“Did he start attacking people again?”
“Not right away. I think it’s like Nico said: he has too much to lose. His role in green-lighting Project Juggernaut was advisory rather than executive, so he escaped facing charges there, but he was trying to set up a political career in the new civilian government and he had to keep his nose clean.” Zach licked his lips and fell silent a moment before plunging on. “But eventually, the Clean Zone Congress established the DPRP and he ended up spearheading the department. He activated the off-site lab and handpicked the research staff. And young men started disappearing.”
“Disappearing? You mean the people Perimeter Security have been talking about?”
“Some of them. There are— It’s difficult to explain. There seem to be two groups of people going missing. One is comprised of men and women of varying ages. The other is comprised of boys in their mid- to late teens, maybe early twenties.” Zach frowned, fidgeting. “And it all seems to be part of the same trend, except that if you look at the missing people as a single group, you’ll see it’s disproportionately made up of young men of a certain type.”
Rhys rubbed the back of his neck, looking around. Now he wished he hadn’t asked for privacy while he and Zach talked and did the usual examination. He was just some guy who’d spent his entire life in almost complete isolation. Surely the Jugs would be better qualified to give Zach help or advice or whatever he was seeking.
“The Clean Zone must have some sort of police force, right? What do they have to say about it?”
Zach looked bleak. “That people get restless or rebellious. Adolescent boys, in particular. They say that what we’re seeing is probably no more than kids deciding life in the Clean Zone was too confined and restrictive, striking out for adventure. No one is taking it seriously, and I can’t figure out if it’s a cover-up or just naïveté.”
“Are you sure it’s not just . . . restlessness?”
“I knew one of the boys to go missing more recently,” Zach whispered, bowing his head. “Adrian. He was in my Bible study. Just sixteen years old. He’d spent his life in a colony in the South, where some of the elders were abusive. I imagine it was much the same sort of situation you lived in with my father and brother.” His eyes shimmered when he looked up. “He was so glad to be here, Rhys. Grateful. He finally felt safe and like he’d found people who wouldn’t mistreat him. He had a girlfriend. He was getting schooling for the first time in his life, and he was so eager to learn and make a life for himself. He wouldn’t have run off; I know it.”
Zach fell silent, and Rhys stared down at his hands in his lap.
“The same sort of situation you lived in with my father and brother.”
What if things had happened differently two years ago when the Jugs found him in that monastery? What if the revenants hadn’t attacked? What if he hadn’t been exposed to the Beta and Gamma strains of the virus, condemned to death? What if, instead of trying to make him a Jug, Darius’s squadron had just quarantined him like the rest of the civvies and shipped him off when the time came?
The boy Zach was talking about, Adrian, could have been Rhys. He would have felt the same way, coming here to the Clean Zone as a civilian refugee. So damned grateful to be out of that situation that life in the Clean Zone would have seemed like paradise, even with all its obvious faults. He wouldn’t have wanted to leave, either.
He sighed. “What is it you were going to ask me to do for you?”
“You have to understand, Rhys. I have no proof of any of this. None. Just Nico’s word about what Littlewood is. But I absolutely believe Nico, and there is no one within the Clean Zone, except maybe Gillett Morris, whom I would trust to help me with this. And I can’t ask Gillett because I don’t know if any of his Perimeter Security people are complicit.” Zach licked his lips, his hands twisting together. “Before I got to know you, before you became my friend, I had a plan. Sort of. It’s not one I’m proud of. I don’t know if I could have gone through with it. You see, Littlewood has taken an interest in you. And from the feeling I get in my gut the times I’ve been present while he’s spoken about what the DPRP needs from you, I don’t think that interest is just about your exposure to Bane.”
“You think he’s . . . targeting me?”
Zach nodded slowly. “Or rather, he would, except he didn’t count on the Jugs being so protective of you. He was furious when they refused to leave you unguarded, which was another big tip-off.”
The thought of what someone like Littlewood might intend for him was enough to make Rhys shudder. “What was your plan?”
“I had thought I would stay silent, let Littlewood try to make you disappear, and let the Jugs deal with him.” He gave Rhys a shamefaced half-smile. “Your Jugs would have beaten the tar out of Littlewood’s people, found out where they got their orders and taken Littlewood down. Or, if Littlewood’s people had succeeded in grabbing you, the Jugs would have tracked you down, with the same end result.”
“But you changed your mind.”
Zach shrugged. “I can’t bring myself to use another person that way, much less someone I’ve come to consider a friend.” Heat spread across Rhys’s cheeks, which Zach thankfully chose not to notice. “Besides, taking Littlewood out would only solve part of the problem. The young men I suspect are Littlewood’s prey aren’t the only people going missing from the Clean Zone. And the rest of those people—I think—are being taken by the DPRP, just not for Littlewood’s personal amusement.”
“What?”
“Seven years ago, about a year before the Jugs went to Texas and put a stop to what Charlie Company was doing down there, the DPRP sent a request to each of the squadrons, carried back by the Jugs who were delivering groups of refugees, just like they did with your summons.” Zach rose and began pacing. “Technically, the Clean Zone has no authority over the Jugs, but they asked anyway. They wanted the Jugs to start reporting on their observations about the transmissibility of various strains of Bane. Including Alpha.”
Rhys frowned. “I don’t understand. Before the Jugs took down Charlie Company, no one knew Alpha was transmissible, period.”
“Exactly. It was a strange request. Why would the DPRP have any interest in whether or not Alpha could be transmitted? Well, the official explanation was simply ‘research,’ to try to understand the virus and help manufacture a vaccine.” Zach paused his pacing to reach out and pluck bare a branch of scrub pine hanging nearby. “But that didn’t sit right with Nico, especially after we discovered Alpha could be sexually transmitted. So he asked me to take a job working within the DPRP. Which I did, but I’ve found out as much as I can.”
Rhys mulled that over for a moment. “What is it you think they’re up to?”
“Littlewood is only in the Clean Zone part-time. He travels back and forth to the off-site research facility. I think that is where these people who have been disappearing are being taken.”
“You mean Littlewood’s preferred victims or the other missing people?”
“Both.”
“What for?” Rhys asked.
“Lack of scrutiny and oversight, I imagine.” Zach shuffled back to sit on the ground near Rhys. “Away from the Clean Zone, no one who isn’t complicit already would have any idea what he’s doing with the young men he’s been taking.”
“And the other people?”
“I’m not sure.” Zach shook his head, a look of frustration furrowing his brow. “I suspect they’re culling the people who they think may have had sexual relations with Jugs, people who might be Alpha-infected, or at least Alpha-exposed. That’s part of the intake exam process, trying to get the new arrivals to slip and admit to having feelings for or relationships with the Jugs who brought them in. I know because I’ve interviewed many of them. I helped with the intake process when they came to the Clean Zone. I wrote their records. And when I went back and looked at the records of the young men who have gone missing, they had been altered to indicate that the men may have been expose
d to Alpha, as well.”
Now it was Rhys’s turn to swallow against the lump of fear in this throat. “He’s trying to make it look like they’re part of whatever the DPRP is researching.” Zach nodded, and Rhys inhaled deeply, bracing himself for what he suspected was coming. “You still haven’t said what it is you wanted me to do.”
Zach closed his eyes briefly, as though he were praying again. “I wanted you to play bait. You’re his type.”
“And what type is that?”
Zach’s jaw flexed. “The way Nico described it to me? Littlewood doesn’t want a partner. He wants a victim. And whatever you may or may not willingly do with Darius, you’re sweet, and shy, and just—” He shrugged, clearly running out of words to get his point across. It didn’t matter. Rhys knew what Zach was saying. He may have acquired more height and muscle mass over the past two years, but he was still, as Toby put it, a baby-faced ingenue.
“Why not just have me take this to Darius, ask the Jugs to put a stop to Littlewood’s operations?”
“Because—” Zach drew a deep breath and released it slowly “—we need to see what his operations actually are, what the DPRP is up to, and we can’t do that if we’ve laid waste to the place. We need to get someone inside, see what they’re working on and who else in the Clean Zone—particularly within the government—knows what Littlewood’s true agenda is. How far does it go?”
“So you want me to let myself be taken.” There was something wrong with the calm with which he could face that notion. He felt numb. Resigned. It was the way he’d felt when he’d begun slipping his already-insufficient rations to his pregnant, then nursing, sister. The way he’d felt that day at the monastery when the revenants were breaking down the gate and Father Maurice told Rhys to use himself to lure them away so the rest of them could escape. Like it was inevitable that it should come to this.
Shouldn’t it bother him more?
Zach nodded reluctantly. “You’re heavily guarded, so he can’t get his hands on you, not unless I have your cooperation in getting you away from the Jugs.”
Rhys snorted. “Oh God. I’m trying to envision Darius’s reaction when I tell him about this.” Zach gave him a pained look. “What?”
Zach gnawed on his bottom lip. “There’s a way to do this without involving the Jugs. Nico could come after you by himself.”
“That’s not going to happen.” Rhys shook his head firmly. “I can’t hide something like this from Darius. I won’t. Why would you even want me to?”
“I guess I still keep hoping that someday the Jugs and the Clean Zone population can learn to trust each other and live together. Back before the overthrow, the Jugs were going to make their homes here with us. But the uninfected didn’t want them. They were too afraid. And now the Jugs are resentful.” Zach looked away, blinking rapidly, but not before Rhys saw the naked yearning on his face. “And there are a lot of ways this situation could make that worse. If the Jugs decide the DPRP’s research is a sham, they’re going to stop submitting their field reports and cooperating with research efforts. And I worry what popular opinion would be if you did agree to act as bait and the Jugs followed and attacked the research facility.”
“If Littlewood and the DPRP are doing what you say they’re doing, they need to be stopped,” Rhys argued. “The Jugs won’t give a damn what public opinion about them is.”
“I know, but if it happens, they’ll never be welcome to make a home here!” Zach squeezed his eyes shut, his hands balled into fists. “With the potential for an antiserum from your immunity—and others, if we find there are more people like you—the reasons the Clean Zone feared the Jugs enough to exile them don’t need to be a problem anymore. If we have postexposure prophylaxis—” He cut himself off with a brusque shake of his head. “No. Never mind. Ignore that. I’m being selfish. This isn’t about me or what I wish for.”
He looked so crestfallen that, even though Rhys knew he couldn’t keep Darius out of this, he felt he had to offer Zach something. But that inclination warred against the certainty that Zach was still holding back. The way he’d cut himself off before he could discuss whatever it was he personally hoped to gain threw Rhys right back into the dilemma of not knowing how much he could trust Zach.
“Okay, look. I can’t promise not to tell Darius, but I’ll consider it once I know what is going on.”
Zach was silent a long moment, no doubt arguing with himself. Or praying. But finally, he drew a sharp breath and blurted, “We—Nico and I—think Littlewood wants the Alpha strain for himself.”
Whatever he’d been expecting Zach to say, it wasn’t that. The impact of his words hit Rhys like a fist to the gut.
“Fuck.”
“They’re keeping records on more than the new arrivals,” Toby said when Rhys finished describing his discussion with Zach. “They’ve gone back and done retroactive interviews with everyone in the Clean Zone.”
Darius was beginning to wish he’d heeded Toby’s suggestion about getting away from Colorado Springs back when they’d been climbing the walls in the quarantine unit. Especially since it was pretty clear from the way Rhys was behaving that he was holding some things back.
Titus nodded. “There are thousands of files at the intake center, not hundreds. They have a few computers, but they don’t dare keep anything on them in case the plant goes off-line. They want their research somewhere that they can get to it whether there’s power or not.”
“Well, at least someone learned something from the plague.” Xolani scowled. “Even when there was still battery power, no one could break the security on the data solids scavenged from the Pentagon. The lack of records meant anyone researching Bane had to start from square one.” She drummed her fingers on her thigh. “Do any of the files have information about the blood tests Zach said he collected samples for?”
Toby and Titus both shook their heads. “All that’s there are the interview transcripts and forms the survivors filled out. Medical data is kept elsewhere.”
Darius rubbed his jaw and then nodded irritably. “Fine. Xolani, if you still think it’s worth trying to address the Science Committee, you can detach and remain here with Titus. But tomorrow morning I’m giving Schuyler and her people orders to gather provisions for the trip to Lewis-McChord.” He grimaced. “I know we’re all concerned about the missing people, especially if what Zach told Rhys about Littlewood is true, but when it comes down to it, that’s not our detail.”
“What?” Rhys’s voice climbed high with surprise. “We’re leaving?”
“We’re not Clean Zone citizens. They didn’t want us, remember? He can’t get his hands on Alpha unless he’s willing to try to grab one of us, and that’s too damn risky for him or he’d have already done it. So yeah, we’re leaving.” He scowled into the fire. “I’m not particularly comfortable bringing more survivors here to live under the GDM or be used in . . . whatever it is the government and the DPRP are up to, so there are other things we can do. Once we get to Lewis-McChord, we’ll confer with Luis about dispatching messengers to the other companies about finding someplace new to take the survivors we find, forming another settlement.”
“Whoa!” Xolani held up her hands. “Darius, if the Clean Zone population already feels like we’re a threat, establishing a settlement is going to look like a declaration of open hostility. You’re not doing things the way we want, so we’re going to stop supporting you. The ramifications are huge.”
He arched an eyebrow at her, keeping his hands flat on his thighs to prevent clenching them into fists. Using Rhys as bait . . . It was taking everything he had right now not to hunt down Zach Houtman and pound the shit out of the motherfucker. “So you think we should keep handing survivors over to them?”
Xolani looked like she wanted to argue about that, but she just grimaced and gave a jerky shake of her head. “No. Fuck.”
“Fine.” Darius pointed at Toby and Titus. “Keep digging in those records until we’re ready to go. We want to know ever
ything they’re up to if we’re going to present this to the other companies. Xolani, keep talking like you’re trying to get through to the Science Committee. Don’t advertise that we’re prepping to leave. But we’re fucking out of here as soon as we’re ready to travel.”
They all nodded and got to their feet, except for Rhys, who stayed firmly planted on a log next to the fire.
“No.” They turned in unison to face him, and he raised his voice. “No. I’m not going. I’m going to do what Zach asked. I’m going to play bait.”
“The hell you are,” Darius growled, reaching down to pull him up by his arm. Rhys jerked away.
“No. And don’t you dare try to haul me away like some piece of baggage!” He narrowed his eyes at Darius’s grasping hand.
Appalled by the way he’d just attempted to manhandle Rhys, after he’d sworn to himself that he’d never again force anything on Rhys, Darius dropped it.
“People are being hurt, or killed,” Rhys went on. “If Zach is right about what Littlewood is doing to these boys who are missing . . .” Something tragic crossed Rhys’s face, and he swallowed hard. “We have to stop that. And what if Littlewood does find a way to get ahold of Alpha? It would be Jacob all over again. Worse, maybe. I’m not going to walk away.”
Joe, who had been sitting silently behind Rhys, laid a hand on Rhys’s shoulder with a look of approval. Damn. And there was Toby, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
“What was Zach’s extraction plan, once Littlewood took the bait? Did he even have one?” Xolani challenged.
Rhys broke off his staring contest with Darius to turn his attention to her. “I’m supposed to observe what is happening inside the research facility, see if I can get into their records, find out what they’re doing and who is involved. As far as getting me out, he said he has someone who could help me, someone named Nico.”
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