by Jess Keating
For a brief second, a flicker of hesitation passed over Victoria’s face, and I thought maybe she was about to reach out to Mary. To grab her hand or give her a hug.
Then the moment passed, and with the Venus de Milo watching peacefully in silence over her shoulder, Victoria straightened her shoulders and glared at Mary with those cold, calculating eyes.
“Family?” she muttered. “You killed my family.”
“What?!” Mary erupted. Her face blanched. “How can you say that?! I didn’t hurt anyone! You’re the one who designed a virus to wipe out mankind!”
I cursed under my breath, still desperate for any signs of Leo sneaking up behind Victoria. So far, the hallway to the right remained empty. What was taking him so long? Had something—or someone stopped him?
Whatever had been holding Victoria’s calm demeanor together snapped. “You didn’t hurt anyone?!” she shrieked. “He died because of you!”
“Mary,” Arthur said, his voice rising in urgency. “I tried to tell you.”
“What are you talking about?!” Mary’s yell echoed through the room, causing a ripple of shock.
“He was the love of my life, and you killed him!” Victoria seethed, lifting her gun to aim directly at Mary’s face.
“Whoa, now,” Bert said, joining me to block Mary. “Let’s all just calm down here—how ’bout you put down the gun and you and Mary can actually talk about this, because I’m pretty sure that there’s been some sort of miscommunication. Mary wouldn’t hurt a soul …”
My eyes darted from Mary to Victoria to Grace. Things were unraveling fast, and it would only take a brief slip of Victoria’s finger for the worst to happen.
“Oh, there’s no miscommunication at all,” Victoria said. She sidestepped to get a better view of Mary, staring her down. “Don’t you remember, Mary?” Her voice cracked. “The night they took you away?”
Glancing at Charlie—our fastest pair of legs—I discreetly formed a gun with my thumb and forefinger, trying to convey my question. Could we rush Victoria? If we split into groups of three and four, some of us might be able to wrestle the gun away from her while the others restrained her.
But where was Leo?
Without him to lead the charge to distract her, the equation didn’t work. We were at a stalemate.
Mary shook her head. “I remember going to the neighbors when I couldn’t find you, Aunt Victoria. But I never hurt anyone.” A twist of uncertainty had found its way to her mouth.
Victoria’s eyes widened, but she appeared to be faraway now, as though the past was replaying on the marble walls behind us. Her chin trembled. “And what then? You told the nosy neighbors you couldn’t find me, and the police came and quietly packed up my laboratory? You think that’s how it ended?”
“Isn’t it?!” Mary threw down her fists.
Victoria laughed. A sharp, serrated thing. “Oh, Mary. If only the world were so kind …”
Mary frowned. I could tell by her twitching expression that she was replaying the events of her cloudy past, her memories hidden from the rest of us. “The world wasn’t kind to me either! I never wanted to leave. I didn’t want a new family. I wanted to stay with you! You and …” Mary’s hand whipped over her mouth.
A bitter smile snaked across Victoria’s face. “Ahh, now you remember, don’t you?”
Mary didn’t answer, but her shoulders sank heavily.
“Say his name,” Victoria barked. “Don’t you dare tell me you’ve forgotten.”
Mary’s hands had stopped shaking. “William,” she said. “I remember a man named William. He was very kind to me and …” Her eyebrows furrowed as she tried to remember. “And every time I saw him, he gave me a bundle of papers, stapled together in a little notebook.”
Victoria nodded slowly. “We were to be married.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mary said softly. “Truly, I am.”
“You weren’t sorry the night of the fire,” Victoria said.
The world seemed to turn on its axis as the meaning behind Victoria’s words settled over me. What Mary had told us about that night—everything she believed—could it all have been a lie?
Mary asked the question I knew we were all thinking. “Aunt Victoria …” she said. “Did you not start that fire? I heard the police say that you did it to destroy the evidence of your experiments.”
A muscle in Victoria’s jaw jumped as she sneered at us. “You think I would set fire to my house … while the love of my life was inside?”
My breath caught in my chest as I pictured the horrible images that Victoria’s words conjured. Flames licking the walls, devouring her papers, her curtains, her work … stopping at nothing as they raced toward someone she loved. The thought itself was enough to make my heart clench with terror and sadness.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel afraid of Victoria.
I felt sorry for her.
“But that means …” Mary puzzled it together aloud. “The Franklins?”
Victoria finally appeared satisfied. “You brought them to me—to my laboratory—and guess what! Did they wait for the police to arrive? Did they even bother asking me about my research?! No! All they knew was what their puny little eyes told them—that a woman was keeping secrets and must be stopped!”
“How could anybody do that? Surely that can’t be what—” Mary started.
But Victoria cut her off. “They called me a witch, Mary! They set my life on fire with the kindling you gave them! Whipping the whole street into a frenzy! I returned home to nothing but a pile of singed rubble and the police waiting with handcuffs. William tried to escape, but the smoke was too much for him.”
Mary’s eyes shone with tears. “Is that why you wanted to reanimate the dead?”
Victoria’s lip curled. Now that her story was out, her sadness was getting clouded by rage once more, becoming more lethal by the second. “I had good reason before William’s death,” she said. “Who hasn’t wanted to revive a loved one? I gave up that research long ago. The side effects were too much. But after he died—because of you—I had more incentive than ever. I thought the Spark of Life would bring William back to me. However, while it can do many amazing things to the human body, it couldn’t do the thing I wanted most. I failed him.”
“And when you learned the serum would hurt people?” Mary asked.
Victoria lifted her chin high. “The world doesn’t deserve to be saved,” she said. “You taught me that. It’s only fitting that you be here at the end when I show them all. It started with you. It will end with you, too.”
“But, Victoria!” Mary started to step forward, but I grabbed her wrist to stop her. “The whole world isn’t like that!” she continued. “You can’t punish billions of people because you had awful neighbors who didn’t understand you. They were afraid of you! Afraid because you’re smart! But the best way to show them who you really are is by spending your life making the world better, not destroying it. Use your brilliance to help them understand!” Tears streamed down Mary’s cheeks as she shouted at Victoria desperately.
“It’s too late for that,” Victoria said coldly. “They took everything from me. Now I’m going to take everything from them.”
Mary was close to hysterical now, and I could hardly stand to see her in such pain. “Please!” she cried. “It was my fault! Kill me instead!”
“No!” Bert yelped, grabbing Mary by her other wrist. With Bert hanging on to her, I frantically began searching for a way out of here that kept us all alive. As horrible as Victoria’s story had been, I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—lose sight of why we were here. Mourning someone you loved was no excuse for destroying the lives of billions, no matter how much it hurt. It was clear to me now: Victoria wasn’t a bad person; she’d just been through the worst life has to offer. Maybe, if we all made it out alive, Victoria could get the help she so clearly needed.
But before any of that could happen, one single prevailing fact settled in my mind.
I had to get that gun from her.
>
Maybe the Venus de Milo agreed. Maybe the spirits and ghosts of hundreds of ancient painters and sculptures of the Louvre wanted to help us that day. Or maybe it was just luck. Because right then, a flash of brown hair caught my eye.
Leo!
He’d finally appeared, sliding closer to us with his back against the wall, ready to lunge for Victoria’s weapon.
The others saw him, too, and we all instinctively readied ourselves for what was to come next. When Leo jumped at Victoria, the rest of us could restrain her and take her weapon. It had to work. Failure was not an option.
Sadly, that was exactly when our luck ran out.
Just as Leo got within striking distance—less than ten feet away from Victoria—another figure stepped into view from behind the corner, with a gun in his hands.
A man in a gray suit, with a dark, mottled blossom of a black eye.
“Put the weapon down!” called Agent Donnelly.
Seriously, this guy had the worst timing, didn’t he?
“Stop!” I shouted, lunging toward Victoria.
Whatever happened, he could not shoot Victoria. Not while she had the serum in her hands. From his perspective, Victoria was a madwoman holding a weapon on a bunch of kids. He had no idea that shooting Victoria would land us all in some very horrible—very global—trouble.
“Kid!” Agent Donnelly bellowed. “Get out of the way!” He immediately lowered his gun but kept it wrapped tightly in his hands and aimed at the floor.
“You can’t shoot her!” I cried. “See that in her hands? It’s a virus, Agent Donnelly. I swear! This is what we’ve been trying to stop! If you shoot her, she’ll release it into the air and everyone in the world will get infected!”
Relief surged through me to finally tell him the truth, but it was immediately squashed by the sense of dread that accompanied it. Who would believe us now? After everything Agent Donnelly thought he knew about me? About us? I wasn’t even sure if I’d believe some kid ranting about viruses and global infections.
If there’s anything that villains have taught me in this line of work, it’s that you can always count on them to make your job harder. Naturally, Victoria took that moment to throw another wrench in my plan.
After all, Victoria had plans of her own.
“Don’t listen to her, Officer!” she said coldly. “My name is Victoria Wollstonecraft. This has nothing to do with you.”
“The virus is real,” Mary joined in. “You can’t shoot her! She doesn’t know what she’s doing! She’s in pain!” Mary waved her hands, drawing Agent Donnelly’s attention. “Please! She’s my aunt!”
“Enough!” Agent Donnelly said, exasperated. He looked to Victoria, demanding her attention directly. “Ma’am, put the weapon down, and nobody will get hurt.”
This was it then, the moment of truth.
How far would Victoria go to spread her horrible serum? Would seeing Agent Donnelly change her mind? I could only hope that sharing her story with Mary had been enough.
But all the emotion she’d shown to us earlier had disappeared. She continued to hold the gun in her right hand, completely unfazed by Agent Donnelly’s threats. Her gaze turned back to Mary, and a distinct air of sadness appeared in her otherwise vacant eyes.
Please, no.
“This has nothing to do with you,” she repeated calmly.
I swallowed down my dread, locking eyes with Leo for a moment. This situation was about to go from bad to worse, and he knew it, too. With Victoria refusing to lower her weapon, Agent Donnelly didn’t have a choice.
He tried once more. “Ma’am, put the weapon down.”
“Don’t shoot her!” Mary yelled.
“This has nothing to do with you,” Victoria repeated yet again, that same creepy, robotic tone to her voice.
I didn’t need Mary or Arthur’s ability to deduce the future to know what was going to happen next.
Agent Donnelly took one final glance at the team—eight kids he was trying to protect from harm—and raised his gun to aim at Victoria. He was going to warn her one final time, and then, when Victoria didn’t surrender, he would have to shoot her. Victoria would pull the trigger on her own weapon, and the virus would be everywhere, with us powerless to stop it.
Mary shrieked, bringing all my rabid thoughts down to one.
I couldn’t let it happen.
I couldn’t let Victoria release the serum. But even more than that, I couldn’t let Mary’s aunt—her family—get shot. Sadness could do terrible things to a person’s soul, and Mary would never forgive herself for losing her aunt. Protecting Mary meant protecting Victoria.
I couldn’t hesitate this time.
So I didn’t.
Leo’s eyes widened as I leaped toward Victoria, ignoring the gun trained on her. I could only hope that Agent Donnelly wouldn’t accidentally shoot me.
Crashing into Victoria, I grappled for her weapon, the two of us landing in a heap at everyone’s feet, with my team shouting for help and Agent Donnelly bellowing for us to stop.
I grunted in anger at Victoria, clawing at her viselike grip on the gun. Much closer now, I could make out that there were two barrels to the gun, each connected to one of the triggers on the handle. All I had to do was get the gun away from her before she managed to wrap her finger around a trigger. With the chaos around us, I knew I had only seconds …
I almost had it, too.
But she was too strong.
Grunting in pain, Victoria wrenched the gun away from my grasp and elbowed me in the sternum, shifting back onto her feet.
My vision tunneled as the tip of her finger traveled from the barrel of the gun to the trigger—the silver one—and the slight pressure of the movement turned her knuckle white.
“You can’t!” I begged, twisting on my knee to kick at her before it was too late. “Please! For Mary!”
“I can,” she said.
And she did.
In moments of grave peril, I’ve heard that time can slow down. The seconds can become minutes, and every breath gets dragged out until you’re left reeling in a strange sort of limbo while the world happens around you.
That didn’t happen to me as I lay sprawled out on the shiny floor of the Louvre. Time didn’t change.
Instead, it was space that shifted. The room became bigger and broader, more spacious than before, and suddenly it felt as though there were no walls at all surrounding us. There were no doors, no windows in the museum. No walls on earth that would stop what was about to happen.
Because when it comes to airborne viruses, there are no walls.
Victoria pulled the silver trigger.
A burst of green haze erupted from the tip of the gun, dissipating into the air with a quick fizzle, like the smoke from a match being struck or the sharp burn from a leftover crumb of food on the element of a stove.
Just like that, the virus was in the air.
And in that second, we’d lost.
In true Agent Donnelly fashion, he had no idea what had happened. All hopes I’d had that he’d believed me were dashed. He was completely oblivious to the lethal virus making its sinister way into our lungs.
“Stand up,” he barked. “Both of you! And I swear, if anybody in this room moves another muscle, so help me …”
“I’m sorry.” It was all I could say.
Was I talking to Mary? To everyone? I didn’t even know. The reality of what Victoria had done crashed over me. There was no use going over every detail—every second that had led up to that decision I’d made.
What was done was done.
And yet, I knew I’d never be able to get out of that museum for as long, or short, as the rest of my life turned out to be. I would always be replaying the last two minutes in my head, searching for the loophole I should have found. The action I could have taken. The one move that could have made it right.
I should have felt it, right? You should be able to feel it when the world ends. Your heart should stop, or tears should co
me to your eyes. But I felt nothing—just a crushing, shocked numbness permeating every one of my cells.
We’d lost. The virus was already drifting through the air, through the ventilation ducts above our head and all over the museum. Within hours, the air would be full of the invisible molecules, ready to infect the millions of tourists who would be lining up at the door at dawn.
And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“It’s over!” Victoria shouted at Agent Donnelly. Now that her virus had been released into the air, she appeared exhausted, her work finally complete. She set the gun by her feet, close enough to place the tip of her foot on it protectively.
“You’re infected, and I suggest you go home and make your last arrangements. You’ll want to say goodbye to your loved ones, as they’ll be infected by the end of the day, too.”
“Not you, too,” he groaned, running his hand through his messy hair. “Enough with this madness! Now all of you—get your hands in the air!”
The others dutifully lifted their hands, and it was only then—with the shock of seeing them so resigned—that something shoved away the numbness inside me.
What could we do if Agent Donnelly didn’t believe us? It was too late for us already. We’d all been exposed. We’d all been infected, breathing in the virus along with him.
But something stopped me from lifting my hands in surrender. Something small and quiet—a whisper of an idea growing inside me, taking control of my body.
The virus was already running rampant in the air. Dissipated into millions of molecules. We’d traveled thousands of miles to chase it down, but it had been for nothing. My head spun, racing through every bit of knowledge I’d ever encountered about viruses. About bloodstreams.
About death.
What we needed—what Victoria had completely overlooked—was an antidote.
We couldn’t make one with the virus already dispersing into the air. But that didn’t mean this was over.
We needed a concentrated dose of the virus itself. We needed it safe, locked away, and protected so doctors could use it to develop the cure. Right now, that dose was still in the other barrel of Victoria’s gun. But what if she realized it and pulled the trigger once more?
