“That’s a terrible basis for a nickname,” I say, but at Katherine’s sharp look I press my lips together, keeping my ruminations to myself.
The door opens, and a younger-looking white man wearing a leather apron is behind it. Relief breaks across his features at the sight of Gideon.
“Very good, sir, glad to see you are back. Ah, with additional test subjects?”
“No, Plimpton. I’m hoping Mr. Shiner is our final subject. Jane McKeene here is a success story, so she will be helpful in the distillation of new serums. Please escort them to the two-person berth. How is Mr. Shiner doing?”
“Still stable, sir. No signs of transference.”
Gideon nods, moving aside so that Irish Tom and his boys can herd Katherine and me toward a cage. “That’s forty-eight hours. Let’s go ahead and move him into phase two.”
Plimpton nods in response and moves off as my eyes adjust to the darkness of the inside of the building. It’s clearly a lab, despite it’s humble exterior, and no expense has been spared. It’s even more spacious and better outfitted than the lab at Summerland had been. Back then, before I knew the true depths of Gideon’s malice, the lab had seemed magical. Now, every beaker and glass tube gleams ominously.
Katherine and I are pushed into a shambler cage, the iron door slammed behind us. She rounds on me as soon as the hired guns move away, her jaw set.
“I know, I know,” I say. The chill is finally melting from my bones, leaving me to consider my options. “You were right about Redfern.”
“Of course I was,” she snaps, but fear is etched onto her features.
“This definitely is not my preferred outcome, but at least I’ve finally found Gideon,” I say, forcing a tight-lipped smile.
“Really, Jane?” she says, her usual timbre pushed higher by her emotions.
Redfern walks past, pausing by our cage and eyeing me once more before he follows Plimpton and Gideon Carr into a room in the back. When the door opens I get the glimpse of a man, eyes wide with fright.
“Please,” the man begins, but whatever else he has to say is cut off by the slamming of the door.
“Oy, let’s get out of here. I’ve got no desire to listen to this again,” says Irish Tom, and he and his friends leave out the front.
“Jane—” Katherine begins, but whatever she’s about to say is cut off by the sound of a shambler moaning loudly, and a man screaming in terror. It’s too much like the lecture Katherine and I witnessed back in Baltimore, and she covers her face in horror.
“I think I know what phase two is,” I say. My stomach turns. It’s been a long while since I’ve heard anything like the sounds of the man pleading and begging followed by the sounds of the dead feeding. The screams of terror prickle the skin on my arms and start a fire of panic in my belly.
I don’t think—I just start slamming my shoulder against the door of the cage, probing it for a weakness. Katherine, however, is just staring at the floor.
“Help me!” I say to her. “We need to get out of here, and we’re not going to get a better chance than now.”
“You are right,” she says, putting a calming hand on my shoulder just as I’m about to slam the door once more. She points at the ground by the cage wall. I follow it to see a glint of gold.
It’s a key.
“Redfern must have dropped it,” she says as she slips it into her skirt.
“So he is on our side?” I ask, voice low.
“I do not know if that man is on any ‘side’ but his own,” she says. “But it appears that he has some sort of plan. The only question is whether we can trust it.”
“Come on,” I say, gesturing toward the locked door of the shambler cage. “We can figure it out once we’re free.”
“Jane, wait,” Katherine says, and I turn to follow her gaze. The door opens, and Gideon and his assistant file out.
“In the report please note that the subject transitioned one minute after being bitten by the dead,” Gideon says, wiping his hands on a rag. New lines etch his face, and he looks miserable. “Also of note, the lack of yellowing of the eyes. I suspect that indicates the infection did not fully develop. Perhaps we should do a weeklong incubation period to see if that impacts resistance.”
“One minute,” Katherine says, and I share her horror. That’s faster than I’ve ever heard of anyone going shambler. What was Gideon trying to do? Did he even know anymore?
“You’re doing it all wrong, you know,” I say after Gideon’s assistant has left. Redfern is nowhere to be found. My mind spins out a plan as I talk.
Gideon walks over to an open journal on the nearby counter and begins making notes. “Jane, please. I don’t have the energy to spar with you,” he says. “I’m tired and no closer to a workable serum than I was when I left Nicodemus. There is nothing you can say to me that I have not told myself, many times over. I have worked so hard to find the answer, and no matter what I do I find myself with yet another life on my conscience.” He scrubs his hand across his face. He looks half ready to cry, and his anguish makes me mighty uncomfortable, which is saying something. “I’m not a monster, you know, never mind what you may think of me.”
“This looks mighty monstrous to me,” Katherine says, voice low.
Gideon nods. “I am fully aware of how this looks, Miss Deveraux. Trust me. No one hates me more than I hate myself.” His gaze goes distant. “But it will all be worth it once I find an answer.” Gideon turns away and takes out a pen and ink and begins to make notes. I’d expected to find a madman, a slavering lunatic jabbing needles into sobbing victims strapped to tables like in the weekly serial “A Dutiful Wife” where a woman marries a man only to realize he has conducted experiments on all his previous brides, changing them into monstrous creatures. The man we’ve found is someone else. Still, I can’t reconcile this man with the boy I felt soft toward in Summerland. It’s like he’s traded his soul for a scientific breakthrough and no one has told him that his Faustian deal was a poor one.
“Well, the good news is your vaccine works,” I say.
Gideon startles from his work. “Do not mock me, Jane. I’m afraid I’ve lost my mirth in the past year.”
“I ain’t. It works. Well, at least the serum you had in Summerland did.”
He pauses and turns toward me, giving me his full attention. “What do you mean?”
“It works, given time. The problem is you’re too damn impatient. Seven days incubation time? I’d had the vaccine months before I got bit. And Callie had been poked an entire season before she ran afoul of her shambler. How long was it between when you injected yourself in Baltimore and when the dead man bit you?”
He stands and walks over so that he is an arm’s length away from the cage. A little closer and I can reach through the bars and throttle him with one hand, pulling his cravat tight enough to choke him.
He doesn’t sense the danger. “A month. Maybe two,” he says, voice quiet.
I nod. “You don’t need to keep sacrificing people to the dead like some kind of mad scientist from a serial, all you got to do is wait, see how the dead react to a body that’s been vaccinated, and mark when they no longer see a person as food.”
“My god,” he says, some of the weariness fading from his face as he strides away, reaching for a notebook. “I suppose your hypothesis is based on observation?”
“My suppositions are always based on observation. There’s a muting of the hunting instinct when a person is successfully vaccinated. You’ve seen it yourself.” I fairly swear to myself as he moves back out of reach.
“But that doesn’t account for the eventual bites,” he says, warming to my point.
“That’s because the hunting instinct is muted but not completely removed. Sudden movements, loud noises? Those still kick shamblers into a frenzy and prompt an attack.”
“And after the bite, because the original strain has been introduced, the subject’s blood appears the same as one of the dead.” Joy breaks over his face, and he
takes a half a step toward the cage. “How did I miss that? An effective serum will nullify the hunting instinct once deployed.” Gideon turns to his notebook and begins muttering as he scribbles.
“What was that, Jane?” Katherine asks me, voice low.
“A distraction,” I say.
“Was any of that true?”
I shrug. “No clue. I mean, everything I told him was true, but I ain’t a scientist. I don’t know if time or something else is why Gideon’s serum doesn’t work. I was just hoping to get a hand on him so I could throttle him.”
“We need a new plan,” she whispers. I nod.
“Also,” Gideon calls from where he stands, drawing my attention once more, “I never got to tell you this because Callie tried to kill me, but I discovered why Maeve and her girls turned along with all the other folks in Nicodemus. A problem with the potency.” He takes off his spectacles and rubs his face, and it takes me a long moment to realize he’s talking about the Duchess. “I truly am sorry about that one.”
The memory catches me like a right hook and leaves me reeling. For a moment I’m back in Nicodemus, harvesting the Duchess and her girls, and then tiny Thomas. I’m whole and horrified, but my terror of that moment is nothing compared to the things I’ve seen in the meantime. I’ve been across the depth and breadth of horrors on this continent and seen just about every misery folks can inflict on one another firsthand. And perpetrated a few horrors myself.
Maybe that’s why Gideon’s sorrow feels genuine. While he has the screaming victims in spades, he is just as rational and unfailingly polite as he was when we first met him. He truly believes that he is fighting the good fight, that all of this is for a very good reason. And that is somehow more disturbing than any alternative.
Gideon Carr ain’t insane. The man is exactly what Katherine is afraid I’ve become, driven and blinded by a singular goal, and for the first time I understand her fears.
“I don’t get you, Gideon Carr. You helped us in Summerland, and you tried to help me in Nicodemus even if you were a bit wrongheaded about it. Was any of that real? How does a body get so twisted up that you abandon your humanity?”
Gideon gives me a wistful smile and my heart flip-flops a bit. He really is a beautiful boy. But he is so utterly and completely without a single shred of empathy that he’s more a shell of a human being than a real person.
“I don’t know, Jane. You tell me.”
I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. I am speechless.
Katherine squeezes my left shoulder, and I glance up to see her give me a small smile, even though her eyes are wide with barely suppressed terror. Something of my existential crisis must show on my face, because she tells me in a low voice, “You are nothing like him.”
“I think we eventually become the thing we fear the most,” Gideon says, standing, a syringe in his hand. “And I’m sorry for what I’m about to do, but I truly want to test your hypothesis.”
I’m on my feet before he finishes the sentence. My rage is a comfort, and I’m grateful for its return. I wasn’t sure what to do with the feeling of indecision and despair that had begun to creep in, but I know exactly what to do with my anger.
“You even try it and I’ll—” My threat dies on my lips as pain shoots through my body. Every inch of me tingles and sizzles, and I crash to the bottom of the cage. Next to me Katherine has done the same thing, completely felled by whatever just happened. She groans, and as we writhe on the floor Gideon opens the cage door.
Carefully, he kneels down next to Katherine, lifts her arm, and pushes up her sleeve. He pulls a syringe from somewhere within his coat and jabs it into her skin, pushing the plunger and emptying the needle of the dark liquid within. He then rises and closes the door before we’re able to gather our wits.
“I truly am sorry. I will have someone bring you some food and water. Just focus on your breathing, and the pain from the electric shock will fade.” He pauses before saying, “And thank you, Jane. You may have just provided the crucial bit of information I needed. I knew I was right about you.”
I stare up at the top of the cage, tears of rage leaking from the corners of my eyes.
No more.
When I get out of this cage, I am going to skin Gideon Carr alive, and nothing is going to stop me.
I am afraid the dream of California is ended. The dead have taken Sacramento and move en masse to San Francisco. They converge on the wall, their moans echoing day and night. I am the last one left here in the compound; everyone else has fled, taking to the sea. The poor scrabble at our doors demanding assistance that we cannot give. Will my wall hold? I have no idea. But I will not be here to witness the outcome.
—Henry Forsyth, Assistant to Mr. Thomas Edison, 1882
—KATHERINE—
Chapter 46
Notes on Scientific Discovery
I am on fire.
Every inch of my body is aflame, and there is a particular ache in my neck. I want to sit up, but that would require moving, and I am perfectly content to just stare at the top of the cage for a moment and listen to the growls and moans of the undead in the next room while the flames under my skin abate.
After a long while, when I feel a bit more myself, I sit up. Gideon Carr is gone, and Jane lies on her back crying angry tears. Her fist is clenched and there is murder in her eyes. I clear my throat.
“Well, I daresay I am not dead, so it could be worse.”
Jane does not respond, so I continue talking.
“I suppose he means to keep me here for a month and then throw me to the dead. A bit biblical, is it not? Lions seem more humane than the dead. I never thought I could sacrifice myself like those saints, gouging out my eyes for love of my beliefs. But now, I think perhaps they did not really have much of a choice.”
Jane sits up. “I’m sorry.”
I blink. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I took you for granted. Now, then, always. I threw away Callie in my quest to find Gideon and then I turned around and did that same thing to you. Even after that moment in Sacramento, I still was willing to drag you along on this madness.”
I smile sadly. “That is not who you are, Jane.”
“I know. And I’m sorry I have never been a very good friend.” She takes a deep breath and scrubs her sleeve across her face. “Thank you for never giving up on me.”
A lump wells up in my throat, and I nod. “Never. I will never give up on you. “
She does not say anything, just looks out at the lab. A parade of emotions marches across her features, and I do not press her. The important thing is that she is letting herself feel something once again.
Especially since I feel something unnatural within myself.
Whatever Gideon injected me with has left me feeling sore and hollowed out, and I doubt that was the desired effect. My vision goes blurry, and I find myself blinking to keep myself in the moment. I want to lie down and just be, but Jane is plotting, and I must be ready.
“I’m certain some of those concoctions have to be explosive,” she says, changing the subject. “Of course, I can’t tell one thing from another. Maybe there’s something in the man’s notebook that will help.”
“Jane, listen to me.”
“You didn’t happen to keep back a knife, did you? I suppose a broken beaker could do just as well as a knife,” she mutters.
“I think I am dying.”
Jane pauses and turns to me, slowly. “Kate.”
“I am being serious,” I say, collapsing against the bars of the cage.
She kneels beside me. “How do you feel?”
“Awful,” I say, and it is the truth. I am dying. I can feel it. This is no usual sickness. A fever already burns through my body, and my fingertips are going numb. I came with Jane to try to save her, and maybe I did.
But I have sacrificed myself in the process.
The door to the lab opens, and Mr. Redfern enters. “Why are you still in there? Come on, before Gideon
comes back.” He has our weapons in his arms, and I am sorely relieved to know the man stayed true to our cause. I take the key from my pocket to open the lock, but my fingers are clumsy and Jane has to take the key from me. She has no sooner gotten the door open, slipping out of the cage, when we hear the conversation of approaching men.
“I think taking a blood sample now will let us track the resistance to the introduction of a more active form of the sickness. If Miss McKeene is correct about the incubation time, we can see how the blood is changed.”
Jane grabs a beaker, smashing it against a table just in time to stab the jagged edge into the neck of the man who enters first. It is Plimpton, and he burbles a scream as blood fountains out in an arc. He is on the floor before the man behind him is through the doorway.
“What in the—”
But before Gideon can finish his thought, Jane has shoved him up against the wall, pressing the bloody edge of the broken beaker to his neck. Redfern quickly shuts the door and steps back by the table with the lab equipment.
“Go ahead,” Gideon says, struggling to get the words around the pressure on his throat. “Goodness knows I’ve thought about doing the deed myself. But if you kill me now, who will help Katherine if something goes wrong with the injection I’ve given her?”
“Don’t try to weasel your way out of this,” Jane growls.
“All of the lives lost because of my experiments,” Gideon continues, thickly, “they are but a small fraction of the number of people who will die if I don’t finish my work.”
“It’s a fantasy, Gideon,” Jane shouts. She pins him in place with the edge of the glass. Gideon’s eyes go wide. “Everything I said to you, about time taken after vaccination? It was all just a damned guess. You don’t know for certain what you’re doing any more than I do. The people you’ve killed died for nothing.”
“You don’t know that,” he squeezes out, and swallows. A thin line of blood drips from where the glass meets his skin. “If anyone is going to figure this out, it’s me. How long do you think you can stay on the run, keeping the people you care about safe from the undead? We need a cure, or the human race is finished. Everyone you know will die eventually. Everyone but you. Do you want that on your conscience?”
Deathless Divide Page 37