by Jessica King
Cameron hadn’t left anyone unconscious on the pavement. But the feral look in Rubio’s eyes… He’d hurt Rubio, even if it was only because he thought his case of RAUVI was Cameron’s fault. Cameron nodded.
“Are they okay?” That was the other thing Cameron remembered. Maybe the more important part. He wanted to leave the guy who grabbed Trinity out to dry on the pavement like roadkill. His sister had started crying; her voice cracked from how she had screamed when he wouldn’t let go of her arm as he dragged her to his truck.
His father hadn’t said anything. He just walked away and into the house. Cameron and Trinity had run into the house after him and watched through the window as he took bandages and water out to the man he’d thrown onto the ground. He hadn’t been careful with the bruises, but he’d helped fix it.
“I… I don’t know,” Cameron said.
His father swallowed. “You shoot a gun?”
Cameron shook his head.
“Knife?”
Another shake.
“You just fight someone?”
Cameron swallowed. “I took the non-lethal toxin from that box in your room.” His father’s shoulders tensed, and Cameron bit his lip. “I thought non-lethal would be better than using a gun or something, and—”
His father pushed back from the table and sprinted up the stairs.
His mother turned to him. “What was in the toxin?” she asked.
Cameron shook his head. “I don’t know, I… I just…”
The sounds of his father's panic-dressing rang from upstairs. The sound of drawers slamming and water running and bags zipping. His father was in his white coat when he sprinted out the door, telling them he would be back later. Cameron sat down on the kitchen floor, fear and confusion acting as twin hands on his shoulders and pushing him into the ground. What have I done?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Wednesday, April 5, 2017, 5:46 p.m.
The LAPD was eerily silent. They’d been given masks upon landing, which provided Ivy with a mixed sense of relief and absolute terror. Now, entering the LAPD and finding several officers wearing their gas masks, some wearing the same filtration masks she and Vince were wearing, she was glad their chief was a bit of a doomsday prepper.
They smiled behind their masks, but it was a gruesome look. Gloves covered the only part of them that might have been exposed to the elements after their standard uniform, making them look like futuristic soldiers as opposed to L.A. cops.
“Hey, kids,” the chief said, walking out of his back office. Deep purple circles hung below his eyes in an impression of bruises. She couldn’t see most of his face beneath the mask he wore, but the wrinkles in his forehead told her just how worried he was. The entire office seemed to circulate around one another, keeping distance between themselves.
“What is going on?” Ivy asked, pointing around the space.
Chief Marks shook his head. Ivy turned to see Lindsey was sitting at a waiting room desk, her own nose and mouth covered with one of the filtered masks. She was filtering through footage. Just one small camera and one microphone sat on the ground next to her like loyal pets.
“If you’re the last two,” Chief Marks said, “I’m donating the rest of the masks to the hospital,” he said. “They’re hurting for them.” Ivy nodded numbly.
“How bad is this?” Ivy wondered if her own voice was as muffled as Chief Marks.
He shook his head. “Apparently, the first strain isn’t awful, but if you get the second one, you’ve got a good chance of not making it,” he said. “They’re trying to contain it.”
Ivy swallowed behind her mask. Everything they’d heard so far was true.
“Are you going to get Wilkins?” Chief Marks asked, changing the subject.
Ivy nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure about it now,” she said.
“Okay,” Chief Marks said. His eyes clouded. “Be careful.” Ivy and Vince slipped on their Kevlar vests.
“You’re going to take down the King?” Lindsey said, piping up. Ivy glanced around the room. “I wanted them to go home,” she said. “With the risk and all.”
“We’re going to take him down tonight,” Ivy said. “Are you coming?” She wasn’t sure if she should even ask. Shouldn’t she just ban Lindsey from joining them? Lindsey was wearing her own Kevlar vest, a borrowed piece from one of the other officers. She only had a hand cam recorder, which was much better than having to help tote around expensive equipment.
“I’m good,” Lindsey said, standing.
“I’m concerned there might be a standoff,” Ivy said. “With gunfire.”
Lindsey looked at her camera. “I know.” Her voice was quiet. “I want to go anyway.”
Ivy remembered Lindsey waiting in the lobby of her apartment building when she’d thought there was a bomb despite her fear.
“Okay,” Ivy said.
They were silent heading to Wilkins’ office, Lindsey recording out the window.
The desk was the same design as Father Nicholas’ like she had originally believed. This time Ivy knew the door to go to and how to make her way through the lock. She popped open the secret compartment and pulled out file after file of names printed in alphabetical order with their elimination dates, locations, and any name on the list.
“Wow,” Vince said, looking over her shoulder. “It looks like we’ve got a bunch of solved cold cases right here.” Lindsey leaned over his shoulder and tightened the frame.
Andrew J. Wilkins was listed near the end of the list. Barbara Harris [Erin Preston—1974], Marina Mitchell [Martha Eaton—1984], Bethany Hart [Mary Caste—2005], Brittany Glove [Betty Caine—2015], Loraine Mack [Jill Leevy—2016 ], Violet Watson [Lainey Whittaker—2016], Cleo Tillman [2017].
Ivy stared at the page as she ran her finger over her mother’s name. “I knew it was him,” she said. “My mom knew it too. She wrote it out for me, and I still wasn’t sure.” Ivy’s breath fanned out over the page. She shook her head.
“We talked to Loraine two weeks ago,” Vince said, pointing to Loraine Mack [Jill Leevy—2016]. “How was she already dead?”
Ivy’s eyes skittered to the only handwritten entry under Wilkins’ name: Cleo Tillman [2017].
Ivy pulled her phone from her pocket and started searching. The girl was a young actress, trying to break in. Commercials and modeling posts. One picture showed the girl in the apartment they’d visited before they left for Italy. Cleo was in workout gear and drinking a smoothie, her makeup glittering and her hair held high in a perfect ponytail, sponsoring some sort of powder.
“She posted this morning,” she said. Ivy stuffed the papers in her bag, closing the fake top before shutting the drawer. “Let’s go,” she said. “I think Cleo might still be alive.” She handed the papers to Vince. “Take pictures of these in the car and send them to Chief.”
“Aren’t we just going there after?” Lindsey asked.
“Yes,” Ivy said. “It’s always good to send it in if you’re worried about getting into a shootout.”
+++
Wednesday, April 5, 2017, 6:10 p.m.
Wilkins knocked on Cleo’s door. When she opened it, she was in pastel workout clothes, a half-finished smoothie in her hand. “Hey,” she said. “Come in.”
Wilkins closed the door behind him and locked it. “How are you?” he asked.
She nodded her head side to side as if to say “so-so.” She sipped the smoothie. “Getting a little bored of this,” she said, gesturing around to her apartment. “I mean, it’s a great gig to stay home and play Loraine or whatever, but I want to get back to normal, you know?” Her face turned gloomy. “Are those detectives coming back? Is that why you’re here?”
Wilkins nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “And unfortunately, you’re my only witness.”
Her smile faltered. “I thought you said the detectives figuring me out was some sort of training exercise for your officers.” She took a step back. “Is this, like, a weird role-play thing?” If you’re
a method actor, that’s all cool, but you’re kind of freaking me out.”
He pulled the gun from his waistband. She froze. “Chief Wilkins?” He watched as she searched for the police badge he’d worn when he first gave her the assignment.
She took another step back, and he took one forward. Her foot caught on the rug, and she stumbled. The jolt of it knocked her out of her paralyzing fear. She yelped and ran. Wilkins shot once and missed before running after her. She’d locked herself in the bathroom.
“Please!” she screamed through the door. “Please!” He shot blindly into the door, and the girl screamed. A loud thump against the door was followed by a crash. She must have thrown the smoothie. Pink liquid seeped from beneath the door, gathering around the soles of his shoes.
He shot at the doorknob. Once, twice. The metal clinked against the floor, and Cleo screamed again. He heard a clattering noise, and he shot into the hole where the doorknob was until its twin on the other side fell to the ground. He peeked inside and was met with a horrible reverberation through the door. He blinked back the shock of it. She must have taken the porcelain top of the toilet off and swung it at the door. He kicked at the door, and it flew open into the bathroom.
Cleo threw the top of the toilet at him as he fired. The heavy top hit him in the stomach as the bullet left the chamber, angling it toward the ground at the last second. Cleo was screaming a battle cry as she picked up a small set of golden shelves next to the shower. Bottles and makeup and packaging fell from it as she swung the unit, and Wilkins took a step back. One of the legs of the shelf caught his hand, and he held onto the handgun as his skin stung and reddened. He shot again, this one catching her somewhere on the torso. Blood sprayed from her side as she stumbled backward, the backs of her legs hitting the tub.
Cleo swung blindly, searching for purchase and only finding a shower curtain, the rod coming down on top of her as she hit her head against the back of the tub. By the time she’d fallen all the way, she’d gone still and whimpering. He raised his gun for a final shot when he heard a loud noise against the door.
“LAPD!”
+++
Wednesday, April 5, 2017, 6:13 p.m.
David ran into the lab. They, like every other discovery lab in the world apparently, had received samples of both the MAURI-1 and MAURI-2 strains. His lab hummed to life as he ran through, turning switches and lights. “No, no, no,” he said. He’d been saying “no” the entire drive over. How had he not noticed that the DB1307 he’d brought home had been missing for days?
He slid the MAURI-1 virus under a microscope and began a series of tests, trying to keep his hands from shaking. MAURI-1 sounded like his invention when he began to think about it. The low number of deaths, the rapid spread, the horrible symptoms. He wiped his sweat against the shoulder of his lab coat, ignoring the urge to touch his face.
Ten minutes later, he knew. MAURI-1 was a perfect match for his DB1307 bioweapon. He felt numb inside. Like someone had yanked his power chord from the wall, and he was shutting down. He’d freeze in place and be stuck forever.
He found a chair before his collapsing legs gave out completely. He yanked off the rubber gloves and bent all the way over, burying his face into the tops of his knees. A yell bubbled in his chest until he released it, screaming at the floor in the empty building until he could feel the veins in his neck and pressure building in his face and heat behind his eyes.
Heart thumping, he pulled himself back into a seated position. There was something more important to test. He put his gloves back on and took deep breaths, his protective goggles fogging from his sweat.
He tried to pull himself away, detach. This was just another experiment. He would be finding how one virus had morphed into another, more dangerous version of itself. A more dangerous version that posed the threat of killing half of the people it affected, the world’s economy, life as they knew it… He stopped himself. If he was thinking like this, he’d never be able to get through the experiment. He prepared the slides, the tests, the timers, slipping into his lab rhythm.
Another twenty minutes and he was staring into the microscope, his mouth hanging open. This had not been a natural jump. And if the virus had managed to morph that much… It would have taken months, if not nearly a year, like a run-of-the-mill flu virus.
No, this had been engineered.
He reached for his phone and dialed Cameron.
“Dad?”
His son’s voice calmed him just a bit, but the panic was still fluttering in his hands, his heart. “Do you know who got ahold of the bioweapon after you? Who did you give it to?”
“I didn’t give it to anyone,” Cameron said. “Left it on the ground somewhere.”
David gritted his teeth. Anyone could have gotten the canister. It wasn’t a good start. “Where’d you spray it?”
“New neighborhood going up in West LA,” Cameron said. His voice was quiet. David didn’t want to ask why his son had been over there, and Cameron wouldn’t want to answer. He wasn’t sure if his son had fallen in with the Angels, or if it had been one of the newer groups, but he didn’t like to think about Cameron tagging fresh cement, Cameron fist fighting for territory. It gave him a sour taste in his mouth.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll call you back later.”
“O-okay.” Cameron hung up.
David paced beneath the hum of the lights. If he turned himself in for taking the materials out of the lab, he would most definitely lose his job. No questions asked. He took a deep breath, trying to familiarize himself with the idea.
Maybe they would at least give him time to try to help find the antidote. He’d made the thing. Didn’t he have the best shot at finding a cure?
His footsteps echoed against all the hard surfaces of the lab, the canon of it eerie and empty.
Would he be arrested for releasing the first strain of an international pandemic? He swallowed. Did it matter? He was responsible. He couldn’t live with himself, knowing that it was his virus on the run and do nothing about it. He’d help find a cure, maybe even help find out who mutated his original design. Then if the justice system called for it, he’d go to prison. He blinked back the image of visiting his father in prison. Of how Cameron might look at him.
David took shaking breaths as he cleaned up, shut down his lab, and walked to his car.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Wednesday, April 5, 6:15 p.m.
“LAPD!” Ivy yelled. They’d heard the gunshots on their way up. The door was locked, so she backed away, pushing Lindsey back with an arm as Vince shot at the door’s lock then kicked it down. The secondary chain yanked away and clattered the floor. Vince took point, scanning the living room with his gun.
“Livingroom clear!” he said. Ivy sprinted past into the bedroom. She knocked open the closet with a boot. Nothing.
“Bedroom clear!”
“Man down!” Vince’s voice echoed from the bathroom.
She ran into the bathroom, where Vince was uncovering the girl they knew as Loraine but was listed as Cleo on her social media. Blood gushed from a bullet wound at her side. Ivy caught Lindsey as she slipped on a sickly sweet pink smoothie and moved past her. The girl was trying to say something. Her eyes were having a hard time focusing, and considering her angle, Ivy figured the girl had a bad concussion from the fall after the bullet.
Vince moved her to a more comfortable position. “You gotta force those words out for me, girl,” he said, supporting her head. “What was that?”
“My,” she said. She cringed, clutching a hand at her side. Ivy’s mind raced through the organs that might have been hit. It was more than a nick, but it was too low to hit a lung. “Back door,” she rasped.
Ivy popped up and heard Vince giving Lindsey instructions about pressure on the wound and holding her head. She slammed down the stairs, seeing the back of Wilkins’ salt-and-pepper head running for a car.
“Hands up!” she yelled. Vince shouted into his radio for backup. Wilkins ran har
der. “Hands up!”
“Back inside!” Vince yelled behind her to a girl emerging with a small dog. They quickly ran back through her door.
Ivy fired a warning shot, and Wilkins turned around, shooting at them. Ivy swallowed back her nausea, the images of herself tied to a chair. Focus. Focus! The adrenaline pushed her back to the aiming tick at the top of her gun. She heard Vince swear behind her. “Vince!” she said, not taking her sights off Wilkins. She shot, and the top of his shoulder sprayed red.
“Hit.” A grunt. “Fine! Go!” He was clearly in pain, the words ripping through his clenched teeth, but Ivy knew they didn’t have time to regroup. She sprinted down the stairs as Wilkins rounded a car. Ivy shot the front two tires and began firing at the engine. Wilkins shouted something at her. He made a break for it into the wooded area near the back of the apartment complex.
Ivy ran after him, sirens sounding down the road.
Wilkins turned and fired blindly, missing her.
“Hands up! Stop running!” The pavement path slapped against her feet as she gained on him, the concrete turning to grass and dirt. “Drop the gun!” she shouted.
His arms pumped at his sides, his finger still on the trigger. Blood trailed down his arm. He turned again, raising the gun.
Ivy shot. Wilkins tried to turn away, but his feet caught in the dirt beneath him, and he fell.
Ivy ran to him and kicked the gun away. “Give up!”
He growled and turned, trying to pry her own gun from his hands. “You’ll be an easier kill than your mother,” he growled.
She fell heavily, a knee aimed beneath his sternum. His breath whooshed out across her face, even as he pulled her toward him, yanking at the gun. She fired into the ground next to his face, just enough to stun him. He swung an arm out and punched her jaw.
It was a flash, but he’d had a knife somewhere on his body, which came slicing through the air. The tip of it nicked her chin, and she fired. Once. Twice. Red blossomed from his chest, his eyes turning cold and angry before they glossed over. It only took a few seconds before he was gone.
