Infected

by Sophie Littlefield

  At the crack of what Carina recognized as a starter pistol, the kind used in state track competitions, the man took off running. The camera followed, in the jerky, wobbling fashion that indicated someone was filming while running along beside him, and an obstacle course covering several acres of the field came into view. The man scaled a rope wall, leaping nimbly from the top to the ground on the other side, and instantly began running again. He worked his way through a series of structures built out of raw timber and lumber; some required him to climb, others to crawl or to hang and move hand-over-hand. Everything he did, he seemed to do at a heightened speed; tasks that would be nearly impossible for most people looked effortless. When he finished the course, he jogged back to his original position at the edge of the field. The off-camera voice recited his time and added a single word: “Phenomenal.”

  The scene changed to a small room with white walls, gray carpet, and no windows. The time stamp in the corner of the screen read 35:14:08. The same young man, his hair wet from a shower, was sitting on an industrial-looking cot, dressed in a white T-shirt and gray sweatpants. The room looked a lot like a jail cell except for the carpet and the presence of a closed door instead of bars. From the angle, it was clear that the camera was mounted to the ceiling. “How are you feeling?” the offscreen voice asked—the same voice as before, but this time tinny and mechanical, as if it was coming from a speaker.

  “All right.” The man looked alert, his eyes wide and bright, but there was an anxious quality to his fleeting smile. Sweat beaded his brow. It looked like it took effort to appear unruffled. His hands were clenched in his lap and he blinked every few seconds. One foot appeared to move uncontrollably, shuffling in place.

  Carina gasped: it was only forty-five minutes before the thirty-six hour mark. If the man didn’t receive the antidote soon, he would die.

  “All of your test results came back—truly an excellent effort,” the voice said.

  “Thank you.” The man seemed to wince as his leg jerked twice. He grabbed his shin with his hands, as if to keep it anchored.

  “We discussed the lack of sleep. You won’t be able to, so you might as well not try. You’ve had slightly under seven thousand calories today, but you may still feel hungry. This is normal. Try to stay calm.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Then the video sped up. It took a moment for Carina to realize what was happening because the man kept sitting on the cot, then he got up and began to pace. His movements were rapid and jerky, showing that the tape speed had been increased. He seemed to grow increasingly agitated, pacing the room and, it looked like, talking to himself. Eventually screaming, though after the tape increased in speed there was no sound.

  The speed slowed to normal again, the time 36:30:11. “He’s going to die,” Carina whispered, holding Tanner’s hand tightly.

  “Do you want me to shut it off?” Tanner’s voice was hoarse.

  “No. I have to see.” The man stumbled around the room, taking off one shoe and then the other, pelting the walls with them. One crashed near the camera, and the image flickered. The blinking had developed into a full-fledged spasm, one entire side of his face twitching and twisting as he began bumping into the walls as though he couldn’t see them.

  The tape jumped ahead, the time stamp changing to 36:50, 37:18, 38:22. The action slowed whenever the man did something new. He tore off his shirt as though contact with the fabric was hurting him; he tugged at his belt buckle for a while but eventually gave up, his fingers trembling too violently for the task. The discarded shirt lay in the middle of the room and he stepped on it as if it weren’t there. He never sat down, never rested. By hour 38 he was screaming nonstop, the muscles in his neck bulging.

  Then he started hitting the wall. Tanner’s hand tightened on Carina’s as the man slammed his fist, over and over. When blood appeared, Tanner reached to turn off the recording.

  “No,” Carina whispered, her throat dry. She pushed his hand away. “I have to see.”

  The man no longer resembled the one who’d performed so well earlier. His face was a rictus of agony and fury. He kicked and punched the walls until they were soiled with his blood. One of his wrists hung at an odd angle, as if he’d broken his own bones with the force of his blows.

  Then he turned on himself.

  He’d managed to pull the hair out of his bleeding scalp and gashed his face with his own fingernails when Carina couldn’t take any more, and closed the file. The time read 38:39:44.

  Carina forced herself to take deep breaths. “The virus attacks the brain and then it makes you attack yourself.”

  Tanner’s face was white. “We are not going to let that happen to us.”

  “I infected you,” Carina said miserably. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d be fine.”

  “Stop it, Car. Don’t think like that. Last night was … I wouldn’t trade it for anything. We just have to find the antidote.”

  “In less than six hours?”

  “Well, look on the bright side—we won’t need any sleep. We might have to eat again in an hour.…” Tanner smiled weakly.

  Carina felt hysteria tug at her, the horror of the situation and her guilt for dragging Tanner into it making her want to scream. But she had to stay rational if they were to have any hope of survival.

  A buzzing from the desk made her jump—the disposable phone that Walter had left her. Carina stared at it as though it were a snake getting ready to strike.

  “Should I answer?”

  “I think you have to, just so we know what we’re dealing with.”

  Carina picked it up as though it were a ticking bomb. “Hello?”

  “Carina? Carina Monroe?”

  The voice was mechanical, raspy and monotone. Carina couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman; a device of some sort was definitely being used to modify it. “Who is this?”

  “I’m looking for Carina Monroe. I am a … friend of your uncle Walter. I am in a position to help you. Right now you’re in a lot of danger. I just need to know where you are and I can pick you up and take you somewhere where I can guarantee your safety.”

  Carina frantically reviewed the list of people who might have an interest in helping her and the means to do it. There was no one, except maybe Baxter, and he wouldn’t need to disguise his voice.

  Lots of people had taken an interest in Carina—her teachers, her track coaches, her college admissions counselors. A few neighbors. Tanner’s parents—they’d been wonderful to her. The parents of a few other friends. But how would any of them—how would anyone at all—have this cell number?

  Besides, none of those people had any idea that Walter had been involved with something dangerous. Carina herself hadn’t known until this afternoon.

  Twenty-four hours ago she had trusted Sheila completely. She probably would have trusted this stranger on the phone, assuming that Walter had set up a safety net for her. But in the end, Walter hadn’t even been able to protect himself.

  “Are you still there?” the voice asked. Carina gently pressed the end button on the phone.

  “Not anymore,” she said softly.

  “Nothing,” Tanner said. It had only taken him a couple minutes to change into the clothes Carina had bought him, and then he’d taken the phone apart, looking for tracking devices or anything suspicious. As he reassembled it, using the specialized multi-tool set he used as a key chain, Carina made last-minute preparations in front of the bathroom mirror.

  Disguising Tanner had been easy: Carina had bought him a T-shirt with a graphic design of the Golden Gate Bridge. A pair of shorts—they were a little too baggy, but at least they stayed up. And Converse sneakers, since that was all the shop carried—black ones customized with orange stitching and the Giants logo. He looked like any other tourist in town to see the sights and maybe catch a game—all he needed was a sunburn and he’d be indistinguishable from the crowd that gathered at Pier 39.

  Carina was having a little more trouble. The black running sho
rts and tank top she’d chosen to give her freedom of movement were fine. But the hat that had seemed like such a good idea in the store—a baseball cap with a fake platinum-blond ponytail attached in the back—wasn’t working. She couldn’t get her own long hair to stay tucked up in the cap.

  “Can I borrow that?”

  “This?” He handed her the multi-tool. When she opened the scissor attachment, he said, “Oh,” and she had to turn away.

  He’d once told her that her hair was the first thing he noticed the day they met at the climbing gym. It was early autumn last year, and they both used the same gym between seasons. Climbing was an excellent total-body workout for Carina, but for Tanner, it was also a way to keep his arms in shape for the javelin, shot put, and discus.

  He told her he’d known, that first day, that he could pass her on the climbing wall. It wasn’t bragging—to throw a twelve-pound shot almost twenty meters, you had to have developed both a certain level of strength and finely tuned agility. But when Tanner looked up and saw Carina’s long, silky ponytail gleaming in the gym’s skylights, bouncing against her bare shoulder blades, he decided to hang back and let her believe she’d beat him instead.

  Carina had climbed with determination, oblivious to the fact that she was being watched. She took a difficult route, pushing herself to develop her reach. At the point when she overshot and was about to fall, Tanner said he caught his breath as she clung, suspended, trying to regain her footing on a plastic hold that was just out of reach, the whole time her hair shimmering and bobbing in the sunlight.

  The first time Tanner kissed her he’d wound his hands through her hair, the strands slipping through his fingers. Even when they were just watching TV, he liked to play with it, rubbing the ends almost as though he wasn’t aware he was doing it.

  Carina blinked away the memories and clenched her jaw as she made the first cut. It felt like she was cutting some connection between them.

  Tanner put his hand over hers, stopping her. “Let me,” he said gently. He worked quickly, both of them aware of the critical seconds ticking away, but in moments he’d given her a shoulder-length cut that was surprisingly even, considering the tools he had to work with.

  Carina shook out the loose hairs, peering at her reflection. She didn’t hate the look the way she’d expected. She looked like herself but also … like someone else.

  Carina had never known her father. She became an orphan when her mother died, and when Walter died, she was truly on her own. The girl looking back at her, with her light-brown hair curving toward her chin with a wave that Carina didn’t know she had, looked … strong. Capable. Confident.

  “Thank you,” she said, knowing there wasn’t time now to explain it to Tanner. “You can add that to your resume. Hairdresser. Bet there will be high demand for that next year in the dorms at Berkeley.”

  There was one more thing she had to do before they left. She picked up the disposable phone and dialed from memory.

  Sheila answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” Carina said.

  “Oh my God, Carina, I’ve been worried sick about you!” Sheila said. She was pretty convincing, actually, managing to inject a note of hysteria into her voice. Except there had been a tiny hesitation, a beat of silence before she spoke, and Carina knew she’d been figuring out her next move.

  Sheila was cagey. But Carina was only now learning exactly how clever she could be. And she wasn’t falling for it again.

  “You infected me. I want the antidote. Enough for me and Tanner.”

  “What? You think I infected you? I would never intentionally put you at risk.”

  “Oh, come on, Sheila, please. The research you and Uncle Walter were doing? The virus that turns soldiers into killing machines? We saw the video. You know, the one where the guy tears his face off at the end?”

  Carina heard Sheila suck in her breath sharply. “What—you—how did you—”

  “Turns out Walter left us a few clues, or we wouldn’t have any idea what’s in store for us. Very clever, with the whole brow-wax thing.”

  “Carina, I don’t know what you think you’ve seen, but I promise you, all I want is to keep you safe. If you just let me come pick you up, we can sort through all of—”

  “I just want the antidote. You say you’re concerned about my safety, prove it. We can pick a nice public location and you can give me the antidote. When Tanner and I are sure we’re back to normal, then we can have this conversation.”

  There were muffled voices in the background, a harsh shushing, then silence. Carina could practically sense Sheila thinking.

  “Carina,” she finally said, and in those few syllables Carina heard her drop all the pretense. She spoke in the clipped voice that Carina had heard only a few times before, when Sheila wasn’t aware that she was in earshot. In the past, Carina had considered it Sheila’s “professional” voice. Now she realized it was just her real voice. “I understand that you don’t know who to trust. But you need to know that I want to help you. I won’t ask you why you think that Tanner—”

  “Don’t,” Carina agreed. “Evidently I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “But you’re mistaken about one thing. The real threat to you right now is the Albanians. Not me. And they don’t have the virus, there’s no way they could have—”

  “Don’t insult me, Sheila,” Carina snapped. “I’m not stupid. I saw the video. I know what the symptoms are. And I know why you did it too—because you want to force me to give you Uncle Walter’s research.”

  “You actually think I’d risk your life?”

  Carina laughed bitterly. “Nice try. You know, the worst thing about this is that Walter fell for your act. He left me a letter, you know. He said he trusted you for a long time. He cared about you.”

  “I can’t—I don’t even know where to begin to …” There was a pause, and then Sheila spoke more calmly. “I can have you picked up in moments. I have the antidote, enough for both of you, and you can be back to normal in an hour. The antidote is incredibly fast. It wipes all effects of the virus and leaves no footprint. I have to hand it to Walter—he really was a genius.”

  “Why’d you kill him, Sheila?” Carina asked. She couldn’t stop herself. “I know he’d figured out how to manufacture and attach the antidote. Seems to me if you’d just stolen his data, you’d be selling out national security right now instead of talking to me.”

  Another pause, and when Sheila spoke again her voice had gone even emptier. “I didn’t kill him. Sometimes I wanted to, especially when he suddenly decided to cut me out of research that I had been a part of from the start. I mean, Carina, Walter and your mother and I and dozens of other people have been working on this thing for years. Once we got close, all of a sudden he’s the only one who gets to see it through to the end? The only one who gets to make decisions about the future of the project?”

  “He just wanted it to be safe.”

  “Safe!” Sheila spat the word as if it were a curse. “Safe doesn’t exist for people like him and me. We knew that when we signed on. Your mother knew it too. But you should know this: I didn’t have anything to do with his death. And neither did the government. Ours, anyway.”

  “Then who did it? Let me guess, you thought you had everything you needed. Maybe you were afraid he’d want in on your little deal and you didn’t want to share.”

  Sheila exhaled sharply in frustration. “Carina, listen to reason, let me help you—and that boyfriend of yours too. I’m the only person who can get you out of this alive. What else are you going to do, take your chances with your little computer genius when I’m offering you the resources of one of the most powerful research organizations in the world?” Her tone turned bitter. “I guess I’ve forgotten how powerful young love can be.”

  Carina pressed the end button.

  Her heart raced with emotions, none more powerful than her fury at Sheila’s last comment. Maybe because it was true. Carina had doomed Tan
ner, and it was love that had made her do it. Her grief had been overwhelming, once it sank in that Walter was never coming back. And Tanner had been there for her, his every word, every touch a comfort. She hadn’t hesitated. She’d lost herself in his love and those few hours had made her stronger and kept her going, had made it possible for her to wake up the morning of her uncle’s memorial service and know she would somehow get through it.

  Tanner had saved her—but would it cost him his life?

  “Did you hear all that?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

  “Most of it. Enough.”

  “I shouldn’t have hung up on her. She’s our only link to the antidote.”

  “You can always call her back, once we figure out a safer place to meet. I mean, we can’t risk her coming here—even with all of Walter’s protections, the minute we let them in the door, we’re sitting ducks.”

  “But even if we figure out a better place to meet, I don’t have anything to give her besides the key—and what if what she’s looking for isn’t in the locker? Uncle Walter never told me where his research is stored. I always assumed it was somewhere on the lab’s servers.”

  “It probably was, until he decided it wasn’t safe there. It could be anywhere—there’s VPNs in a dozen different countries that could never be traced. Virtual private networks,” he added automatically. Tanner was used to having to translate his computer terms for people. “You’re sure he never gave you passwords, codes, anything?”

  “Very sure. I mean … one of the greatest things about him was that he was always direct. If there was something he wanted me to know, he just said it. But maybe that’s what’s stored in the locker, right? I mean, if Walter had wanted the research destroyed forever, he would have done that. But instead he wants to make sure the Army Criminal Investigation team or whatever it was called gets it. He must trust them to keep the virus out of the wrong hands.”

  “I had the same thought. And something else—Walter might have kept the antidote around, right? I mean, after seeing what was on that video …” His voice trailed off, and Carina shuddered involuntarily. The images of the man attacking himself, blood running between his frantically clawing fingers, would not soon go away. “All I’m saying is that he must have kept a backup supply of the antidote somewhere. And it isn’t here.”