by RJ Crayton
Elaan took a deep breath. Lie after lie after lie. “And what about Lijah?”
“I don’t think your dad ever intended for him to be out in the world alone. After they found out about the virus turning people into carriers, they looked into whether there could be any other side effects that were common traits of carriers.”
Elaan raised her brow. “Such as?”
“Almost every known carrier was sterile. For whatever reason, once the males had been exposed to the disease and become carriers, they produced sperm incapable of fertilization. In females, eggs were damaged so they, too, were incapable of being fertilized. Researchers tested the vaccinated chimps and found all but one were sterile. It meant the vaccine was a no go. My dad couldn’t tell anyone what we’d done. Lijah and I both needed to get into scientist housing.”
“So your dad lied to get you in?” She still was having trouble wrapping her head around all that transpired.
“Your father had already told someone you were immune, so they approved your application. That meant Lijah and I were relying on the whims of the selection panel. Your father had told my father privately that he would back a move to get kids into scientist housing, but he seemed noncommittal in public venues. My dad didn’t want to chance a no decision. Though your father’s choice to appear noncommittal publicly was more of a strategic move, it turns out, as he spoke to scientists behind-the-scenes to ensure there was unanimous support. By the time the committee had decided to let families in, I was already stuck with the lie.”
She closed her eyes. It was all so much. Her mother was right about lies. They were nothing but bad news. Josh had never been immune like her. And he would be a carrier if he went uptop and got exposed to the disease. “Why are you going uptop?” Elaan asked. “You’ll just become a carrier, become sterile. Why don’t you just stay here and explain what happened. Surely, they won’t make you go to this Facility One if you’re not actually a carrier, yet.”
Josh snorted and gave her a hard stare. “You really think they’ll listen to us, that they’ll care when we’ve lied already. My father told them I was immune!”
Elaan felt her mouth form a small O. She bit her lip. They had lied. “But you’re not a carrier yet. That has to count for something.”
Josh sighed. “Why? Why it would count for anything. Even if they believed us, that we had taken the vaccine but hadn’t been exposed to the disease again, they would know that the second we got exposed we were going to become carriers. Why let us turn into this awful thing they have no control over? We’re as good as carriers once we get uptop and exposed to people, so I’m pretty sure they’re going to treat us like carriers, and they’re going take us to Facility One.”
Elaan looked down at the ground, racked her brain. There had to be a better way. This couldn’t be the world they lived in, their only options. “But,” she started to say, only she wasn’t sure how to finish that thought. But what? The government had somehow figured things out and wanted Lijah and Josh at Facility One. “What is Facility One?”
“It’s where they take the carriers to kill them. Mark Dayton was the first to die, but my dad said there have been at least ten other known carriers found and taken there for extermination.”
Elaan wanted to scream. If the government wanted them at Facility One, then it wanted them dead. Josh was right; the government wouldn’t believe anything they said. And even if the government did believe them, they would still kill them. Josh was especially in trouble. His father’s claim that Josh was immune meant they would have no qualms about exposing him to infected people. With Lijah, they at least wouldn’t cavalierly expose him to the virus. But they’d be very willing to expose Josh, who had claimed to be immune. And that would turn him into the very thing they wanted to kill.
“Elaan, Joshua,” her father called. She saw her father standing next to Kingston and Lijah, waving them over.
Elaan sucked in a deep breath and stood. Josh held out his hand toward her and she took it. Immediately, a calm washed over her as Josh’s warm hand clasped tightly around her own. They walked hand in hand over to the others, and she noticed Kingston staring with malice. Her father lingered a moment longer than necessary on their joined hands. Most surprisingly, though, Lijah appeared unfazed, as if he’d expected this. He simply said, “Josh explain it all to you?”
Elaan nodded.
Kingston spoke. “I’m not going to explain the escape route again,” he said, staring daggers at Elaan. “Just stick with Josh and Lijah and you’ll be fine. They both know what to do. As for once you get uptop, you’ll need to find shelter and lay low.” He rubbed his neck, then looked at Josh, heartbreak in his eyes. “Just try to avoid people, try to avoid the virus. You’re not quite a carrier yet. If we can keep you safe for a while, maybe I can figure out how to suppress this symbiotic carrier relationship from turning on with exposure to the virus.”
Josh nodded, his face a blank slate, as if he were simply trying to keep all his emotions in check, as if any expression of them would push him over the edge.
Kingston reached over and hugged his son, whispering something in his ear. When Josh pulled away from the embrace, he had a slight frown, but he nodded just the same.
“James,” Kingston said, the hint of emotion he’d just had with his son had gone. “You said you had a plan, a place the kids could go to lie low, stay safe.”
Elaan turned to her father, curious. He’d been so inept the past month, the idea that he could come up with a plan, one that would actually work, one that Kingston would trust, seemed hard to believe.
“Yes,” her father said. “There’s a woman I helped hide. She’s in Illinois, and she actually is a carrier. But, she’s been lying low so no one finds out. She’s Mark Dayton’s sister.”
“Sister?” Elaan said. “I thought he was an only child.”
Her father shook his head. “Most people thought that, but his mother had a second child, a daughter, and couldn’t provide for her, so she gave the girl up. Very few people in the family had known about the other child, and the adoption records for the girl burned in a fire. After Dayton’s mother died earlier this year, he hired a private eye to find his sister. When he got back from South America, the private eye called, and brought Mark his findings. He’d found Dayton’s sister. Of course, the private eye is dead, as he got infected by Mark. But, the file he gave Mark survived. Mark realized before authorities did that all sorts of people around him were becoming sick even though he wasn’t, so he took his sister’s file and hid it. He told me where it was and who his sister was. A week before he was executed, he asked me to protect her. I promised I would. I promised I would let her know that she was his sister and that it was possible, because of their genetic similarity, that she could be a carrier. He wanted to let her know that she had to stay away from people.”
Kingston’s eyes bulged and he sneered, “So you just let her go, even though she could infect people? You didn’t tell the government there was another carrier out there?”
“So they could execute her?” he asked. “The way they plan to execute your son? The way they plan to execute my son?”
Kingston shook his head, the incredulity at her father’s statement dripping from every pore. “This was a week before the execution, so you didn’t know it was going to happen.”
“I did,” her father said.
They all stared at her father, and his face crumpled slightly, quivering at the lip as if he wanted to cry. “There was a panel, a panel that had to decide if the carriers were too dangerous to live, if we should violate the law and save our nation, if we should kill a few to save the lives of many. I said, yes.”
Kingston’s nostrils flared and his fists balled at his side. “You did this to them. Your vote is what condemned my son.”
Neither Josh nor Lijah said a word. Josh was wide-eyed, a loathing in his countenance as he stared at her father. Lijah stared at the floor, his face blank.
Elaan turned back to see
her father’s apologetic face. “I realized I was wrong,” he said softly. “When he told me about his sister, about an innocent, about a person who didn’t know and wouldn’t hurt anyone, I felt guilty. I promised him I would help her, and I went back to the committee. I told them I’d changed my opinion, but they didn’t care. Regardless of my opinion, they had decided killing the carriers was the best way. I know I’m partly to blame for that, Kingston, but I can’t change it.”
Kingston’s face was a mix of contempt and loathing. Josh, for once, looked exactly like his father, something Elaan had never seen before. Lijah’s expression was neutral still. He showed not an iota of emotion or reaction. That was when she realized he knew. Go to her, her father had told Lijah. The sister. Lijah knew his father wanted them to go to this woman who was a carrier. He’d known it all, that his father had saved this woman, had hid her, hid a carrier.
“So, who is this woman?” Kingston asked. “What’s her name and how do you know we can trust her.”
“I can’t tell you,” her father said, drawing all eyes to him. All eyes, except Lijah’s.
“What do you mean?” Kingston said.
“I mean, I can’t tell you,” he said, pointing his finger at Kingston’s chest. “I know that if you know, you will sell this woman and my children out in a heartbeat to protect your son. I’m not willing to risk you having that information. Lijah knows the information. He’ll tell Josh and Elaan who they’re going to as soon as they get uptop.”
Kingston shook his head and took a step forward. “That’s not acceptable.”
Her father laughed. “Really,” he retorted. “Then what is acceptable? That they stay here? That we watch the MPs drag our sons to Facility One for a lethal injection and take my daughter off to Charlottesville to experiment on her? Is that acceptable to you?”
“No, but it’s perfectly acceptable for Josh to go it on his own, to stay away from this woman who’s a carrier. Your kids can go on their own.”
“Fine,” her father said. “They can leave together and Josh can decide what he wants to do when he gets uptop.”
Kingston snarled. “Yes he can, and I’m sure his plans don’t involve heading straight toward a contagious woman. Right now, Josh is not a carrier. If he goes near this woman, he will be.”
Elaan stared at her father. Kingston was right. “Why would you send us to a carrier, Dad? That’s not safe for Josh or Lijah.”
“She’s not a carrier of the airborne virus,” he said. “She seems to be immune to the airborne strand, and a carrier of the original strand. The original version of this disease, Helnoan-A, is hard to contract. So long as you’re not playing in her bodily fluids, no one should be exposed to enough viral load to switch on the carrier genes.”
Elaan watched Lijah closely, awaiting some reaction. Only, there was none. He seemed to have known all of this.
“It shouldn’t make a difference which strand she has,” Elaan asked. “Should it?”
Elaan’s father nodded. “It does make a difference. Helnoan-B, the airborne strand, behaves radically differently. It is easier to catch and spread, which is why this pandemic got out of hand so quickly. The A-strand carriers seem to actually be immune to both strands but carry only the fluid-contracted strand. It’s something I realized when I tested Dayton’s sister. While siblings have genetic similarities, they’re still very different. It seemed unlikely she’d be a carrier. She didn’t show any carrier traits to the airborne disease. In fact, she was immune to it. I went ahead and tested her against the A-strand just to be safe, and that’s when I learned she was a carrier of it. So, she’s not a danger. Not like the B-strand carriers.”
Kingston was silent, but he didn’t disagree with her father, which was a good sign. Kingston would have argued if her father had been wrong.
“What I’m telling you,” her father said, looking sincerely at Josh, “is that you are very unlikely to be turned into a carrier by coming in contact with her.” He looked down at his watch. “We don’t have time for this now. The key thing is that the government believes they’re carriers, and the minor fact that they’re not quite yet, won’t matter. I doubt they’ll believe us at this point, since we’ve lied already.” He turned to Kingston. “They need to leave. We don’t know whether Greg made it to the comm tower, and got the message. If he did, it’s possible he’ll come back for Elaan early. Or, maybe they even sent another message through, asking one of the lower officers to get the three of you early. We don’t want to chance that.”
Kingston opened his mouth, hesitated as if thinking better of it, and finally spoke. “I’ve been monitoring the communication channel using a backend surveillance device,” he said. “The general hasn’t communicated anything back to them, nor has he reached the communication tower. You should probably have all night. He tried to communicate to the uptop that he planned to spend the night at the communication tower, then head back in the morning.”
“What do you mean, he tried?” Lijah asked.
“He’s been blocking outgoing communication from the general,” Josh said. “He has an encrypted military backend key.”
Elaan stared at the father and son, her eyes darting between them wondering how two people so different could be genetically connected. “Why are you blocking the communication?” Elaan asked Kingston. “Are you why we haven’t been getting messages?”
“No,” Kingston said snippily. “They stopped communicating with us on their own, but it did worry me so I’ve been monitoring the situation. I added a secret reroute code so I get all messages first, and decide whether to route them to the communications room. I didn’t know the general had a private comm room in his suite.”
Elaan’s father put his hands up. “Enough. We’re wasting time. The backpacks have two sixteen-ounce bottles of water, some vacuum-sealed food packages and clothing. You need to go before they start looking. Once they start looking, you’ll be under the gun. They’re going to think you’re holed up here, around Maryland. If you head as far away from here as possible, over a short period of time, they won’t be expecting that.”
Kingston looked at them all and said, “He’s right. You have to go.” He grabbed Josh by the arm and started leading him out of the room. Elaan’s hand was still in Josh’s so she got tugged along, too. She was surprised Josh didn’t let go of her hand, that he wanted her with him.
Everyone fell in line after Kingston, going through the lab to a back hallway Elaan wasn’t familiar with, down a corridor with several turns until they reached a door that had a keycard reader, a small screen, and a touchpad. Kingston pulled a card from his pocket and touched it to the reader. The screen lit up, demanding a code. Kingston typed one in quickly, then waited. Nothing happened for a moment, and Elaan worried Kingston had messed up, that an alarm would blare alerting everyone to their escape. Only, it became obvious that Kingston knew what he was doing. After a longer wait than Elaan would have liked, she heard the electronic sound of a latch release. The door had unlocked.
Kingston pulled open the door and held it. Beyond it was a set of stairs. “Get uptop, get a set of keys, and take a jeep. Military cars are the only vehicles that can be out at night. Don’t worry about this door. I’ll secure it once you’re in. Just go out, try to get someplace safe and remember,” he said, lowering his voice. “I love you, son. Stay safe. Stay strong and I’ll find a cure for you and for others. Just stay away from people who are sick, and I hope you’ll consider going it alone after you get up there.”
Josh nodded, releasing Elaan’s hand and giving his father a hug. Elaan found her own father, who was standing behind her. “It’s not goodbye,” her father said. “It’s auf Wiedersehen, like in that movie you like. It means we’ll see each other again. Just stay safe. Both you and Lijah.”
He hugged Elaan, and then Lijah. He seemed to linger a moment longer with Lijah, and Elaan was sure he’d whispered something in her brother’s ear.
Lijah pulled away from their father and head
ed through the door. Elaan stood there, not ready to leave but knowing she couldn’t stay. This underground complex was supposed to be a safe haven, only now it was the opposite.
Elaan swallowed. The knot in her stomach tighten as she walked through the doorway, joining Lijah and Josh. Kingston shut the door and locked it. It was completely dark in the stairwell. A small ray of light emerged. It was Josh. He stood in front of them holding a flashlight. “We just go up these stairs and open the door. We should pop out in the garage.”
She could barely see Josh in the low light, but after he stopped speaking, she saw Lijah move, so Elaan followed. Elaan wasn’t sure how much longer the stairwell went. They moved forward a few more paces and stopped. The one thing clearly visible was the door in front of the guys. Josh turned back toward them, pointing the flashlight up to the ceiling, so the light dispersed and they were all visible with eerie shadow.
“Did you get a uniform?” Josh asked.
Elaan hadn’t actually packed her bag so she wasn’t sure. Lijah answered for her. “Dad put one in her bag. It was the smallest size they had. Should fit, even if she has to roll up the pants and sleeves.”
“What kind of uniform?” Elaan asked.
“Military,” Josh said. “We should probably change in here. They have a name tag, but we don’t have any corresponding ID, so if we’re questioned, we’ll be in trouble. With any luck, we won’t be questioned. Our goal is to get out of here using a military vehicle, and not get stopped for a while. We’ll eventually have to ditch it, but we want to take it as far as we can. According to my dad, the garage we’ll exit through contains two vehicles. Probably a jeep for four soldiers, as well as a larger transport vehicle. The vehicles were scheduled to be serviced two weeks ago, but it’s not clear if that was done. With the exception of vehicle maintenance checks, no staff visit here, so it should be empty.”