by Kristen Judd
He wasn't sure when Riggs had left, but when he dared look up, the agent was gone. The pangs in his gut only increased after that as the hours ticked by, but his resentment held them at bay. He wouldn't give the man the satisfaction of seeing him eat, even if that meant he'd starve. The three scientists worked all night. Two more meals were delivered, and each time Adam refused to eat.
Adam held his hands on his face for the hundredth time. His neck was stiff and his body hot. His head was spinning, and his bones ached with exhaustion. He wasn't any closer to replicating the virus than he was ten hours earlier. He kept running into impediments. He slammed his fists on the desk and laid his head down. The desk was cool, and it felt good on his head.
None of them slept. Kondo and Sally only stopped to eat and use the bathroom in the back; otherwise, they were seated or standing at their desk, moving around the lab for what they needed, clicking away at the keyboard, their three monitors flashing their code.
Thirty-six hours in, it was Kondo who finally succeeded in replicating the virus.
"I've done it!" His shout broke the barrier and woke Adam back up. He hadn't realized he had fallen asleep on his desk. He felt so tired. His body weak. He pried himself away from his own station and walked over to Kondo. Sally was already reviewing his notes, going from the microscope to the screens. Kondo was sitting on his chair, pushed to the side to allow his colleagues a chance to review his findings.
"Without extensive testing, I'd say you've done it, Kondo. Well done!" she exclaimed. Her smile was genuine but lacked the full energy that came with rest. Kondo nodded. Sally stepped aside to allow Adam a chance to review. Adam scanned the monitors and scrolled through the sequence and activity on the screens. Kondo's notes were extensive and detailed. Adam wondered how he had never heard of him. The man's code and process were superb. Adam had only ever seen such detailed scrutiny and clear sequencing one other time—his own.
He peered through the microscope and followed through Kondo's testing steps. Twenty minutes later, Adam backed away from the lens and stuffed his hands in his pockets.
"We have our virus," he said. The easy part was done. Now things were just getting started. Sally clapped her hands and congratulated Kondo again. Adam turned to head back to his station. The room was spinning, and he needed to sit down. He made it three steps before he collapsed. His body spasmed, and white foam leaked out of his mouth.
Sally rushed to him the moment she saw him fall. She turned him on his side and laid his head flat on the ground, ensuring his mouth remained open and his airway clear. Kondo ran to the medical supply cabinet in the back and returned with a small vial and syringe. He quickly measured out the dosage, squeezed a small amount out to ensure there were no air pockets, and then inserted the needle into Adam's arm. The twitching ceased a minute and half later. Adam remained on the floor; his head nestled in Sally's lap.
She was looking down at him like a mother does an injured child.
"You're going to be okay," she said.
Adam's eyes were unfocused. Her face was disoriented and cloudy. The room was still spinning. He closed his eyes and willed it to stop.
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CHAPTER
- EIGHT -
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"What happened?" Adam asked, his eyes opening to find Sally looking down at him. Seeing her hovering over him, cradling his head in her lap, brought him back ten years when they were both in Nigeria. He had gotten severely sick. Had they not been sent there by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with the cure to vaccinate the Nigerian people, he most likely would have died. He had been quarantined to a small tent on the outskirts of the town to avoid any possible spread of the disease. Every time he opened his eyes, Sally would be there to dab his forehead with a wet cloth and hold a cup of cold water to his lips. For three weeks, she did this, never leaving his side. That was when Adam knew he loved her. The two months before, it was more an adolescent kind of love and infatuation coupled with passionate sex and stray glances, the touch of the hand, and kisses. Had it not been for her by his side, he would have given up and succumbed to the sickness in his body, not wanting to fight anymore.
When they left Africa, they each went their separate ways, an unspoken truth that what they had could never last. They each had different lives back in the States. Adam would go back to his wife and two-year-old daughter, and Sally to her work. Their love affair was nothing more than a temporary fantasy, a reprieve from the heartache and struggle that they found themselves in. They had helped each other survive that stent in Africa. They had healed more than the people of the local tribes. They had healed themselves in ways they would never understand. It was with much sadness and doubt that Adam said goodbye to his new love. He hadn't seen her for ten years.
He looked up into her emerald eyes and reached out his hand to touch her cheek. The years hadn't scarred or affected her like they had him. Her face was just as soft and smooth as he remembered it all those years ago in the hot, humid wild.
Her voice broke his memory and brought him back to the present.
"You had a Generalized Tonic-Clonic seizure. We've stabilized you, but we need to monitor your vitals to ensure that it wasn't more serious. Without an EEG, we can't really know for sure if it was a seizure or something else." She didn't voice her other concerns about what it could mean.
Adam tried to sit up, but Sally pushed him back down with a loving, yet assertive hand. They had placed Adam on one of the cots that detached from the back wall. There were six in total, one for each of the workstations in the room. Since there were only three of them, they had plenty of space. The longer they remained in the pod, the more it became obvious of how self-sufficient it really was. Other than the meals being delivered through tunneling chutes in the ceiling, they had everything else they needed to survive: oxygen, water, protection, sleeping quarters, bathroom, and enough medicine to last them five lifetimes. That is, if they didn't die from a virus before then. For all intents and purposes, they could very well survive the nuclear apocalypse if it came down to it, not that they'd want to be trapped in the enclosed space forever. Even with the see-through walls, it was claustrophobic. They were already getting stir crazy.
"You need to rest. You've been going at this for over thirty-six hours with no sleep or food. Your body is going into shock." She held his hand and dabbed his face with a wet cloth with the other.
"How long was I out for?" He closed his eyes and savored the coolness of her touch and the springy fabric beneath him.
"Just over twelve hours," she said.
"Twelve hours!"
He leaned up and yanked his arm free of her grasp, knocking the cloth from her hand. It fell to the floor. She slowly bent over and picked it up, placing it on the stand beside her. He grabbed the metal siding on the cot to stabilize himself. The room started spinning immediately when he went vertical as the blood rushed to his head. When the spinning slowed down, he stood and used the other workstations to make his way back to his desk. He collapsed into his chair, gasping for air.
Sally caught Kondo looking her way as if asking if he should do something. Leave him be she said with her eyes. He motioned for her to join him at his workstation.
When she was near, he asked in a whisper, "Do you think he'll be okay?"
She knew what he was asking. Will he survive? Is he strong enough to help us? Do we need to do something?
She looked to the man who once was the love of her life. She remembered him being a vibrant, shining beacon of strength and optimism. He always lifted her spirits and encouraged her in Nigeria when the sick just kept coming and it seemed it would never end. She wondered if anything had changed since those months in Nigeria. She knew they hadn't for her but looking at his crippled body hunched over on the desk, his hair disheveled and the nape of his neck covered in sweat droplets, she wasn't so sure about him. He had
definitely changed. She wondered if his feelings for her had faded with the years or if they were dormant inside, ready to burst with power like hers.
"He'll be fine. He's been through worse," she said, trying to convince herself more than him. The look on Kondo's face worried her.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
Kondo lowered his voice even more and leaned in closer to where his face was inches from her own. "While he was sleeping, I took a sample of his blood and crosschecked it across all known diseases, bacteria, parasites, and viruses in the data base. I then inputted the schematics for our new virus and ran a test directly against the replicated Black Death virus. I got a hit."
"What?" she asked.
He pointed to the left screen of the three. She traced his fingers through the string of green text on the monitor, scrolling through the diagnostic checks the system ran to look for a possible match. The chart broke down each disease, parasite, bacteria, or virus that had ever existed and had a Positive or Negative beside it to indicate whether it was active within the blood. Out of the thousands of negatives, one came back positive. Sally's heart caught in her throat when she read the description next to it: yersinia pestis. The bacteria tied to the bubonic plague that swept across all of Europe, Asia, and Africa, killing more than fifty million people.
"I don't understand. The bubonic plague is spread through the blood of dead animals or infected fleas. Neither of which are in this room," she said.
"Exactly, which concerns me," Kondo said. "Doctor Richards is getting noticeably worse by the hour. At first, we weren't sure if he was infected. Now... we know. We need to do something."
"Like what? Kill him?" She backed away slightly, her face contorting in anger and shock.
"No. We stand a better chance with him than without him," Kondo quickly added, dissuading her fear. "I'm just saying, maybe we should quarantine him until we figure this all out."
"He's been through enough. He doesn't need to be locked up," she said.
Kondo raised his hands in peaceful surrender. "It's been more than forty-eight hours since he was infected. We can only assume as to how he became infected, but I have suspicions. I believe the live virus was planted on the card with the virus' genetic code, and when Adam opened the envelope, it released the bacteria and it somehow found its way into his bloodstream. Now, when I examined his body for any marks, bites, cuts or scrapes, or open wounds, I found none. This leads me to believe that the virus is airborne."
"If that's the case, then why isn’t either of us exhibiting symptoms?"
Kondo didn't have an answer for that. "I can't explain why neither of us is exhibiting similar symptoms. Understanding how this virus works, once it gets to the lungs, its host dies within twenty-four hours."
As he was speaking, Adam broke out into a coughing spell. When he pulled away his sleeve, it was covered in blood. Kondo and Sally exchanged worried looks. It was in his lungs.
"Things aren't looking good for Doctor Richards," he said.
"Don't say that, Kondo. He's going to be fine," she said defensively. Her eyes teared up. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her hands shaking.
"But there is some good news," he quickly added. Her eyes begged for some hope to cling to. There was no mistaking it. She still loved Adam. She wasn't sure if she ever stopped loving him. The years had never threatened her feelings for him. And now with him finally back in her life, the thought of losing him again was too much to bear.
"It seems that whoever altered the state of the original plague virus to create this new strand, changed something within the genetic codex. The virus is not spreading and attacking parts of the body like its parent did. Instead, it appears to lie in an inactive or dormant state for a period of time based on the host's DNA makeup. This would explain why you and I aren't showing any signs of the infection."
"That still doesn't help us. How are we going to save him?"
"We need that cure," he said so matter-of-factly that she almost thought he had lost all sense of the present, untouched by panic, worry, fear, and doubt. Kondo Rashidi was calm when she was flooded with fear. He had the uncanny ability to separate his emotions from the facts and what lie before him. She could only postulate that it came from a childhood wrought with danger, chaos, and fear. From a young age, he had learned to control his fear and use it to his advantage. It's no wonder he was able to survive the drug lords and massive genocide. He was also smart.
Sally admired Kondo for that, envied him even.
Sally and Kondo were distracted from their private conversation by another wave of coughs from Adam. He had turned and was facing them. He had this smug grin on his face, and his eyes displayed an understanding resilience.
"Well, looks like we found our live victim," he said, holding up his blood-covered sleeves. His lips and chin were scarlet, and his eyes bloodshot. The side of his neck was swelling and turning blue.
"I imagine I only have a day or two left, so we better get started."
He ripped his shirt off and his trousers. Only his boxers remained on. Sally gasped when she saw his body. The whole left side was purple and covered in swollen welts. Adam didn't bother to look. Her eyes told him everything he needed to know. He knew he was dying, but at least he could go out fighting.
"Sally," he said.
She was lost in a trance of worry, her face streaked with tears.
"Sally, look at me," he said with force.
She looked up.
"Look into my eyes."
She did. She hung on his every word, desperate for a thread of hope even though she knew there was none.
"I'm not going to die," he said.
She looked confused.
"But... you're black and blue... and the virus... it's..." She couldn't finish her sentence before sobbing.
He took a step closer but stopped. He didn't want to risk infecting either of them if they weren't already.
"Do you want to know how I know I'm going to live?" he asked.
"How?" she asked.
Adam smiled in rebellion to the war raging within his body.
"Because you're here. You've saved me two times now. I used to believe in coincidences but not anymore. You're a miracle, my miracle. I shouldn't have left you. I'm sorry I hurt you."
"Oh, Adam. You don't have to—"
"I do. I loved you then, and I love you still," he said.
Sally wanted so desperately to run to him and wrap her arms around him. But Adam kept his distance intentionally. She could see in his eyes he wanted to touch her, too, but his love for her was greater than the temporary relief her touch would give. He was protecting her even now.
Adam looked to Kondo. "I've not known you long, my friend, but I know a good man when I see one. I couldn't place my life in the hands of anyone better."
Kondo nodded, his shoulders pulling back with pride. Adam stumbled to the gurney near the front workstations and rolled it closer. He heaved himself on top and lay on his back, gasping for breath. He closed his eyes for several seconds before opening them again.
"All right, I'm ready."
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CHAPTER
- NINE -
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Riggs watched Adam Richards hacking his lungs out while the other two discussed his diagnosis. The red hardline phone to his right began ringing. He picked it up on the third ring and held it to his ear.
"This is Riggs," he said.
The voice on the other end was strained, as if he hadn't slept for days.
"Any update on our new guest?" the President asked.
"He's infected. It's only a matter of time now," Riggs said.
"I still don't know if this was the best approach. We're risking everything on one man. What if he can't develop the cure in time? We'll lose our best microbiologist and still have no cure. We need that cure, Special Agent Riggs. The fate of the nation depends on it."
"Yes, Mr. President. I have faith that Doctor Richards and his team will succeed."
"I wish I shared the same confidence," the President said.
"It's like I always say," Riggs said. "Sometimes all you need is a little push in the right direction. If the doctor's own life is not motivation enough for him to succeed, then nothing is."
"Keep me apprised," the President said.
The phone went dead before Riggs could respond. He held the phone to his ear a second longer before gingerly replacing it.
“Yes, Mr. President,” he said under his breath after he hung up. He stared at the recording of POD 543. Their last hope for survival was in the three scientists' hands on the screen.
Doctor Kondo Rashidi from Swahili East Africa, Lead Scientist for Cell Corp. Doctor Sally White of Texas, Lead Scientist for Whisp Industries. Doctor Adam Richards of Maryland, Lead Scientist for BioMe — the government's advanced molecular department into human regenerative capabilities.
The world's leading experts on molecular cell development and diseases were humanity's last hope. Riggs hoped they succeeded. If they didn't, well, then they'd have to go to Plan B. Either way, the end was coming. All that mattered now was how that would come about.
Riggs picked up the red phone and dialed the number. A woman operator came on the line.
"There's been a lightning strike," he said then hung up the phone.
The next plan was already set in motion before the phone even clicked. The operator would relay the message to command, which would then dispatch the teams. Tether Protocol would be initiated and in progress within thirty minutes. Riggs removed the Cuban cigar from his jacket pocket and allowed the tobacco to singe before he took the first breath. He held the hot fire in his throat before exhaling it into a large cloud. The smoke whipped and flowed over the twenty-foot screen in front of him. Richards had his sleeve rolled up, and they were taking more blood.