by A. P. Kensey
“Y—yes,” said Adsen, pushing Colton away. “Yes, it’s possible. But I would still have to give Kamiko real data in order to stall her. She would know if I was lying. They always know. It wouldn’t do any good.”
“You sitting here doesn’t do any good.” Colton lowered his voice even more and took a step closer to Adsen. “They’re going to start shooting my friends in less than an hour unless you get to work.”
“I don’t want anyone else to die because of me. Do you understand what I’m saying, Colton? I would have to truly work on Fade for your plan to succeed. That means I would have to increase its lethality to one-hundred percent. No one would be safe. I—I can’t do it.”
Colton’s fists shook with rage. He wanted to strangle Adsen, but instead he smacked a beaker from the table. It flew across the room and shattered against the wall. Shards of glass tinkled to the floor.
Colton stood next to the table and tried to slow his breathing. Adsen looked at the spot on the wall where the beaker had shattered. Suddenly his eyes cleared and he sat up straight. A blanket had been lifted from his sour face and he smiled with an obvious glint of mischief.
“I could do that,” he said.
“Do what?”
“I could give them progress. I’ll keep them jumping through hoops like dogs, all the way until the very end, just long enough for your plan to work. No one from the Dome will die, Colton, I promise you that.” He was on his feet, one clenched fist held victoriously over his head. “I will atone for my dark work!” His wild eyes searched the room, seeing the lab equipment as if for the first time. He went to it eagerly and picked up jugs of chemicals, reading the labels and muttering rapidly to himself.
Colton took a hesitant step toward the table. “Adsen, what do you mean, ‘dark work’?”
Adsen ignored him. He filled two beakers with green liquid and set them atop Bunsen burners.
Something clicked in Colton’s head, and the answer was right there, waiting for him to reach out and grab it. “You created Fade,” he said.
Adsen stopped suddenly. He breathed in quick, rapid gasps, as if he were a rabbit frozen stiff by a hunter’s flashlight. “I had to,” he whispered. “The things they did to me…the things they did to the others…”
He turned to Colton for sympathy, but found none.
“You have to understand what it was like,” said Adsen, pleading for understanding. “Endless hours of torture. It would only stop if I agreed to help them. They already had the base form of the virus, but they couldn’t make it infect our clear cells. It withered and died in the bloodstream before it became lethal.”
“And you helped them right along, didn’t you?” said Colton. The disgust and accusation in his voice was crystal clear. “You went ahead and showed them where they went wrong, was that it?”
“It wasn’t like that at all,” said Adsen. His hands were shaking at his sides. “I just wanted the pain to stop. It was the only way.”
“Was that before or after you killed the first boy? The first Nova they brought to the lab?”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” whispered Adsen. He turned away and heavy tears rolled down his cheeks. “I never killed anyone. You tell yourself things—things about the type of person you hope you really are. I always told myself I was a man who would die before he let anything bad happen to other people.” His jaw quivered as he fought back a sob. “I was wrong. I would have done anything to stop the pain. So I helped them. Yes, I helped them progress to what I thought was the final stage. But then I stopped before the end. I realized the virus was not quite complete and I refused to go forward. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?” He looked at Colton hopefully, then his expression dropped. “No. No, I suppose not.”
Colton’s throat was dry as a desert. He looked away from Adsen and wanted to be anywhere else in the world but in that room.
“But now I will atone,” said Adsen. “I will go forward with my work, this time so others can be saved. You will stop me before I finish, won’t you, Colton? You will save all of us.”
Colton looked at him. Adsen stared into his eyes with a mix of hope and madness, and Colton’s rage was replaced with pity. He saw a broken man who had been forced to make terrible decisions—the same kind Colton may have made if their roles were reversed.
“Just stop me before the end,” said Adsen. “I’ll let you know when the time comes.”
Colton sat on the stool and leaned back against one of the water tanks. Adsen soon forgot he was there and puttered about the room, humming to himself and working quickly. Colton closed his eyes and thought of Haven. He tried to feel her presence in the world—tried to call out and tell her everything was going to be alright in the end.
Perhaps if he had truly believed it himself, it would have worked.
26
Haven picked her way through the storage room, stepping around discarded plastic containers and piles of equipment covered in sheets of green canvas. The truck driver had taken them to some lesser-used section of the huge complex, a place where unused junk was discarded and forgotten. She wasn’t having any luck finding a door that led to the adjacent rooms.
“Pssst!” whispered Bastian loudly. “Over here, all of ye!”
He pointed to a door set into the back wall, hidden behind a stack of heavy wooden crates. A foggy light sticking out from the wall dimly illuminated the doorframe.
Bastian pointed to it triumphantly as Marius and Roku gathered around.
“Who wants to go first?” he asked. “Draw straws?”
Haven pushed past him and twisted the doorknob. It turned easily in her hand and she opened the door an inch so she could peek into the next room. There were no guards in sight, but there was a man a few yards away in a long, white lab coat standing with a clipboard, leaning back and looking up at the ceiling. He pointed up repeatedly, as if he were counting items on the ceiling high above. The man in the lab coat shook his head in disapproval and made a note on his clipboard, then walked out of sight.
Haven inched the door open and stepped into the shadows against the wall of the next room.
The space was enormous. Packaging machines lined both sides of a long corridor that ran for several hundred yards through the middle of the room. Thick pipes descended from the ceiling far above and connected with the machines. Haven couldn’t see the wall on the other side of the massive warehouse through the maze of pipes and machinery.
She realized this room was the heart of the complex. When she had stood on the dune outside, looking down at the massive building, this giant room took up the majority of the compound, right at its center. Other rooms like the storage unit her ragtag group had stumbled into were smaller satellite rooms, connected to the main warehouse around its edges.
Roku, Bastian, and Marius shuffled into the room behind her and the door closed. Marius reached back and tried the handle—locked. They crept along the wall and found shelter behind a large piece of machinery. Haven squeezed into the space between the machine and the wall and kept going until she had a clear view of the room between a gap in the machine parts. The others followed her in. Marius had to suck in his gut and scoot in sideways in order to fit.
The machine was warm. Large tubes ran through it and up to the ceiling, where they joined a dozen other pipelines that burrowed into the wall and out of sight. Liquid sloshed from somewhere within the machine, as if a giant spoon were pushing water in a giant bowl back and forth.
The floor of the entire room was a maze of machinery. Huge tubs of empty syringes sat next to bottling machines, but instead of pumping soda into empty glass containers, the machines pumped Fade into metal syringe canisters.
Another machine spat out small flying drones—little metal spheres with an orange light strip and a hole in the side, just the right size for a syringe filled with Fade. In the background of all that, Haven saw racks and racks of filled syringes, their needles glinting brightly in the strong light from the halogen lamps on the ceili
ng high above.
Around all of those machines flowed the tubes. They plunged into the room from the ceiling and ran straight down to the floor, as if they were supports for the building itself. The tubes fed into the machines that filled the syringes—a mass-murder delivery system, direct from the manufacturer. Wherever those tubes ended after they left the room, Haven bet she would find the holding tanks that contained the main supply of Fade.
Haven ducked when she heard approaching footsteps, expecting to see the man in the white lab coat—but it wasn’t him. It was a woman wearing the same kind of coat, with the same kind of clipboard. Marius looked at her and frowned.
“Not her,” he said.
Bastian was just opening his mouth in protest when the first man returned to talk to the woman. Bastian relaxed and pointed. “How about him?”
Marius nodded. “They have info kiosk after all.”
“Are you sure?” whispered Haven.
“He will talk. Marius knows.”
The man in the white lab coat was showing the woman exactly what he had seen on the ceiling that made him shake his head in disappointment, and she joined him in his disapproval. After a few more words, she hurried quickly away, and the man watched her rear as she went, smiling faintly to himself.
“Hey,” said Haven from the shadows, just loud enough for him to hear.
He looked around, confused, squinting into the darkness behind the machine. Haven walked to the far edge and stood against the wall. “Help me!” she said urgently. She did her best to look terrified, shooting quick glances all around like she didn’t know where she was.
The sly grin returned to the man’s face and he walked toward her slowly, first checking to make sure no one else was watching.
“What are you doing back there?” he asked.
As he came closer, Haven noticed several deep scars on his face. She thought it may have been a car crash or some kind of industrial accident. One of his ears was lower than the other and the skin of one cheek was pulled back toward it. For a moment Haven felt guilty about taking advantage of him, because she saw the loneliness in his eyes when he spoke to her. Then he reached out his hand and she remembered where he worked and what he did for a living, and her sympathy drifted away.
“Please,” she said. “I don’t know where I am.”
“It’s alright,” said the man in the lab coat. “I’ll take care of you.”
A shadow moved behind him and grabbed his throat before he could cry out. His eyes bulged in their sockets as Roku dragged him over to the wall with one hand and slammed him against a machine. The man gurgled loudly and clawed at Roku’s hand, to no effect.
“Where’s Alistair?” asked Haven, standing close enough to see the sweat begin to bead on the man’s forehead. He opened his mouth and choked out a garbled word. “I didn’t quite catch that,” she said.
Roku loosened his grip slightly and the man spat out, “He’s not here. He left yesterday.” Roku’s eyes searched the man’s face for a moment, then his fingers tightened around his throat and squeezed. The man’s eyes turned black and the color drained from his face.
“Please,” he managed to spit out. “Please…”
Roku released him and the man slumped to the ground. He choked in a breath and started to scream, “HEL—” but Marius kicked him in the ribcage, right over a lung. The man grabbed his chest and dragged in a long breath as if he were sucking air through a pillow.
“Don’t do that,” said Marius. “Is very bad idea.” He knelt down in front of the man and slapped his face to bring him back to the present. The man blinked at him stupidly. “Okay, then?” said Marius. “We ask you some questions now. You answer and you walk out of here. Otherwise we stuff you into the machines, see how you fit. Understand?”
The man’s eyes cleared a little and he nodded weakly.
“Good. First, what’s your name?”
The man took a deep breath. “Walter,” he said at last.
“No it’s not,” said Marius. “Is Dead Meat. That is your name, isn’t it?”
The man looked at him, confused, then nodded slowly. “Y—yes. I guess it is.”
“You learn fast!” said Marius. “This will be over in no time. Tell me, where is Alistair?”
“He’s not here—”
Marius slapped the man’s face back and forth. “Don’t lie to me, Dead Meat.”
“I’m not lying,” he gasped after Marius pulled his hand away.
“Where did he go?”
“He doesn’t tell us those things. We only know when he’ll be here at the facility. He just came in yesterday for an inspection, wanted us to ramp up production.”
“Why?”
Dead Meat hesitated. Marius raised his hand to slap him again but the words tumbled out quickly after that. “Okay okay! He just finished testing the new variant and we have to make some slight modifications to the delivery system before we start rolling out the new drones.”
“What new variant?” asked Haven.
He looked at her, then down to the floor. “Human.”
27
Marius grabbed the collar of the lab coat and drew the man closer to his face. “They make Fade for everyone?”
The man nodded, trying hard to keep away from Marius’s snarling mouth. “Not just—not just for your kind anymore,” said Dead Meat. “Now anyone can be infected, abilities or not.”
“Well, that’s just great,” said Bastian. He threw his hands up in defeat and walked away, shaking his head.
“How long until he starts using it?” asked Haven.
“Distribution starts as soon as we make our adjustments.”
“How long will that take?”
Dead Meat didn’t answer right away. Marius shook him roughly by the collar.
“Two days,” he said finally. “Three at the most.”
Haven stood there, trying to wrap her brain around the concept of a global virus that could wipe out all of humanity. Dead Meat was just starting to relax when Marius got in his face again.
“Why you do this?”
“Wha…what do you mean?”
“Why you work here? Why you make the virus that will kill everybody? Is it because of your face, huh?” Dead Meat tried to turn away as Marius slapped the deep scars on his cheeks. “They were mean to you, so now you get them back, is that it? Marius wants to know how so many people could work here and do such a thing.”
Marius relaxed but Dead Meat continued to guard his face.
“Most of them don’t even know we’re making a virus,” he said. “They think we’re shipping placebos for a major pharmaceutical contractor.”
Marius laughed loudly. “You lie to them! Of course! You tell them it is safe to come to work, to have a normal job. Do you know what you have done?”
Dead Meat shook his head and cried.
“Yes, I think you do.” Marius sighed and grabbed Dead Meat’s chin so he could look right into his eyes. “Where is the cure?”
The man seemed genuinely confused. “What cure?”
Marius’s face turned bright red as he shouted, “Don’t you lie to me! Where is the cure?!”
Dead Meat looked from Marius to Roku, then to Haven. “There is no cure,” he said, almost sadly. “Once you’re infected, that’s it.”
Marius yelled and hauled his foot back to kick Dead Meat in the chest.
“Waitwaitwait!” pleaded Dead Meat, holding up his hands in defense. Marius paused with his leg swung back. Dead Meat spoke quickly as he stared warily at Marius’s black boot. “There was a rumor that Alistair had a cure made for himself. After he was inoculated, he could never be infected again. And then he had the cure destroyed so no one else could ever be saved.”
“Almost no one,” said Haven, looking at Bastian. He swallowed hard and wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“But-but-but it’s just a rumor!” said Dead Meat. “There was never really any cure.”
Marius dragged him to his feet and pushed him u
p against the machine. “Is it in this one?” he said. Before Dead Meat could answer, Marius dragged him across the floor and slammed him into another machine. “How about this one, huh? I know it’s here somewhere. You would not make a virus without the cure. No one is that stupid.” He dragged Dead Meat over to a large bin and threw him over the top. The man screamed when he landed on top of a pile of exposed needles. They stuck into his skin at all angles like he was a giant pincushion. Marius jumped up over the side of the cart and stood on the man’s chest, pushing him deeper into the pile of syringes.
Dead Meat groaned in agony, his voice quivering with pain.
“What I say to you about lying?” asked Marius gravely. There was a blank look in his eyes that Haven had never seen before.
“Marius, take it easy,” she said.
Dead Meat twitched beneath Marius’s feet. “Please,” he whispered. “Mercy.”
“Why take it easy?!” shouted Marius. “You are trying to kill seven billion people and I should take it easy? Explain that one to me.”
But Dead Meat couldn’t explain. His eyelids fluttered until they closed. His body went limp and he passed out, stuck half to death with needles.
Haven turned around and saw Bastian walking toward her with his hands up. “Let me explain,” he said.
“You lied to me,” said Haven. Blue light flashed across her vision.
“I know I did,” said Bastian. He stopped when he saw the flames in her eyes. “There was a perfectly good reason—”
“No,” said Haven. She didn’t recognize her own voice, so deep and full of anger. Bastian’s promise of a cure had taken her away from Colton and Noah and the others in the Dome. She realized then how much she cared about Colton, about how much she would miss him if he were gone. There was a pain inside of her that equaled the pain of loss she felt when her parents died. At the same time she hated herself for even thinking the loss of another person could come close to the pain of her parents’ murder.