Incubation

by Laura Disilverio

  “Well, I’m going to see what’s down here,” Wyck says. “There might be supplies, weapons, something useful. We need food.”

  It’s true. We’re down to the last couple of vegeprote bars we took from the IPF vehicle. I look from Halla to Wyck. I sense that he needs to find food for us, that he’s still feeling guilty about losing our supplies in the swamp. This place is so well hidden it’s possible looters never found it, that there are provisions stored underground.

  “Why don’t you climb into one of the towers and wait for us?” I suggest to Halla. “You should be safe there.”

  “Good idea,” Wyck seconds. “You can be our lookout and holler if you see anyone coming.” He continues to pull on the door which is easily eighteen inches thick and opens via a pneumatic system that hisses as the door yawns wider. A staircase slopes into the ground. I can’t see the bottom of it through the dark. Wyck is already three steps down.

  “I don’t like this,” Halla says, moving toward the closest watch tower.

  “We’ll be back in ten minutes,” I say. With only a brief hesitation, I put my foot on the first step.

  The air is chilly and smells of—I take a deep sniff, trying to identify the faint but familiar odor—disinfectant. My unease ticks up a notch. The metal treads clang under our boots. It crosses my mind that they are a built in alarm system like the bootleggers’ utensil-decked wire. The open door lights our way to the bottom, barely, where I find Wyck waiting for me in a small tile-floored vestibule. Halls lead from it in three directions.

  "Eeny, meeny, miney, mo.” Wyck points to a hall and starts down it, clicking on a flashlight. “Here.”

  He tosses me one. Its beam is broad and bright and I feel a bit better. The hall we’re moving down is nothing special: pale green walls with white tile floors. What look like old LED fixtures are attached to the ceiling. On impulse, Wyck reaches out and taps a light pad when we pass and the fixtures spring to life, bathing us in glare.

  “Batteries not dead yet,” Wyck says with satisfaction.

  “How long could they last?”

  He wags his head, considering. “With virtually no use—fifteen or twenty years.”

  I’m silent. How long has this place been here? How long ago—and why—was it abandoned? There’s a door, half-open, on our left. We exchange a look and Wyck pushes it wider. It swings back silently. There’s a narrow ante-room with an intercom grid, a red palm-sized button on the wall, and then another door. Like the airlocks at the Kube. We pass through the inner door and Wyck finds another light switch. It illuminates more white tile and little else; the room has been stripped of all fixtures.

  Outlines suggest counters, and multiple outlets suggest equipment that required electricity. Plumbing rough-ins hint there were several sinks and even a shower. One small white basin remains. Two other doors, closed, are set into adjacent walls.

  “It was a lab,” I breathe, almost unconsciously recognizing the arrangement of counters and outlets. My mind fills in stainless steel, coolers, centrifuges. “That’s an emergency eyewash station.” I point to a dangling hose. “Well, it was.” Thinking of the airlock and noting the openings in the ceiling that might have enabled air hoses, I add uneasily, “I think this might have been a Level 4 bio-containment facility.”

  “Twink,” Wyck says, not one bit nervous. “Probably making drugs, don’t you think?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of Ebola or anthrax,” I admit, “but I suppose one might need similar facilities for manufacturing synthetic stimulants.” I drift to the wall where half a piece of paper is still affixed. “‘istry of Science and,’” I read aloud. “Not drugs,” I say, considerably more nervous now. “The government. Look, there’s nothing here. Nothing useful for us. Let’s go. Halla will be getting worried.”

  A small scraping sound catches our attention.

  “What was that?” Wyck whispers. He’s moving toward the closest door and the sound.

  I’m half-way to the hall door and escape. “Wyck!” I try to draw him toward me, but he keeps going. I quit breathing as he puts his palm against the door, hesitates a breath, and slams it back. So much for his promise that he’s changed. Anger stirs beneath my nerves. I cross the room, intending to collar him and drag him back to the surface.

  “Big furnace,” he says. I look in on a huge blue incinerator with a control panel studded with red and green buttons and gauges, one of them with a temperature indicator that tops at 1100-degrees Celsius. Toasty. Wyck’s moving to the next door before I reach him. I’m on his heels as he opens it. There’s a built-in cupboard with labels I can’t read from here. There’s a cot covered with a rumpled intelli-textile blanket, with a rolling metal tray as a night stand of sorts. A mug sits on the tray, a wisp of steam rising from it. I’m fixated by the steam as it drifts up and dissipates. Someone is living here.

  Before I can stop him, Wyck detaches the beamer from his pack, aims it at the cupboard door, and says, “We know you’re in there.” When there’s no response, he says it louder, adding, “Come out now or I’ll blast you.”

  The door eases open an inch. Wyck backs up until he’s standing beside me. His knuckles gleam white as he grips the beamer. The door opens wider and a booted foot appears. The boot is slightly scuffed, not that old; whoever’s in there has not been trapped here for decades. A hand curls around the door and I gasp. The hand is covered with boils and streaked with blood, flayed almost to the bone in spots. I’m suddenly sure this was a bad idea. A very bad, potentially fatal idea. If this person has something infectious . . . My brain runs through the options. The boils are small, like smallpox, some of them mounded atop others: boils on boils. The blood streaks . . . I don’t know what infection would cause them.

  “Don’t shoot.” The voice is soft, papery, male. A man emerges, hunched over as if trying to hide himself. One hand scratches at his arm through a thin jumpsuit. I imagine more boils beneath the fabric. He brings his hands to his shoulders so we can see he’s unarmed. “I’m no danger to you.” He raises his head.

  I swallow hard at the sight of the boils crusting his face, neck and bald scalp. Bloody weals score them. From scratching. He has no eyebrows. His eyes are golden; he’s geneborn. How did he end up here, in this condition? Boils bubble on his lips and inside his ears. From the way his tongue works at the roof of his mouth, I suspect they’re also in there. His expression says he knows how horrible he looks.

  “Who—who are you?” Wyck asks.

  I can tell he’s knocked off-balance by the man’s hideous appearance. Pity is edging out our fear.

  “Anton,” he says, scratching hand moving to his neck. “Anton Karzov. I haven’t introduced myself to anyone in a very long while.”

  “What happened to you?” Wyck asks bluntly. “What is this place?”

  Anton eyes him warily and lowers himself to sit on the cot. Wyck watches his every move.

  “This was a laboratory. A research lab. Run by the Ministry of Science and Food Production. I worked here.”

  “On what?” Don’t say “smallpox,” I beg mentally.

  “Vaccines.”

  “For?”

  “Influenza, among other diseases. Mostly influenza. This was sixteen years ago—the third wave of the pandemic was still going strong. The Pragmatists had gained power a few years earlier. They wanted to create a vaccine that would show the population—what there was left of it—that they were capable of protecting them. As you can see”—he scratches his thigh—“the experiments were disastrous. They looked promising during rhesus trials, but when we moved to human subjects . . .”

  “Who would volunteer to test a new vaccine that did, that had such”—I discard words like “horrific” and “hideous”—“painful side effects? And where did you find volunteers out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  Anton doesn’t answer. Only the sound of his scratching breaks the silence. My eyes widen. “Oh, my God. The Prags wouldn’t do that.”

  Wyck
looks at me, puzzled. “What?”

  “They didn’t use volunteers.” I round on Anton. “Who were they?”

  A gleam in his eyes applauds my analysis. “Prisoners. Criminals. Enemies of Amerada.”

  “They were still people!”

  “We were working to save the human race,” Anton says. “At the time, we were afraid the flu would wipe out every human on the planet. We did what we had to do. If the flu hadn’t killed off so many, and if the insecticides hadn’t left so many infertile . . .” He makes a moue, clearly telling us that it wasn’t his fault, the forces of nature had forced him to participate in the vaccine study.

  “So the vaccine didn’t work and you gave up, abandoned your research?” I ask.

  “On the contrary,” Anton says. “The vaccine was effective at preventing avian flu infection. But the side effects . . . the blisters didn’t show up until a couple of months after inoculation. They drove most of the test subjects insane. It turned most of them into animals. The howling—my God. The wards were supposedly sound-proofed, but even so.” He closes his eyes and shivers.

  “How did you . . .” I let the question trail off.

  “One second’s carelessness,” he says bitterly. “I was disposing of a syringe we’d used to inoculate a test subject. It was the end of my shift. I’d already removed my PPE and was wearing only latex gloves. Someone had spilled water. I slipped, the needle pricked my pinky, and . . .”

  And he was condemned to live in agony. I shudder, remembering the times in the lab when I was careless with safety procedures. I understand now why Dr. Ronan chewed us out and banned us from the lab when we didn’t follow protocols to the letter.

  “A couple months later the decision was made to abandon this site, take what we had learned, and resume modified experiments in another location.” He scratches furiously at his scalp, and blood beads along the bare dome.

  “Where did the test subjects end up?”

  Anton ignores Wyck’s question. “We were told to sanitize the entire site. We incinerated paper copies of our research and much of our equipment. Teams of IPF engineers came in to remove the computers, destroy the fixtures, and raze the hangar. There used to be flights from Atlanta, twice a month, with food and other supplies. Now, I scrounge and steal. I don’t know what I’ll do when the batteries die and the lights go out.” He looks scared.

  I can sympathize. I couldn’t live in this underground warren to start with, but without lights it would be unendurable. Of course, his whole life is virtually unendurable.

  “What happened to the test subjects when everyone left?” I repeat Wyck’s question. I see the truth in Anton’s face before he speaks.

  “Euthanized. It was the only humane thing to do,” he says. “Don’t look so effing judgmental. You don’t know what it’s like. I do.”

  Wyck’s brow wrinkles. “You killed them?”

  “Not me. I was one of them by then. That damn bitch wanted me dead, too.”

  “Who?”

  “The lab’s head scientist. She didn’t want any proof of her spectacular failure left around. And I’m pretty spectacular proof, aren’t I?” His laugh is manic, and I shoot a look at Wyck.

  “How did you escape?” Wyck asks.

  Chewing at the boils on his lips, he says, “My wife helped me. Even after this happened”—he waves a hand in front of his face—“she still loved me. We’d applied for a procreation license, thinking that if she could gestate while working here, it would be okay. We were still waiting to hear when . . .” He exhales heavily. “She risked her job to hide me, and falsified the records saying I had been euthanized and cremated. Officially, I’m dead. I wish to God I really were, but Alaura can’t stand it when I talk about killing myself. After what she risked for me, how could I leave her alone?” He steps toward us.

  His use of the present tense raises the hairs on the back of my neck. His wife's here. I see the realization hit Wyck. “We’re leaving now.” He levels the beamer at Anton who has somehow gotten to within four feet of us. Madness glitters in his eyes.

  “No, you’re not.” The voice, brittle and female, comes from behind us. We turn to see a blonde, as thin and brittle as her voice, leveling an old-fashioned automatic rifle at us. The weight of it makes the muscles and tendons of her forearm stand out. “Put the beamer down,” she orders Wyck. When he doesn’t comply immediately, her finger flexes on the trigger and six or eight bullets spit from the muzzle, chewing up the tile at our feet. Ceramic splinters jolt into the air and I close my eyes reflexively, expecting a bullet to plough into me any second. Wyck’s beamer clatters to the floor.

  “Alaura.” Anton sounds almost wary. “Do you have to—”

  “Yes. They’ll tell. You know they’ll tell. They’re horrified by you. You disgust them.” She glares at us. Her hair is slicked back, perfectly sleek. Her face is translucent porcelain, as white as her lab coat. Her eyes are geneborn gold and her thin lips virtually colorless. She looks like something has drained vibrancy out of her. Living in hiding. Scrounging for food. Loving the tortured Anton. “Throw us your packs.” She gestures with the rifle.

  Reluctantly, Wyck and I shrug out of our backpacks and slide them across the floor to the couple who have moved closer to the lab exit. When Alaura motions with the rifle, Anton grabs the packs’ straps, wincing as they cut into the boils on his hands. He backs toward the door.

  “That too,” Alaura says, nodding to the messenger bag strung across my chest.

  “No.” I’m not giving up my feather and my book. I meet her gaze straightly.

  I can see her decide it’s not worth it. She joins Anton in the airlock. As the door whooshes shut, Wyck dives for the beamer and comes up shooting. The blasts thud harmlessly against the windows. Shatterproof. Fireproof. Alaura looks at us impassively. Anton carries our packs into the hall. Are they going to lock us in here to die of dehydration? I should be horrified at the thought, but we’ve got a chance if she doesn’t shoot us. I’m guardedly hopeful. Maybe they only want to contain us long enough to get away.

  Alaura’s hand comes up and smashes against the button I noticed earlier.

  An ominous hissing fizzes in my ears. I don’t recognize it until almost too late.

  “Halon!” I shout to Wyck. We’d had to activate the halon once at the Kube lab when a young AC ignited a fire by mixing the wrong chemicals. I’d watched, stunned, at how quickly the halon snuffed the fire. Already it’s hard to breathe. I grab Wyck’s hand and drag him into the incinerator room. The halon will suck all the oxygen out of the room in under two minutes. Our only hope is that the incinerator has an airtight seal. It must. We won’t have a lot of oxygen, but we’ll have some.

  The incinerator takes up most of the small room. Its wide-mouthed door opens to the side by turning a wheel. Wyck clangs inside, and I jump in after him. We pull the door shut, which is hard to do from the inside. It seals with a reassuring thwuck. We’re standing on a grate. I can barely touch the top of the chamber by standing on tiptoe and reaching my arms up. I take two steps to the side and reach a wall that feels like bricks or rough tiles. I run my hands down it and encounter metal tubes poking into the cavity; I suspect they’re for gas. Wyck and I bump into each other. He puts his arms around me and I loop mine around his waist, leaning into him. I exhale, wondering as I do how quickly the two of us will deplete the oxygen inside. I estimate the oxygen volume at .2kg. Breathing as heavily as we are, we’ve got maybe an hour. I suspect Alaura and Anton are a bigger threat than running out of air.

  “We need to get out of here,” Wyck says, following my thoughts again. He looses me and moves a step away. I feel chilled. “Do you feel that?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “Air.” It sounds like he’s at the back of the incinerator. “This has got to have a vent.” His voice sounds like he’s speaking into a tube.

  He rattles a piece of metal, pulls it loose and passes it to me; it’s thin with hundreds of perforations. “Ta-da.” />
  I put the filter down with a clang and come up beside him to look up the hole he’s created. More blackness. I can’t see a thing, but I can definitely feel moving air. Hope makes me giddy.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if this leads to that grate I kicked up top,” he says. “This is our way out.”

  “This?” The opening is two feet wide I ascertain by sticking my hands up and moving them sideways until I hit metal. The duct goes up into more darkness. “We won’t fit.”

  “We’d better.”

  There’s a humming from outside the incinerator. I listen intently and finally identify it. A fan. Alaura is clearing the halon from the lab. Within minutes, she’ll be back inside, ready to shoot us, or worse.

  “I’d better go first,” Wyck says. “It may be hard to dislodge the grate at the top. With any luck it’s screwed on, not welded...” I hear him maneuvering himself into the opening

  “Hurry,” I whisper.

  I hear him place one foot against the duct’s far wall and then jerk the other foot up with a clang. Scraping and shuffling tell me he’s crabbing up the vent, pushing upward with one foot at a time.

  “Everly?” His voice floats down, distorted by the metal.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s doable. Start climbing.”

  I brace my back against one side of the duct and put one foot against the other side. My knee almost touches my chest. I press back and swing the other foot up, so I’m suspended in the vent, held in place by my back and my feet. From the moment my second foot leaves the ground, the pressure on my back and knees is intense. Pressing down through my feet, I scootch up six inches. Encouraged, I maneuver one foot up, bumping my breasts with my knees, and push. My back scrapes along the duct wall and I move about a foot. I move my second foot alongside the first one and use my thigh muscles to power myself upward. Another foot. I try not to think about what might be filming the inside of the pipes, about whether or not the ash of one of the tragic test subjects is rubbing off on me. I tilt my head back but can’t see or feel Wyck. I don’t know how far it is to the top. The vent isn’t quite vertical; there’s a slight slope that makes it not impossible to support myself with knees and back. My arms are stretched overhead, almost useless. My fingers keep feeling the duct walls, but except for the occasional welded seam, there’s nothing.