Outbreak

by Tarah Benner

  “Yeah, there’s that.”

  “God, Eli’s plan sucks,” Sawyer mutters, cracking her knuckles nervously and staring up at the ceiling. She’s got on her analytical face, and I know she’s still processing all the information — too shocked to offer any real solution just yet.

  “How the hell did they introduce the virus to 119?” she asks, more to herself than to me. “Recon operatives are always kept in the medical ward for observation, and patient zero wasn’t a Recon guy anyway. He was Health and Rehab.”

  Sawyer closes her eyes in concentration. “Even if the virus was passed from a Recon guy to someone in the medical ward, the Recon worker would have presented with symptoms first . . .”

  “I just want to know what he meant when he said the plan was already in motion. I mean, do you think they plan to ambush the compound again? We have people patrolling the perimeter, so . . .” I trail off, slowly latching on to Sawyer’s train of thought.

  “Hang on . . . Patient zero belonged to Health and Rehab?”

  Sawyer sighs loudly, probably frustrated that I interrupted whatever breakthrough she was so close to. “Yeah, he worked in the decontamination unit . . .”

  Suddenly, Sawyer’s eyes snap open, and a look of pure dread spreads across her face.

  “Harper . . .”

  “What?”

  Judging by her expression, I can tell she’s worked out some horrible conclusion that I just haven’t been sharp enough to grasp.

  “Patient zero worked in the decontamination unit.”

  “So?”

  “So . . . the decontamination unit is how people usually smuggle pre–Death Storm contraband into the compound.”

  “People like Shane?”

  “Yeah. People like Shane sometimes pay Recon workers to bring stuff back from the Fringe. They’ve cracked down on illegal smuggling recently, but sometimes Health and Rehab workers still let things slip through.”

  She lets out a shallow breath, staring at me with a look that can only be described as devastation.

  “What?”

  She swallows. “The plan the drifters put in motion . . . It was you and Eli.”

  Sawyer looks as though she’s about to cry, and I don’t immediately understand what she’s saying. “Owen sent you back here because you already carried the virus in . . . and I helped you do it.”

  twenty-six

  Harper

  For a moment, I just stare at Sawyer. What she’s suggesting is too horrible to fathom.

  “That can’t be,” I murmur. “Owen wouldn’t. He couldn’t pass the virus to me and Eli unless he was infected himself.”

  “Yeah, he could have.”

  “How?”

  Sawyer begins to pace, talking so fast I can hardly understand her. “Do you remember reading about the anthrax attacks of 2001?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I do.”

  Of course.

  “They used it as a case study when they taught us Health and Rehab’s safety protocol for containing a virus. Anyway, back before Death Storm, somebody sent anthrax spores through the mail in letters.

  “It’s possible Owen got Eli to carry the virus into the compound on something small. Where did Eli get that necklace? He brought it back on your last mission along with a picture of his family. Did Owen give him that?”

  I shake my head. “No. Eli found that stuff at his house, but Owen was already gone when we got there. He didn’t even know Eli took it.”

  “Did Owen give Eli anything to carry back to the compound?”

  I shake my head, wracking my brain. “His hat, but Eli asked for it . . .”

  Then the realization hits me, and I want to throw up.

  “The arrowhead,” I whisper. “Oh, god. Oh god, oh god! Owen gave him an arrowhead just after Eli told him they were finished.”

  “And Eli brought it back with him?”

  “I think so.”

  Suddenly my mind flashes back to the drifters we overheard at the tavern: Last time, we didn’t have a contingency plan.

  Were we the contingency plan?

  Owen tried to get Eli to join the drifters, and when he refused, Owen found a way to use him anyway.

  “Oh my god,” I say again. “You’re right. We were supposed to be the mules.”

  When I look up at Sawyer, her eyes are shining with tears. That’s when the full impact of our discovery hits me.

  “Do you think we’ve been exposed?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispers. “Probably.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “If it’s airborne, it’s already too late.”

  “But we don’t know if it is, right?” I ask desperately, trying to hold back the tears burning in my throat.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise, I don’t know how 119 couldn’t have gotten a handle on the outbreak.”

  “Well, what about Eli?” I ask, starting to blubber a little. “If anyone’s infected, it would be him. You should tell him and Seamus and whoever they were with. We need to quarantine ourselves so we don’t infect anyone else.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.” Sawyer is nodding profusely, falling into business mode, but her hands shake a little as she taps her interface.

  She waits for the call to connect, and after a few seconds, the stern face of a man appears in front of her eyes.

  He’s wearing a surgical mask and a look of intense irritation. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but judging by the deepening crease in Sawyer’s brow, I’d guess he’s yelling at her for disturbing him.

  “Sorry. I’m sorry, sir,” she says, summoning a steadier voice. “Listen. I’m in exam room twenty-eight, and I’ve got a possible code green. I have Harper Riley with me. We also need to isolate Eli Parker, Seamus Duffy, and any medical personnel who’ve seen them.”

  He yells something through his mask at her, and Sawyer bows her head. “Yes, I know. I know. Well, I don’t want to cause a panic, but we may have identified the source of contamination.”

  Now the doctor on the other end of the line seems to be paying attention. By the looks of it, he’s barking orders to the people around him before rounding on Sawyer and hanging up.

  She looks stricken as she redirects her attention to me.

  “What did he say?”

  “We’re being quarantined until they know for sure whether we’re infected.”

  “What about the debriefing?”

  Sawyer lets out an evil, half-crying laugh that I’ve only ever heard once when she failed a test in higher ed. “Tell Jayden to come at her own risk. I’d pay big money to see that woman die a slow, painful death with us.”

  “We need to warn anybody we came in contact with,” I say. “If it is airborne, we could have already spread it to half the medical ward.”

  Sawyer gives me a shaky nod. “I know. They’ll send up the Undersecretary of Health and Rehab once we’re quarantined to determine what other precautions we need to take. That’s protocol, anyway.”

  At a time like this, I’m so grateful that Sawyer is a nut for protocol.

  It doesn’t take long for the quarantine crew to find us. They burst into the room like a SWAT team, wearing dark green suits with heavy-duty air filtration masks.

  They strap masks on me and Sawyer and steer us out of the room and down the tunnel toward a wing I’ve never visited before. Instead of depositing us in separate private rooms, they put us in a small ward with four beds.

  One of the beds is already occupied by another med intern I vaguely recognize. He’s got strawberry-blond hair and a dense spatter of freckles.

  Then there’s Eli. He’s hovering near the door, looking as though he’s about to start climbing the walls.

  “What’s going on?” he asks as soon as the doors slam shut.

  I take a deep breath and glance at Sawyer, who looks miserable.

  “Harper . . .”

  By his voice, I can tell he’s expecting something terrible, but i
t’s not nearly as bad as the truth.

  “Why are we here?” he asks. “They wouldn’t tell me anything except that we couldn’t leave this room. Where’s Jayden? Did she already debrief you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why —”

  “We’re being quarantined.”

  Eli’s eyes dart from me to Sawyer and back to me. “What? Why?”

  “Sawyer thinks . . . she thinks Owen played us.”

  “Played us?” Now he looks pissed off and confused. “Played us how?”

  I hesitate, wishing I didn’t have to say it out loud. “She thinks he let us come back because we were carrying the virus.”

  “Virus?” pipes the guy in the corner.

  Everybody ignores him.

  For a second, Eli just stares in stunned silence. I expect him to lash out at me, but he turns his fury on Sawyer. “You think my own brother would infect me and Harper with a virus and send us back to the compound to die? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “Eli!” I yell.

  But Sawyer doesn’t shrink away from him. She straightens up and leans in to his outrage. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Owen didn’t infect us with a virus! He’d have to be infected himself.”

  Sawyer is already shaking her head. “It’s in the arrowhead.”

  “Arrowhead? How the hell do you know —” He turns back to me with an irate expression on his face. “You told her?”

  “She asked if Owen had given you anything to carry back with you, and I said he had.”

  “It’s just something he found with my dad when we were kids.”

  “Do you have it on you?” Sawyer asks.

  “No! It’s in my uniform —” He stops abruptly, as though he just remembered that he left the arrowhead in his pocket to be decontaminated and sent through the laundry service.

  “It’s not in the arrowhead,” he says finally.

  “Oh, wake up, Eli! Why would he give it to you after you ended things with him the way you did? He tried to get you to stay with him, and when you wouldn’t, he made us the drifters’ back-up plan!”

  “There’s no way in hell!” Eli bellows.

  “Excuse me,” the guy interrupts.

  The three of us finally turn our attention to him, and he looks a little intimidated.

  “Will someone please just tell me what’s going on?”

  “No,” says Eli, waving off the intern. He turns back to Sawyer. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “Lay off,” I snap, stepping between them.

  That’s when his expression changes to a look of pure betrayal. “I can’t believe you went along with this.”

  “It’s the only explanation that makes sense! Patient zero at 119 was medical-ward staff who worked in the decontamination unit. How do you think Shane gets all his pre–Death Storm crap into the compound, huh? Through the decontamination unit.”

  “You only think it makes sense because we haven’t thought of anything else,” he groans. “You were supposed to wait until I came up with a plan. I was handling things, but now that’s all screwed up.

  “What are we supposed to tell Jayden? That we were having a nice little chat with my brother and he told us all their evil plans? Oh, and then he gave me a poison arrowhead to smuggle back to the compound! How’s that going to look?”

  “I don’t give a fuck about Jayden!” I snap. “This isn’t about her or Owen. It’s about saving the thousands of innocent people who have nothing to do with any of this.”

  Eli opens his mouth to protest, but I cut him off.

  “And don’t give me that crap about ‘handling things.’ You weren’t handling shit!”

  A stormy look flashes across Eli’s face, and I’m suddenly reminded of the fighter in him with all that buried rage. Then his expression evolves into something else. He looks . . . hurt.

  I open my mouth to apologize, but before I can get the words out, a low beep sounds over the intercom.

  “Miss Lyang. Miss Lyang. Kindly come through the door and be seated.”

  Glancing around the room, I see a door off to my left next to the bathroom. Sawyer throws me a puzzled look and opens it, revealing a smaller isolation chamber framed in glass. Through the window, I can just make out a slight woman in a taupe suit. That must be the Undersecretary of Health and Rehab here to interrogate us.

  “Shut the door,” she says over the intercom.

  Sawyer obeys.

  When the door slams shut, Eli seems to deflate. Rubbing his eyes, he sinks down onto the bed closest to the exit and sighs.

  “Harper. When you talk to her, you can’t mention Owen. I have to tell Jayden he’s dead so she doesn’t come after him . . . or you.”

  “Don’t you think a deadly virus in the compound cancels out your little deal?”

  He tilts his head to the side and gives me a look of disbelief. “It’s Jayden. She’d kill her grandmother on Christmas if she thought she was plotting against her.”

  “Right.”

  We fall silent for a few minutes, and then he says, “I still don’t believe Owen would do that to us . . . to me . . . to his own brother.”

  “Hey!” says a voice behind Eli, noticeably bolder this time.

  I turn to look at the elephant in the room — the freckly intern with shocking green eyes.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but I couldn’t help overhearing you.”

  By the tone of his voice, he isn’t sorry at all — he’s pissed that he’s stuck here with us. I would be, too.

  “What the hell is going on? You’re saying your brother is out on the Fringe and he’s the reason we’re being quarantined?”

  Eli glowers at him, and the intern recoils.

  I glare at Eli. “It’s a long story. All you need to know is that there are some hostile survivors out there, and some of them are looking to bring down the compound with a virus.”

  The intern’s brow crinkles. I don’t like the look he’s giving me — as though I’m some crazy girl who just messed up his day. “And how do you know all this?”

  “Who are you?” I blurt, my irritation getting the best of me.

  “Don’t mind him,” says Sawyer, breezing back into the room. “That’s Caleb. He works with me. We’re both going for Progressive Research.”

  “You knew about this?” he says, rounding on her. “That the people out there are trying to infect the compound with some kind of virus?”

  “N-no.”

  But Sawyer is a terrible liar. She freezes on the spot and blushes from her neck to the roots of her hair.

  “So why are we here when the others aren’t?”

  “Seamus and his retrieval specialist wore their masks the entire time, so neither one of them would be at risk of contracting an airborne virus,” says Sawyer impatiently. She turns to Eli. “They want to talk to you next.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Natasha Mayweather and Jayden.”

  Cursing under his breath, Eli gets up and crosses to the door. I try to send him a silent plea not to lie about Owen, but I know it’s futile. Eli has already made up his mind.

  “What did you say?” I ask Sawyer.

  “Just what you told me . . . that you came into contact with a drifter after they’d been planning to bring down the compound with a virus. And that Eli has a habit of trying to smuggle pre–Death Storm relics into the compound. I put two and two together and figured you guys were a big risk.”

  “That won’t get either of us in trouble or anything . . .” I mutter.

  Then I remember I might be carrying a deadly virus. Getting written up for breaking deployment protocol is probably the least of my worries right now. “I feel fine.”

  I said it out loud without really meaning to, and Sawyer cracks a weak smile she sometimes uses to deliver uncomfortable news. “The incubation period for that virus is seventy-two hours.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That’s what Natasha s
aid.”

  “How could she know that?”

  Sawyer shrugs. “It was in the records from 119.”

  “That bitch. She knew all about the outbreak.”

  “I guess.”

  “What are you talking about?” blurts Caleb. “What outbreak?”

  Shit. I keep forgetting we have an audience.

  “Nothing,” I say, hoping he’ll just shut up and leave it alone. No such luck.

  “One-nineteen? Do you mean compound 119? That’s where they sent the recruits who opted out of their bids this year. Are you saying the virus is there, too?”

  Sawyer and I have a silent conversation, and she gives me a tiny nod that says Caleb can be trusted.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” I say. “It would just start a panic.”

  Caleb sinks back down on the bed, staring up at me with those earnest, startling eyes. “There was an outbreak.”

  “Yes.”

  He shakes his head. “So what happened? Is there a cure?”

  “No.”

  Sawyer and I exchange another look, and Caleb’s expression grows more and more desperate. “What happened to them?”

  I swallow. “Everyone at 119 is dead.”

  Caleb opens and shuts his mouth several times, and for a moment, I think he might burst into tears. It’s becoming a very familiar reaction to me. But he just runs a shaking hand over his face and attempts to steady it on his knee. “That can’t be right. We would have heard . . .”

  Sawyer shakes her head once, and I start to wonder if this kid was equipped to handle the reality of the situation. He’s not in Recon. He doesn’t know what’s out there — not really.

  He doesn’t know about the corruption in the compound or how he ended up in Health and Rehab. We probably just blew his mind.

  Suddenly the door opens again, and Eli comes back in, looking frazzled.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  He nods. “Jayden bought it.”

  “I’m glad.” My voice sounds flat, even to me. Lying to her is a stupid plan, but I guess what Eli says goes.

  He stares at me for a second, and I can tell something has changed. He’s no longer looking at me with that loving, protective gleam in his eyes. He feels betrayed and completely blindsided.

  “You’re next.”