Into The Fire (The Ending Series)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  As I watched Dr. Wesley—Dr. Cartwright, in all reality—lose herself in memory, I lowered myself into one of the worn, padded chairs in front of her desk. I didn’t think her story was going to be short, but if it contained the answers I sought, an explanation for why any person would do what she’d done, I could sit and listen and be patient. Why she was telling me her story, I didn’t know, and honestly, I didn’t care, just so long as she gave me answers…information…ammo. Assuming she’s telling the truth…

  “He was a soldier, one of the men in the unit assigned to guard us, which really meant keep an eye on us so we didn’t hand potentially dangerous technology over to ‘the enemy.’” She smiled wistfully, the past filling her eyes. “I hated him for months, but that was really just because I’d fallen for him almost the first moment I saw him, and I refused to give up my career for a man.” She was quiet for a moment. “When I discovered what the military intended to do with my research, he was the one who helped me escape.”

  So she didn’t want to hurt anyone…but she still ended up killing everyone. I tried to imagine Tom Cartwright, my best friend’s scatterbrained, hardworking craftsman father, as Dr. Wesley’s knight in camouflage armor. But I’d only known him as a troubled, middle-aged man, and picturing him as a soldier was impossible.

  Quietly, I asked, “What were you researching?”

  The doctor’s hint of a smile disintegrated. “A base pair on a specific strand of DNA estimated to be present in a little over 10 percent of the human population. It held the genetic key to accessing never-before-seen mental and physical abilities.”

  “Like what we’re experiencing now?” I asked.

  She nodded. “One of my colleagues hypothesized that—” She halted, her gaze sharp, assessing. “How familiar are you with genetics?”

  I shrugged. “Not very. I took a biological anthropology class as an undergrad, so I understand Darwinism, natural selection, and all that good stuff, but being able to picture a pretty, multicolored double helix is about as far as my DNA comprehension goes.”

  With a frown, Dr. Wesley nodded. “I’ll keep it simple, then. Basically, we discovered the strand of DNA that, among other things, controls our genetic potential to exhibit an Ability. I discovered the base pair on the strand that inhibits—or used to inhibit—that potential. All we had to do was determine a way to delete the inhibiting pair, and then we could really see what the strand could do.”

  I held up a hand to interrupt. “Can you even do that—delete a gene?”

  Shaking her head, Dr. Wesley corrected, “A base pair, not a gene, and nature does it every day. You have some understanding of evolution, so you know that genetic mutation, one of the driving forces behind evolution, is random, correct?” Whatever my personal feelings for the doctor were, I couldn’t deny her genius. Her eyes practically glowed with it.

  I nodded.

  “Those natural, completely random mutations generally take place in three ways: substitution, when one base pair is substituted with another; deletion, when a base pair is left out; and insertion, when an entirely new base pair appears. Unfortunately, such mutations are completely unpredictable, usually harmful, and, for the most part, uncontrollable, not to mention limited by the reproductive rate of a species.”

  Raising my eyebrows, I said, “But…” The genetic changes caused by the Virus hadn’t been limited to the next generation of humans; they’d impacted us all, changing everyone who survived.

  “But,” Dr. Wesley agreed. “Over two decades ago, a few months before my husband-to-be helped me flee from the military, I read an article by a brilliant young microbiologist on something he called ‘gene therapy.’ Have you ever heard of it?”

  Entranced by her story, I shook my head. It was mind-boggling that the moves leading to the destruction of mankind had been set in play so long ago, before I was even born. Had anyone known the consequences of their actions? Had the demolition of civilization been the goal even then? Or were the key players just looking to make a new, stronger breed of people?

  “Essentially, gene therapy is a way to force spontaneous genetic mutation, even in a fully grown subject.”

  Subject. I snorted and clarified, “Person.”

  “Person, cat, apple tree—anything with DNA,” Dr. Wesley explained. “In gene therapy, a virus is the delivery method for the mutation—either to transport a new base pair for substitution or insertion, or to delete an existing base pair.” Dr. Wesley dropped her eyes, looking at her hands instead of at me. “Unfortunately, though the virus we initially used was mostly harmless on its own, our trials proved that the gene therapy was too dangerous to continue researching and experimenting with.”

  “Trials? As in, human trials?”

  “Well, we couldn’t exactly use a bird, could we? And unless you know of a secret preserve of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, our only route to test the procedure was to try it on our fellow humans.” At seeing the appall warping my face, she added, “They were all volunteers.”

  I snorted again. “I’m sure. So what happened? You said it was too dangerous. Did the government shut the program down?”

  Dr. Wesley shook her head. “If only. The gene therapy had an unfortunate side effect for most of the test subjects. During the first round, we only chose subjects who were confirmed carriers of the P-strand.”

  “P-strand?”

  “Pandora strand.” She laughed bitterly. “One of my lab assistants came up with it as a joke. She had no idea how appropriate the name was.” There was a long pause before Dr. Wesley resumed her explanation. “We only chose people whose genetic makeup contained the P-strand, but we didn’t notice the variation among different test subjects. The gene therapy was designed to take out the final base pair in that strand, which we’d identified as the Ability-inhibiting pair. But”—she took a heavy breath—“eighty percent of the test subjects in that first group had an additional base pair, which inhibited something else entirely, and in those subjects, that was the base pair that was deleted. We hadn’t been looking for it, so we just…missed it,” she said, an air of defeat in her voice.

  So…what does that mean? I thought about my experiences in the post-Virus world over the past few months, and I was pretty sure I’d puzzled out what that additional base pair inhibited. “Let me guess—it inhibited insanity, and once it was deleted, those people lost it?”

  Eyebrows raised, Dr. Wesley nodded. Apparently, I’d impressed her. Go me.

  “It wasn’t obvious at first,” she explained, “just like the Abilities didn’t develop immediately. But in time, it became clear. I begged my superiors to set the project aside. I told them it was far too dangerous, but they ordered another trial, this time with a random sampling of people who weren’t preselected based on their genetic makeup. I hated myself for doing it, but I followed orders, carried out the trial, and cried myself to sleep every night. Tom was all that got me through it.”

  Looking into my eyes, imploring me to understand, she said, “There were one hundred people in that test group, and ninety-one of them died within a month of treatment. Not from the gene therapy, exactly, but from colds, allergies, blood infections caused by minor wounds, you name it. You see, unlike in the first trial, where we made sure everyone carried the P-strand, we didn’t do so with the second trial group. Ninety-one of them didn’t carry the P-strand. The strand that was in the place of the P-strand for those test subjects”—at my sudden scowl, she amended what she’d said—“for those people related directly to the immune system. Deleting the final base pair did something that almost completely destroyed their bodies’ ability to heal. It was irreversible, and no matter how—” An uncontrollable sob choked off her words.

  Sympathy welled inside me, but I shoved it away. She deserved her pain. She killed Grams…Cam…Callie…her own husband…

  Voice cracking under the weight of her sorrow, she said, “No matter how many hours I spent in the lab, trying to find a cure, they all died. My superiors wou
ldn’t even let us contact their families so they could speak to their loved ones one last time.” After another choking sob, she regained her composure. “Tom said he would take me away…that we could start a new life somewhere else, where we would become other people—normal people—and hide from the horrors of what I’d done. We developed a plan that protected us, and once we were married and had children, protected our family, for almost ten years.”

  Tilting my head to the side, I said, “You disappeared?”

  Dr. Wesley’s answering grin was sly. “Better than you can imagine. Tom and I—we both carried the P-strand, and by some glorious twist of fate, neither of us had the extra base pair. It seemed like destiny at the time, like some higher power was guiding us, telling us we were doing the right thing. So, we gave ourselves the gene therapy treatment and waited for our Abilities to develop, hoping they would be in some way beneficial to our escape. You know mine—nulling others’ Abilities—”

  “And amplifying,” I said, interrupting her. “The General only knows about that side of your Ability, doesn’t he? I’d imagine he’d be pretty upset if he found out you could block other people’s Abilities as well.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she agreed with a stiff nod. She’d heard my not-so-subtle threat, and it seemed she would continue to cooperate. “Tom’s Ability proved equally useful. He could alter people’s memories, making them forget they’d ever seen us. It was the next best thing to being invisible.”

  I stared at her, flabbergasted. Overloaded on insane information, I’d yet to process the fact that Tom—Zoe and Jason’s dad—had an Ability, or at least, he’d had one before he died of the Virus. He died of the Virus. Suddenly, several things clicked. “The Virus—it was different this time, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” she said. “It was a modified influenza virus, nearly universally contagious and designed to take advantage of the weakened immune systems of the non-P-strand carriers.”

  “And you created it that way, didn’t you? You created it to kill everyone.” Too angry to wait for an answer, I repeated my initial question, “Why?” Why’d you create it? Why’d you leave your family? Why’d you kill everyone? Why?

  Dr. Wesley met my eyes, then immediately looked away. “Gregory—General Herodson—had been one of the lower officers overseeing my project in the beginning. He and I had gone on a few dates before I realized my feelings for Tom, and he convinced me to check his DNA for the P-strand. Like Tom and me, he was a viable candidate for the gene therapy. He convinced me to include him in the second trial, which I shouldn’t have done because it invalidated the random selection process, but I did it anyway, hoping it would make him more amenable to letting me leave.”

  Raising her furious gaze to mine, she said, “It didn’t. Tom and I escaped before Gregory’s Ability was strong enough to really control anyone’s minds, but once we were gone, he had several decades to strengthen and perfect his control…to plant people where he needed them. And for the past twenty-four years he’s used my Ability—or half of it—to make his even stronger.” From the fury in her voice, I could tell how much she hated him. Good. At least we agree on that.

  Dr. Wesley took a few deep breaths, then said, “During the ten years Tom and I were gone, Gregory built up his own mind-controlled army within the military, and eventually he found us.” She sounded utterly despondent. Broken.

  Oh God…I can’t hate her. I wanted to scream.

  “We’d gotten married and had two children at that point—a young boy and a girl little more than a baby—and he threatened to kill them if I didn’t join him…work for him…be his plaything.” She spat out the final word, and for once, I didn’t squash my sympathy. “He told me he loved me and needed me, and that if I attempted anything to be free of him—end my own life…try to end his—he would kill my children and husband. He had people ready to destroy my family if I hurt him or his plans in any way. He called it his ‘contingency plan.’” With liquid blue eyes, she begged me to understand. “So you see, I had no choice. My children—”

  “Are the only reason you’re still alive,” I said, standing. Honestly, it was mostly a bluff. I couldn’t kill her, not now that I knew the truth of who she was and why she’d created the Virus, but she didn’t need to know that.

  Dr. Wesley eyed me warily. “So you know.”

  “That Zoe and Jason are your kids? Yeah.” I took a step closer to her desk and held out my hand, palm up. “You have a master key. Give it to me.”

  She ignored my demand. “Will you tell them I’m here?” Her eyes were filled with equal amounts of hope and dread.

  “No. I hate lying to them, but the truth would hurt them so much more than if they go on thinking you’re dead.”

  “They would hate me. Thank you for—”

  My face twisted into an ugly sneer. “I’m doing it for them, not for you,” I spat. “They’d blame themselves, because if you had refused the General and let them die, everyone else might’ve gone on living. At least, that’s how they’d see it.”

  She flinched like I’d slapped her.

  “Give. Me. Your. Key. If you don’t, I’ll tell the General about the other half of your Ability and the neutralizer,” I said, an icy chill coating my words.

  Dr. Wesley reached into the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out an inconspicuous key. She placed it on my palm without touching my skin.

  “Does it open his office?”

  She shook her head. “Only he has those keys.”

  “Do you know why he sent a Re-gen to my people’s camp?”

  “No, I—” Her face filled with worry. “Are they alright?”

  “They’re fine.” Reluctantly, I added, “Zo and Jason know you didn’t die in the car crash. They found a letter you wrote to Tom—”

  “Oh God,” she whimpered as tears leaked from her eyes. “How…how’d you figure out who I was?”

  I started stringing the key onto the cord with the red card and the guard’s warehouse key. “You look like an older version of Zoe. I’m surprised I didn’t suspect sooner, but you were supposed to be dead, so…”

  “What are they like?” she asked softly.

  I sighed, really not wanting to ease her pain, but I could hear Grams chiding me in my head: I didn’t raise you to be so heartless, Dani-girl. “Zo and Jason are…they’re two of the best people I’ve ever known. Strong, smart, stubborn…I love them both very much. I’d die for them, and I’m pretty sure they’d do the same for me.”

  “They might, when they try to get you out of here. Then I’ll have a reason to hate you as much as you hate me.”

  God, I hope not. Their deaths were my worst fear. Wait—how does she even know about the escape? I narrowed my eyes. “Gabe told you.” That little…argh!

  She shrugged. “I’m not the enemy, Danielle.”

  I raised one shoulder.

  “You didn’t have to blackmail me for that.” She pointed to the key resting against my chest. “All you had to do was ask, and I would’ve given it to you.”

  I almost said, “I don’t care,” but I caught myself. I did care, and I suddenly felt monstrous for blackmailing her. It’s too late to take it back now. “I’ll do whatever I can to keep them safe.”

  “If your actions kill my children, then everything I’ve done to keep them safe will have been for naught. That’s on you.”

  Ouch. I shook my head, irritated at myself for letting her get under my skin. “Zo and Jason might blame themselves for everyone’s deaths if they knew about you, but I don’t. I blame you.” I turned and headed for the door.

  When my hand was on the doorknob, she asked, “Would you rather I’d killed myself, thus killing the two people you love so dearly? Gregory would have found another geneticist to engineer his virus, and everyone would’ve died anyway.”

  I opened the door and exited the office without responding, not on principle, not to give her the cold shoulder, but because I didn’t have an answer. I hurried down the hallway,
around a corner, and leaned my back against the wall. Slowly, I slid to the ground, and cried.

  22

  ZOE

  MARCH 21, 1AE

  I flung my bent arm up to block Sanchez’s elbow strike. When sparring, I was required to focus on something other than the thoughts jumping around like pesky, filthy fleas trying to distract me. I stepped into Sanchez, hooking my left leg directly behind her right, and before she had a chance to react, I shoved her shoulder, throwing her off-balance. She started falling backward. Knowing my weakness was not moving away in time, she clutched my thick braid and pulled me down with her.

  “You’re such a bitch,” I joked, panting on the ground beside her. We’d been at it for over an hour, and I was feeling it…everywhere.

  “I told you to chop it off. It’s not my fault you keep it long enough to pull.” She flung her hands above her head and tried to catch her breath.

  I’d thought many times about cutting my hair, but I was reticent. It was the only “old” part of me I had left.

  “I think you’ll get those achy muscles you wanted,” she said as she rubbed her thigh. “You did a number on me today. Those knees of yours are knobby.”

  I only laughed.

  A small smile tugged at her lips and she shook her head slightly. “You did good. You’re quicker than you used to be and definitely stronger.”

  That was a relief. I wanted to be better. Beyond that, I wanted my body to be as sore and heavy-feeling as my mind. I wanted physical exhaustion to help me fall asleep without trailing, wistful thoughts bothering me before my brain finally turned off for the night. We’d been practicing our Abilities, too—stretching and flexing them as much as we could.