He thought for a moment. “The virus is deflected? What happens to it?”
I shrugged. “The virus can’t survive without a host.”
“What about the boy? Have you tested her son?”
“Yes, but the key is having two doses of the mutation. If only one parent has
the mutation, it becomes ineffective. Because Philippe inherited only one dose, as his father didn’t have it, he wasn’t protected from the illness.”
224
www.samhainpublishing.com
Degrees of Wrong
Nicoli nodded, and I was thankful he could follow. “Why was he able to
hold on for so long? He still survived longer than anyone else who contracted it.
That must mean something.”
“Yes. Since he inherited one dose of the mutation, theoretically half of his
cells would be resistant to the virus. It would delay the spread of it substantially.
The other half, though, would be vulnerable, and the infected cells would—”
“Reproduce and kill him. So, what’s the solution?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’ve got to find a way to give everyone the advantage that mutation offers. I need to think on it some more.”
To my surprise, he seemed relieved that I had no answer. “I’m sure you’ll
find it.”
“Yes. I believe I just might.” I turned my nose up at him as I strode to the
door, but flashed him a smile before I left. His laughter chased after me down the hall.
www.samhainpublishing.com
225
Chapter Thirteen
I tiptoed from Dr. Folsom’s quarters, careful not to wake her. Today marked
the third day she couldn’t keep sips of water down, and I was getting concerned.
Cadets with the same symptoms appeared at the lab in regular intervals, filling
the beds until I started to quarantine them to their rooms. I called it the
stowaway virus because we most likely picked it up in the Maldives—and
because it had already outstayed its welcome. And, after repeat exposure to it, I was just biding my time. Which meant Nicoli—who insisted on invading my
personal space at every opportunity—would get it too.
I stalked into the lab, brooding with the thought.
The tall, pale cadet with the inverted muscles waited for me, heaved over the
trash receptacle. I told him to sit on the examination seat.
“I feel like I’m rotting on the inside,” he groaned as I put on my gloves and
checked his vitals, avoiding his vomit breath.
“Looks like the same bug everyone else has.” I pulled a pack of pills from my
pocket and handed him one. “I need you to take this. It will help support your
immune system while you’re fighting it. You need to go straight to your
quarters. Do you have a roommate?”
He nodded.
“He’s quarantined as well. Do you see those bottles over there with the clear
pink liquid in them? They’re concentrated electrolytes. Sip them. Take four, and
give two to your roommate.” I hoped it would get him through without
necessitating an IV—I didn’t have any left.
Degrees of Wrong
He passed Nicoli at the door, almost too weak to salute his captain.
Nicoli didn’t return my smile. “Dr. Morgan, I need you to come with me.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Please come with me,” he reiterated impassively.
I took off my gloves and tossed them in the trash. Nicoli had already left. I
hurried out the door and tried to keep up with him as he entered the elevator.
“Admiral Rudd’s office,” he instructed it before I was even inside.
“Did you mean for me to follow you?” I asked, agitated.
His jaw tensed, then relaxed. An apology softened his face. “I’m sorry, love.
I…” He raked his hand through his hair. “What was wrong with that cadet?”
I grinned. “The only thing I’ve ruled out is pregnancy.”
He snorted.
“That was funny,” I insisted, elbowing him playfully.
“I’m not in a funny mood right now, love.”
The doors opened, and I followed him into the admiral’s office, wondering
what I had done. The admiral’s lips formed a tight line, out of which he tried to shape a smile of greeting.
“Here she is,” Nicoli told him curtly.
The admiral motioned for me to sit on his couch, where he joined me. “Did
Nicoli tell you why he’s brought you here?”
I shook my head, as Nicoli said, “This is your show, James, not mine.”
Nicoli wouldn’t sit. He stood there with his arms crossed, glaring at the
admiral. I’d never heard him call the admiral by his given name before.
Admiral Rudd turned to me. “Dr. Morgan, a situation has arisen, and we
need your assistance. One of the UOC’s prison compounds asked us to make a
medical call on one of their inmates. Since Dr. Folsom isn’t well enough to go, I was going to ask if you could go instead.”
www.samhainpublishing.com
227
Anna Scarlett
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d held. I preferred this scenario—asking
me a favor—to all the other ones my mind raced with. “Of course I wouldn’t
mind.” I patted his hand more for myself than for him.
“No,” Nicoli ground out. “That’s not how this is going to happen. If she goes, she goes informed.”
“Nicoli, that’s all she needs to know. Anything else is classified.”
“To hell with classified.”
“Nicoli, you are allowing your feelings for Dr. Morgan to obstruct your
judgment—”
“Don’t even say it, James. Not when we both know where you were last
night, despite the risk you were taking in being discovered.”
“That is my personal business, Nicoli.”
Nicoli pointed to me. “She is my personal business. So, as we are discussing our personal business, this would be a very convenient time for me to relay to her some of my family history, wouldn’t you agree, James?”
I felt as if I weren’t in the room. My head snapped back and forth with the
conversation, almost suffocating from the mounting tension. I had never seen
these men at odds before, and I felt like the wedge pushing them apart—but over
what?
The admiral grunted in defeat. “I can’t protect you if you do this.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
Admiral Rudd stood and strode to his desk, leaning back in his big chair,
hands rested behind his head, as if proving he’d extracted himself from the
situation.
Nicoli sat down next to me and took my hands into his, his face full of
torment. “First, I want to tell you that I don’t want you to go. But if you decide to go, after making an informed decision, then I’m going with you.”
228
www.samhainpublishing.com
Degrees of Wrong
This almost made me feel better, until the admiral said, “No, Nicoli. Out of
the question. It’s too dangerous—”
Nicoli wrenched his gaze toward the older man. “My personal business,” he
reiterated. “Even if I didn’t have a specific, professional responsibility toward her…you wouldn’t let Dr. Folsom go without you either.”
The admiral raised his eyes to the ceiling and rocked in his chair.
Nicoli turned back to me, his expression softened into agony again. His
thumb traced small circles on my hand, sending tingles everywhere. “The
admiral gave
you the fairytale version of the circumstances, love. The fact of the matter is, this is a dangerous situation for you to be in, and I’ll be damned if
you’re going into it blindfolded.”
I nodded, waited for him to continue.
“Everything about this is suspicious,” he said. “For one, this is the highest
security prison on the planet—that’s why it’s a thousand meters under the
ocean’s surface. The UN houses its most acute offenders there, most of them
waiting simply to be executed. The reason they’ve asked for our assistance is that the residing physician passed away in his sleep two days ago. He was a healthy,
middle-aged man with no documented health problems. The circumstances
surrounding his death are questionable, at best.”
“We are the contingency plan for this particular prison,” the admiral
interjected. “The Bellator, like all other UOC vessels, is set on a continuous, pre-plotted course around the oceans. Part of our responsibility is to provide support to UN and UOC installations within our designated range. It’s not uncommon
for us to provide medical or transport services to installations inside our
assigned course. Nicoli is forgetting that under normal circumstances this would
be a routine assistance.”
www.samhainpublishing.com
229
Anna Scarlett
Nicoli scowled. “And you are choosing to overlook the fact that this is not
normal circumstances, James.” He turned back to me, his grip tightening on my
hands. “The most concerning part of the whole damn thing is that the particular
prisoner who suddenly requires medical attention is Ares Petropoulos. He’s a
Greek revolutionary, linked with—if not the leader of—the same faction that
engineered the Black Death. At present, the UN considers him the most
dangerous individual alive. He’s being held there to await his trial.”
I swallowed, trying to follow amid the realization that this man was most
likely, at least indirectly, responsible for my parents’ deaths. I understood now why Nicoli resisted— fought—my helping out. “He’s awaiting trial for this? For his…role in the spread of it?”
Nicoli shook his head, his eyes hard. “No, love. He’s being tried for the
attempted assassination of my father.”
I gasped. He scooted closer to me and squeezed my hands. I looked around
him, at the admiral. “You want me to help this man? You want me to give him medical treatment, knowing all of this?” Fairytale version, indeed.
He made a wry face. “Our hands are tied, Dr. Morgan. He can’t go to trial
unless he has a clean bill of health going into the courtroom. We can’t produce a clean bill of health for him if he doesn’t see a doctor. If he doesn’t see a doctor and he dies before he stands trial, his followers will advertise it as murder and retaliate with a vengeance. No public place in the world will be safe.”
“When is his trial?” I asked.
“In two days,” the admiral drawled.
“We could request another UOC vessel to assist them,” Nicoli said.
“That would only raise suspicions, Nicoli. Our entire staff of officers is aware
of the request for assistance. They’ll begin to question why we didn’t send Dr.
230
www.samhainpublishing.com
Degrees of Wrong
Morgan. Then they might question her function here altogether. We’d be risking
her protection if we didn’t send her.”
Nicoli growled. I could see that my options had dwindled to nonexistent.
And I could see why I might have preferred the fairytale version of the story.
“What are his symptoms?” I whispered.
“He’s conveniently complaining of chest pains. If he dies and doesn’t stand
trial…” The admiral trailed off.
Chest pains. The highest medical priority besides bleeding out. It required
immediate attention. I absorbed this for a moment, mulling over the
consequences of his not standing trial. I turned to Nicoli to confirm what I
already knew. “You think the prison doctor was murdered.” His answer was all
over his face.
I swallowed, attempting to push down the bile. Still, there was no choice.
“He can’t get away with it, Nicoli. The world has to see he was given a fair trial, that the UN dealt with him judiciously. If anything about it can be construed as
underhanded, it will swell the ranks of his followers.”
“No one will listen to them,” he insisted. I could tell he’d already considered
my reasoning but would simply not agree to it.
“He has to stand trial, Nicoli. He has to stand trial for what he tried to do to
your father.”
“No,” he forced out. “Damn it. That’s not why I told you about my father. I
told you because I wanted you to understand how dangerous this could be, that
this man will do anything to get what he wants. I don’t want you to do this. And
I especially don’t want you to do this for me.”
“Who else would I do it for?” I asked softly.
He stared at me for a long time, his expression pained, his eyes burning with
an emotion I wouldn’t dare name. He stood up, pulling me with him, cursing
www.samhainpublishing.com
231
Anna Scarlett
under his breath. “Let’s get this over with. I’ll prepare the transport pod. I’ll get Frank to assemble a team.”
“No.” I grabbed his arm as he turned. “You’re not going.”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead in his hand. “We already
discussed this, Elyse. If you go, I go.”
“This could be a trap. You said it yourself. Everything about it is suspicious.
He already tried to kill your father. He might be trying to get to you…”
“This isn’t open for discussion. Unless you tell me you’ve changed your
mind, you need to meet me in the transport hall in fifteen minutes.”
He effortlessly pulled away from what I’d considered my best vise grip and
stalked out the door, still cursing under his breath.
I turned to the admiral, my eyes welling with un-spilt tears. “What can I
do?” I pleaded.
He stood up. “Nothing. Lois wouldn’t be going without me, either.”
Cold and quiet fed off each other in the transport pod. The other pods
maneuvered ahead of us through the currents, their cabins small, illuminated
specks in the vast ocean.
I glanced at Nicoli, who stared ahead with unseeing eyes. He had chosen a
small pod for the two of us, to brief me privately on the way there. I wasn’t sure if it was the truth, or if he was just catering to Lt. Horan’s sensitive feelings.
He spoke, startling me. “This man is wicked, Elyse. And highly intelligent. I
don’t want you speaking to him, other than what is absolutely, medically
necessary. I’ll be with you at all times.”
232
www.samhainpublishing.com
Degrees of Wrong
“No,” I told him, and he snapped his head toward me. I held up my hand to
stop his argument. “He has patient-doctor privileges which would be violated if
you were to stay in the room.”
“I don’t give a damn about his privileges.”
“The UN does.”
“He’s a prisoner. His patient-doctor privilege is—”
“Still intact,” I finished. “I looked into it before we left.” I was looking for a way to keep Nicoli from going altogether but would take th
is over nothing. I
knew he’d be angry, but I could deal with that. I could not deal with his being injured or— I couldn’t even think it.
He scowled. I lifted my chin, ready to fight if need be.
“Why do you care about this man?”
“It’s not him that I care about. You will stay out of the room during the examination, Nicoli.”
His face softened when he realized my meaning. “I can take care of myself,
love.”
“So can I.”
The prison came into view, and I took deep, concentrated breaths to keep
from shaking. Beneath us, tiny dots of light outlined a square, multilevel
building. The six other pods ventured ahead of us, descending to land on the
roof. Before they touched down, the roof opened, drawing them into the top
level. Nicoli eased us down as well, and as we dropped I watched the doors of
the ceiling slide shut, enclosing us into the structure. We parked in the center of the other pods, and when the water receded, the teams began to disperse to the
grated metal floor.
www.samhainpublishing.com
233
Anna Scarlett
“We’ll wait for everyone else,” Nicoli said. “Let them get ready first. Then
we’ll follow.”
I watched in apprehension as thirty men organized into a single-minded
company with Lt. Horan calling out instructions in front. He nodded to Nicoli,
who retracted the glass shield and lifted me from the pod. I followed him across
the cavernous transport room.
The synchronized troops assembled around us in a deafening echo, creating
a pocket in their ranks just big enough for the two of us. We moved as one to the door, which opened automatically with the commotion of us.
We were forced to bottleneck into the room, which turned out to be a large
elevator. Despite its burdensome cargo, it descended us into the core of the
structure without so much as a creak. When the doors opened, Nicoli motioned
for me to stay behind him. The thunder of heavy boots plodded in front of us
and behind us, and I felt the reverberation of our herd move through the hall.
Ahead of us I heard voices. Nicoli extended his hand back for me, and when
I grasped it, he pulled me to the front of the ranks. Before we broke the line he dropped my hand, but I knew I should still follow.
Degrees of Wrong Page 24