock-full of old viruses. Little hitchhikers that found a forever home.”
Navy laughed at her metaphor. “You’re going to be right at home with the team.”
Something tickled at the back of Rory’s brain, that feeling again that something was about to make sense to her before she’d even dived into the research she now was more than eager to be a part of at the Hibernia.
“Did you say something about viral markers?”
“Yeah, I know I read that somewhere.”
“Are they working on viral vectors for gene therapy? Or maybe phage therapy? How big is the lab?”
She was surprised when he leaned over, wrapped a hand behind her neck, and kissed her hard and fast.
“Really sexy brains.” Returning to the wheel, he added, “And I have no clue. Maybe when—”
Abruptly Rory dove in front of him, turning up the radio to amplify the chatter happening in the Nova Scotia harbor. Her expression seemed excited, not concerned. She grabbed the handset and pressed the button, her lips just forming the words, and he quickly snatched it.
“No names, Rory,” he said sharply.
“I know,” she snapped, grabbing it back, then took a breath.
She spoke into it with a lilting, almost giddy voice.
“‘Wild nights, wild nights! Were I with thee, wild nights should be our luxury. Futile the winds to a heart in port. Done with the compass! Done with the chart!’”
She released the button and listened to the crispy silence of the open radio air as her missive left all but one of its listeners stumped.
A brief crackle responded, then Byron’s voice boomed back over the airwaves. “‘Rowing in Eden—Ah, the sea! Might I but moor tonight, in thee?’”
The dazzling grin that spread across her face hit Navy like a punch in the chest. She’d found Byron and Army, lacking anything more than a shortwave marine radio and poetry.
“And how is Emily’s post?” Byron said after a minute.
“Quite right,” she returned. “E tu?”
“Good. Beware north-flying geese. They’re vicious.”
Pleased to know he was fine, she handed off the handset to Navy, who pressed the button and said briefly, “DNR until approach. Repeat, DNR until approach.”
“HUA,” Army’s voice replied, verbal military shorthand for a nod. Navy set the handset back in its cradle.
Since he knew she would ask, he explained. “Do not rendezvous. We have about a day and a half of travel left. I don’t want to give any more drones an obvious target. It sounds like they’ve already seen some.”
Rory found herself looking out, scanning for the shapes of birds.
He saw the direction of her searching gaze scanning the skies.
“They could be underwater, too.”
PART THREE
* * *
Rough Waters
CHAPTER 23
* * *
Washington, DC, TEAR Headquarters
“If you need me to tell you your next step, I’ll be finding you a new post faster than you can call your wife and ask how she likes camel races in 140-degree Qatar.”
General Kessler turned from the window he was staring out.
Kessler’s top reporting officer twitched in his seat and hesitated for a moment, but he committed to an effort.
“Sir, I believe the ideal next step, in consideration of the primary target’s status as unlocated, would be to return to their original location for a full sweep.” He imagined his wife’s face reacting to the news of a transfer out of the elite DC social circles she’d just begun to penetrate.
“Good call, soldier. Get a team down there today. Interview neighbors, too. The time for discretion is over. Dismissed.”
As the door clicked behind the officer, Kessler was reading an message from the chair of the Senate Health Committee, the only committee to surpass the Senate Intelligence Committee in sheer power.
Rumors are swirling that you’ve let a cure slip out of the net. WTF is happening? Make something happen, or it’s your head on the block.
CHAPTER 24
* * *
Hibernia Wind and Energy Farm
Rory stood next to Navy in the elevator, Army and Byron in front of them, as the lift took them to the above-water levels of the restructured drilling platform. After days at sea, she still felt the ground moving beneath her, but her disorientation related more to the anxiety of starting a new life in such a remote, lonely place. The horizons around the platform were all the same: blue ocean and wind towers.
Navy’s hand covered and threaded his fingers into hers. She felt her breath catch, then calm, as a wave of love went though her. She looked over to him and saw the corners of his mouth turn up as he squeezed her hand reassuringly.
The elevators slid open, and she saw a couple of figures in the room ahead of them. A tall, broad-shouldered man with silver-white hair stood with hands in pockets of cargo pants. As her father stepped forward, she saw a woman with dark blonde hair that waved back from a face shaped like hers.
“Mom . . .” The word left her chest like a ghost escaping.
“Rory. By. Thank God.” Persephone stepped forward hesitatingly, but Byron crushed her in a hug before she could say another word. Their long-held love was evident as the tall man’s voice cracked with tears and his hands roamed over her face, murmuring how much he’d missed her. How he thought he’d never see her again.
Rory moved into the fold, and Byron locked her into their hug, all of them now crying, though Rory still hadn’t found her voice. Her mother clasped Rory’s face in her hands, her mirrored blue-green eyes devouring the sight of her daughter.
“I’ve missed you so, so, so much. I’ll explain everything, I’m so sorry, but it was to keep you safe. God, you’re so beautiful to see again.”
“Mom.” It was all she could manage. She didn’t even feel the tears cascading off her cheeks. They locked themselves to one another as Rory felt her breath shorten with the overwhelming feelings. Opening her eyes again, she saw her father wiping his eyes helplessly.
“I’ve been waiting so long to see my girls together again.”
Rory blinked away tears and slowly released her mother, holding her father’s gaze.
“You’ve been waiting?” she repeated. She was in such shock, it only slowly began to come together in her mind. “You knew?” she asked Byron, and his expression was so pitying that she had to look away, to her mother. She wore the same expression of guilt and pity. Rory stepped back from them, hand to heart. “You both . . . you both faked her death . . . ? You told me she was sick. Told me she got sick so fast, while I was hiking with Birdy.”
She couldn’t stand to see how they were pitying her, these people she loved so desperately, who had fooled her and broken her life in half three years ago. The roar of thoughts and emotions in he
r brain was deafening. Persephone came toward her, appealing in the timeless approach of a mother who has caused her child to cry but knows she is the perfect one to soothe. Rory held up a palm and stepped back, into Navy’s hold on both of her arms.
She looked down at his hands, the strong and warm fingers that had guided her safely here. Persuaded her, without disclosing the one reason that would have held the most sway. Lied.
“Rory. Take a slow, deep breath. You’re hyperventilating,” he whispered as he turned her to face him and his hands cradled her jaw.
“You, too. You knew, too.” Her lungs spasmed against the combined pain of so many betrayals, of her own stupidity. She remembered how she’d slept for nights on the ground over her mother’s grave, how long it had taken to be able to think of her without crying. How she had punished herself for not being there to say goodbye.
“Rory, breathe. Breathe slowly. Calm down,” he said in a firmer tone, but when she met his eyes, the marked face she’d let herself fall in love with seemed one more enormous con. A deception to coax her here.
Before she could indulge more self-hatred and grief, her vision grayed at the edges, and his face faded to black.
Navy sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his chin on his folded hands, as he listened to Persephone and Byron debate their parental choices. Jeff sat in a chair as well, but he was relaxed and listening in what Navy knew was smug bemusement. He’d never had children and seemed to hold a self-assured opinion that his was a superior choice.
“That’s what we discussed when we decided it. There was no way I was going to let her see my body.” Persephone paced, angry, defensive, and ashamed at turns.
“I should never have agreed to it. She’ll never trust us again.” Byron had repeated this lament for the past few minutes as they waited for Rory to come to.
Jeff finally spoke, filling the silence. “She’s less than thirty years old. There’s probably not a single statement you could make about Rory that might not pivot by 180 degrees in the next five years. She’ll get over this, and she’ll do it quickly because everyone’s depending on her.”
“That’s an unfair burden to put on her after all this,” Persephone argued. “It’s not like she understands this research better than we do.”
“Perhaps she does.” Jeff let the suggestion sink in. Persephone and Byron might be brilliant, but he doubted their combined genetic offspring would disappoint. Then Jeff, in his usual trouble-stirring way, gave a shrug and said, “What do you think, Navy?”
He didn’t even lift his gaze to Jeff. The sight of Rory turning boneless and collapsing against him had left him shaken, and he wasn’t sure his decisions along the path to that moment were very defensible.
“Why are you asking him?” Persephone asked sharply.
“I think Navy has a . . . a good grasp on Aurora’s point of view. He lost his father suddenly.”
“Don’t play games, Jeff,” Navy snapped. “There’s been enough already.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Persephone snapped back.
“It means she deserves everyone’s honesty. She’ll deal from there.” Navy pushed up from his seat and went back into the small room devoted to medical care, where they’d laid Rory down. She’d been completely unconscious, so he was surprised to see her standing at the tiny sink, splashing water on her face. She straightened to face him. Her eyes were red, and her irises glowed greener than he’d ever seen them.
Navy knew that once the others followed him in, the chance to explain anything would vanish. But speaking would let them know she was awake, and he sensed she didn’t want that any more than he. He stepped closer, pleading with his eyes for her to understand that he hadn’t meant to hurt, to deceive her. Navy reached for her hand. Trust me, please.
She snatched it back and gave a short shake of her head. Her eyes betrayed her tightly set jaw, filling with tears against her will, chin lifting in defiance of her own emotions as she drew a shaky breath.
“Mom, Dad. I’m fine,” she said aloud. Navy stepped back when they rushed inside. As they began to pour out apologies, she raised a slim hand. “Stop it. What you did was . . . horrible. I can’t fathom understanding why you did it, but even if I could, it would still be hard to forgive.”
“Sweetheart, we won’t expect forgiveness—” Byron began, but she raised a hand again.
“You’ll all understand if I want some space. Mom . . . and you must be Jeff? How about the short tour to my room? I need privacy.” Her tone was flat, exhausted, the voice of someone who had just lost more than she could process. As she walked out behind Jeff, she stopped and turned her head slightly back to them. “Navy was right about one thing. Everyone had better be goddamned honest from here on.”
CHAPTER 25
* * *
Rory rubbed her eyes and refocused on the text she was reading on the screen, comparing it with the data she had been compiling. Things were getting bleary, her eyes dry. She absentmindedly grabbed the water nearby and glugged a few swallows, then tried to read again.
“Eventually you’ll need reading glasses.”
She turned to see her mother leaning against the doorway into the lab that had become Rory’s new workday space. Persy shrugged and added, “I’m quite certain you have my eyes. But exhaustion is probably more the reason right now. You need a break, sweetie.”
Rory found reason to smile whenever her mom was around. Three years without getting to see her would leave a scar forever, but it certainly gave her a new appreciation of her mother’s presence. Her father was still not the recipient of her smiles, and she spent many sleepless nights trying to reconcile the idea that for three years he had hid Persy from her.
After a couple of weeks at the Hibernia, she was already entrenched in the research team’s efforts to discover what about her immune system was different from other survivors of infections. The team, a hodgepodge mix of outstanding minds, had been unsure of her at first, but they quickly recognized her speedy grasp of the data and natural curiosity would be a needed fresh perspective. She sensed she was getting closer to solving it, that feeling of some revelation within her grasp. But her current knowledge of microbiology, immunology, and the insight from her database still didn’t explain it.
“Have you eaten dinner?”
Rory shook her head. “I’ll make a sandwich later.”
“You can’t keep avoiding him.”
“I’ll talk to Dad when I feel ready,” Rory repeated a refrain she’d used for a fortnight. “I get that you two felt I could be taken if they thought you were alive. I just . . . He lied even when I was heartbroken over losing you.”
Persy came in and sat across from her daughter, holding her eyes with those of a matching sea green. “Heartbroken was better than stolen, in a coma, your life being sucked away slowly.” She took a slow breath. “But I wasn’t talking about Dad. I was talking about Nathan.”
Rory turned her chair away, but Persy stopped her and turned it back.
“Both of you look miserable. I mean, Nathan always looks a little stoic, but I’d be blind not to see him watching you every time your paths cross. Byron told me he sensed it at the farm, too.” Persy touched her daughter’s proud cheekbones with a caressing hand. “And you are not sleeping, not eating enough. Why don’t you talk to him?”
“He lied to me, too.” It was a cold, hard statement, and accusatory in its delivery.
Persy’s eyebrows rose. “I ordered him to lie to you. My choice wasn’t his story to tell you.” She seemed to realize she was turning harsh instead of comforting, and it was certainly a fallback to her parental role as disciplinarian where Byron was the softer influence. “Sweetie, there’s so much more I need to tell you about what brought me here. It was you, it was all you, but it was such a scary time because I feared they would kill me and take you. I left, and you know what I brought with me?”
Rory shook her head.
Persy caressed her daughter’s face again. “A
photo of you and Dad, and my TEAR badge. Because I knew that I needed to remind myself that I was complicit in what they were doing. I still think they’ve killed more people than I or Nathan ever knew. Imagine how he must feel, knowing his actions directly stole people from their families? So when I ordered him to retrieve you and Byron, it was because no one is more capable of keeping you safe, and no one more badly deserved atonement for tearing families apart by bringing ours back together.”
Then she added, “I certainly didn’t order him to fall in love with you, but I can forgive him for it. What happened between you two?”
“Mom, that’s private.” She sighed and glanced at her laptop screen again. “I can’t trust him, that’s the end of it. There’s nothing more to tell.”
Persy shrugged. “All right. I’ll drop it. But I won’t drop you eating dinner. Go freshen up, change out of that shirt because it smells like you slept in it for three nights, and come down to the mess hall. Someone caught a bunch of snow crabs and they’re making a boil. I made them add fried hush puppies to the menu for you.”
“Was this mission your idea or his?”
“His. But I’m a SEAL. So it’s ours,” Army replied. Jeff looked dubious as he transferred his narrowed gaze to Navy.
“How is now the right time for it?”
Navy answered easily. “If you weren’t expecting it now, neither will they. We’ll infiltrate, gather enough recon for a full extraction, then plan for that with complete intel and a complete team.”
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