“I did.” Zach smiled, but he was starting to regret his choice already. Xolani put her notebook aside and rose, wedging herself under Zach’s shoulder to take his weight and guide him back to his room.
“You’re lucky I don’t just toss you over my shoulder,” she muttered, but she didn’t seem truly cranky. Just her usual irascible self. Zach had gotten used to the abrasiveness, and he understood why Rhys was so fond of her. There truly was no better ally.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “I just really wanted a chance to talk to you without Nico hovering nearby.”
“Yeah? What about?” She swept his blankets back, waited for Zach to climb obediently into bed, and then covered him up again. Even though the summer heat was oppressive, Zach needed the layers. He always felt chilled without them.
Zach had to fight the impulse to drop back to sleep immediately. He’d been sleeping easily twenty-two hours a day for the first couple weeks of the virus, and then a good sixteen to twenty hours since. It was tapering off, though. He could stay awake for longer stretches now.
“I want you to try to infect me with Beta. Your Beta.”
She gave him a long, searching look, but he could tell she caught his meaning immediately.
She’d already considered this, hadn’t she? Of course she would have been contemplating the possibilities during those weeks when he was too sick to think at all.
“Nico would kill me, even if it works the way we think it will,” she said. But it wasn’t a refusal.
Zach nodded. “I know. But we have to know if having Beta-Prime makes me immune. If it does—”
“Then we finally have a way to inoculate people,” she finished for him. “Crude, but effective, as the saying goes. Providing Nico is willing to donate samples of his blood. It’s his version of Alpha that we need to make it work.”
“Exactly.” Zach sank into the mattress. Even that much conversation left him feeling drained.
“And if it doesn’t work?” she asked cautiously.
“Then I’ll die of the Rot, after all. But at least we’ll know. And if it does . . .”
If it did, whole new worlds of possibility would open up for them all.
It would change the quarantine process. Now, instead of isolating new survivors until they were sure they weren’t a danger, they could infect newly recovered civilians with Beta-Prime before integrating them with the civilian population.
Then the Jugs could freely mingle with the civilians too. Those who hadn’t had the flexibility to find long-term companionship among the mostly male Jug population could marry civilians and have children without infecting their partners. The ones who had menstrual cycles wouldn’t need to isolate themselves from contact with uninfected people. Coupled with Rhys’s idea of using an antiserum derived from his blood on infants born to Jugs, they could keep those children safe until they were old enough to survive being infected by Beta-Prime themselves.
If they could inoculate everyone until the revenants were exterminated and the last of the 1st Juggernaut Battalion died, the threat of another outbreak would finally be a thing of the past.
He knew Xolani was aware of all the ramifications and no doubt worked through all the possibilities and permutations herself. But she must not have been willing to ask Zach to submit himself as a test subject, so he’d had to take the first step and volunteer.
“You’re sure you don’t want to clear it with Nico?” she asked, unsnapping the sheath on her belt and drawing out a knife.
“He’d never let me if I did, and you and I both know we have to do this.” God’s hand was at work here, Zach knew it. Everything made sense now—why it had never been right for him to let himself be infected by Alpha, why he’d had to break down the barriers keeping him apart from Nico, regardless of the danger. This was God’s plan, to use him and Nico to protect the surviving population. It just required one last act of faith.
Xolani nodded and drew the blade across the back of her forearm.
“I’m going to fucking kill you!” Nico snarled, nose to nose with Xolani. Her scarred face pulled up into a smile.
“Yeah, good luck with that.” Nico barely had time to register her moving before she had him in a wristlock, pinned face-first against the hotel wall.
“I get that you’re pissed,” she said from behind him, keeping his hand just high enough between his shoulder blades to ache and ensure she had his attention without dislocating his arm. “But it was Zach’s choice.”
Fuck this. He might be out of practice, but that didn’t mean he was helpless. Nico’s hand went through the plasterboard of the wall as he shoved back, thrusting her off-balance and twisting out of her grasp, using his momentum to turn and grab the hand she had locked around his wrist. Xolani drove an underhand jab into his ribs before he managed to flip her to the floor, though she bounced right back to her feet as if she were on springs. She ducked his roundhouse kick, but he managed to catch another blow to her jaw, staggering her.
Nico charged furiously after her, rage making him more aggressive than strategic. Which he paid for when she swept his legs out from under him and had him on his back, a knee pressing against his larynx, before he even realized what was happening.
“Feel better now?” she asked calmly, her brows climbing high. Grudgingly, he nodded, and she rose, offering him a hand up. “That was fun. We should spar again sometime.”
“You shouldn’t have done that without talking to me,” he insisted once he was on his feet.
“It wasn’t your call. You may be a Jug, but that doesn’t mean you own Zach. Unless you’re thinking of going the way of Charlie Company. Are you?” He bristled at the suggestion, and she gave a brusque nod. “Good. I’d hate to kill you. But if you’re not, better ask Darius how well it works out, trying to tell your civilian partner what to do.”
Nico swallowed hard, turning away from her so she wouldn’t see the way his eyes were burning with tears. “I don’t want to control him, but damn it, I already came so close to losing him.”
“If it’s any comfort, I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I didn’t think there was a significant chance of it working.” She squeezed his shoulder in a sympathetic grip. “I’m not interested in wasting lives needlessly, and Zach’s a good man. The two of you have been through enough. But this was a completely plausible hypothesis, and unfortunately, we have no other way of testing it.” She rubbed her ribs where he’d hit her. “I mean, sure, we could get back to the Clean Zone so Zach could access the equipment he used in testing Rhys. He could have tested his antibodies, exposed a sample of his blood to a sample of my blood and watched what happened, but in the end, it still would have come down to this. A live, human trial. And since he is the only person anywhere to have been infected by Beta-Prime, he’s the only possible test subject. And he thinks it’s worth it.”
He wanted to hate her for that pragmatism. He’d been away from the Jugs for too long. This was what they did. They weighed the costs and benefits with cold reason because they didn’t have the luxury of sentimentality. Everything they did was about survival. For a while, he’d been able to look at the world that way himself, but it had been some time since he’d been a part of their uniquely fraternal culture.
“So what happens now?” Nico asked after a moment, sinking into a chair across from Xolani’s bed.
“Well, hopefully Joe will be back with that skim-craft soon, if he’s still got fuel for it.” Xolani sat on the edge of the bed, facing him directly. “It will be months until we can get Zach anywhere with lab equipment, otherwise. He can’t make the journey on his own power and probably won’t be able to before it’s too late in the year to pass over the mountains.”
He pressed his hands to his knees to stop their anxious bouncing. “Okay. Let’s say we get him to a lab. What then?”
“We’ll watch his blood, see if the antibodies he’s got from his Beta-Prime exposure are combating the lethal Beta exposure. Then, we wait until it’s certain he hasn’t been in
fected with the Rot, just to make sure our live trial confirms what the microscopes are telling us. Which, as I said, I think there’s a really good chance that will be the case.” Xolani pursed her lips, considering. “We’ll give it, say, four to six weeks before we call it conclusive. That’s when things will get really interesting.”
Something about her smile made Nico sit up straighter. It wasn’t a pleasant expression, but it sure looked like she was enjoying herself.
“Interesting how?”
“Leverage.” Her smile broadened. “We may just have the means to make the Clean Zone enact some badly needed reforms.”
“Are you really going to keep giving me the silent treatment?” Zach asked softly as Nico sullenly puttered around the room, making sure everything was secured before he settled into the armchair to sleep. He hadn’t shared the bed with Zach since Zach had confessed what he had done.
“Are you really going to act like I don’t have every right to be pissed off at you?” Nico shot back. It was the longest sentence he’d uttered to Zach in days.
“No, you definitely have every right to be angry.” Zach plucked at the covers, feeling his eyes growing heavy. The damned malaise wasn’t going to allow him much time to hash this out with Nico, and this was a conversation they desperately needed to have. “But that doesn’t mean that what I did was the wrong thing to do.”
Nico’s eyes narrowed. “I’m less upset by what you did than the fact that you did it totally unilaterally. After everything we’ve been through, you just decided by yourself—”
“Like you decided by yourself to leave me behind?” Zach shot back. “You decided that your desire to protect me overrode any right I might have to choose to take the risks involved in being with you.” There. Good. The irritation was giving him a little more energy to have the discussion they needed to have. He’d pay for it later, but at least he wasn’t trying to make his case while half-asleep. “I’ll grant your anger is understandable, Nico, but I won’t tolerate you rapping me across the knuckles for being autocratic.”
Nico’s mouth fell open for a moment before he sneered. “Right, okay. So, you insist your choice wasn’t wrong, and I’m apparently a hypocrite for being upset that you didn’t even consult me. So much for me having every right to be angry.”
“You’re not angry because I chose the wrong thing, because you know that what I did was right. You’re not even angry because I chose it without asking you first, because you also know you couldn’t have forced yourself to agree to it even though it was necessary. If I wanted to do the right thing I had to leave you out of the decision-making process.” Zach closed his eyes a moment, the burst of energy fleeing as quickly as it had come. “You’re angry because you’re scared. And that’s valid. We just had a near miss and now this. But just . . . put it in the right place, would you? Because I’m tired enough without worrying whether we’ll be able to get past this and forgive each other when I come out on the other side of this thing.”
Nico didn’t answer. He crossed to the window and stared out through the dusty, cobweb-laden panes at the twilit sky outside. His shoulders drooped, and Zach desperately wanted to go to him and hold him and assure him everything would be fine. But weariness was weighing him down, sucking him into the mattress until he couldn’t move.
He didn’t mean to fall asleep, but when he opened his eyes again, the room was dark except for the moonlight filtering in through the dirty windows. Nico’s face was before him as he knelt beside the bed and stared at Zach in the darkness.
“Never again,” Nico whispered, and his voice was ragged, his eyes too shiny in the bluish half-light of the room. “If you survive this—and I’m trying like hell to share your faith that you will—nothing like this happens again. I don’t care how much greater good is at stake. We don’t make any more choices that could take us from each other, no matter what. Promise me?”
“Never again,” Zach agreed, reaching out to caress the faintly silver-shot curls tumbling around Nico’s shoulders and the stubbled chin where he’d finally shaved off his thick beard. “After this is over and I’m in the clear, it’s our time to just be. I promise.”
Nico smiled and captured Zach’s hand, pressing a kiss to his fingers. The sense of rightness in that touch, the surety of God’s blessing upon them, made the room feel like daylight was flooding in, enveloping them both in its radiance. He smiled drowsily and tugged at Nico’s hand, silently entreating him to join Zach in bed. Never mind that Zach hadn’t had the energy for more than a sponge bath for weeks. He needed to be held.
Nico obliged, wrapping Zach up with his arms and legs and holding him as if he’d never let go. “I promise too,” he whispered, and Zach drifted off again with that vow filling his heart.
“Wapato Island Refuge?” Darius looked up from the documents Joe had delivered.
Toby nodded eagerly. “That was the indigenous name. We decided to go with that instead of calling it Sauvie Island.”
“That was mostly farmland, wasn’t it?” Xolani asked as Darius passed her the papers.
“That and wildlife conservation,” Toby confirmed. “It’s gorgeous. Room enough for a few thousand people and still plenty of space to grow crops and house livestock. It’s been fallow for years, so the soil is rich, and there’s no need to build any sort of perimeter because there’s just one way on and off the island. Could have quarantine or—” he nodded to Zach “—Beta-Prime convalescence housing on the other side of the river before newcomers cross the bridge to join the population.”
Darius rubbed his chin, smiling slightly at the excited light in Rhys’s eyes as he listened to the conversation. “Is the bridge sound?”
“Seems to be,” Joe answered. “If not, we can come up with a ferry system.”
“What did the other companies say?” Xolani scanned the pages in her hand, her attention only half on them.
“They’re taking it back to their COs, but they were satisfied enough to leave their civvies in Portland after Schuyler’s people told them to divert from delivering to the Clean Zone. They figure worse comes to worst, they can always go to the Clean Zone later.” Toby shrugged. “Consensus seems to be that the other companies will agree to helping set up the Refuge as a second settlement so long as we get a promise that there won’t be another exile. We’ll have to work on whether the Jugs will live in the Refuge or just nearby or what, but we won’t be pushed out again. We want representation in whatever government is established, and we want to be assured of a home to return to. Everyone up at Lewis-McChord seems to agree.”
“That’s reasonable,” Nico said. He swallowed forcefully, but he made himself continue speaking. “If Zach’s in the clear with regard to contagion from the Rot, exile won’t be an issue anymore anyway, right?”
Xolani smiled. “Exactly. We just make sure everyone going to the Refuge gets Beta-Prime exposure and goes through convalescence first.”
Zach spoke up from where he was huddled in a bundle of blankets beside Nico. “Schuyler should be part of drafting whatever constitution they come up with.” He met Nico’s eyes. “Wasn’t that the plan, during the overthrow? She studied political science. She knows the law.”
“She made that point too,” Toby said. “I’m not sure how it’s going to work, throwing her in with a bunch of civvies, but, you know, the survivors we recover are different from the ones who were already entrenched in the Clean Zone before the overthrow. They aren’t as afraid of us, especially since so much time has passed since the first wave of the plague.”
Xolani drew a deep breath. “I think we should have more than one Jug helping make the constitution. In fact—” her eyes locked on Zach and Nico “—I think whatever interim government or committee gets set up, you two should head it up.”
Zach jerked upright, looking more awake than he had for the entire conference they had put together once Toby, Joe, and Titus arrived. “Us?”
“You studied political science, too, didn’t you?” Rhys p
ointed out. “You told me your dad made you do it.”
“Well, yes, but—”
Toby smirked. “The symbolism is nice and heavy-handed. No one could miss it. Partnership between a civvie and a Jug, running things together. The civvie looking all safe and happy. Nothing to fear.”
Darius smiled in satisfaction, pleased with the direction in which his people’s minds were working. “That, and Nico’s gonna need to stick close to the Refuge to make sure they have enough samples of Beta-Prime to infect new arrivals. And Zach’s worked as a medical assistant. He can help nurse the convalescents at first, because we’ll be short on medical personnel for a while.”
“So this is it, then?” Rhys had stars in his eyes, and Darius started feeling the urge to call the meeting to a close just to get him alone. He ran his hand up the back of Rhys’s shirt, carefully thumbing along the outline of the delta etched on his shoulder. Rhys shivered. “It’s really going to happen?”
“It is.” In a rare gesture, Xolani gave him a rough kiss on the temple and rose. “If we have the fuel cells left for it, I want to go back to the Clean Zone. Worst-case scenario, I want to let the people there know they have alternatives, and make it clear that we won’t stand for their congress restricting any Clean Zone citizen who wants to relocate from doing so. But I have a better proposal too, if they’re willing to listen. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She grabbed Titus by the collar and hauled him to his feet. He went willingly enough, looking mildly amused. “Some of you may have been fucking nonstop for the past couple months, but I need to get laid. Good night.”
Rhys stood beside Xolani as she faced the Congressional Science Committee through the glass. Sweat trickled down his back, making the brand on his shoulder itch. On Xolani’s other side stood Zach, and behind them were Darius, Nico, and Schuyler. Xolani’s voice was firm and confident, as if she had no nerves about addressing the committee.
“As you can see from the lab results Mr. Houtman included in the report, there’s no question that Beta-Prime infection results in immunity to all other strains of the Bane virus, including the Rot and the Gamma strain.” She put a document up on the projection display. “Following the plan I detailed, by quarantining small groups of the population at a time and exposing them to Beta-Prime, you can inoculate your population in phases, without adversely impacting the productivity of the Clean Zone’s workforce. And if you do it during the winter months like I suggest on page eighty-seven, you can inoculate larger groups without worrying that there won’t be enough personnel for agricultural operations during the growing season.”
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