Infected

by Sophie Littlefield

  But there wasn’t time for that now. She took the phone and dialed the number scrawled at the bottom of the note.

  It rang twice before it was answered, the voice on the other end so familiar it brought tears to Carina’s eyes.

  “Mom. It’s me.”

  It took a few minutes to hail a cab, but when Tanner pushed some bills at the driver, he put the pedal to the floor.

  The address Madelyn had given her was in a working-class neighborhood fifteen minutes from the center of the city. Since it was the middle of the night, the cabbie said he could make it in ten.

  Carina rested her head against Tanner’s chest, even though she didn’t feel the least bit tired. The jittery sensations that had been plaguing her nerves had increased, until it felt like an electric current had completed the circuit within her, sparking along her synapses. She had to remind herself to blink, but then at other times her eyelids would spasm, fluttering out of control. Even after sharing a bottle of water with Tanner, her mouth felt dry. She felt like walking—no, running—if only to channel some of the extra energy away from her muscles.

  Instead, she nestled into Tanner’s arms and listened to his heartbeat. It was fast, too fast, but it was also soothing. She inhaled his scent, and it was amazingly clear, as though all the individual notes—laundry detergent, soap, fabric softener, sweat—were tangled into a knot that she could untie with her mind.

  “Think about next year,” Tanner said, rubbing her back. “In six months you’ll be just another college freshman with a bad haircut.”

  Carina knew he was trying to distract her, to take her mind off the reunion that lay ahead, but she couldn’t force herself to go along, because her mind was beginning to go haywire along with her body. Tanner’s infection was several hours behind hers; soon enough he would feel what she was feeling, thoughts starting to fray at the edges. It was becoming difficult to concentrate—and impossible to lie. “But I won’t be with you,” she said miserably, her voice almost lost in the sound of the cabbie’s scratchy radio, the wind rushing through the open windows, the traffic noise.

  Tanner’s hands went still on her back. They’d circled this discussion so many times. About Tanner’s acceptance to Berkeley, and all of the rejections Carina received before her acceptance to Cal State Long Beach.

  Before Madelyn died, Carina had performed well in all of her classes. But afterward, her grades tanked and she never recovered. Looking back now, she had to admit that her mother’s death had created a deep chasm of grief, loss, and loneliness that nothing could fill. Schoolwork wasn’t hard for Carina—just pointless, at least when all she had to look forward to was an empty house and the take-out dinners her uncle would bring home long after everyone else had left the office.

  All those nights, she’d ignored the textbooks stacked up on her desk and spent time on Facebook or watching shows on Netflix or working on problems in her cryptography books. She went out with her friends, and learned how to hide the emptiness, but she never forgot she was the only one with virtually no family. Being part of the track team had helped, though sometimes she used the workouts to make herself so tired that she could fall asleep without having to think.

  When Tanner came along, everything changed. Carina began to believe in a future. She started to see the outline of a family she could build for herself, one made up of friends, people who loved her, with Tanner at the center of it all.

  But it wasn’t enough. The plummeting of her GPA meant she didn’t qualify for Berkeley, one of the toughest schools in the country to get into. She celebrated along with her friends when Emma was accepted at Michigan and Nikki got into Sonoma State. When her own acceptance letter came from Cal State Long Beach, she was grateful for the opportunity.

  But Tanner wouldn’t be there.

  They’d only talked about it twice, and both times Carina had cut the conversation short. Because there was only one way it could work out, and that was with them being separated. Sure, they could see each other on weekends sometimes, maybe holidays, depending on when their breaks were. But Carina had gotten used to seeing Tanner almost every day. She had needed to see him, almost like she needed oxygen, even before Walter’s death. Now he was all she had. And if they lived through the day, she wasn’t sure she could bear to be apart.

  “You can’t think that way, Car,” Tanner whispered into her hair.

  “But what other—”

  “This the street?” the cabbie asked, his voice making Carina jump. It was impossibly loud inside the car, a trick of her heightened senses.

  She looked out the window and understood why he was dubious. They were driving slowly up a steep incline, a narrow street that was full of potholes. Cracked sidewalks gave way to driveways crammed with beat-up cars. The houses looked shabby, a few of them boarded up and covered with graffiti.

  “Um, is this Mortimer Street?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “Then I guess … yes, that’s number 165.”

  The cabbie pulled over and Tanner handed over some bills. They got out of the cab, Tanner shrugging the backpack over his shoulders, and regarded the house, a battered two-story structure that was missing several shutters. The porch railing hung loose off broken posts, and a single lamp glowed behind dingy curtains. Carina made no move toward the house, letting Tanner hold her instead; she wasn’t sure if she was shaking all over because she was about to see her mother for the first time in almost a year, or because the virus was wreaking further havoc on her nervous system.

  “So she said she has the antidote, right?” Tanner asked.

  “Yes.” The truth was, her mother had started crying and it was hard to understand what she was saying. Carina had given her mother an abbreviated version of everything that had happened in the last day, from being chased from the cemetery to finding Walter’s apartment to being attacked at the BART station. Madelyn had begged her to come straight to her house.

  “Car … before we go in, I need to tell you something,” Tanner said. “I think I know what that thing is. From the locker.”

  He took it out of her pocket, but it was too dark to examine it outside the house, since the display was not backlit. “You barely got a look at it.”

  “Didn’t need to. I saw it flash the codes. My guess is that it’s generating them every few seconds.”

  “What, like, randomly?”

  “Sort of, except it’s mirroring a sequence on a server. It’s an ever-changing password for a specific gateway, and while it could be anywhere, I think it’s wherever your uncle stored his research backup.”

  Tanner started to unzip the backpack’s outer pocket, then stopped and crouched down. “I wonder … Yeah, it fits, just barely.”

  “Your sock? Seriously?” Tanner had found running socks with a zipped pocket on the Internet, and he wore them to train in because they held his keys. They were the only socks he ever wore, even today, with the clothes he’d worn to the funeral.

  “Well, look at it this way: you’ve got the ring with the IP address, I’ve got the token generator. Even if something happens to the backpack, we’re covered.”

  Carina had to admit it made sense. Without the token generator and the ring, they had nothing. Walter had destroyed the lab’s access to the data—and in the process, Sheila’s. “Why didn’t he just destroy it all? I mean, if he thought it was that dangerous, why not delete every copy, every backup? Make it so no one could ever find it?”

  “But that’s the problem, Car. They can re-create the virus. They just can’t re-create the antidote, at least the version that’s attached to the virus itself, so you can’t be infected without it—the foolproof version.”

  “So … if Walter destroyed it, they could have more accidents like the one we saw in the video—”

  “That was no accident, Car—they left that poor guy there to die, and kept the camera rolling. That was an experiment, and he was their guinea pig.”

  “Okay, right, so Walter figured if he destroyed his rese
arch, Sheila would just sell the virus as is, without giving any thought to the consequences. That’s why he was going to contact Major Wynnside—he trusted the Army Criminal Investigation Command to stop her, and if the lab went forward with the project after that, at least they’d be able to produce a virus that was safe to use.”

  “And that’s where that password generator comes in—to get into his private files on the VPN.”

  “But how does the password on that thing match up to the one on the server? I mean you said it could be anywhere on earth—”

  “Yeah, but—Look, Car, it’ll take me too long to explain it now. The reason I brought it up is, when we go in there, I think you need to, uh, maybe not mention it to your mom.”

  “Why wouldn’t I tell her? Tanner, she was the one who tried to stop this project from the start.”

  “Um, yeah. I mean, that’s what Walter thought.”

  “You don’t believe him?” Carina felt her chest tighten. “You don’t trust my mom?”

  “Look, Car, I never met her. I believe what you’ve told me about her,” Tanner said hastily. “But, you know, there are a lot of players here and not a lot of time to get this right, and I just thought, it wouldn’t hurt to hold back a little until we have the injection.”

  Carina pulled away from him, shocked that he suspected her mother could be capable of betraying them. But what if it was true? How well had she really known her mother? How many times had she wished they were closer, that her mother confided in her, asked her about her day—cared about her the way mothers were supposed to care about their children?

  “Just—just let me have this one thing, okay? Let me have this time with my mom, without ruining it?” Carina dug her fingers into her palm, something she often did when she was upset—and nearly yelped with pain. Uncurling her fingers, she held her hand up and saw the dark runnels in the middle—she’d drawn her own blood.

  Tanner took her hand and examined it under the weak light from the streetlamps, turning it over. “Damn, Carina—” He lifted the corner of his shirt and gently dabbed at the blood.

  The gesture was so tender that Carina couldn’t think of anything to say. She felt like she was getting worse; it was hard to control her strength, her impulses. And she had to admit that at least some of the anger she was feeling toward Tanner was misplaced. It would be so much easier to lash out at him than to face the faint doubts that she also had. “I won’t tell her about the password generator,” she said, keeping her face as neutral as she could.

  “And maybe the computer … you know, until we’re sure.”

  Carina’s jaw clenched. “Maybe you should trust me a little more. I’m willing to wait and see, but, Tanner, if I feel like she’s being honest with me, after she gives us the antidote, you can’t stop me from telling her everything.”

  “I know I can’t stop you, Car,” Tanner said, anger edging into his voice too. “And I’ve always trusted you. I think it’s pretty damn ironic that you’re accusing me of anything else. I thought you finally understood that I’m not the enemy. That I lo—”

  “Stop.” Carina’s voice sounded frantic, even to her. She knew what he was going to say—and she couldn’t deal with it. Couldn’t stand to hear it, especially now. Love wasn’t something she was ready to acknowledge out loud, no matter how right it felt to be with Tanner, no matter what sort of thoughts she had whenever he was near, no matter how often she fantasized about them being together next month, next year. “Please just don’t. I mean, not now. My mom is in there, and I—”

  “I understand,” Tanner said grimly, cutting her off and backing away from her with his palms raised. “I do. But think about this—we’re in a hell of a bad situation here, and we may not have a lot of tomorrows ahead of us. So if you’re ever going to get around to facing the way I know you feel about me, you might want to start soon.”

  With that he strode up to the door and started pounding, leaving Carina to hurry up the walk after him. The door opened almost as soon as he knocked, the figure behind it obscured in the unlit room beyond.

  “Get in here quick,” the familiar voice said. “Oh, Carina, it really is you.”

  When the door shut behind them a light turned on, almost blinding Carina as she threw herself into her mother’s arms.

  “Mom! Oh my God, I can’t believe it. I can’t …” She inhaled her mother’s familiar scent, her shampoo and perfume, as Madelyn hugged her hard. She was thinner, and she had let her hair grow long, but it was still the same rich red that it had always been.

  Her mother had never been the hugging type; it had been one of the things that had made it so hard for Carina after her death. Everyone wanted to comfort her in the weeks following the funeral, and they had showered her with affection. People from the lab, her friends’ mothers, they enveloped her in big, comforting hugs. Even Walter was more affectionate than Madelyn had ever been. And it had taken a while for Carina to get used to it, when all she wanted was the quick back-patting embraces her mother had given her from time to time.

  But now her mother held on like she would never let go. Finally, she released Carina, hands on her shoulders, her eyes filled with emotion. “Look at you! Oh, Carina, you’re so … I mean … oh, how I’ve missed you. I thought, I just thought I would never see you again. I almost couldn’t bear it. And then Walter—” She swiped at her eyes, smudging her mascara, wiping away tears. “I’m sorry, honey. This is your friend, yes? Hello, Tanner.”

  She offered her hand and Tanner shook it. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Monroe.”

  “Come with me. Back this way. Away from the windows.” She led them into the house, which was furnished with shabby, nondescript furniture. Carina looked around as they passed through the living room and saw no personal effects, no photographs. She couldn’t help feeling disappointed that there were no pictures of her anywhere. But maybe that was her mother’s way of protecting her. Maybe she couldn’t have pictures because she was always looking over her shoulder, worrying that she was one misstep away from being found. From meeting the same fate Walter had—for real this time.

  “Was that you who called us, Mom?” Carina guessed. “Back at the apartment?”

  “Yes. You can’t imagine how worried I’ve been. I had a friend of mine watching the memorial service—when he reported that you’d disappeared with Sheila’s security detail after you, I was praying you’d make it to Walter’s safe room.”

  “And I hung up on you?” Carina asked, horrified. “But why did you disguise your voice?”

  “Baby, I was just trying to protect you. I still thought the way to keep you safe was to never let you find out about me. But I just had to know. I should never have called. It was so stupid of me—I should have known how upset you would be, and I only made things worse. I’m so sorry.”

  “I just—I never dreamed—” Carina’s voice faltered as they reached the kitchen. “How did you do it, Mom? How’d you disappear?”

  Madelyn took Carina’s hand, her eyes glittering with tears. “Sweetheart, I could have never done it without the help of a few trusted friends, and—Oh! You’re wearing the ring! Did you ever …”

  “Find the secret inside? Yes, I did. And Walter left me the cryptographic token.”

  “I had a feeling he would, if he ever thought he was under any threat.” Madelyn sighed. “I know it was a risk, but I just thought … I couldn’t bear not to have any connection to you. And this way, I thought if anything happened to both me and Walter, there would still be one person in the world who had access to our work. To the research that could be used to create an antidote. So that if the virus ever was used, at least there was a way to keep it from killing innocent people.”

  “But what if I’d never found it?”

  “I guess …” Madelyn spoke quietly, not meeting Carina’s eyes. “I thought if it was ever meant to be, you’d find it.”

  “That’s pretty unscientific, isn’t it?” Carina said, surprised.

  Madelyn l
ooked embarrassed. “Yes. I suppose it is. But you know, if I’ve learned one thing in the last year, it’s that I let science take over too much of my life. I gave time to my work that I should have spent with you. I—I hope you won’t make the same mistake.”

  “Mrs. Monroe, I know Carina has already told you this over the phone, but we really need the antidote,” Tanner said apologetically. “I mean, I think we’ll all feel more relaxed, and we can think about the next steps. It’s getting—well, I guess you probably know what’s happening. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  “It’s been about thirty-three hours,” Carina said. “I’ve only got three hours left before …”

  She couldn’t bear to complete the thought, especially after seeing her mother blanch with fear.

  “We’ll go in a minute,” Madelyn said. “I just need to make sure you weren’t followed here.”

  “Go? Go where?” The edge in Tanner’s voice was more pronounced.

  “This isn’t where I live,” Madelyn said. She took Carina’s hand in hers and squeezed it hard, never taking her eyes off her. Carina understood—she had an urge to grab her mother and hang on, to keep her close now that she had found her. “I do some of the time. I have three places I use. We’ll head over to where I have supplies. Walter insisted on giving me the antidote when it was ready—he sent it to an unmarked PO box I use. It may have lost a little effectiveness, but it will still be plenty potent.”

  “Mom, I wish—I don’t—” Carina’s thoughts and wishes tumbled together, and she could voice none of them. What she’d pretended for so long—that love was impossible for her—it was a lie; the love she’d had for her distant and preoccupied mother had never been destroyed, the way she had made herself believe. It had just been buried, and now that her mother was here in the flesh, warm and breathing and clutching her hand, she dared to long for more. If they could just get through this, find the antidote and contact the major, then maybe they could stay in contact. Maybe there was a way to be together again someday, a way to build their lives around each other. Carina couldn’t help feeling a surge of hope that they would live long enough for her mother to see her graduate, to enter college, all the milestones Carina had thought she would have to endure alone.