by Bec McMaster
Eden took his vitals. "You said the Confederacy know about the plague? How long have you been feeling like this? When did the rash first appear?"
He answered her questions tersely. Yes, they knew. Two weeks. Eight days.
Hmm. Pulse regular, limited signs of fluid turgidity when she pinched his skin. Taking the small torch she'd been given by the Confederacy during the opening negotiations, she peered into his eyes, and then insisted upon examining his chest and taking his temperature.
"You have a mild case of plague," she announced, stepping back. Maggie was right. The timeline was unusual. Phase two turned swiftly into phase three, and Mr. Chin's rash had appeared eight days ago. "You should consider yourself lucky."
"I shouldn't have any signs of it at all," he said tersely.
"I'm sure—"
"Wentworth promised the vaccination we received last month would protect us," Mr. Chin insisted.
Eden slowly lifted her head. "Vaccination?" She'd read about the theory in old pre-Darkening manuals she'd salvaged over the years.
When she'd been a little girl, she even remembered a smuggler injecting her with a combination of needles for a small fortune, though Eden had no clue what they'd been for. That was the year measles killed five people in their town, including her mom.
Her family had only had enough money to protect her and her brother, Adam, and Eden had known then she wanted to become a healer, so nobody else would lose their mom.
"Wait. Wentworth and the Confederacy expected the plague to hit?" And they hadn't breathed a word during the negotiations? Granted, they'd been stalled in the last month, but... it was common courtesy.
"He knew there were cases of it. I'm a geologist by trade, so I wasn't involved in most meetings, but I saw a disease outburst map displayed on the map table when I was checking in one night. Wentworth swiftly downsized the map, which made me wonder at the time. Not my area though, and it doesn't pay to be too curious. He evacuated the survey camp last week," Chin replied. "The reivers were starting to get restless, and there was talk of dead bodies being found out in the ranges. Wentworth wanted to clear the area until the mayhem died down, and considering there'd been no progress with the settlement agreement, he was feeling restless for home. Wanted to get back to Cortez City."
Eden had radioed in two weeks ago, as usual, and Wentworth hadn't breathed a word of it. That was the day Emily started complaining of a rash.
"How'd you end up being left behind?"
Chin looked down at his clasped hands. "I hid in the mines during the evac. Wentworth was on a strict timetable, so I knew he'd have to leave without me."
Guy was definitely crazy. "I would kill to have half the resources the Confederacy has."
"I would risk my life to have half the freedom you Wastelanders have," he replied simply.
Eden slowly nodded. She'd heard living in the Confederacy city-states was almost as dangerous as living outside their walls. No privacy. The military in charge of everything. Citizens encouraged to report dissidents. Enormous prison facilities where people vanished.
And that was only what she'd heard from traders.
"Tell me more about this vaccination," she said. "I've only been able to discover the disease is bacterial in nature, and seems to be responding to the antibiotics I have."
Antibiotics she was about to run out of. There were limited supplies of dextrose and saline solution too. Limited supplies of damned near everything. If she didn't get another shipment through from a Confederacy smuggler in the next day or two, she'd be shit out of luck.
"That's the problem," Mr. Chin said. "The salt plague isn't natural. Your antibiotics will seem to work. Initially. Your patients will start to feel better, their fever will break, and then all of a sudden you'll notice the bacteria seems to retaliate. Within twenty-four hours you'll lose them."
Eden's throat went dry. "What?"
Mr. Chin opened his mouth, clearly trying to work out the right words. "I don't know to how to say this, but this plague has been genetically tampered with. It's been designed to be resistant to most strains of antibiotics. Last year there were rumors of one of the Confederacy generals running a top-secret project that tested on human subjects. He set up a private laboratory in Cortez City, and a corporation called the Radisson-Meyers Syndicate.
"A whistle-blower broke the news to the military; General Radisson was buying Wastelanders from the slavers down south and using them in certain medical experiments. He used his military access to smuggle them into Cortez City." Chin swallowed, and glanced down at his lap. "My wife, Megan, worked as an attaché to Lieutenant Bligh, who exposed Radisson. They kept it out of the docu-feeds, but she spoke of it to me when she was home. Said there was enough salt plague created to wipe out millions. Radisson was planning on a coup; he was the only one with the cure. It bothered her how they kept it quiet, and then Megan was killed on her way to work one day. Someone planted a bomb under her car. I couldn't stay there any longer, so I put my hand up for the Copperplate Mine Expedition."
"Eden?" Maggie burst into the tent breathlessly.
Eden held up her hand, staring into Chin's eyes. This couldn't be happening. Most of her plague cases had been getting better. "How do I cure them then?"
"You can't," he said simply. "The only ones who might have that cure are what's left of Radisson-Meyers. Lieutenant Bligh locked down everything when he became general."
"Eden!"
Damn it. "Not now, Maggie," she shot, swiveling to face the other councilor as Maggie held the tent flaps open.
"It's Haven," Maggie said, her face drawn and pale.
That punched the breath from Eden's lungs. "What do you mean, 'It's Haven'?"
"Luc Wade's on the radio. Said he needs you there. Now. He thinks they've got a plague case."
"Adam?" She straightened abruptly. Her brother lived there, but he was supposed to be in the north.
"No." Maggie shook her head. "Luc said he wasn't there. Adam and Mia left last week to visit her sister. There's been no word from them since."
Could be a good sign. Maybe they left before the first victims started coming down with plague.
Haven was a small nearby settlement that had been decimated by reivers a few years back. When her brother was outed as a warg and thrown out of Absolution, he'd eventually wound his way back there and settled. Only a couple dozen people lived there now, and she knew all of them intimately. Half of them were what she considered family.
The heat drained from her face. "Who?"
Maggie shook her head. "It's Lily."
Eden's adopted niece.
CHAPTER TWO
EDEN KICKED the stand out on the bike, and slung her leg over it as dust settled. She'd come as quickly as possible, but her heart was still racing, certain it was too late.
Fourteen days, she told herself, running facts through her mind. You've got roughly twelve to fourteen days from the time symptoms appear.
And then Lily would die an agonizing death....
Henry Chin's revelation had destroyed her equilibrium. She'd run all the way to the council chambers and slammed into the room, startling the other six councilors. "Lock it down. Now!"
Meredith and Maggie were starting to sort out who might have been in contact with those patients in the quarantine camp. Bart had warned her if she left the settlement, then they might not let her back in, and Eden had stared him in the eye. "So be it."
Family was family, and she'd trained her team well. She couldn't do anything more than they could to save her patients. Not against a maliciously designed disease that would ignore anything she could throw at it.
Eden dragged the helmet off her head and unzipped her leather jacket. She barely paused to sling them on the seat, grabbing her medical bag and heading for the main house in Haven.
Haven still bore the brunt of the reivers’ attack from several years ago. Nestled in a canyon, the sleek stone cliffs at its back created a natural barrier to protect the town, and w
hat was left of the perimeter wall had been repaired and painstakingly rebuilt with granite. Palm trees nodded lazily in the breeze, circling the main water source—a natural spring that bubbled out of the ground.
"Hello?" Eden called, leaping up onto the timber deck that surrounded the main house, where her friend Riley lived. She rapped her knuckles on the door, then pushed her way inside.
Riley looked up from where she was nursing the baby against her chest. Her long blonde hair tangled over her shoulders, and her eyes were red and raw. The baby's shock of black hair stood upright and he blinked big blue eyes at Eden, eyes that stole her heart in a second.
"How is he?" Eden whispered.
Riley's smile trembled for a moment as she curled her shoulder to allow Eden to have a look. She'd delivered Thomas Wade three months ago, and he was a fat and happy baby. It had been a harrowing birth as they all waited to see whether the baby would be infected with his father's warg curse.
"Tommy's fine," Riley said.
A flush of heat swept through Eden's heart; he was beautiful. "Hey there, little man," Eden whispered, tucking her finger into his curled fist as he blinked up at her through blue eyes. "Are you being good for your mama?"
"Always." Riley cleared her throat, determination gleaming in her brown eyes. "Eden, what have you heard? Do you know what this is?"
"I know a little. They're calling it the salt plague down south. Absolution was hit about two weeks ago, and I've been quarantining the patients. The second we realized it was contagious, we set up sterile tents, but now they're talking about quarantining the town and shutting the gates to all newcomers."
"How many?"
She reluctantly took her finger back from the little boy and met Riley's gaze. "How many plague victims?"
"How many have survived?" Riley corrected.
Eden shook her head, feeling sick to the stomach. Riley was not the sort of woman who wanted false comfort. "I've got twelve victims, and only seven still alive." She settled her bag on her shoulder. No point scaring Riley with the details Henry Chin had given her. Riley needed hope, not a nightmare. "The ones that are still breathing won't be by the end of a week, if the fever runs its course."
Silence fell, broken only by the baby's gurgle. A single silent tear slid down Riley's cheek. "How long?"
"How long since—"
The door to Lily's bedchamber opened, and Luc Wade stared out at her. Eden stopped speaking. As a warg, with his enhanced senses he'd have heard her. There was no hiding the truth. But when she met the raw grief in his eyes, she wanted to.
He closed the door behind him. "Riley, you're not supposed to be in here."
"The baby was fussing," Riley shot back, then shushed little Tommy, despite the fact he hadn't made a sound.
"Better that than—" Luc broke off, unable to say it. Energy boiled off him, as if he wanted to explode into violence, but restrained himself. "I want her and the baby away from here," he said, looking to Eden. "I can't catch this, but she can. And so can he."
Eden hated to agree, but she turned to Riley. "You can't help Lily," she said, taking her best friend's hand. "Do as Luc says. Keep Tommy healthy and isolated. Is there someplace else you can be staying?"
Riley swallowed. "Adam took Mia to visit her sister, so their house is empty."
Thank God. "Stay at Adam's place. It won't be a bother, and you'll be better off. Luc and I will look after Lily. Take all the precautions you can. I don't know how this spreads, though I suspect it's via body fluids, coughing, or sneezing. But it wouldn't hurt to boil your water and not let anyone else in the house. Don't touch anyone's hand, don't let them sneeze on you. Bleach all your blankets and clothes, and air-dry them in the sunlight to try and kill any bed lice or fleas." She continued through the list until Riley was safely on her way.
Then she turned to Luc.
"How's Lily?" It had been easier to control her fear when she was in doctor mode, but now Riley was gone....
"Tired," he replied bluntly. "Thirsty. Complaining of muscle aches."
Still in phase one then. Eden ran the timeline through her head. Maybe fourteen days, if they'd caught it early enough.
But then what?
Ever since Chin told her the truth, she'd had this hollow pit in her abdomen, like a black hole that just kept sucking at her.
"How long since the rash first started?" Eden asked, slipping the face mask over her mouth and nose and tugging on a pair of gloves. She'd been forced to leave the HAZMAT suit behind. Absolution only had three suits, and the others who were working in the isolation tents needed them.
"A couple of hours," Luc replied. He raked a tired hand through his hair. "Lil was complaining of being thirsty yesterday, but we assumed it was a sore throat, nothing else. Then she started coming down with a headache last night. Riley and the baby had been out all day, so I sat up with her."
"Who do you think she caught it off?"
"There was a pair of travelers come through Haven five days ago. They had a daughter around Lily's age, so the pair of them played together." His face looked stricken, and she reached over and squeezed his hand.
"It's not your fault. You couldn't know. Nobody could have known. There are no symptoms during the incubation period. Was she around the baby yesterday?" Eden kept asking questions softly, trying to work out how far this might have spread.
No, she hadn't been around the baby or Riley yesterday. She'd been out riding with Luc, and the baby had been fussing, so Riley had been sleeping in the spare room with Tommy for the last two nights. Thank God. Fingers crossed Tommy hadn't picked it up.
Inside the room, the girl on the bed tossed and turned, stinking of stale sweat. A young man sat by her bed holding her hand, and Eden was about to tell him to get out when she saw the amulet around his throat.
Cole Jackson. Or CJ, as she knew him. The young man who'd been turned into a warg by Luc.
Just like Luc, he couldn't catch the plague, but she was surprised to see him here, near the man who'd torn his life asunder.
"She wants more water," CJ murmured, looking to Luc, and suddenly Eden realized the past didn't matter. Lily was the one thing that tied the pair of them together. Lily and CJ had always been close, even though five years separated them.
Luc fetched it, giving Eden a chance to examine Lily. She stroked a hand through the girl's silky blonde hair. She and Adam had raised the girl like their own for three years, until Luc came riding back into town. If anything happened to her....
"It's her birthday in a week," Luc muttered, and heartbreak echoed in his voice. He paused for such a long time Eden wondered if he was going to say anything else. "I want her to live to see sixteen, Eden. Please. Please tell me you have something."
Not enough to grant him much hope.
He saw it in her eyes.
"What do I do?" Luc's eyes gleamed with unshed tears, his voice roughening. "I only just got her back. Do I turn her?"
An instant wave of revulsion swept through Eden, even though she understood why he asked. Wargs were immune to sickness, and could heal from almost anything, apart from a silver bullet. But they were also monsters. Without another amulet to control the beast within, Lily would be prey to the creature inside her. She'd go on bloody rampages across the deserts, killing and tearing apart anything that lived before feasting upon it.
"I'd give her mine," Luc said, seeing the look on her face. He pressed both hands together, and dug his clasped fingers against his lips. "She could live an almost normal life—"
"And what happens to you?" CJ muttered.
Their eyes met. Luc wouldn't be able to hold back the monster he kept hidden within. "You get to finally take revenge for what I did to you years ago."
Once it had been all the boy dreamed of, but he reared back from the promise, shaking his head. "No. No." His gaze slid to Lily's. The girl would never forgive him for killing her father—they all knew it.
"Then I'll do it myself," Luc said in a hollow voice, scrapi
ng a weary hand over his face.
It made Eden feel sick. Her brother had faced the same dilemma for years. It had always been the way Wastelanders dealt with the warg curse, before they realized there might be another way.
"And what about Riley?" she whispered hoarsely. "And Tommy? What about Lily? You're going to leave them behind to fend for themselves? You don't even know if turning Lily will save her. A full-fledged warg is immune to any disease, but what if the turning kills her?"
"Then you find me an answer, Eden," Luc snapped, shoving to his feet and glaring down at her. "What do I do? She's my little girl. She's already seen far too much suffering. I can't just sit here. How do I save her, damn it—"
"I don't know!" And there lay the crux of the problem. "I don't have more antibiotics. We're dangerously short of them. And this strain might be resistant, according to Chin. We're in the middle of the goddamned Wastelands and—"
"Then find something," he snapped, the muscle in his jaw shifting almost inhumanly, a ripple of muscle moving behind his stubble. "I can't just watch her die. Or pray the antibiotics work this time round."
Eden took a subconscious step back. If Luc was this close to the edge, then she couldn't afford to push him.
"Easy." CJ came to the rescue, stepping between them and slamming a hand to Luc's chest.
The men looked at each other, and Luc's nostrils flared.
"Dad...."
The hoarse whisper stopped him in his tracks. He groaned and turned back to the bed, sinking onto the covers to capture Lily's hand. "Hey, sweetheart."
"Why... are you shouting at... Aunt Edie?" Lily rasped.
"Sorry." He brought her hand up to his forehead and then kissed her knuckles. "It's all right. Everything's going to be all right. Eden's here now."
It was a knife to the chest, for what if she couldn't do anything?
"Hey, Lily Bell." Eden eased onto the bed, wishing she could hug her. "How are you feeling?"
"Horrible," Lily rasped.